Christopher Hitchens on how to succeed

At 6 minutes 20 seconds, Christopher Hitchens explained his move to Washington here:

"I think my life changed when I moved to Washington because I became a really hard worker. A person of almost iron self discipline. I built my own workspace at home. I never went to an office anymore. I didn't hang out with people at lunch. Got on with it. If I wasn't reading, I was writing. It's 'cause there are no distractions in Washington DC. Washington was like taking my vow. It was like becoming a friar. I can't recommend the vow of monk-hood or friar-hood too highly if you want to get on with doing some real work."

This echoes the quote by V. S. Pritchett who wrote in an essay about the English historian Edward Gibbon:

"Sooner or later, the great men turn out to be all alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very depressing." 

There's also this famous quote made by unknown:

"Successful people aren't born that way. They become successful by establishing the habit of doing things unsuccessful people don't like to do. The successful people don't always like these things themselves; they just get on and do them.”

Video interview with Hitchens in full here and further below. He also said in an interview here:

"The main thing I keep saying, never tire of saying is, to keep testing yourself against other writers who are better than you. That's what qualifies one as a writer I think, as permanently running the risk of having to say, 'I don't know why I bother.'"

He also said:

"The essential thing for being a good writer is being a good reader." 

He said in an interview here at 22 minutes that a writer can never really stop.

TCD Social media panel

On Friday 18 October the Political Studies Association of Ireland hosted a conference in Trinity College Dublin which included a panel looking at new media and new politics and their influence on conflict transformation in Northern Ireland. Chaired by Niall Ó Dochartaigh (NUI Galway), I featured alongside Alex Kane (Journalist), Paul Reilly (Uni. of Leicester) and Alan Meban (Political blogger). 

Alan in Belfast covered the event here. See my images of the day and of the event above and below.

#WhitePaper - What's the case for a united Ireland?

@chrisadonnelly @brianjohnspencr nats. have the best of both worlds in the UK - SF in govt + UK exchequer + NHS + BBC - all lost in a UI
— Comrade Stalin (@TovarichBelfast) December 9, 2013

In the spirit of Whitepapers (i.e. Scotland's Future: Your guide to an independent Scotland) I'm asking: What's the case for a United Ireland? What would a United Ireland look like? This is a rolling "White Paper" series I'm kicking of right now. Why? Because nobody else is doing it. Because nobody - again I say nobody - is able to actually make a reasoned case, or actually tell me what a United Ireland would actually look like, save that partition is an abomination, the original sin and that unionists are illegitimate colonists. When Salmond et al. came out with his considered and thought out proposal which he has put to the people of Scotland, I muttered, jeez if I were a nationalist/republican I'd be writing a White Paper pronto.

Well I'm pre-empting that. Doing that with my "White Paper" blog series which will make the case for not having a United Ireland. I submit to you that this is timely development and I ask you to join me in this mission.

To get things moving I think it necessary to understand the current state of affairs in the Irish republic. The usual criticism is the €200m public debt. That's a bit cheap. I want to hear more. So, what's the story of the Republic of Ireland right now and in recent history?

Let's begin by looking at The Growing Up in Ireland study which began in 2008, the same year Fianna Fáil implemented their No Bondholders Left Behind policy. The nation-wide study is following a representative sample of 11,000 children as they grow up in the post-Celtic Tiger Ireland.

Ironically since 2008, a great many children in Ireland have been left behind. Fintan O'Toole outlined a few startling facts in The Irish Times here. His headline was that "The gap in health between the best-off and worst-off children has doubled in the three years after the bank guarantee." Here's his main points:

One:

"One child in every four is living in a home where nobody at all has a job (In 2010, 22 per cent of all Irish households were jobless; the next highest proportion in Europe – the UK – was 13 per cent)."

Live Drawing - St Joseph's Craft Fair

Less sweaty, stinky, lumbering politicians. More nice, polite little children. On Sunday 8 December I was doing live drawing at Saint Joseph's Primary School in Crumlin. As you can see from the picture above it was like being trasported back to my primary 4 class of 1994/1995 - Lots of kids enjoying the euphoria of a good cartoon!

I lost count of how many cartoons I actually produced. Tried to take a picture of every piece but missed a few. Click below to see a sample and selection of pieces from the day. Enjoy.

Live Drawing - Thriftway 2013

Mukesh Sharma asked me to come along to the Thriftway 2013 Christmas party at the Crumlin Road Gaol. Above and below you can see a selection of cartoons I did of the attendees during the proceedings.

Fintan O'Toole on the Mandela-Martin McGuinness comparison

In the New York Review of Books here, Fintan O'Toole wrote in February 1998:

"That journey is treacherous because, though Irish republicans would like to think otherwise, the analogy between themselves and Kenyatta or Mandela is not in fact valid. The IRA’s campaign has not been a war of national liberation, waged on behalf of the majority against an oppressive minority or a foreign power. Its enemies have not been illegitimate regimes but two liberal democracies—the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland—and the majority Protestant population in Northern Ireland itself. The end-of-empire ritual of an old flag lowered at midnight and a new one raised at dawn will not be played out in Belfast, whatever the outcome of the talks. Sinn Fein’s leader, Gerry Adams, may have made the transition from terrorist to politician, but he and his comrades are not about to take over the state. The question on which the future of Northern Ireland depends is whether, without the reward of power, an undefeated paramilitary army can be persuaded to trade the epic certainties of violence for the unglamorous ambiguities of peaceful politics. One of the most resilient and fearsome of terrorist groups, which has withstood all the efforts of the British army and the local Northern Irish security apparatus to destroy it, is being asked to settle for something far short of its goals. And for this incorporation into a liberal democracy of an armed conspiracy to overthrow it, postwar history offers no precedent."

Live Drawing - Pub guys

A doodle of some guy I met in the The John Hewitt bar in Belfast. More doodles of his mates below:

Quentin Blake on his relaxed style

Quentin Blake is one of our most popular illustrators. Best known for his collaboration with Roald Dahl hid work is immediately recognisable and is full of joy and happy chaos. Quentin's father worked as a civil servant, his mother was a homemaker. At 14, he began sending drawings to Punch. At 16, his work was accepted by Punch. Quentin also produced work for The Spectator. 

Appearing on Desert Island Discs with Kirsty Young here, he was asked: "If we were to leave through some of those 1949 editions of Punch, would we recognise those drawings as notably Quentin Blake?" Quentin Blake responded:

"You might do. They were quite economical but. You might recognise them. But that way of drawing, that people now recognise, happened really when I was 20-something. Gradually I relaxed and in fact if you draw relaxed you draw much better. You're thinking about what that is, what that gesture is that that person is making. You're not thinking about, am I going to spoil it which is the important thing."

In a 2008 interview with The Telegraph here he said was asked about his idiosyncratic use of line to convey depth and movement. On that style he was asked: "is this because you're relaxed when working?"

"Not really. I remember someone saying I’m deceptively slapdash. Well, thank goodness for the deceptively. I think I’m relaxed in a way that is focused."

During his Reith lecture series here, the cross-dressing potter Grayson Perry spoke of the need for "relaxed fluency" and of the need to break away from "the crippling effects of self-consciousness."

2006 interview with Kirsty Young on Radio 4 here. 2008 Telegraph interview in full here. My blog post on Grayson Perry and "relaxed fluency" here.

The artist's Journey, Ctd Deane's Painting #1

See the image above, the images below explain how I travelled from brief to final product.

A tiny minority makes us all look like loosers

A commenter from Northern Ireland, now living in America responded to a guest blog I produced for the Loyalists Against Democracy blog here. He said of the flag protests:

"I am currently studying Politics in The United States as part of a BA international from University College Dublin. An American Student asked me this question the other day. 'The guys in Belfast marching about the flag are Protestants ya?' I said yes they are. He then asked me 'Why do those people always behave like such freaks?' I said its only a tiny minority, he replied, 'well that tiny minority makes them all look like a bunch of losers dude' - This conversation sparked a discussion in my class (I am studying in California, where the majority of the students are American or of European decent, only one with any Irish connection) I was genuinely shocked by the discussion. They all had such a terrible view of Unionism, undeserved in my view. But the point is that unionism is being destroyed at home and abroad by these idiots."

Richard Haass has said here that the riots and instability has scared off international investors.

Live Drawing - Civic Conversation in Belfast

The above pencil and pen sketch with colour is my interpretation of the below:

Religion no longer - Identity is the new sacred

Ed West writes in The Spectator here:

"But now that identity, whether of race, religion, class, sex or sexuality, is the new sacred, hate crime laws have become blasphemy laws in all but name. The things that will get someone arrested, investigated, shunned, boycotted, made unemployed or end their political career – all relate to the blasphemy of identity."

Live Drawing - Peace Journalism

I had the enjoyment of attending the Peace Journalism workshop during the day of Friday November 29, covered by Alan in Belfast here. He wrote on Slugger O'Toole:

"The phrase “peace journalism” was found wanting by organisers and delegates alike at today’s workshop in Belfast. Partly because the journalistic ethics that apply to conflict equally apply to peace (and every other situation), and also because Northern Ireland may be on a transition between conflict and peace, but it’s definitely not yet altogether post-conflict. 

The main speakers (Deaglan de Breadun, Mike Gilson, Jane Morrice and Malachi O’Doherty) and panellists (Laura Haydon, Alex Kane, Lyra McKee and Julia Paul) all had differently nuanced articulations of the role of individual journalists (and media organisations more generally) in covering conflict and peace, and differing notions of what constituted truth, justice and public interest."

Check out my cartoons from the day above and below:

Art is theft, Ctd Peter Brookes

@Blowercartoons ....and here's one I did earlier! pic.twitter.com/gdvqLmPCpR
— Peter Brookes (@BrookesTimes) July 5, 2013

Live drawing with Ian Knox

I had the great honour of drawing with the Northern Ireland treasure Ian Knox at the Black Box Belfast during the Belfast Comedy Festival. My blog post with photos of Ian Knox here. Check out above and below some images of me drawing with my great cartooning hero Ian Knox!

Ian Knox & Brian Spencer hard at work on our wall comic strip. Looking good pic.twitter.com/Ldj2yVedLE
— Belly Laughs Belfast (@BellyLaughsB) October 6, 2013

Deaneos wine

                       

Check out my drawings for Michael Deane's wine label which I helped to produce. More images below.

Live Drawing - Belfast Friday Night Mashup

On Friday 29 I had the opportunity to do live drawing at Belfast's inaugural Friday Night Mashup, held at the Titanic Pump House in Belfast. Clair Weir covered the event in the Telegraph here. She said:

"It's a networking event with a difference and there isn't a pinstripe in sight. Northern Ireland's bright new tech start-ups and potential funders now have a new way in which to meet, mingle and hopefully, make money. 

The Friday Night Mash-up is run by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs and provides a great opportunity to meet with other big thinkers, tech enthusiasts, investors and media."

Read more about the event here, here, here and here. See below for a selection of the cartoons I produced on the evening:

Let Me Tell You (with David McCann)

Little experiment with David McCann (@dmcbfs), building on the inimitable and esteemed If You Ask Me feature that ran for 16 years on BBC Hearts and Minds. Check out the cartoons featured in the video below. See the full compilation with audio from David McCann here. See the feature on Slugger O'Toole here.

Political cartoonists in the digital age

In The New Statesman here Helen Lewis asked: "can political cartoonists can survive in the digital age?" In a piece by the title, "Loss of habitat threatens cartoonist species" Andy Davey wrote on the matter here:

"I am a member of an endangered species; no, not just homo sapiens sapiens but a rarer and more endangered sub-species; the cartoonists. In fact, my small colony is a sub-sub-species – the few who actually (well, as I write) make a living from the practice. The fact is that habitat change is threatening us. I am extremely lucky to have made it through the Darwinian undergrowth to find this sun-dappled glade where I can reflect on how our small herd got here and to muse about the path ahead. If you’ll indulge me, here goes. Like the WWF, I’m aware of you, dear sympathy-fatigued readers, so in the following paragraphs I’m hoping to strike a bold, rakish balance between abject sorrow at the dwindling numbers of a once-majestic species and an uplifting message of feel-good hope about the future [extended conservation metaphor ends]."

He wrote here:

"The ever-eloquent Rowson always likens us to parasites who will find a host even in the most unforgiving of environments. Our forbears were hosted by Georgian coffee shops, pompous, dry Victorian magazines and eventually newspapers."

The reverse diaspora and Cloud cities

In The Sunday Times of December 1 2013, Balaji Srinivasan considered how the future could look. He said here:

"And we can’t know from today’s vantage point where that first reverse diaspora might assemble outside the US, or what those cloud cities or countries will be like. They could be countries formed by internationally recognised processes similar to the ones that created about 30 new countries over the past 25 years, a pattern noted by Marc Andreessen. They could be regions of the world set aside by global agreement for experimentation, as discussed by Larry Page. They could be floating cities in international waters as put forth by Peter Thiel, or one of the more ambitious 80,000-person colonies on Mars desired by Elon Musk. The specific location is still unknown; in a real sense it matters far less than the people there. 

What we can say for certain is this: from Occupy Wall Street and YCombinator to co-living in San Francisco and co-housing in the UK, something important is happening. People are meeting like minds in the cloud and travelling to meet each other offline, in the process building community — and tools for community — where none existed before. Those cloud networks where people poke each other, share photos and find their missing communities are beginning to catalyse waves of physical migration, beginning to reorganise the world. 

Will this ultimately end in a cloud country of our own, as Page, Thiel and Musk propose in different ways? We can set this as a long-term goal, like the kind of dream that propelled so many millions to exit and come to America in the first place, but it’s unclear what the future holds. We do know this, however: as cloud formations take physical shape at steadily greater scales and durations, it shall become ever more feasible to create a new nation of emigrants."