There is a tension within social networking. A duality. It is at once public and private, serious and trivial. The writer Nicholson Barker is the best precursor to the medium I can think of. His novels prescribe the minutiae of the trivial and inconsequential, whilst implying that the sum of the minutiae is profound. I predict that in the very near future the rich and inconsequential will have social networking publicists, people employed to make their facebook & twitter posts witty and profound. We are all legends in our own lunchtimes now.
Hence the title of this blog. One of my first posts on Twitter was, "I am not currently eating a cheese sandwich, but when I do you'll be the first to know".
It's a an oh so clever comment on the triviality and self regarding nature of the medium. at the same time I'm using the medium. Ultimately I'm just as self regarding as everyone else, probably more so.
So what I wanted to do was encourage people to illustrate the profound with the trivial. I'll give you some examples from my own experience.
Today I was driving through Ordsall in Manchester looking for a location next to the ship canal. Through a wire mesh fence across a concrete poured waste ground I watched a heron glide in to land. I know herons are territorial and solitary, but this one flew in to meet a group of 10. I saw 10 Herons on a derelict concrete waste land next to the ship canal in Manchester.
Not long ago I was working on a tv programme. I was waiting for the crew to move from one location to another and had some down time. The crew were due to park up next to a little known train station just outside of Manchester City Centre. I used the time to go to a nearby petrol station and fill up. I was just about to pay when I heard a beautiful voice singing. The streets were grey and quite and slick with rain. I heard the voice again and saw a young woman in a grey dress rolling along the street not 100 yards from where I stood. She was louche, raw kneed and swaying. She ducked in to the car park of a van hire place across the road and momentarily the singing stopped. Then she emerged from behind a white transit adjusting herself having taken a piss. The singing started again, like a sirens song it echoed off the walls of the over pass as she weaved away from me and out of sight but strangely not out of mind.
Lastly, The sun shone and the fat lazy dog lay in the long grass.
Embrace the cheese
