Tales from the river bank

If you take a walk up the River Thames starting at Woolwich you will track the three themes that have dominated this blog over recent months.

Walking past Canary Wharf you will come to the Tower of London and the financial centre; the square mile as it is known and the epi centre of the banking crisis that rocked the economy during Autumn last year.

Directly across the river you will overlook Bermondsey; the place where Jade Goody was born. This blog tracked her sad death, noting that  it could  mark the beginning of the end to our nations preoccupation with celebrity culture.

Another half an hours walk along the South Bank, taking in the wonderful variety of street performers and artistic delights, you will find yourself looking over to the Houses of Parliament and the most recent implosion to rock our nation.

The ripples from the credit crunch and the expenses scandal are yet to fully work through. The effect so far however has been collosal and whilst the death of a celebrity could hardly rank with these, nevertheless the scar on the nations pyche is there for all to see. I suspect an analysis of media coverage these last six months in the UK would put these three subjects right at the top of the agenda.

Interestingly if you continue up river you will pass Lambeth Palace, the home of the Archbishop and eventually the royal palaces of Hampton Court.

Anyone want to guess what’s coming there?

So disasters or opportunities? Well disaster if you have just lost your job, knew Jade Goody as a friend or family member, and hold the Houses of Parliament as the last bastion of democracy.

Opportunity if you have any care at all for the huge environmental damage that consumerism has had on the planet.

 Opportunity also if you believe there is a greater cultural heritage in our nation than that which continually encourages us to sell out to our TV’ schedules and yet more celebrity antics.

Opportunity  if you actually think a thorough expose of politics will eventually lead to a greater grassroots involvement and something much closer to true democracy.

Finally, opportunity  if you happen to consider that your story really does count. A vacuum has opened right up so that the stories of ordinary people like you and I can find greater space than ever before.

It is time to invest. Not in another corrupt set of M.P’s or in more shares and stocks. Neither in the next celebrity personality to make a grab for the mantle that’s fallen. Rather in our own story.

There is also a new sound to be heard in the nation, and it is not the sound of discredited Speaker for the House of Commons, Michael Martin Rather it is the sound of your voice and mine, your story and my story.

The value of stories is on the rise in the UK. That is all good for you and I

Jade Goody’s funeral-Back to the future?

Whilst the icon of reality TV Jade Goody is buried so a new futuristic magazine is launched this w/e called Wired. Well worth a look at their web site. Probably too scientific for me with a focus on the “man type” gadgets that bore me silly, but am tempted to sign up for a year’s subscription; possibly because a mate-well, acquaintance of mine Patrick Dixon is going to be a regular writer.

Always been fascinated by what’s round the next corner; from the times of adventuring as a kid and wanting to get to see what’s over the hill, to the way I live right now; even the way Sfts is looking to position itself.

So at the moment we are told there is

1. Little space in the market for short stories
2. Even less space in the market for short stories from those who do not carry a celebrity label
3. That the desire to escape into fantasy and fiction-perfectly legitimate, is stronger and will always be stronger than the desire for true, authentic, real life stories.

However, we just have this hunch that something is stirring, fueled by the growing disenchantment with politicians such as Geof Hoon, with their fat cat allowances and crass understanding of the type leadership the country needs at this moment. Also that more and more normal people are looking for a level of reality that somehow Jade Goody , in the story of her death, became a figurehead for.

So is it a case of back to the future and more of the same, or is there a growing desire for a voice amongst the ordinary person in the street? A cry to know, in a rapidly changing world with so much dysfunctionality, that ”my story counts”!

Time will tell.

PS I took the photo above from the New Zealand Herald. Unbelieveable how far the Jade Goody story travelled.

Jade Goody-a sign of the age we live in

A well known author was asked on radio yesterday as to why Jade Goody has captured the public imagination. Her reply was “She is a sign of the age we live in. It’s an age that is hungry for stories.”

At the same time a  friend of mine sent me a link  to an amazing venture called Storycorps. Yep I know the name sounds a bit corny, but these guys have spent the last six years documenting the oral stories of ordinary people across the breadth of the USA. With stories from a survivor of Hurricane Katrina who lost his whole family, to the tale of a homeless man, this is as authentic as you can get.Click here to take a look at their web site. Incredible initiative with a mission  statement “to honour and celebrate one anothers lives through listening.”

Interestingly me and my mates are out on the streets of Leeds the back end of April. We will have a portable “Big Brother style Diary Booth” with us, rickshaw style! People will be invited to enter the booth and begin to tell their story on video. So looking forward to it. I reckon within minutes we will have a queue. Email me if you want to come along; steve@storiesfromthestreet.com There are still a handful of of places going.

“The art of story is the dominant cultural force in the world.”

So said Robert McKee. We ignore it at our peril.

Jade Goody dies-The end of an era?

Jade Goody’s death early this morning marks the end of an era I believe. A product of so called reality TV she, in the end, provided a level of reality that none of us would have wished for.

Could it now be that two deaths, that of Princess Diana and Jade Goody will mark out a period in the UK when our preoccupation with celebrity reached almost hysterical proportions? Of course the outpouring of grief will never reach those days of Diana but most certainly these two women have touched a deep nerve in our pschy.

So where to now? Who will rise to take up the mantle that has gone into the ground this morning of Mothering Sunday?  For ever doubting the storyline of our own lives I suppose this search for a fantasy figure to project our own stories onto is as long as the ancient fairy tales that every culture nurtures. The rags to riches story that we all love to be associated with.

Will the terrifying recession that we are in deepen this seach for utopia, feeding the frenzy further, or will somehow the reality check of possible food shortages and global meltdown finally shake us free from this elusive curse?

Watch this space. In the meantime I want to be one of the first to say a thank you to Jade for the courage of her final days. You won me over and for that I am grateful.

Signs of the times

Yesterday I posted on two amazing photos that for me captured a moment in time. Scroll down to yesterdays post to see them; they are iconic. On the one hand Slumdog Millionaire sweeps the Oscars, and on the other Jade Goody prepares for her wedding……..and her death.

As for today consider first of all the scenes in India, and how they celebrated!

A story of rags to riches with actors drawn  right out of the slums,directed by Danny Boyle, a guy who has his own rags to riches story, from a film industry continually in the shadows of Hollywood. Indeed a film that was rejected by one distributor as fit only for DVD’s and not for the big screen.

Now to me, despite the fairy tale nature of the story, there is something completely authentic about this. Not just the subject matter of the film but the way it involved from conception to the full glare of the Oscars.

Then consider  Jade Goody, in a remarkable way celebrating through her wedding, what is suggested will be her last time in public. The icon of the media celebrity era, manufactured out of the land of make belief, prepares, with incredible honesty and courage for her death.

Put another way the  woman who epitomises everything about so called reality TV and our need to find in her story, and others like her, excitement, meaning and identity (as I would suggest a substitute to our own story), exits stage left whilst children burst out of the slums with smiles on their faces to grab their moment of fame and their place in the future.

Now you tell me, which is the more authentic and which story would you most want to be identified with?

 

What a contrast. Could this be a sign of the times- a changing over of an era?

If so, and only time will tell on this, then Stories from the Street is looking to be part of that. Doubt that we will ever win an Oscar! But who knows, we already have our own set of heroes emerging. Could you be one of them?