Pocketful of Euros

The second night of the book festival, featured Kevin MacNeil.

He read some short stories, a particularly good one about a Wedding from the perspectives of all those involved and their drugs of choice to help themselves get away from the event. Talking about his education he was really positive about the Nicolson. Strangely although his stories could be quite dark, he was really positive, maybe he gets his dark side out through the writing.

I assume the guy questioning him on stage was somebody from the publisher, asking when The Stornoway Way was going to be released and highlighting the preview copies available, even though Kevin had said the same thing about 5 minutes before, repetitions for the media I guess.

Speaking about literature, he comes across passionately, talking about writing with a social cause and how he deliberately set the book in a topsy turvy world to challenge himself. The book has abortion and suicide in it. I asked him weather he wanted to try and break the social taboo around these locally?

He started by saying that reviewers have claimed that he tried to get attention by attempting to shock the reader.

I didn’t feel this at all, but quite a few people I know locally have taken a dislike to the book, I’m not sure why that is.

He said that he felt especially in the islands where suicide is such a problem that the normal attitude of trying to ignore the situation doesn’t help.

The Western Isles does have among the lowest rate in abortions along with the Northern Islands: Orkney and Shetland, which all the have the highest rate in suicides.

I think this may have to do with the sense of shame in an Island community, you are likely to know the medical professionals in another way, secrets are much harder to keep and the power and guilt of the Church are still strong.

This is a negative way to look at it, you could put it down the strong community/family which pulls together to look after any new members, the economics of raising a child in a rural setting and correspondingly the quality of life much better.

I don’t think its one or the other, but the fact that is highest and the other the lowest is interesting and worth looking at further.

Kevin and Willy Campbell will be doing a Gig for the suicide awareness project at An Lanntair next Friday 8 September, should be good.

Willy’s band Our Small Capital, came on later and did a good hour and a half set to the ‘emptymate’ 25 strong crowd. Covering OutKast and finishing up with their fantastic track ‘Ways and means around the gospel’

The film rights for the book The Stornoway Way have been sold, and Kevin stated that if it is done it will be done here with local talent, sounds great

Sharing

The Hebrides Book Festival ‘Facalan’ began today, invited through work I attended the showing of two old BBC programmes, one on Murdo Macfarlane ‘The Melbost Bard’ and the other on Iain Crichton Smith

The first was a look at the bards life from the beginning born on the day Queen Victoria died, seeing the island as it was when the crofting life was strong, through the first world war, and the disaster of the Iolaire, recalling how he ran out of the smokehouse where he was working when he heard there had been a disaster. Seeing one of the first victims lying against the cemetry wall, he thought it was as if he was halfway between the grave and the sea.

He journeyed too Canada, then the US in the twenties, angered at the poverty and the farmers waiting for the right price to sell their grain. He returned home at the end of the twenties, the documentary seemed to leap forward at this point to 1942, where he was in the army, angry at the war, he wrote about being handed many slender bullets to kill a mother’s child.

There was a brief mention that he helped bring the Trades Union movement to the islands. But the part that most stood out for me was how his poetry was taken up by the Na h-Oganaich a young band of three who were very successful. Calum Macdonald of Runrig and members of Capercille commented on how this strongly influenced their music.

Noal Eadie a member of Na h-Oganaich commented on how he never said don’t do that with my words, he always seemed happy with what they did, always willing to try new things. Donnie Macleod commented that he was glad of a larger audience.

I feel thats a really important thing he wanted to share his work, much as I would love to share the documentary I viewed tonight, I would love to upload it to YouTube and embed it here and get it linked too, I think thats our natural want as humans is to share.

I believe the bard would have liked the bigger audience too, but is it fair on those that put effort or money into making the program not be rewarded for reshows. I would like to reward them, but I think the greater danger is that these fantastic emotive programmes aren’t out there, aren’t available, in a culture that is so media driven, and a culture that so desperately needs the boost.

Is it wrong?

Thurston Moore, in Mix Tape, notes that “trying to control sharing through music is like trying to control an affair of the heart – nothing will stop it.” (quoted from Dan Hill’s excellent essay ‘New Musical Experiences‘ )

The ease that music was shared with in the 80s with formats like Cassette, Is the same kind of era we are entering now for video.

With large capacity devices in our pockets, phones that can play video, high speed broadband, easy tools for converting formats and site like YouTube and Revver ( where artists are rewarded ) and the big studios realising there is a lot of money in per episode downloads from iTunes.

I agree with Tim O’reilly and Cory Doctorow that Piracy is progressive taxation and that All complex ecosystems have parasites, the great danger here is obsurity and piracy can be positive if it can convince the publishers to release the material on DVD or commision more work like that. Like the online file trading that encouraged Fox to make Serenity and put out Family Guy on DVD. I see it working like a free market, where the audience who have the demand, release the supply, encouraging the real suppliers to supply more.

Update: Created a wikipedia page for him, suprisingly their wasn’t a great deal of info about him on the web.

Unposted Questions

Mark Thompson was good pushed all the right buzz words, user generated content, long tail etc

Seems like a good guy and a good idea of where to take the BBC in a very different world.

Saddened by concentration of questions on budgets/independents etc, but it is my own apathy at getting the mike.

Well my question would have been a follow on from what Calum Iain ( Niseach, An Comunn… ) said about the RNG not serving the community as closely as 20 years previously RNE had. I felt moved to speak as the best commentary I found on some island issues ( Sunday Sailings. Health Board etc ) was Arnish Lighthouse published and moderated by the BBC.

My question was how does the BBC shift from being the GateKeeper in a traditional media setting to engaging properly with User Generated Content ( Hate that term ) that means taking a less authoritairan slant and being more permissive as people will only contribute to services that respect them, and don’t overly restrict the discussion?. I think it is a really tricky situation as even the Poster Childs for user generated content such as wikipedia infer a stricter and stricter contribution scheme.

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