I think I've smoked about three cigarettes in my life, and each time was to impress a girl. The same girl. I suppose I kind of liked the buzz, but not enough (thankfully) to become addicted or have any desire to spend any of my own hard-earned cash on the things. How many fewer CDs would have I have been able to afford, if I'd developed a habit? How many comics would I not have been able to buy?
My dad smoked cigars when I was a kid, and I always loved the smell of them. As he got older, and had less money, he switched to a pipe and tobacco. I've probably mentioned this before, but one day in his early 60s, a doctor told him, "you keep smoking that pipe and you won't be here in ten years time". So my dad quit, cold turkey, and lived another 30 years... although arguably some damage had already been done, and he struggled with emphysema and other bronchial disorders, and (old age aside), those were probably what got him in the end.
My Mum only smoked the occasional cigarette, at parties. Whenever I saw her with one in her hand, I became upset. I grew up watching some pretty graphic smoking ads on TV... from an early age, I was pretty well indoctrinated against fags... unless I thought I might use one to get a girl to like me.
It's hard to believe now just how much the smell of cigarette smoke used to be everywhere when we were teenagers... and how rare it is to smell them these days. It's all bloody vapes with the kids these days. Horrible things, with their claggy, artificial scents. Makes me feel a certain nostalgia for fag smoke... and definitely for cigars.
The recent peloton of bike posts over at Charity Chic blog forced me to dig out one of my few favourite Pink Floyd songs, although I think it's fair to say that it's more of a Syd Barrett solo...
I have to confess I'm not the biggest expert on Syd - I'm sure some of you know far more about him than I do - but I often think it's a shame he was (to quote iffypedia) "ousted" from the Floyd, as to me they became a far less interesting combo without him.
And
it feels like 1974 Syd
Barrett's last session, he can't sing anymore He's
gonna have to be Roger now for the rest of his life
...but he's remembered fondly by many and proved to be a huge influence of many of the next generation of stars, including Bowie, Bolan, Weller, Cope... and Freezer.
He's also to be found in illustrious company here, as Scroobius Pip lays down his Ten Commandments...
Thou
shalt not worship pop idols or follow lost prophets Thou
shalt not take the names of Johnny Cash, Joe Strummer, Johnny Hartman, Desmond
Dekker, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix or Syd Barrett in vain
Leslie Feist obviously has a little Syd obsession going on too, as she reveals here in this excerpt from her notebooks...
Why
did I write down everything that entered my mind? Check
out these lines, like - "I'm
Syd Barrett and I'll swim to England in his clothes, in 20 holes" How
could I say at what point I would gain perspective, let alone know I had it?
Texan indie dude Matthew Logan Vasquez is a new name to me. He's apparently in three bands: Delta Spirit, Middle Brother and Glorietta. And on his day off, he does stuff like this...
My
little sister got my record collection They
tried to tell her it's a bad direction But
somehow I'm alive today With
Syd Barrett fuckin' up my brain
Back in 2011, John Wesley Harding stopped releasing material under the name he'd stolen from Bob Dylan (who in turn stole it, with a misspelling, from Wild West outlaw John Wesley Hardin). Instead, he went back to using his real name, Wesley Stace. Here he is, in nostalgic mood...
In
Hastings, when I was younger Thе
sea could take you under I
never much swam in there But
I skimmed some stones and I breathed the air The
Who, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd Syd
Barrett's final show Didn't
take that long to get To
want to know the ghosts Of
Hastings Pier
As is so often the case with this feature, one tune immediately sprang to mind when it came to Syd Barrett: Roddy Woomble's biggest hit. I loved this song from the first moment I heard it, though I've never had a clue what it was all about. Apparently the title comes from some nonsense Roddy shouted at his girlfriend during an impassioned argument, and the whole thing was Idlewild's attempt to write a Pavement song. So the fact that it doesn't make any sense actually makes perfect sense.
You smoke too much when You talk too much, and When I argue, Syd Barrett makes me laugh I laugh at your conversational skills Or lack of
I was in a meeting at work last week when a consultant psychiatrist explained something about how the brain works which I thought I'd share with you. I'm paraphrasing somewhat, but here we go...
Brain tissue is like muscle tissue - you need to use it to keep it working. If you want to build muscles, you work out with weights. But you need to steadily increase the weights you use or your muscle won't grow. It's the same with brain tissue. If you want to increase your attention span, knowledge, brain power, you need to set your brain increasingly harder tasks.
Although he didn't state it implicitly, I inferred that the reverse was also true. If you stop doing physical exercise, the muscle tissue you've built will eventually turn back to fat. Similarly, if you stop using your brain to think, work things out and solve problems, eventually your brain will lose the ability to do so. Bluntly put, you'll get stupider.
Last week, we spoke about the negative effects too much social media can have on our mental health. We discussed how prolonged exposure to social media - in search of more and more feel good dopamine hits - can effectively rewire our brains. Facebook, Twitter (I refuse to call it X), Instagram, Snapchat... they're all guilty of this... but by far the worst offender in my eyes is the evil known as TikTok.
It's an article I'd recommend everyone reads - I even use it with students, ostensibly as a writing to argue exercise, but also to plant the seed in their heads that TikTok is something they should be wary of. That Forbes writer, John Koetsier, explains how he downloaded the app purely to research the article he was writing, and despite that he found himself immediately addicted.
If you've never used TikTok - firstly, well done you. (I refuse to go anywhere near it, myself.) But you may be wondering just how it can be so addictive. The answer, according to Professor Julie Albright (as quoted in Koetsier's article) is that the platform works on the same principle as a slot machine. Sometimes you win (get a little dopamine hit from having viewed a photo or video or meme that you find amusing or emotionally engaging) and sometimes you lose (that next video leaves you cold). But you keep on feeding the machine in the hope of another win... and before you know it, it's three o'clock in the morning and you've just watched your 121st post of the night.
And this is when the rewiring of your brain begins...
“Our brains are changing based on this interaction with digital technologies and one of these is time compression,” Albright says. “Our attention spans are lowering.”
That’s not just happening for kids: it’s happening for all of us. If you don’t believe that, try to watch a movie from the 50s, 60s or even 70s. In most cases, within minutes you’ll be wondering: when will something happen?
Which takes us back to that quote from my colleague the brain doctor at the start of this post. How to exercise our brains to stop them turning into pudding, as I fear mine might have been a few years back.
In the comments to this series a couple of weeks back, Alyson rightly questioned the amount of time I must spend on this blog, saying...
I do wonder if you substituted a couple of days of blogging for a couple of sessions of reading (I know you don't have time for this really enjoyable pastime any more) you would replace the dopamine hit with contentment and achievement.
I'm very much aware that my reading suffered over the last ten years. I used to read a book a week, but when I became a teacher (and soon after a father), I found it harder and harder to find the time, energy and brain space to focus on reading. And I did fall into the trap of scanning facebook instead of settling down with a book, because that seemed like something I could spend just a few minutes on rather than committing to a long read... then after a while, I found it harder and harder to pick up a book. That's something I've fought to rectify since leaving The Bad Place and starting the new job. And this year, I really feel like I've been able to retrain my brain to be able to focus on reading again. But it wasn't easy.
Similarly, this blog. One of the reasons the post-length has grown and my subject matter has become more diverse and complex is that I'm pushing myself to write better. Because sustained writing is like sustained reading: it takes effort. Both are great brain exercise. Every time I write a post that verges on a thousand words, I'm pressing some serious weights. And every time you read one of these posts all the way through - which, let's face it, is no small investment - you're pressing some serious weights too. You might not realise it, but your brain will thank you for it.
Tim Booth is sick of me using him as a clue for people called James. Sugar Ray is less bothered.
"I never knew that George Harrison song was a cover version," Louise said to me the other day. I had to admit, it took me years to discover the original too. But when I did... hoo boy!
Roxanne... you don't have to put on the red light. I've given the green light to another part of the Snapshots saga next Saturday.
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