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Listening to the Malcolm Gladwell audiobook
Miracle and Wonder in which he talks to Paul Simon and tries to come to academic conclusions about the singer’s work and journey. I have been a big fan of Paul Simon for forty years, and as you know I don’t really go crazy over music. We used to joke in Fist of Fun that I was a fan of Paul Simon and Ice T and nothing else, which wasn’t quite true, but not far off. I don’t know much about Gladwell, but at times this audiobook feels like a bit of a parody of academia and dissecting someone’s work in insane detail. I kept imagining how Stewart Lee (not a fan of Paul Simon) would react to his work being treated with such reverence (this was before his latest newsletter), as even I found it a bit much. I imagined someone doing a four hour long audio book going into such insane detail with someone I thought was rubbish and it’s undoubtedly a funny idea - I don’t know, let’s pick Pat Sharp again. Imagine if Malcolm Gladwell did a four hour audiobook about his career with the same level of fandom. Of course musical taste (as with most things) is purely objective and one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor (this is the kind of clever obscure Paul Simon reference that Gladwell might like) and so maybe it’s ridiculous to take anyone’s work this seriously.
The kind of level I am talking about is where Gladwell takes the line Toomba Toomba Toomba Mardi Gras from “Take Me to the Marid Gras” and suggests that it might be a reference to a Russian/Jewish folk song (I think), but even when Simon says he was referencing something else, Gladwell argues that he might have still subconsciously have been influenced by the music, or the music he’s been influenced by might have been influenced by it.
All this about basically just some la la la bit at the end of a pop song.
As a fan you like to go in deep with stuff and I am enjoying the book, even if I am finding Gladwell a bit intrusive - it just points up how crazy it is, especially when thought of from the perspective of someone who thinks the artist in question is rubbish.
It’s just pop music.
Plinky plinky plonk.
An artist has to take themselves seriously to produce good work, but that seriousness is in itself inherently comedic. It’s easy to start believing the hype and disappear up your own rectum. And it’s even easier for big fans of something to do the same. But being a fan of something isn’t a personality, trait just as supporting a football team doesn’t mean their victory is really yours.
But in spite of Gladwell occasionally putting himself at the centre of it all, there’s some ace stuff in the book for fans. I was especially surprised to hear Simon playing “Still Crazy” on a chat show when he hadn’t yet finished it. He had the opening, but didn’t know where to go next. Not many people would premier a half finished work (of any kind) on prime time TV, but it’s a fascinating insight into the process to see him try to work out where it might go next. He’s obviously pretty pleased with what he’s got. But you don’t get to see the process too often. It’s not as impressive as Paul McCartney busking Get Back out of nothing, but it’s surprisingly open and unguarded.
But I am enjoying the book, whilst simulataneously wondering how I can parody it. Which is not a bad thing.
The improvised short I did with Bilal Zafar before Christmas
has just gone up on YouTube. I’m really pleased with the way this turned out (even though loads of good stuff had to hit the cutting room floor - by necessity), especially given how little of this was planned beforehand. I’d come up with the idea of a guy who’d become a serial killer in order to get a girlfriend because he was jealous of all the action that murderers get and that in order to do that he would only kill people who were nearly dead anyway, but beyond that it all evolved from the conversation. And we went into some very unexpected and unplanned areas involving squirrels. This kind of improvised comedy, which I’ve only really got into since lockdown, is really exciting to me and I think we were both on good form on this day (congratulations to director Ben Mallaby for managing to edit out almost all the corpsing) and it even builds up to an ending that might have been scripted, but isn’t. Bilal, like Stevie Martin, is a performer that I’ve found I have a pretty good chemistry with, even though this was the first time we’d actually worked together in person.
I also think there might even be a film idea in this character.
There’s more improvisation coming up soon, which I am very excited about. It’s a great way to do more acting work and doesn’t involve having to learn scripts (which I am finding increasingly difficult).
