• ABOUT

thinairfactoryblog

~ A topnotch WordPress.com site

thinairfactoryblog

Tag Archives: Hipsters

Hoover bag, fish-tank, trophy cabinet & the art of wearing your intellect lightly.

30 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Arts & Humanities, Atomic, beano, Class, Culture, Doctorates, Evolution, Fish Tank, gogglebox, Hipsters, Hoover bag, Hubble Telescope, Intellect, Intelligence, M Theory, Race, School Swot, Sex, Showing Off, Sir Richard Attenborough, Smarts, society, Stephen Hawking, the Sciences, Tophies, Tribe, Universe, Wit, X factor

vacuum-bag1.jpg$_35.JPGTrophy-Cabinet1.jpg

Hoover bag, fish tank or trophy cabinet? Which one describes your model of intellectual self-awareness and demeanour best?

I spend a lot of time suspended (the animation part is discretionary) between two worlds where intelligence chimes very differently and how it is worn can speak volumes:

One brims with an ‘earthy’ scrum of normal people with their pop populism, non p.c humour, fun food formats, all things sporting, inappropriate music lyrics, sudoku and simple telly pleasures:

The other teems with a rare, heavenly throng of ‘visibly’ smart people (staggeringly smart actually) whose weather eye rests not just on Gogglebox but also on the material and scientific threads that stitch us in to our universe at a sub atomic and particular level from both the inside out and the outside in: a sort of Hubble-scope meets microscope universal view. Which takes some cells, grey or otherwise.

Whilst suspended between these two worlds I have come across a myriad of different shapes and shades of accidental, expressed or demonstrable ‘intelligence’.

But for the sake of this piece I have gathered them into three buckets.

These buckets are purely based on how people ‘wear’ their intelligence, knowledge and learning. They do not seek to make points of a sex, class, race, regional or tribal nature.

Intelligence, smarts and book learning are as likely to be mocked or marvelled at in a stately home in Cumbria as they are in a mock Tudor Semi in Southall and a single-parent council house in Cleethorpes.

So the three buckets are as follows:

Hoover Bag:

The majority of us, though our intellectual reserves have been honed to some degree in our childhood and teenage years through some form of formal education, spend most of our time applying a needs-must, auto didactical approach to the appropriation, collection and storage of any information, data, knowledge and the subsequent exercising of it via what might loosely be called intellect and its reflex inventive cousin ingenuity.

We just hoover up what’s in front of us at the time; all in the moment and for little reason other than to get through, survive, overcome, complete (or avoid) the tasks that life sets in front of us. Most of it tends to be transient: pockets of old knowledge from schoolbook rote and favourite teachers, the history channel, anything ever said by Sir Richard Attenborough, the odd TV show theme tune, an ex-lover’s ‘hot tunes’, news stories, sleeve notes off albums, film quotes, holiday resort locations, train times, exam questions, sweet names, bus numbers – the majority of it utterly random and seemingly disconnected – fluff and drivel: insubstantial, frivolous, fleeting. Only of meaning in the cats cradle of life and experiences in our head. All hidden deep in the bag unless we’re compelled to have a rummage.

But in that intellectual Hoover bag somewhere, amongst all the dust and atomic grains of everyday life – with a little rooting around – and if pushed – there are brilliant little treasures to be found: nuggets; the intellectual version of shiny marbles, lost lego characters, the odd ear ring, the missing washer off that clock, and a rare coin from somewhere exotic.

It’s not that we’re incapable of being a Fish Tank or Trophy Cabinet. On the odd occasion we can be very intellectually forthright. But. We’re just not that interested. Intelligence for most is directly linked to and in relation to what we must and need to do. Work. Earn money. Buy treats. The odd holiday. Survive. With Stickers. Intellect does not represent anything of value for us to wield in the world. Exams are for getting through. Real stuff is about what books cant teach and accolades cant fake: common sense, nous, drive, smarts.

Many people remain deliriously untouched by the compulsion to scale ever- greater heights and plumb ever-deeper depths of their intellect to pull out a plum.

There is in fact a running suspicion amongst a lot of people that too much learning is bad for you. Like fatty foods and alcohol.

Referring to people as being intellectually obese or an academoholic probably hits the referential nail on the head.

A lot of people feel an antipathy to the ‘too clever by half’ bunch, not too dissimilar to the feelings people harbour for the overly fat and the commonly drunk. Fat drunks take it to a whole new level of course.

Getting above yourself is one of the most common malaises they point to in the overly smart.

Fish Tank:

Go up just one notch and things change for the shinier. This is not yet the domain of the public academic, but certainly we are now in a realm where intellectual and academic possessions are going on show – they are becoming socially important not just to the trajectory of us as a person but also to our sense of self – our core identity. Their value isn’t hidden any more.

Fish tank intellects are suddenly about visibility: about being seen to be smart. It can start small. Quipy; witty. Ripostes. Razor sharp. ‘Quick wittedness’ gets bolstered with facts and bite sized pieces of knowledge not found on the history channel or in the newspaper. Suddenly we’re utilising our intelligence not just as an evolutionary survival mechanism but as a status marker, courting tool, and social lever.

However small, simple and under-populated the fish tank might be (We’re all quietly fond of the singular fish bowl inhabited by that gold fish) there is still a shiny attractive thing to look at.

Now fish tank intellect land is the bucket that provides the most flex and room for manouvre. Because you can go from one small intellectual goldfish in a clichéd bowl of water on a window sill to a multi-atmosphere self cleaning super sized wall set super tank with teeming shoals of exquisite, rare and increasingly expensive creatures.

From Intellectual Ahhh! to intellectual WOW! At the super scale end we find ourselves in the world of the serial collector of intellectual pursuits – reaching far beyond what they will ever need for their day job. The role of intellectual curator and collector of brightly coloured intellectual exotica as a matter of projected identity is a big deal for big fish tankers. But the big difference between these and the Trophy Cabineteers is the stealth nature of the presentation. However bright, gregarious and attention seeking the various and increasingly valuable baubles are, they are not presented ‘directly’. This is a world where proofs and demonstrations of intelligence are refracted through a prism of tangential referencing – obtuse, sophisticated, shrouded – usually hidden inside some trojan horse of life learning or experience story: presented simply as a new piece of the expanding fabric of their life.

But however subtle the presentation – these brightly coloured attractive and seductive entities are most definitely for show and for effect.

These ‘exotic splashes of colour have been plucked from the sea of knowledge to aggrandise us: to decorate our lives and create conversation focused on us through them.

Trophy Cabinet

Smashed it. No time or interest in discretion or subtlety. I’m smart. I’m bloody clever. And competitive. An intellectual winner. I’ve got more degrees and PhDs than I can shake a stick at. Doctorates are just the beginning. I probably have a few Honorary Executive positions as well. Sciences. Arts. Humanities. Classics. Don’t care. Whatever it takes. I am not in the business of doing a topic. I’m in the business of being really, really clever – and wearing it on my sleeve. If anyone’s up for a Nobel Peace Prize it’ll be me. Via national and then global recognition. I am professionally clever. Love academia. A wonderful pursuit. But please keep your intellectual generosity and shared collectivism of the mind to yourself. This is the expanding me show of cerebral fabulousness.

Simply put, you’ll all come to realize that you are cerebral dwarves and I am resplendent in the glow of my own brilliance. I am Alpha Meta.

A harsh caricature? Perhaps. But the dissonance between what we consider intellectually valuable in the more rarified halls of first world academe and what humanity actually requires to live thrive and survive on this planet can sometimes make us look at the trophy cabinet persona and their exceptionally competitive and vaguely sociopathic behaviours with a not necessarily benevolent eye.

For many, especially those struggling to make ends meet and having to work all hours to do it, and for those with a natural aversion to people who speak ‘in riddles’, it is hard sometimes to see the greater value in  relentless and unquenchable pursuit of ever greater learning. To many it is hard to see why anyone should support or laud someone wanting to remain the ‘eternal student’, wrapped in ever decreasing intellectual circles on arcane subjects that owe more to human ego than evolution.

The Trophy Cabinet model of flamboyantly worn intellect is mostly seen for what it ostensibly is: a tower of self-impression: a monument to ones ego. Questionable. Perhaps.

BUT, before we start measuring how many hands high the horse is we’re leaping on to sound off about the super bright, it must be remembered that these stratospheric arrogances of the mind and the intellect (as some see them) bring much to be thankful for: scientific advances and revelations that make enormous tranches of humankind more healthy and more resilient.

Some of these people have opened doors in the fabric, nature and story of human kind and the multi-verse we exist in. And we are better for it. And for them. Whether we think they’re too smart by half or not.

Witch hunting and pointing fingers at the nerds and the super bright people is a lazy pursuit. Existing, as many do, ‘on the spectrum’, dislocated from and uncomfortable around what most like to see as ‘normal’ people, they have their own crosses to bear: crosses that many of us would never countenance let alone endure. Brainbox baiting also smacks of being ‘chippy’. Take a swing ‘cause you make me feel bad! Thankfully now that Stephen Hawking is officially rock n roll, with his own Hollywood movie to boot, and the new tech hipsters are to all effects bearded and brogued members of the Nerd tribe, the old Beano comic view of school swots is changing – slowly.

Learning, the knowledge it brings and how the individual mind processes and leverages that knowledge to best and personal effect, to inspire and engage us may be a divisive topic; but we need to celebrate and embrace every type of intellect we have if we are to continue to live, thrive and survive.

And whether the gems of insight, idea and illumination that improve our everyday lives get shaken out of a hoover bag, netted from a fish tank or taken down from the trophy cabinet, I couldn’t care less.

Now where did I put that nozzle…?

Criss cross, passing ships & the escalator lives of the Social Commute

30 Saturday May 2015

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

AA MIlne, Brogues, DubStep, Escalators, Fluffy Mules, Gene Pool Imperative, Hipsters, Hoxton, Identity, ley Lines, Material Girls, Medieval Royal Courts, Postcode Tourists, Robin The Frog, Shoreditch House, Sloanes, social advancement, Toffs, Trustafarioans, W11

8MartinGodwin

“Half way down the stairs is the stair where I sit.

There isn’t any other stair quite like it.

I’m not at the bottom;

I’m not at the top;

This is the stair where I always stop”

Courtesy of AA Milne & Robin The Frog

Kermit’s nephew is an inspiration for more than just folksy green-leg swinging sing-songs for small people. For anyone interested in the subtle shifts and shapes of social dynamics and advancement, the transient beauty of the place he describes is quite illuminating, being at that point between top and bottom: a moment of clarity in the space between being neither one thing nor the other.

And as the creator of this profound little ditty, the writer, AA Milne, proves how much he was in some ways far more than just a writer of children’s stories.

Outlining as he did the dynamic differences and human vibrations that exist between our grand aspirations and banal realities, the petty social jostling that pervades the space between them; and the immutable frameworks and hierarchies of life into which it all fits, he strikes me as more that social diarist and commentator.

Half way down the stairs is indeed a wonderful place: a vantage point from which to drink in the human condition and view some of life’s subtle people-powered idiosyncrasies in all their glory. Even when those stairs are of the rolling steel toothed conveyor kind.

Traveling through Shoreditch station recently I was reminded of the social ‘in through the out door’ nature of London’s slicker and more happening post-codes, especially when viewed from half way down (or up) the stairs and escalators, depending on your trajectory.

Watching the tribes of London pass like ships both in the morning as well as the night was already a quiet observer sport for me.

It was only after some time of watching though that I started to notice the fractal shades of difference between those who were commuting down the escalator and those on the up.

Both the Ups and the Downs ostensibly deliver the postcode vibe: whether that be Tech Hipsters, Money Monsters, PortoBelles, Fashionistas, Indie activists, Media Molotovs, Toff-ee Mochas, Mayfair Mules or Tattooed Love Sexys. A shared moment of complicity enacted in the fleeting criss cross at the mid point on every escalator or stair well.

Sloane Square, Shoreditch, White City, Notting Hill, Whitechapel, Brixton; these escalator moments of criss-cross spot the difference are note exclusive to one or two stations. They are legion across London (and every other thronging highly emerged metropolis on the planet for that matter). Waves of social similarity washing up and down the escalator in both directions; little to choose between them – all card carrying citizens of their particular postcode vibe.

(That Postcodes tend to attract particular types and tribes is unsurprising; and for that very reason they are able to successfully deliver and maintain their ‘vibe’ or atmosphere. Much of what orientates this ‘oneness’ remains unspoken. This points to something of the Ley Line at work in these postcodes.)

So at first glance there is little to separate those commuting either up or down these escalators on any given morning.

But look a little closer and there the similarity ends. Look closely and you will see small differences start to appear between those on the morning Down stroke and those on the Up-ward claw.

What is that? There. Barely discernible but yes, just there. That! Is that… a quiet swaggerdaccio we see in some of those who commute down and away from the postcode?

Perhaps. After all they carry with them the self assurance of being The Real Deal: no neighbourhood tourists these. They don’t work here. They live here. The pubs restaurants brasseries boutiques and cocktail bars scattered before you are their locals – firmly untouched by them in the day or for early doors drinking. That’s for the postcode tourists. This is their back yard. No drift home to some more sub–urban existence at the end of the day or last orders for them. They will never experience the burden of carrying the creeping disappointing of having ‘been there, done that, bought the ridiculously overpriced T Shirt’ with you back down into the tube tunnels like a cheap fading fragrance.

That quiet, centred and softly confident sense of belonging in the Down the Escalator Morning commuters emanates an aura that the Up The Escalator arrivistes simply cannot and will never be able to match. They remain both literally and spiritually the Upwardly Mobile in every sense of the phrase.

But up they come, day after working day (this is a Mon – Fri affair) – relentlessly, happily, expectantly; something oh so enervating about working somewhere smart or cool. And every day they get to come up that escalator and be in that postcode, is another day they managed to not get found out or set aside. They are cutting it and they’re going to enjoy every second lest it gets ripped away from them by some unseen arbiter of what constitutes being the real deal.

And every day somewhere, the Scuffing-Downs stumble tunnel-ward blissfully unaware of this tension lurking opposite them…  ish.

Perhaps a small frisson percolates through them every now and then, when they look up from their gorgeousness reflected in an oh so déshabillé, slightly beach-bruised smart phone for just long enough to remind themselves that they are going down the escalator, with the quiet luxury of knowing that they belong there; up there, in that place up the stairs behind them; written into the property and social fabric of it – rooted. They belong there even when they’re not there: so by day, the Sloane happily inhabits a dingy warehouse in E1 or the W11 Trustafarian a bland vanilla office in Acton in the full and certain knowledge that eventually she or he will return home; climb back up the escalator to ‘being’.

And with this laissez faire acceptance of the Downs place in the world comes a relaxed attitude to those who ape them to the point of genetic similarity. Mimicry is and will always be after all the most profound and absolute form of flattery; especially to those coming down from on high every morning.

So criss-cross; the moment of invisible reverberating collision – where the cultural ‘what is’ meets the social ‘what could be’.

But look again, closer still and you will reveal more layers in this social puppet theatre.

One such layer is amply provided for by the human penchant for living so far beyond our means that we need to buy a home in a different postcode to house our aspirations in.

This human truth of this scale of self-delusion and aggrandisement plays nicely into the theatrical complexity of this criss-cross escalator moment.

And in doing so points to a third ‘ type’ we haven’t mentioned yet – the cuckoos; those pretenders to the postcode throne. Yes, they obey the laws of similarity: as they should. They aspire to this demise so therefore should be respectful of its dress & styles codes. But therein lies the difference. Perhaps they are a little too over respectful? Too attentive to the detail and churn or what the postcode demands? Too vocal about what’s soooo amazing about Postcode x or y. A little too hung up on breathing in and out with every infintesimal more of belonging.

How do you spot them? With difficulty. Their rather overly self-conscious attention to postcode fashion detail can sometimes be a giveaway. But it demands a forensic knowledge of sartorial detail and minutiae and a instinct for trending.

A more illustrative litmus paper can be found hosted just behind their eyes – and on it you will find the dark reactive stain of being ‘almost’. Local -ish. But far from indigenous. Close but no cigar. And the pressure fostered by the pretence can be suffocating. Their intensity of purpose is just a little too pointed. There is an absence of Scuff & Amble in their gait. And under their demeanour behind the safety curtain of their laissez faire an arch pensiveness boils. Clinging to the edges of their Scuffing-Down life (and the over-leveraged mortgage and credit card tsunami that makes up the bulk of it). There by the grace of bonuses, the odd windfall, and an ability to juggle a comedic level of credit go they. A small desperate voice in the back of their mind relentlessly flip flopping them between the distant luxuriant basso profundo embrace of an eventual inheritance and the hysterical alto soprano anxiety fuelled by the immutable fact that their parents have no intention of dropping off this mortal coil anytime soon and those credit card statements simply wont go away.

(These are the urban silent-screamers, who other than their location, are much the same as their sub urban cousins – all shiny largesse and thriving conversation – locked firmly in the hi tensile rictus smile of their fragile success.)

Anomalies in the criss-cross world provide a couple of variants just to keep us on our toes.

There are the visiting cohabiting friend from somewhere exotic and equally zone/zip/post obsessed– staying for a couple of months – and bringing a confusing and very different zone/zip/post vibe to the daily commute.

And then there are visiting siblings. They can really throw you. They look the same, so familiar, so similar in so many ways BUT totally different post-code vibe. The academic or the soldier visiting their banker sibling. The golf club gold card local business person visiting little brother or sister in the Hoxton massive. Baby brother Uni-Boy in the Sloaney Hen House. The normal weight normal life teacher sister in the W11 cat house of eating disorders.

They can completely shift the dynamic of any morning criss cross BUT thankfully, we can broadly agree that the Ups, Downs and perhaps the Cuckoo Types are where the heat and fun is at.

The cross cross moment is also a rich source of information and illumination.

For example the mid point tension between these types of faux similarity on the escalators might remind us why we’ll continue en masse to be material girls and boys in pursuit of Kardashian flash and gold-plated everything.

As someone pointed out to me recently: find me a poor person who doesn’t want to be rich!? The gene pool imperative applies. And the smart rich person; whether escalated there from a poor beginning or born there with a clear vantage of how life is so much better up in the rare air; knows this.

The anomaly is the educated liberal academic elite in the middle, flush with intellectual riches and a sneer for anyone in any way materially driven: and unlike their asset laden, cashed up contemporaries they are profligate with their own riches, motivated to little commercial purpose: and with societal equilibrium and fairness their cause.

Rich people and poor people have no time for this ‘posturing’ as they see it: life is simple.

One is either super rich – counting in BNs – loaded £50M and up – minted £10M+ up – Rich – £5M-ish – or comfortable – the euphemism for being worth £1M+ or more.

Or you’re stiflingly poor. And always just one scratch card away from £1M or a lottery ball away from £26 M and a bloody good life (familial and social consequences of staggering wealth aside).

And a huge pointer to what you’ve achieved or been handed and your subsequent position in life lies in the post codes you both live work and hang out in

For the ordinary people in between, happiness lies in the grey middle ground of ‘almost’. The space between Not Being and Being someone who belongs in that postcode and all it purveys.

Most  in-betweenies (whether they choose or care to admit it or not) would like the chance to aspire: to hang out with the big dogs, the cool kids, the upper echelons. Every now and then they want to lounge where the money is and bask in the reflected glory of what its like to be someone who actually lives in the postcodes that the stations serve: to feel  ‘happening’: ‘minted’; ‘in flow’.

People want to be part of those post codes that house who they wish to be, even if just for a moment; even if just to spend 8 hours a working day creating a seismic atmospheric tipping point by spraying fragrance at already terribly over cologned passing shoppers in Selfridges before returning to Sutton on the 6.35.

Some of our political parties are in fact the living constitutional embodiment of that right to aspire – by fiercely conserving and protecting the sanctity and very existence of those individuals that so many of us are so desperately trying to stand in the shadow of, even if just for a moment. The Medieval Royal Courts positively thrived on this desperate need to be part of the elite: and the large number of crimes of acquisition used to fill their coffers and expand their lands and the crimes against humanity that usually accompanied them remained more than adequately fuelled by aspirational types and their preparedness to do anything to court the favour of their ‘betters’.

So it comes as no surprise that if there was one thing that many of us would love to sustain, to make last forever; it’s those moments where we are in the thrall of and breathing the same air as the powerful. The only downside one might point to is that in those moments alongside the passing glitter of ‘being’, is the crouching genesis of disingenuous identity, delusional social affectation, crippling personal debt, cheap money, living beyond ones means, profligate waste and a self confident disregard for those less better off than ourselves.

Don’t look down the human condition says to itself. I’m not going back down there. It took me a bloody age to get just half way up the stairs. I’m looking up, to the point were Ill need a neck brace. I’m commuting up into the demise of glory and a better life.

But the fragility of it all is hard to deny.

All that social ‘shimmer, glimmer and glitter’ fades all too quickly after leaving the cocktail bar on Sloane Street to catch the tube back to Finchley or Tooting.

The ageing taste of that last Shoreditch House mojito takes on a less ‘happening’ tang as the Overground wends its way to Highbury.

And that slamming DubStep club night that got you so pumped up fades into the distance when you have to trawl back up the Piccadilly line to Cockfosters.

Perhaps. though therein lies its greatest attraction – its fragility and fleeting brilliance. A precious volatility; such that it all might burst into flames at the drop of a well-turned fashionista hat. Perhaps that is what makes it so delicious. And sordid. And gratifying.

So what they hey!

For a moment, in the prism refraction of the brightly lit morning commute – half way down the stairs; clutching your over priced cappufrappocrappachai-ccino, sling backs or sockless brogues clacking, at a point neither up nor down; not at the bottom and not at the top: for that golden moment everything stops: and you belong: you are one with the ‘vibe’. And life is beautiful.

So postcode anyone?

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • June 2021
  • December 2020
  • August 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • January 2020
  • October 2019
  • June 2019
  • April 2019
  • November 2018
  • August 2018
  • June 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • March 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013

Categories

  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • thinairfactoryblog
    • Join 28 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • thinairfactoryblog
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...