Everyone's a critic...

Since I decided to start this intermittent blogging project (top tip -- put irregularity and unexplained absences into the name of what you're doing, and you can get away with anything) I've been conscious that I'm leaning towards writing about other people's creative output.


And not always positively.

Just Emin it.

OK, seeing what happens if I set 10 minutes aside at the start of my writing routine to blog to get thoughts flowing. From the looks of the post title, my thoughts may have congealed.

Last night we watched a BBC 4 show called What Do Artists Do All Day, or something like that. A kind of Day in the Life documentary about Tracey Emin.

Before I watched it I knew nothing about Emin. I think I was in a pub with her once. I was aware of her only as a controversial name at the time, my more arty pals were very excited though.

She was really inspiring in the way she approached her work, the art and the business side. She was confident, open, decisive, patient, hard-working. I liked how she talked about her painting and how it could have two conflicting thoughts on the same subject go into it, and another surface level where it's just a funny idea.

And her painting was really good.

Even on a TV screen you could get a feeling for the power of it.

I shouldn't be trying to get into art criticism. I don't have the vocabulary.  Or the critical faculties. Or...

I remember at one point, though,  being amazed by her life drawing -- a stroke of a brush and there was a back! It was just a line, but it was a clear, real, representation of a person's body. Maybe something you learn on day one of art school, or something you can just do naturally as an entry requirement, but I was unexpectedly taken aback by the possibility of it. On the paper, a man. It almost seemed animated.

But what I liked most was when she talked about the pressure of the practical business side of her job: getting exhibitions ready, meetings with accountants, job-type stuff. When that happens she tries to get into her studio early, so she can work on the art, the stuff she loves.

I get up early to write too. And while Emin's creating amazing painting exploring raw internal emotions, and leaving herself open to anyone to interpret and judge her very being, and I'm trying to come up with jokes about dishwashers, her dedication and creativity made me want to get up 10 minutes earlier. From me, there's not much higher praise...

Running, writing, and rap

Writers running, and then writing about running, seems so common it's probably a cliche. But there does seem to be good reasons why the two activities go well together.

I started running in October last year. Well, actually September last year, but a week heading out in ancient Nikes with no arch support meant I knackered my back and had to start again a month later, when walking didn't cause step-by-step electric shocks of pain. 

I'd been put off running for years by a sentence that seems to come up whenever there's news about marathons on the radio or telly: 'collapsed with a formerly undetected underlying heart condition'. But when I realised the groaning noises I made whenever I had to get out of a chair were no longer purely ironic, I figured it was time to start living dangerously and began a couch to 5k programme.

And right from the start I felt I liked running for the same reasons I like writing.

Reviews of what I can remember of films I saw a few weeks ago...

I've decided I'm going to write my impressions of films down in case I start to forget ill-thought out opinions on subjects of no consequence. The following contains huge spoilers for Gone Girl and Boyhood. Although as I'm the only person likely to read it and have already seen them, it shouldn't be much of a concern...

Games being rained off

When I was a teenager, one of the best things that could happen to me was that games would be rained off.

It wasn't so much that I didn't like sport then (although I wasn't really crazy about sport then), it was more that it meant that something you were supposed to be doing, you didn't have to do. I would never have had the guts to bunk off at school, and this was the closest I got to unanticipated freedom, and I loved it, even if it meant sitting in a classroom and doing your homework. I guess the adult equivalent is having a meeting unexpectedly postponed -- that's always a good day.

Anyway, I thought this particular upside of rainy weather had ended when I left school. But now, with a 6 year old getting into the Gaelic games of football and hurling, and me having to take turns watching  -- and even, God help the future of Cork GAA, helping out -- that particular hope is back again.

Who needs 62 hour deodorant?

I have a roll-on deodorant that promises 62 hour protection. I am now worried I am not using my personal hygiene products to their full potential. I spend a lot of time thinking about these products, I'm not sure why, perhaps because they're located near showers and lavatories, places that encourage thinking.

But anyway, I've had 24 hour deodorants, and I've tested them to the full extent of their claims. I may even have put the 48 hour deodorant through its paces by possibly forgetting to apply on a busy morning (I work from home by myself, so don't worry no-one was harmed by these clinical trials).

But 62 hours? Where is this useful? Who is not going through their morning showering routine for 3 solid days?

The Apprentice Final

I spend a lot of time pondering the Apprentice, not least why I watch a show involving people I largely hate. But lately it's been on two things, the format, and the latest winner.

Now the prize is a business partnership rather than a job the whole point of the series has been removed, and it's just a lot of smoke and mirrors to the final. From pretty much week one, whose getting fired? The person with the crap business plan. Who gets picked from the interviews? Business plan. How you do on tasks, whether or not you're an arse (I mean, the degree to which you're an arse, there's never been a contestant who doesn't share 98% of their DNA with an arse), how hard you're going to work, these things are entirely irrelevant, because he's not looking for an employee any more. HE'S NOT LOOKING FOR AN APPRENTICE.

The first 11 weeks are an entire waste of time, and I always get caught up and forget that until the end, and the show turns in to Dragon's Den. I guess the end has always been disappointing, because, like all reality shows, they have to make the finalists look like decent human beings rather than the halfwits they are, but still...

Anyway, this year's winner bothered me: