LX
I’ve always known that the JFK/Doctor Who 60th anniversaries would mark the 13-month countdown to my own encounter with 2x2x3x5. But it really started last Christmas when I was in the midst of whatever non-Covid knock-out virus that had entered me and I shuddered as I turned 58. 59 was a year a way and then… For now, I’ll settle for 58 and 11/12ths and forget about what’s to come. My daughter is also celebrating her half-birthday for the first time, now that she’s in her thirties, I think it’s a good habit to encourage. #

Wisteria is hanging on tight to her leaves. She doesn’t believe that it’s the end of November, either. The creeper has given up. Olive appreciated getting a bit of a trim a few weeks ago. Rosemary is as persistently mad as ever. We’ll leave the leaves for now. #

---

Ripples
I listened to a writer last night talking about his preferred narrative structure being an exploration of the ripples that spread out after an event. Basically taking a seemingly simple (if odd) event and noticing the huge but not obviously connected consequences. I think his point is what complexity people refer to as non-linearity, ie that complex outcomes can arise from the simplest stimuli.

The examples he gave were negative – ie seriously bad things happening as a result of smaller bad things. The problem I have with it is that it’s a creativity killer. For some people, thinking like this has to mean STOP! don’t make this thing, don’t make anything, because you can’t control the unintended consequences. But that can’t be right – if it were then the only people left making art would be people who have no problem with or remorse for doing bad things. Oh… wait…!

When I speak about the ripple effect, I prefer to dwell on the positive version. That small incremental improvements in how we are with ourselves and others can spread out and touch people far away, even people we don’t know. That me taking care of myself means there’s one less angry person on the tube train adding to the madness, one more person ready to smile and help someone who’s lost and afraid and alone. #

---

I updated my BlueSky profile to say:

You may know me from such hashtags as #tuttle #wewillgather #c4cc #PLATE and #blackelephant
Sings with a non-hashtagged ukulele.
Blog (like this only bigger chunks) at perfectpath.co.uk

https://bsky.app/profile/lloyddavis.bsky.social

You might not be on BlueSky, but you can infer that it’s like this, only in *smaller* chunks. I don’t know how much longer it’s going to be invite-only, but if you’re interested and impatient, I won’t dissuade you – I have invite codes for those who ask. #

---

Anchor Links
I’m also experimenting with anchor links so that I can more easily link to any of the abovementioned “chunks” – that’s what those hashes represent at the end of each section – if you click on one it should open a new tab with the “cursor” at the top of that section. (Maybe not) obviously, they’re there for you (or me) to easily link to a bit, rather than to be clicked on while reading… or has this sentence made it more confusing? Anyway, if you’re confused, ignore them. If you understand, just nod to yourself. Grand. I’ll probably forget all about it after a while. #

---

Small talk kills me. I think it’s an attention thing. On my way home from another thing last night, I was having some regret about going, but then I realised that the people weren’t a problem and the majority of the content wasn’t a problem, it’s that it got to a point where we were left to do even more small talk (having already had an introductory bit and a break in the middle) and I don’t like to just rush off immediately, and I also did enjoy talking to all the people that I talked to, it’s just that it drains me completely and leaves me thinking I’ve made a mistake in coming out at all. It doesn’t matter how many interesting things I have to talk about or lovely people there are in the room, I will gravitate to an internal state of thinking I’m boring and surrounded by people who are disappointed to have ended up next to me because they only came over for another of those samosas. It’s not you, it’s me… and small talk. #

60 years ago today, my parents (who were engaged to be married) were taking the bus to get into town and had to change by the cricket ground at Edgbaston. That was when they heard the news from Dallas – on a street, in a crowd of people waiting for their bus on a Friday evening.

Further research is required to ascertain whether either of them watched the first episode of Doctor Who the following evening. Personally, I doubt it.

---

I’ve told the story before about my first experience of downtown Dallas. I was on a train from Chicago to Austin in March 2011 and Dallas was a point where there was an extended stop (half an hour or so) to change engines. I like to think that there are northern engines that can handle Chicago winter and southern engines that are more at home once you get into Texas, but I’ve never dug deep into that one. Anyway. Some friends that I’d made on board and I decided to take a little walk while we were waiting and strolled along the road. As we got into the more built-up area, I started having the weirdest feeling of deja-vu, or really that I’d been there before, but I knew the nearest I’d gotten was to change flights at Dallas-Fort Worth once. But then, as I looked, I saw a sign saying we were in Dealey Plaza and everything suddenly fell into place and came into focus. Those familiar landmarks of the railway bridge crossing the road, the green spaces (one might call one of them a ‘knoll’), the tall redbrick buildings all revealed themselves to be the backdrop of that dramatic day, the location for the Zapruder film, a place where a man got shot and the world shifted. I tend not to want to travel to places just to see sights – to be in places where things happened. I’m more interested in the people who are here and now and what’s going on today, but this shocked me out of that present perspective and said “Oi. There’s something else to pay attention to!”

---

I’ve had time to think a bit more about the thing I went to last night. I think what disturbed me was focusing on the testimony of the newly converted, or as we call them in recovery circles “the newcomer”. In AA, the newcomer is often described as “the most important person in the room”. This is not just to flatter them into staying (although it worked on me!) it’s also a reminder to the rest of us that a big part of the work is “giving away what we were so generously given ourselves”. Our own recovery depends more on being able to help someone who has no hope than it does on sitting around with the same bunch of folk reinforcing our well-worn stories. And that means that the newcomer needs to be welcome, but also to recognise that they have more to hear than they have to say. Much is made in media portrayals of our meetings of the poor addict who wanders in and gets to tell their story for the first time – it’s great drama, but the more important stuff comes after that, when they sit quietly and hear the testimonies of other people who’ve been in a similar predicament – not telling them what to do, but just letting them know that they’re in the right place, and importantly that there is a solution and it’s a spiritual one. This, of course, is an ideal that is practiced less than 100% and often the newcomer has to step over the line in order to know there is a line (as do we all at times). The bottom line is: just because you’re the most important person in the room, doesn’t mean you get to dominate the space or preach to everyone.

I had a lot of love for Martin and Paul telling their stories of coming to their brand of faith, but the setting was confusing, because people who stand at the front on a platform with a mic (whether it works or not) are taken to be the ones who have more important things to say than everyone else and then the Q&A reinforces that. It’s not that I was desperate to tell my own story, just that it felt off, like the content was being shoehorned into a format that didn’t quite fit. So you can see I’ve thought it through a little, but not completely.

---

Yesterday, I said in a team meeting that I needed to be working out in the open more. Very soon after, I got an invitation to go to a thing tonight, coincidentally featuring someone who is associated with Black Elephant. Fun.

But really working out loud or working in the open is not restricted to going outside and talking to people (the horror!). It means this place. Or this place and all the other places that I have a tense relationship with – the places we’ve come to call social media, but only because “soul- and relationship-destroying online social networks that feed us more crap than the mainstream media every dreamed of” is a bit of a mouthful.

When I first heard that phrase “social media” it was at a conference, probably in 2005 or 2006. It got an immediate “ugh” from me. At the time I was doing that thing where I’d turn up to a conference and record the speakers (with or without their permission or knowledge) and then publish it online, and everybody (I spoke to) thought it was great. People started paying me to do it for them and to create an RSS feed for them as podcasts. Until they didn’t. Until they (or someone in legal) thought through the ramifications because this did seem to be becoming the new normal and maybe people wouldn’t go to the conferences if they could get them free or bootlegged. Ah well, by that time, I’d got new fish to fry. But anyway, the point is that making media was only the means to an end, it was a way of me thinking out loud and making things that other people could reflect on and think about too. And that’s what this place ought to be too, certainly not a place where media is made or *shudder*… content!

I’ve spent much of today working on a new deck for Black Elephant. And I’m still getting used to how to do this sort of work remotely in a team that exists separately in England, Greece and Mali (at least we’re vaguely on the same time zone). Yesterday we just had a bunch of text and the old deck. First thing this morning we had a first draft of the deck and we spent almost an hour in our morning meeting talking through what was needed. Then two of us worked together in Google Sheets to pull in stuff that we’ve used before and amend new stuff and put new ideas in. Just as with blogging, the writing of these things is the thinking. It’s really hard (for me) to think through an idea for a slide or set of slides without typing something out and then looking at it and realising that it’s wrong and going back over and over. This is the work today. We have a better draft. And as the cult of done manifesto says: “Accept that everything is a draft, it helps to get things done.”

And so this evening to St Ethelburga’s in the City, y’know the one just along from St Mary’s Axe that was blown up by the IRA and is now a Peace and Reconciliation Centre. I heard Paul Kingsnorth and Martin Shaw talk about Seeking God in Wild Places. I don’t know what I think about it yet, so don’t ask me. No, I’m on the train and it’s nearly 9:30pm and it’s getting more and more crowded because there’s only 5 carriages and everyone’s trying to get home.

I can’t believe it’s four years since we went to Iceland and then I came back and started work in the church.

---

When people say “We’ve had enough of the madness” I hope that’s true, but I know that I’ve said it about my own odd choices and divergences and it takes longer than we think. Nonetheless, “the best way out is through” (according to Robert Frost) and we just have to keep trudging.

We smashed the windows of a major bank. A jury acquitted us. This is why – Gully Bujak in the Guardian.

There’s a bit in here about people’s assemblies. I went to a thing at Nesta last week about similar forms of democratic infrastructure that might be an antidote to our current quagmire and impending authoritarianism. Of course though, it’s complicated and in particular, it’s tempting to end up talking about such processes coming to a “better” conclusion, when what we really hope is that means they agree more often with what we believe in and we get our own, “enlightened, progressive” way.

---

I’d quite like to write some more here, but as is the way when one has “a job”, there’s always another meeting in the way… or somewhere to go. Tomorrow is another day.

---

Oh and, just a note really that there’s something rumbling in me about coming back to blogging as a remedy for all the splintered remains of the the former microblog monolith. Something about what I need to say, what needs to be said in public, and how my thinking just benefits from me expressing it in a place that’s mine, regardless of which platform you end up reading it through. Sorry, that’s a bit of blogging about blogging again, but I do notice that I’m not being as open and transparent about my work as I used to be and that there’s an irony in it being even easier to publish than ever before (technologically) but the culture into which the writing goes makes it more difficult (at least for sensitive souls like me).

PS. I’m also going to do something about the ads that appear here. If you look and go “what ads?” I’ll have done it properly!