I'l be one of the contributors to a discussion on blogging on Drivetime with Dave Fanning on RTE Radio 1 tomorrow evening between 7 and 8. I'm not sure what other Irish bloggers will be making an appearance. I'll post a link to the show once it's aired.
I'm doing another radio interview on Monday next - nothing to do with blogging this time though. I'll be on the new Derek Mooney Show on Radio 1 (3-5pm weekdays) talking about "cyber infidelity". Statistics coming out of the States are suggesting that nearly half of divorce proceedings there reference online affairs as a contributing factor in the breakdown of relationships. This issue is now presenting in Ireland and I began to see it several years ago in my psychotherapy practice. I'm looking forward to exploring this further so tune in (I'm on during the first hour)..
David Chase made a rare public appearance last night at a public interview at the Centre for Communication in New York. Before a packed house (at which yours truly had a front row seat) he talked about the evolution of The Sopranos, how similar Olivia is to his own mother and how that relationship sent him into psychotherapy. I was able to share with him my view that the therapy scenes in The Sopranos are the most accurate description of "real" therapy I've seen on the screen to date.
Chase seemed genuinely surprised at how popular the series is outside of America after people from (Ireland), Italy, Israel, Cuba and further afield shared their enthusiasm for the show. After much discussion about it being quintessentially an "American" tale it struck me that it's a very small family story and ultimately it doesn't matter what kind of control we have in our external lives - it's generally the internal stories that perplex us. Tony is a smart guy and applies the learning he gains in therapy about his family of origin to his business family.
Not all of us have a sabotaging mother like Olivia, but we've all got a family story that we bring with us into the work place. Some of us join the dots and make the connections between our family of origin and how our experience therein influences how we are at work - others don't and relive many of the episodes from the past in the present. We mightn't like Tony's lifestyle but in my mind there's no doubt that the success of the show internationally (apart from the stupenduous writing) is that he's everyman - neither all good nor all bad; generally in control in his external working life and somewhat at sea in his internal and emotional life. I, for one, am eagerly anticipating the final 9 episodes due to broadcast in March.
Photo credit: Centre for Communication
I attended a Tribeca Talks panel discussion this week on Cinema 2.0: Me, Myself and iPod – essentially a discussion on the impact of social media on the production of art (notably cinema and literature). The line up of panellists included
Jonathan Lethem (Author)
Brent Weinstein (Head of the Digital Media Dept. at United Talent Agency)
Jerry Paffendorf (Futurist with The Electric Sheep Company and his blog is here)
Charles Leadbeater (a leading authority on innovation and creativity, ex Financial Times and Independent. The wiki for his current project We Think - The Rise of Mass Creativity is here ) - great TED talk here.
Kathleen Grace (Director and Producer of The Burg a web based drama set in Williamsburg, Brooklyn)
and moderator Georg Szalai (NY bureau chief and business editor at The Hollywood Reporter)
There were a lot of pertinent points raised about the relationship between the old, the new and the vast space in between.
I can’t do justice to the 90 minute discussion (and subsequent questions and answers) but I did capture a few points which I think it’s worth mentioning here – particularly in the context of Irish arts and cultural organisations – some of whom are out there using social media, many others of whom are ambivalent about the impact on the production of their artistic artefact.
The panellists addressed the issue of giving work away for free, particularly if you’re struggling to make a living in the first place. Kathleen Grace and her crew have created a soap opera about Williamsburg which is viewable free and online. They decided to forget about pitching to the studios at the outset and are hoping that it will be picked up (before they drown in credit card debt I imagine). It’s given them a direct outlet for the creation of their art and an instant audience for the work.
Novelist Jonathan Lentham created The Promiscious Materials Project which was specifically designed to distribute his work (at the cost of $1).
I like art that comes from other art, and I like seeing my stories adapted into other forms. My writing has always been strongly sourced in other voices, and I'm a fan of adaptations, apropriations, collage, and sampling.
Lentham described his online activity as an “analogue gesture in a digital cloak” because he is very clear that he creates the artefact and then allows it to be discussed, modified, mashed-up etc once that creative act has taken place.
Leadbetter posted 11 chapters of his book online and sought feedback and comments – he is incorporating some of those into the final draft and will credit those whose work he includes.
The panellists were in general agreement that creativity is a collaboration, and while the origination of the artefact (book, sculpture, video etc) may be the work of one person – the conversation that surrounds it (both before and after) is the way of entwining both spaces and expanding on the relationship between artist and community.
There was a lot of discussion about the future of the business of social media, particularly from Futurist Jerry Paffendorf (whom I could have listened to all evening and who focusses on ROA Return on Awesome rather than ROI..) on how online worlds are evolving and changing (virtual worlds are increasingly “opt in” and the mantra is “Don’t have sex with Google”) and and notably Brent Weinstein who heads up a division at United Talent Agency that specifically handles artists working in/with new media. There is money to be made and business models are evolving but Paffendorf described it well when he said
The currency we are using doesn’t know how to quantify what we are making
I really enjoyed the discussion, it got my own creative juices flowing and I came away with the following which I think are going to be pertinent issues for Irish arts and cultural organisations.
1 There’s no going back. An active, updated, interactive online presence is a must if you are a creative and it’s about driving traffic to where you will get paid even if in the short term it’s unlikely that you are making money.
2 Circling the wagons and adopting a defensive approach to creativity is self defeating. In the old days (6 months ago as Weinstein suggested) retaining and restraining may have worked – in this new era of social media community is where it’s at.
3 As one producer (in the Q & A) described it - people are in control of their ipod screens, their computer screens, their TV screens and ultimately their cinema screens. This model of drag and drop cultural consumption is only going to increase and impact on all other areas of media/cultural production. If creatives aren’t driving that traffic then they’re going to get stuck in a traffic jam that’s going nowhere fast.
4 There are no residuals on the internet so new ways of creating work and more importantly commissioning opportunities for this medium are going to have to evolve, particularly in countries like Ireland where we have a grant-aid culture.
5 Commerce, community and creativity co-exist in an internet age – the challenge for many creatives is how to make that relationship work for them.
The Tribeca Film Festival broadcasts a daily webcast on Youtube
Interactions was featured in the Sunday Business Post's "So you want to be a blogger" on 6th May. It was good to contribute to a piece about the value of blogging for business in Ireland and to be in the company of my blogging colleagues Sinéad Gleeson, Ice Cream Ireland and Beaut.ie.
Congratulations to the Arts Council of Ireland for being the first of the National Cultural Institutions to install an RSS feed on its re-designed website. The feed doesn't appear to be working at present but hopefully that's a minor technical hitch. I hope it's not going to be too long before the rest of the members of the CNCI follow suit - some of the websites of these major institutions are very poorly designed and I gave up trying to navigate through the National Library's site in an effort to find out more about their series of talks (I saw a printed brochure about them) but there's nothing on the site for an interested ticket buyer or if there is, it's buried somewhere very secret. Look instead at the New York Public Library's site with 8 different feeds for various areas of its activities...A quick scan of many of the websites of smaller Irish arts and cultural organisations reveals the same thing ... all this great activity going on, in secret, buried in the bowels of dusty websites ... let's not make it so difficult for interested people to spend their money on what you have to offer!
And for those of you who aren't sure what I'm talking about here's a brilliant explanation of RSS in Simple English from Common Craft.
There's a transcript of the video here
The Irish Independent has a piece featuring my good self, Claire at Gingerpixel, Jason Freid and Krishna De on web applications for business. I had to think really hard when Marie Boran asked me to talk to her about this because so much of what I use has been seamlessly integrated into my work and my initial reaction was - I'm not a tech person - well, it appears I kind of am. When I did reflect I realised that I use the following on a daily basis
Firefox
Google
Google alerts
Gmail
Zotera
Google Scholar
Skype
MSN
Bloglines
coComment
Stumble Upon
My website and blog
Online library at the University
Endnote - particularly its ability to download searches and bibliographies from the web into my library
Meteor text messaging online
Delicious
Feedburner
Feedblitz
Technorati
Then there's Flickr which I use from time to time and do newspapers count if you don't pick them up via RSS?
I still haven't taken the leap to Facebook or MySpace and I don't have a Twitter account - I'm ambivalent about them and maybe I'll write a longer, more considered post some time about my ambivalence.
And I'm also sure that as soon as I post this I'll think of a bunch of other applications I use that I take for granted...
Following the blogging and podcasting workshop I ran with Conn earlier this year and some of our conversations about extending the reach of publicly funded services Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council Library Service (a client of mine) decided to commission a series of 2 podcasts of one of their cultural events Books in the Park. The podcasts were created by Conn at Edgecast Media and part one The Children's Corner is now available for download from the DLRCC Library website. Part 2 is now also available by clicking here and features the adult authors who read in Cabinteely Park on June 23rd. They are Paul Carson, Sarah Webb, Robert Dunbar, Marisa Mackle and Jacinta McDevitt.
The event itself was held in Cabinteely Park on 23rd of June, organised by the Library and Parks Service and 5 Childrens' authors read their work to a rapt audience. Conn and Brian Greene recorded the events and interviewed a selection of people on the day and this episode includes authors Don Conroy, Oisin McGann, Aisling O Loughlin, Joe O Brien, Derek Landy. Mairéad Owens and Conor Peoples from the Library Service and some of the attendees are also included.
I'm hoping this is going to be the start of many more podcasts from Dun Laoghaire Rathdown who are trailblazing in this regard - and I'm hoping that other local authorities will follow. This is such a brilliant example of how to extend the reach of publicly funded services - it's about connecting with people where they are when they want rather than the other way around. The trick now is going to be to find ways of evaluating the impact of initiatives like this when they don't tick the traditional number-crunching formats. For now, I'm thrilled to have been part of the conversations that led to this development. The DLRCC Library site doesn't have a comment facility on the post (not yet anyway!) so please leave a comment here or at Conn's site, or alternatively drop the Library Service an email at libraries@dlrcoco.ie I know they would appreciate your feedback.
I'm a guest on Newstalk's Life with Orla Barry at 11.30am on Wednesday morning next (10th October) reviewing The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld. Described as a 'dazzling literary thriller' by the Richard and Judy Book Club and
inspired by Sigmund Freud's 1909 visit to America, accompanied by protégé and rival Carl Jung. When a wealthy young debutante is discovered bound, whipped and strangled in a luxurious apartment overlooking the city, and another society beauty narrowly escapes the same fate, the mayor of New York calls upon Freud to use his revolutionary new ideas to help the surviving victim recover her memory of the attack, and solve the crime. But nothing about the attacks - or about the surviving victim, Nora - is quite as it seems. And there are those in very high places determined to stop the truth coming out, and Freud's startling theories taking root on American soil.
Psychoanalysis rarely takes things at face value so I'm sure Freud would have appreciated the many promotional pieces for the book - award winning works of fiction in their own right. Freud is not a central character, he has nothing to do with solving a murder (the 'killer' confesses); and the interchanges between him, Jung, Firenze and other are interesting diversions but hardly central to the plot of a murder mystery.
As I mentioned here the book has a brilliant series of opening paragraphs but unfortunately it's all rather disappointing from then on. The strength of the book is its attention to detail. The descriptions of turn of the century New York are very evocative and lovingly written. The weakness of the book is also its attention to detail it’s generally over researched, over written, too clever for its own good and could use losing at least 100 pages. There are three stories going on. The murder (or is it?); the solving of the case and an attempt to draw together the areas of expertise of the author – psychoanalysis and Shakespeare.
The novel attempts to gather many of Freud's core ideas and use them as a way of developing and driving the plot. I didn't think it worked. The dinner party scene where Freud gets to have his dilemma about what women really want answered is but one nod to the psychoanalytically inclined reader but again, hardly important in the greater scheme of things. The book is far too contrived for me and I didn't know whether this was a covert lecture on psychoanalysis or a poor murder mystery in need of a credibility makeover. I read the book in three sittings and with over 40 characters I found it hard to keep up with who was talking about what (anyone who reads this a chapter at a time and keeps up with the plot gets my admiration that's for sure) and by the end of it all I didn't really care - I had lost sympathy for the characters and connection with the plot.
Yes, psychoanalysis gets a look in as an 'interpretation' of something (the 'victim' Nora is in fact based on Freud's famous case of Dora); Hamlet's procrastination is given a psychoanalytic makeover and Freud's Oedipus complex is revised so, we have an interpretation of two philosophical and psychological murders. Confused yet? Well join the club - I found the latter two interpretations interesting (and credible) but can't say more because it would ruin one of the more curious moments in the novel.
It's marginally better written than the DaVinci Code but in the same territory in its mixing of fact and fiction and the text reads more like a film script (I'm sure it's already in development) but it's too academic – The author includes an epilogue outlining the research that went to making sure so much of the book is accurate. I've seen several interviews where he talks about the amount of 'fact checking' that went into it. It's a novel isn't it? Would it matter if he took liberties with the 'truth'? I hardly think so. I have an interest in psychoanalysis so that's what kept me reading - I wonder how it reads to someone with no interest or knowledge of the area? One blogger I know said this about it:
That scene under the river made a total farce of the book, which up till then had an interesting take on New York society, Freudian/Jungian theory, sadomasochism, sexual innocence and perversion. After the river scene we were expected to believe the most outrageous stuff that not even a panel of big brother residents could swallow without incredulity.
But Freud gets the last laugh because the author is the
Robert R. Slaughter Professor of Law at Yale Law School
But then again, that's what you get when you search for meaning instead of being happy with what's sitting in front of you!
Tune in and add your own views to the conversation, I'll post the link to the podcast as soon as it's on the Newstalk website.
Update: I see a fictional meeting between Henry James and Sigmund Freud forms the basis for another book Lions at Lamb House by Edwin M. Yoder Jr. I wonder why Mr Freud is making guest appearances? What does that tell us about the state of psychoanalysis these days?
Ryan Tubridy asked ‘is it ever right to show emotion in the workplace” on last Wednesday’s show. While I was glad to see this issue discussed on national radio I was really disheartened that the show didn’t appear to take the opportunity to challenge the most basic of myths about emotion i.e. women cry and men get angry; emotion has to be ‘controlled’; emotion is ‘personal’; emotional behaviour has to be taken out of the work environment. Hopes for a more sophisticated discussion that might have included reference to work as an emotional and emotion generating environment; the difference between feelings and emotions in the workplace; emotion as systemic intelligence about what is going on in the workplace and the fact that there’s no such thing as an emotion free environment (well maybe in the case of extreme bureaucracies) and the ‘rules’ about emotion were quickly dashed. The increasing body of research into this area wasn’t referenced even in passing.
Yes, if only we could get those pesky emotional people out of the workplace then all would be well eh?
So who are we? We are the life force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world. Right here right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere where we are -- I am -- the life force power of the universe, and the life force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form. At one with all that is. Or I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere. where I become a single individual, a solid, separate from the flow, separate from you. I am Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, intellectual, neuroanatomist. These are the "we" inside of me.Which would you choose? Which do you choose? And when? I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world and the more peaceful our planet will be. And I thought that was an idea worth spreading.
If E-mail is e-mail then instant messaging is e-whispering or epassinganoteatthebackoftheclass
Check out Matt Moore's simple and very sophisticated presentation on email and where it fits in the landscape of web 2.0 in Peak Email - A Fairy Story.
How to remain visible in the face of death? Bringing Nuala O’Faolain on her final wish to see Berlin before she died was a sad and memorable journey, but also one of fun and optimism. For the writer whose memoir in German translation was entitled Just don’t become invisible, this was a remarkable way of staying alive
Today’s newspapers in Ireland are infused with images and memories of Nuala O’Faolain. Her radio interview a month ago with Marian Finnucane brought me to tears. Her death, while I was in New York last week, reduced me to silence. The New York Times ran an obituary and an opinion piece in which she was described as ‘fearless even when she insisted she wasn’t’. Fintan O’Toole, in today’s Irish Times, appreciates her understanding of the personal as political and indeed the reverse..
She solved one of the most difficult problems a writer can face – the use of the word “I”. In journalism it can be used to create a comic, self-depcrecating persona, or to bear raw witness to an exraordinary event. …Only very rarely can it be used with sincereity and integrity on the one hand and a cool objectivity on the other.
Hugo Hamilto’s beautiful tribute to his friend (see the first quote) is an extraordinary testament to a woman for whom
‘..coming to terms with her life experience was turned into something more vociferous. She felt the need to change things, to fight not only for herself but for everyone else, to expose the damage done by society’
It’s always personal. Even when it’s business, even when it’s framed as something else – it’s always personal. And that’s why I loved her writing because she connected with the humanity of every topic, person and issue she talked about. You were never in doubt as to where her interests and loyalties lay. And perhaps that’s the invitation – each and every time – to see the humanity and the person behind the problem, the issue and the solution. Because if we don’t then we’re missing the point that to be in any kind of relationship means relating on a human level - and that requires feeling and emotion and allowing ourselves to be impacted instead of defending ourselves against the intimacy. There has to be room for love – where ever we are and what ever our task.
May she rest in peace
I'll be appearing on the Ryan Tubridy show on RTE Radio 1 next Monday morning talking to Ryan about relationships at work - personal and social ones; how we manage them and don't; the 'rules' and boundaries etc. I'll post some of my thoughts here and a link to the podcast next week. In the meantime if anyone has any comments or thoughts on the subject I'd be delighted to hear from you.
Update: The podcast is here (date 16th June) and I appear at around 44 mins in (you'll need Real Player to listen). Ryan and I talked about negotiating boundaries (formally and informally) and the importance of establishing how much information we're willing to reveal about ourselves and more importantly (some times) how much we're willing to hear. I told a story about one work situation where I was unwittingly involved in a boss's affair by having to tell his wife when she called that he was 'at lunch' - very often it's this type of situation that contributes to difficult personal relationships at work.
We also talked about the importance of personal relationships particularly when work is stressful or dangerous and as a way of decompressing from work place anxiety. If my life is in your hands the chances are we are going to be very close and intimate at work. The reality is though that many of those kinds of intense relationships don't transition long term. But work relationships are about work most of the time and the work context will take precedence over personal - chances are if we're friends we may be competing for the same job one of these days and our friendship may take a battering if we're both after the same position.
Work is a social situation and it wouldn't work without personal relationships but I'm becoming increasingly interested in the splitting that goes on where we have highly formalised 'rules' for good behaviour in the work place contrasted with an 'anything goes' attitude outside of work particularly on social networking sites - as though it's possible to keep both separate. Ultimately I wouldn't want to do anything on Facebook that I wouldn't be comfortable doing in front of friends and family. But it's interesting to me that we can even imagine that we can be 'all good' or 'all bad' and separate and contained in those ways.
We just touched on these and other issues - it would be great to continue that conversation in some way - the feedback and emails I've received since the show have been fascinating .. it seems to be an issue many are interested in.
