On Being Here Now

And in memory of

I’m going to recommend some music in a minute, but the point of this post is to ask you a question. Actually, two.

I’ve started a bunch of posts in recent weeks, then deleted them. I have things to say about AI but that discourse is so thick now that maybe we don’t need any more — my only real point is there’s a lot of (justifiable) hand-wringing about the moral and copyright and environmental issues, but maybe we as creators and humans need to think most about what we want from our lives, and our endeavors, and how much we’re prepared to hand off to machines making profits for billionaires. We need to focus down on what’s existentially important, rather than merely expedient in terms of convenience or avoiding the judgement of others. Do we want to write a book, or to have merely “produced” one; do we want to be able to understand French or be able to create songs, or just appear to be able to do so, for the silent applause of some audience that likely doesn’t care? What’s your end goal? Is it to look big in front of others, or to have increased the value and depth of your self? What best serves us? That feels like the main question in the face of the unavoidable AI juggernaut.

And yes of course there’s politics too but I think many of us have reach the point of bored despair over all that, and me ranting on about it will merely be another piss into the ocean of what has become an endless Reality TV show of bad-tempered tribal bullshit when it’s supposed to be about making people’s lives better.

So here are my questions:

Firstly, is there anything you’d like to see me write about? Don’t say “Football” because honestly apart from watching Messi be amazing I don’t care. Though if England continue to be not-shit I may suddenly get all proprietorial about it.

Secondly, how the hell are you? What’s up? How are you weathering the storms? What’s new and cool? What’s driving you nuts? How’s your cat?

Hit me up.

Before the music, I want to dedicate this post to someone I never met. Back on Twitter in the good old days, and then on this Substack, I had a number of memorable interactions with a guy called Gareth Smith. He lived in Cornwall with his wife Carole — often comedically referenced in his comments here — and was a hedger and sign-maker and a brother and a son and husband amongst other things. He was funny and insightful and warm and his comments were a highlight, and I was saddened and shocked to see on Facebook when he died suddenly a couple of months ago. It’s his family’s loss rather than mine but I will genuinely miss Gareth, and mourn the fact he’ll never pop up here again saying something interesting or silly or involving the word “twat”.

It’s easy to dismiss the Internet as a doom-scrolling waste of time, but it isn’t always. We meet real people here. They, like the flesh and blood examples, are worth cherishing. Tech changes the world and we have to change with it, acknowledging and fully inhabiting the new spaces it creates. We need to be here now, too.

The music is just a few connected things I recently found and liked. The first is this piece of summer loveliness from a few years ago, Bon Entendeur’s remix of Le Temps Est Bon.

This led me to seek out Isabelle Pierre’s original, which is also great… though it has one of those weird middle bits they insisted on doing back then.

And this led me to another Bon Entendeur remix of a song I instantly recognized… L’Amour, L’Amour, L’Amour…

… from the original by Mouloudji…

… but the version I love the most — and which has been in my life for a quarter of a century and is on all my party mixes — is the one by Rouge Rouge. Paula and I discovered this on a (then achingly fashionable) Hotel Costes CD the summer we were in Paris when temperatures went over 100°… and this slinky beast will always make me feel hot. No, not in that way, weirdo.

Finally, because it wouldn’t be a post from this year without me wanging on about The Stones, I recently discovered what must be the Platonic Ideal of them live — Brown Sugar at the Wiltern Theater in 2002. Please enjoy Mick (and Chuck on keyboards) being doggedly professional, Keith embodying the louche twangy spirit of the Telecaster to the point where it seems like the guitar’s playing him rather than the other way around, Ronnie smoking throughout and looking so hammered he’s in danger of falling over, Darryl on bass wandering around looking stoned and the backing singers are literally making out and meanwhile Charlie serenely drums along at the back, oblivious… and yet in this glorious chaotic shambles the music’s as tight as it can be only if you’ve been doing this for decades and you’re the greatest rock and roll band of all time. Even if you don’t like The Stones (you’re wrong), this is worth checking out. Play loud.

And live loud, too. I speak as a man who sometimes seems to try to live his life on mute. Maybe it’s time for all of us to turn it up. AI can’t do that for us.