Schools & Education - Wake The Fuck Up!

I have done some talks and workshops in schools recently, and am part of an organization that works with troubled youths, trying to help them see that the world is bigger than the bully in the playground.

But the bully isn't just in the playground. He's in the staff room. He's in the system.

I met this girl today who told me her dream. To be a singer and actor. She's never told anyone that before because when you're thirteen and you tell people you want to sing and act they think you're insane.

They don't like insane in society. They don't like ideas and dreamers. They wanna teach us maths and science, even when we hate maths and science. All they teach most of us is how to add up how low our paychecks are and then how to set fire to them with a Bunsen burner.

There was this other kid who we met because he's the 'bad kid', which is code for 'black' and 'gets restless during French lessons'. We gave him a folder and said "make it your own." We thought he'd write his name and class number. Instead he designed graffiti. It was amazing, and he did it for the other student's folders too. 

But schools don't get that. They think singing and graffiti don't lead to a career but knowing 3.14 is Pi does.

I was 12 years old and I was exactly how I am now, but less tall. My English teacher told me "Writing isn't your skill, find something else". It hurt. But she was my teacher. I didn't write for fun again for five years, and school was a nightmare.

I lost five years of my growth as a writer and it's because my teacher said I can't do it, and I believed her. 

It's time to wake the fuck up. The talent of young people is getting squandered. It's hard to be an entrepreneur from a prison cell, or from behind the counter at the supermarket. By then most people are dead. Because when you have big dreams the system doesn't allow you to exist.

And the system is broken. Half the people aren't working. I know geniuses who went to university because that's what was insisted, and now they work part time doing admin in the back offices of shoe shops. Everything is fucked yet we still make them call the teachers "Sir" and we still make them read shit that has nothing to do with who they are.

It's time for the educators of our young to wake the fuck up. I don't know how we do it. But the world is changing. Our young people are Facebooking and developing iPhone apps. It's different now. But still the artists suffer. 

That girl today was so shy about wanting to sing. It doesn't HAVE to be that way. That shyness isn't nature--- its growing up and having to push your aspirations so far inwards that pretty soon you convince yourself that not only do you not want to sing, but you really want that extra shoe shop shift.

I've got nothing against the shoe shop. I just know that people have bigger dreams. It's hard enough if you know what you're doing and have resources; but when your teachers, schoolfriends and everyone around you is forced to be exactly the same as everyone else, you get oppressed. You get stuck at home.

The world is a giant place, dreams come true. But we can't keep killing it at such a young age. Because how you are at 14 is usually how you are forever. Let's make it about possibilities and uniqueness. 

It's down to us as individuals -- as teachers, parents and teenagers. But there are also larger forces. Our governments, the men in grey suits who run the schools, and God knows who else. School is a place to learn, to have your mind opened to the possibilities. It's almost never the thing I just said. We need to change that.

Wake the fuck up.

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Cinema Visit Checklist

You're going to see a movie? Print out this handy Kid In The Front Row guide to make sure you are always prepared for a fantastic cinematic experience! Do not go to the cinema without these five things!

1. A Blackerry.

I'm talking about the electronic device, not the fruit. You can take the fruit to the cinema, but it is less capable of storing text messages.

A blackberry is essential. No movie is complete without BBM'ing your friends, especially when they're in the seat next to you!

2. Candy/Sweet Wrappers

I use the American term 'candy' and the English term 'sweets' to make sure nobody misses out on this one.

Wrappers are an integral part of the cinema. The rustling of the wrapping, together with the tap-tap sound of your Blackberry, means you're arguably deserving of a 'Foley Artist' credit.

Please note: I am, once again, referring to the Blackberry device, and not the fruit, as the fruit rarely makes a tap tap noise, unless trying to grab the attention of a friend.

3. A Girlfriend With An Annoying Accent

Women are so beautiful and wonderful! Especially when they are sitting two rows in front, in the dark cinema, talking with a twang that is part Southern, part retard.

Rather than jealously watch the guy in front of you talking to her, bring your own. But you must be strict. Regardless of how pretty she is her voice must be of a particular style, tone and diction, which can at best be described as the sound of a parrot that has been brought back three months after its death, made to swap genders and then forced to give a lengthy speech about hairdressing.

4. A Pretentious Laugh

Be sure to bring it. Every now and again, you spot a joke in a movie that most people in the audience missed, apart from the one person who spotted it and laughed loudly so that everyone knew they got it.

The only people who do this are either 54 year old bald men, or pretentious 19 year old students called Yvonne. Find out which one you are most like, and dress accordingly. You can also practice your laugh before the film, by giggling condescendingly during the trailer for the new Nicholas Cage film.

5. Loud Shoes

Loud shoes are wonderful, and they come in all sizes!

With these you can tap along to the musical score, you can kick the seat in front in a subtle, unobtrusive manner (when I say subtle and unobtrusive, I mean in a way similar to a small elephant jumping on your head whilst yelling in German).

The shoes are great for walking, for pushing the entire row of seats in front of you, and for running away should a member of the public want to kill you (cinemagoers just don't appreciate loud shoes these days, you can't be too careful).

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Super Injunctions: Everybody Is Wrong

Most of my readership is American - so let me catch you up.

Google defines a Super Injunction as:

"An injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a court order, whereby a party is required to do, or to refrain from doing, certain acts."

This means a variety of things, but what is in the limelight at the moment is that celebrities are paying the courts for the rights to have their extra-marital indiscretions kept out of the newspapers, by law. In the UK we don't have freedom of speech or freedom of press, we just have celebrities and rich people. 

So, to begin with, we have the dumbness that the mega-rich are able to pay the courts to silence the press from printing stories. 

But then we have the other side of it. Who a footballer has sex with is not news. If David Beckham is found in the midst of a passionate threesome with Alex Ferguson and Thierry Henry: this isn't news. It's people's private lives. Newspapers like 'The Sun' aren't in court fighting for the right to print these injunctions based on principle, it's based on smut, based on printing titillating bullshit for the masses to spend their days reading about. It sells copies. 

So we have super injunctions, the very existence of which strongly curtail the freedom of press. 

And then we have the newspapers on the other side, who use whatever freedom they do have not to report on corruption and power and poverty -- but to print which actors and soccer players have been getting their penises out in their private lives.

And then there's us, the public. Storming onto Twitter and retweeting every bit of sordid bullshit about which footballer's fucked which model. There is so much in the world that is wrong, really wrong, and there is so much we should be focusing on. But we're a society obsessed with breast-implanted TV stars and sportsmen who get paid £200,000 a week. What the hell are we doing? 

I realise that by sharing this picture, I am becoming a part of the very crap I am arguing against -- but I want to make a point. This is a picture from The Daily Mail.

This is what our country is getting excited about. This is what sells our newspapers. These are the conflicts that matter in our world. How many of these are newsworthy? 

I am not saying all this in defence of these overpaid celebrity men who can't keep it in their pants. It's embarrassing just how common these affairs are. 

I'm not saying the newspapers shouldn't be allowed to print these stories. I'm saying they shouldn't want to. This isn't news. A few of the alleged super injunctions aren't even affairs, they're just private stories about people's sexuality and preferences. The ethics of these news organisations is so much worse than the people they write about every day. Maybe they should stop writing about celebrities, even stop writing about dictators and murderers, and just publish stories about themselves.

The important news is harder. A story about people being killed in Georgia or gangs raping women in the DR Congo is tough to read; I understand why we need nonsense, I understand why we can't bare to look at this stuff. But the energy and time we spend on this absolute bullshit about celebrities is INSANE. 

Everyone, on all sides of this --- they are insane! It's insane that the press are restricted by the courts when it comes to this stuff. It's insane that everybody cares so much. And it's insane that I am writing in this way. We are all nuts!

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Radio

I was 14 and I'd lay on my bed with my eyes and ears as close to the speakers as I could get. And I'd have the cassette ready on 'record' and 'pause', all I had to do was click pause to begin recording.

Back then it was no career path, I wasn't a blogger ranting about art or a filmmaker desperate to capture life in a jar: I was just a kid by the radio.

And within a split second of a song starting I knew if I should be recording or not. I wanted to record everything that was great. I probably taped hundreds of hours of radio.

It wasn't crystal clear digital then, the music sounded like it was from somewhere far away (literally, I had interference that sounded like aliens). But at the same time it was right there in my room.

When you lay there in the dark, at fourteen, hearing Sam Cooke for the first time, and remembering the names of every Beatles track they play; you can't help but have it shape who you are.

The music was so authentic.

I didn't know what I was doing. There was no set task, no job to win. I just recorded anything I loved. And I loved so much of it. And this was in the days when DJ's who actually decided what to play were dying out, the last few remained.

Without doubt, a good DJ is an artist. Even deciding what track follows "What's Going On", that's an art. Not many get it right.

Night after night, I was a kid who loved to hear the voices of the world. I loved music that described how I felt. And that was enough, just to be there, engaged in the night and the music beamed across invisible radio waves.

A few nights back I listened to "Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay" at 2am. And tonight it's "Vincent (Starry Starry Night)" and wow, they don't make them like this any more, they don't even try.

Music in headphones whilst heading to work is just a distraction, or an energy boost, but there's something deeper on offer. The history of music is filled with tracks that will change how you see the world. They'll make you understand yourself and the people you love better.

Radio is something else now. It doesn't mean anything. But the music lives on. Find it, listen to it, and get those cassettes ready.

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Art Not Bullshit

Charlie Chaplin was so good it was impossible he wouldn't make it. He'd seen people on stage practically from birth, and he was on stage himself from the age of five.

Tupac was such a powerhouse of ideas and anger and poetry that he was never going to be anything apart from the greatest rapper of all time.

Steve Martin was funny but he couldn't make the whole room laugh. He did comedy gigs in empty clubs for eight years before he broke. It took him that long, night after night, to figure out what he was doing. Woody Allen has the same story, his manager's sent him out to clubs every night in New York and he'd bomb. The audience didn't get the jokes and Woody thought he was a failure.

Steve Martin became the biggest stand up comedian ever and Woody Allen changed cinema.

We can be bystanders and critics, but we won't be artists. If you want to be one of them you have to be sweating it on stage every night. You've got to be drawing storyboards when you're in bed with flu.

I interviewed Scott Rosenberg on here a few years back and he said it takes fifteen scripts to get good. How many have you written? Maybe you've written thirty-four and they all suck. But you're still writing, good.

Needless sequels, glorified violence, pop stars with their breasts hanging out-- these things bring people and projects attention immediately. But it disintegrates. They might get noticed and make heaps of money for a brief time, but nothing else lasts. You won't be showing these films to your soulmate or playing their songs at your funeral.

So I'm going to assume if you're a creative person reading this here, you're interested in the art, not the bullshit.

Art takes time. Talent takes time. You just have to keep working. The films you acted in five years ago showed some promise but were mostly awful. The screenplay's you wrote were all over the place.

Even bloggers will feel this. The more we write, the better we get. My first ever article was some generic bullshit about how music is important in movies. It meant nothing, no-one was reading. But I'm getting better at figuring out who I am and what I love about movies. Sure, some posts suck, but that's creativity. We take the risk. The point is, post-for-post, I nail it more often than I did two years ago. Why? Because rather than sleep, I stay up writing blog posts. It's 2am and I have to be up in five hours.

I'm fine with that.

It takes time and discipline. I like how Will Smith put it. He says he'll die on the treadmill, no way is he getting off. He works at it. No wonder he's a millionaire movie star and producer with a beautiful wife and talented kids.. he shows up for work. He could have been remembered as that kid on that Bel Air show, but he's so much more, because he's dedicated to learning and practicing and hustling and trying.

There are no shortcuts. The myths make it sound like Spielberg woke up one day and directed 'Jaws', but the truth is he dedicated all his time, from childhood onwards, to believing in his mad visions, and demanding his Dad get his friends to let him film scenes in the cockpits of their planes.

Don't wait around to be discovered by an agent or producer or magazine, just keep doing the work. You're not powerless. Even if they're not hiring you, not financing you, not liking your sound.

It means you keep working at it. Because Spielberg was just too determined, and Tupac was just too revolutionary, and Chaplin was just too funny. I'm not saying we can be as successful as them-- because they are once in a lifetime geniuses, but we can learn a lot from their work ethic, from their perserverance. They had rejection and self-doubt just like me and you. But the work always came first. No time for excuses.

Nothing can replace experience. We get better.

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