VinceT

For too long
these shapling
structures
consumed our air
and swallowed
our
best
hearts

Drowning
out yearning
disavowing all
desire
for freedom
to choose
our
best
paths

Finally abandoned
obtuse orders
constrictions
fighting free
yielding promise
our
best
ideas

Our muse swelling
creative
“Here we are!”
Yelling at bonds
Those pitiful
objectionable
meaningless
fear-driven
tethered restraints

“These!”
we cry
“These are
our
best
hearts!”

Flooding
dungeons
Emitting
Radiant
Exultant
Breaking
senseless bounds

We screamed
emergent…

Emerging
from
the shroud

   

First of all, I have a confession – as an alternative, independent, egotistical musician who, by all rights, should sneer at any large-scale industry shindig, I’ve always had a soft spot for large awards shows.

In the UK, it that means the Brits, and over here in the US, I’ve grown very partial to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction night – mostly for the speeches, although many of the performances are pretty good as well A couple of years back, I started watching the Grammy’s which, in my head, were similar to the Ivor Novello awards in the UK. As the years passed though, I came to see them very much more as being like the Brits.

Now, all that confessed, I have to add that I’m not an awards geek. I don’t study the form, or join betting pools for potential winners. I just turn up on the night and watch – enjoying the performances and those few moments when sincerity shines through and an artist seems honestly humbled by the occasion.

So, last night, I settled in to watch the 2012 Grammys

[which should be Grammies, right? Right?]

joining the show about halfway through.

Within five minutes, I’m thinking that I’m watching the death of an industry. Live.

This is a show that could have been aired in the late 70′s

[just swap Leif Ericson in for Chris Brown]

with many of the same names making a showing and a format that is easily 50 years old.

I don’t often use text-speak, but W… T… F?!!!

At now here’s Ryan Seacrest paying testament to the enduring legacy of The Beach Boys. Great, a montage and some testimony, thought I.

No such luck.

[and please forgive any inaccurate quotes...]

“And here to bring that legacy to life,” said Seacrest, beaming his beamiest grin, “Maroon 5!”

And it was. Maroon 5 singing Surfer Girl…

… with about fifteen backing guitarists. Twelve percussionists. Nineteen backing singers.

At the end of the song, Adam looks to his right and announces, “Ladies and gentlemen, Foster The People!”

Cut to the adjacent stage and, sure enough, it’s Foster The People singing Wouldn’t It Be Nice…

… with a different fifteen backing guitarists. An alternate Twelve percussionists. And nineteen other backing singers.

Huh?!!

Then come the Beach Boys themselves, replete – for the first time in decades – with Brian Wilson’s thousand-yard stare. They’re old. Very old.

[shit, they were old in 1985 when they reformed to play Live Aid]

But at least they have a legacy. And they sound good enough, which might have something to do with…

… another fifteen backing guitarists, twelve percussionists and nineteen backing singers.

I know musicians have fallen on hard times, but my sense is that the Grammy’s did it’s bit in hiring as many musicians as it could fit in an arena, and then didn’t plug any of them in. Maybe it’s a union thing…

Fast forward.

Taylor Swift. Another 53 musicians

[how many mandolins does one song need, for fuck's sake?!!!]

all in choreographed perfection.

Still, at least Taylor’s smile on finishing the song and experiencing the crowd’s reaction provided one of those rare moments of humility and honesty.

But enough with that youthful talent, this is the Grammys! Wheel out the geriatric Beatle!

And for heaven’s sake, make sure he looks like he got his suit off the bargain rack at Mens Wearhouse.

Introduced by Stevie Wonder as singing a new classic, Paul proceeded to sing a… well…

For all his legacy, Paul McCartney is no Frank Sinatra.

I miss John Lennon.

[PRODUCER: "Note to self - now he's done his bit, make sure for the rest of the show, we have as many cutaways as possible to a badly dancing geriatric Beatle"]

Onward.

To the dance tent, where David Guetta and Chris Brown did some perfunctory auto-tuned pop dance

[yay! pass me my large glo-stick so that I too can be cool, hip and trendy!]

which, thankfully, cut to Foo Fighters mashed up with Deadmaus – finally some honesty.

And beats.

With only the original musicians involved.

[phew]

Katy Perry. Blue hair. Guitars. Many dancers. Not so many musicians.

[phew]

Adele. The quite astounding Rolling in the Deep. Alone but for the specific members of her touring band who joined her onstage.

[phew]

Enough said.

And now they start hyping Nicki Minaj – “A performance you will not want to miss!”

Erm.

Look, courting religious controversy is all well and good, but its got to be on the back of memorable songs: Like A Prayer, not some low-budget, poor-quality Excorcist rip-off.

[but today's blogs confirm the Catholic church is upset - job done - record sales up!]

Moving right along.

By this time, I’m getting a headache and sinking feeling deep, deep into the pit of my stomach.

I will never get these wasted moments back again.

And some dude with a beard and grey hair is on spouting something about something and how there’s a charity that helps young musicians and a picture of Johnny Rotten flashes up and my cognitive dissonance hits unparalleled heights.

And this dude is spouting something about protecting the creators in the digital age. And I’m almost screaming at the television because this is, by definition, an awards show geared about and for the MIDDLEMEN!

[and those reading this who don't believe that those same middlemen have been doing whatever they can do to fleece artists since Elvis signed his first contract with Colonel Tom might as well leave now]

Bon Iver says it all when he thanks those musicians who will never have a hope of appearing at the Grammy’s.

[thank you, Bon Iver]

no surprise that the ‘out-of-time’ music plays him off stage.

Adele gives us one of those down to earth, honest moments when she accepts her umpteenth grammy – I don’t think I’ve ever seen an award recipient acknowledge snotty tears before.

[thank you, Adele]

Jennifer Hudson pulls the toughest job in showbiz, singing a tribute to Whitney Houston. Does a great job.

[thank you, Jennifer]

And LL Cool J – who always makes me smile – introduces the grand finale.

Oh shit, it’s Sir Paul back again. Sgt Pepper’s rear-end…

[only with an awesome drummer]

… an all star celebrity guitar jam.

Yawn

[and I'm a guitarist for fuck's sake!]

and I can’t help feeling that Sir Paul now sees Beatles songs as an opportunity to hone his pantomime karaoke skills.

[did I mention that the Grammy's reminded me how much I miss John Lennon?]

And it’s over.

Phew.

My initial reaction – that this throwback mess of a show was the death of an industry, live! – remained with me. So much so, that I slept on it before writing this piece, wanting to check my head and listen for any voice of jealousy.

But it never came. The only thing that emerge was this: Support local live music. As the months and years pass, it’s likely the only place where you’ll find honesty, talent and humility.

Ugh.

[all that, and I didn't even mention Glenn Campbell]

Birthday in about a week’s time – that’ll make it 44 years since I popped out and said ‘Hi!’ to the world.

Though I had my eyes tested last week – and need prescription specs – I don’t worry about growing old.

Never have.

I want to grow old like Neil Young – doing what I love doing, on my own terms.

I want to grow old like Christopher Hitchens – irascible, non-accepting of moral weakness.

I want to grow old like Mother Theresa of Calcutta – caring until the end.

I want to grow old like my Nan and Gramps – loved, loved, loved.

I want to grow old like me.

Just like me.

I was interviewed at The Examiner over the weekend as my last formal stop on the Family Rules Virtual Book Tour:

“… I can, and do, write pretty much anywhere. At home, my office is chaotic, but I fall through the computer screen pretty quickly and all the junk and paraphernalia on my desk disappear.

I always have music on when I write, and I count that as the most important part of my writing environment. I usually write to what I call ‘transport music’, floating away from my own moment and into the landscape of the story. For Family Rules, and especially the redraft, I was listening a lot to the Scottish band Mogwai, who make epic heavy instrumental rock, very powerful stuff.

So, I tend to think of my writing environment as my MacBook Pro, a screen and transport music, all taking me into the heart of my stories…”

I spend a lot of time in stories.

From the deep dive of novels to the crystalline focus of screenplay, from the ether of poetry to the immediacy of song, all of it story.

I talk about story. I write about story.

Consciously and sub-consciously, story has been my life’s work.

I worked in a major corporation for 20 years, on both sides of the Atlantic ocean. I had job titles. I had a career path. I had a talent profile. I had performance documents. I had direct reports. I had resources to manage. I had internal politics to wade through. I had crappy days. I had great days.

Even with all that, story was my life.

Or, more accurately, maybe it should be my life was a story.

It was about a guy who… did that.

[and three years ago, I started telling a different story - I'm now a guy who does… this!]

In my corporate career, I interviewed thousands of people for jobs – not just passing conversations, either; at least an hour of a candidate’s background, motivations, values, aims and aspirations.

I heard their stories.

[these are the voices in my head when I write]

And I remain convinced that everyone – you included – is living out a story in each moment.

A story about a guy or gal who…

[forgive me, I'm not writing a legal document, so I'll use guy/he from here on, though there's nothing gender specific to this]

When I coach people, or counsel them on career change, or on life in general, I listen for their story, where it finds friction, where it finds alignment. Who is this guy, who does he believe he is, and who does he expect to be next?

Is he a victim, railing against misfortune?

Is he a plucky upstart out to prove ‘the man’ wrong?

Is he a dangerous firecracker in a box of dry tinder?

Is he a searcher for some ultimate, hidden truth?

These and many other archetypes play out in movies, television and books all the time and, like it or not, thanks to mirror neurons, we mimic what we see others doing. We absorb these archetypes into ourselves, and organize our lives to become one of these stories.

So, who is this guy?

Is he the spouse who believes he can get away with an illicit affair?

Is he the under-performer, distrustful of management and determined to screw the company over? The over-achiever picking up the slack from that under-performer?

Is he the guilty child, still suffering from toxic parents decades after that influence should have waned?

We are all stories. Stories about a guy who…

So, what’s your story?

Who’s the guy who’s you?

Because, once you can see your story

[and research estimates that only 15-25% of the population have the self-awareness to be able to do so without help]

you can tell a different story. How different? Well, that depends on you and, yes, on your story. But have no doubt, story-telling is the rocket fuel of personal growth and professional development.

It’s why so many companies get it wrong by prescribing paths and defining jobs – when we cede our story to the company, we lose our identity. Is it any wonder so many people feel lost in their day-to-day, disempowered and floating aimless?

What’s your story?

Who’s the guy who’s you?

Who’s the guy who you’d like to be?

Drop me a line if you’d like me to help you answer those questions and start telling a different story.

I was humbled to read this review of Family Rules at Word Up Nerd Up today:

“… I picked this up for a casual afternoon perusal, intending to read the slim volume over the course of a couple of days. Within the first few pages I was lost in the time warp that is brought on by a really good story. There was no way I was ending the day with Family Rules unfinished.

The story ricochets between the UK and New York, the 1980′s and present day, all narrated [sic] in Kenny’s plaintive voice. He was at once a child who had to grow up too quickly, and an adult who never did grow up, suspended in a state of perpetual discomfort and discombobulation.

Kenny’s life as a child actor is central to the story, but surprisingly it is not accusatory. Throughout it all Kenny is damaged, but he is not deviant- a small, but important, distinction.

My biggest problem with this book was the inconsistent use of American and British spellings and colloquilisms. Quite truthfully, it is exactly the kind of inconsistency you would expect from a young man who spent his first years in the UK, then moved to the US with his British parents. I know this, yet I still found it distracting. What can I say? I’m nerdy that way.

My verdict: Read it! One thought I had as I raced through Family Rules is that it is what A Million Little Pieces could have been, had it been good. For all the over the top angst and drama spewed by Frey, he didn’t get it right. Tuckwood has managed to create a believable story that leaves us feeling both saddened and hopeful for the main character. It is still early in the year, but I have a feeling that Family Rules may very well end up on my list of top reads in 2012…”

Today, I’m interviewed over at As The Pages Turn as part of the Family Rules Virtual Book Tour:

“… To understand Kenny, it’s really important to know that he spent the first five years of his life raised by a television-family, often being treated as little more than a prop or dummy. It’s also worth noting that his addictions began in those years, his minders giving him Valium in honey to keep him calm between scenes. The upshot is that psychologically, Kenny runs away from reality whenever it gets too close. He’s quite a poignant, tragic character; as a writer, he feels very real to me, more-so perhaps than any character I’d written before.

Ivvy is like the Yang to Kenny’s Yin. She’s a junkie cop, working undercover for Vice. Older than Kenny, she’s drawn to normality like a moth bashing its head against a porch light. This push-pull between Kenny and Ivvy is key to understanding their relationship. She’s clinging to him for some sense of a normality she can attain, while he’s repelled by her neediness because it feels too real.

The joy for me in writing Family Rules was to take these two damaged people and make them ‘parents’…”

And, before you even think of calling me

[Mum]

I’m not thinking of starting up again.

I just finished Certainty, the screen adaptation of Do Sparrows Eat Butterflies? and am very pleased, and humbled, by how its turned out.

That last may strike you as odd, to be humbled by a story. But if you read Memento: 2001- My own time and space oddity, you’ll remember that the novel was written against a backdrop of seismic shift in my life. Most of the writing still feels like a dream to me.

In the 8 years since I published the book, I’ve tried to start writing the screenplay a number of times but never gained traction with my muse. And, as ever with my novels, all the time I’ve had readers telling me that they can see the movie when the read the story, and that I should really think about adapting it.

Last year, around the time I started work on Team Building, I took tentative steps to begin Certainty, but all the other stuff of last year held me off any serious work until December.

And when I did turn my attention to the adaptation, I realized just what had been holding me back.

I was stuck in the how of telling Ray’s rebirth.

For those who haven’t read Sparrows, it’s told in first-person, present-tense – i.e. what happens to Ray happens to the reader in real-time. By necessity, there’s a LOT of internal dialogue and Ray’s weighing up of events, and of his reactions. This lends pace to the writing and, truly, is what brings people into the story so deeply – we experience Ray’s rebirth, we don’t observe it.

All of which is great in a novel but, frankly, crap in a movie – unless we’re making 1960′s French art house, which we’re not.

[believe me, if I'd written and published this in the 60's, there's a good chance that's exactly what would have happened]

There was a real risk that this would be a) a boring film, b) completely lost in self-analysis, and c) totally unworthy of the original novel. This is a story I love, filled with characters I know intimately, and I couldn’t let myself do that to myself.

So I was stuck.

Until, one day in the shower

[oh, how the movement of water, and idle reflection, opens my sub-conscious]

I had a very clear and vivid snapshot of how to bring the internal dialogue to the screen.

[and no, I'm not going to tell you what it is]

Tentatively, I started carving the screenplay – lifting the whole book over, chopping out all the unnecessary, and porting the internal dialogue into the vehicle I’d imagined. And boy did it work! In the space of a couple of weeks, I reworked, tightened and shaped this story for the screen. A couple of days back I registered it for copyright and it’s already heading out into the world.

And, yes, I was humbled by the process – as I often am. When you give yourself to your art, and allow it to flow through you, it can feel other-worldly – a scary feeling, a joyous feeling.

Once again, Ray’s story has told itself and, though the hard work of getting it out there now begins, right now I feel like a post-coital cigarette.

If only I still smoked.

Which I don’t.

But you get my drift anyway, right?

I’m being interviewed over at Broowaha today as part of the Family Rules Virtual Book Tour.

“… I read voraciously, both fiction and non-fiction, so it’s difficult to pin down specific books.

Some books that now feature high on my list didn’t make sense at first, mainly because I think I read them when I was too young. A good example of this is George Orwell’s 1984, which I tried to read several times as a teenager, and could never get past the first few chapters. I read it again recently and was stunned by Orwell’s prescience – especially given the idiocy of modern politics, the shock doctrine and double-speak media, where it feels like 1984 is being used as a “how to” manual. I guess I needed the maturity of the intervening years to be able to open myself to its political insights…”

Today, I was interviewed at Blogcritics as part of the Family Rules Virtual Book Tour:

“… Of The Tribe was a vampire tale, Jeremiah Whispers a metaphysical homage to Clive Barker, and Jumbo a take on the media and its fascination with quasi-messianic characters in the midst of tragedy. The triggering event in Jumbo is a 747 crashing in Central London and, bearing in mind this was written six years before 9/11, when the planes struck the twin towers, I just gave up any idea that it would get published. With a complete rewrite to reflect 9/11, it could have current credibility – but, to be honest, I’ve not got much energy to revisit that path, not when there are new stories to tell…”