LOST LECTURES
Written by James Ward
I recently gave a talk at an event called The Lost Lectures. The Lost Lectures is a brilliant idea – a series of talks every couple of months, in a different venue each time. People talking, but talking in nice places.
My talk is sort of a handy guide to my entire aesthetic and everything I believe in. There’s a bit at the end – a particular line – which I accidentally skipped. I didn’t mean to, I think I was just glad to have got that far without humiliating myself too badly and in the excitement I missed a bit. So really, what you should do is watch the video right up until 11:44, then pause it, then say the following sentence in my voice:
Attention and focus and patience can take a sneeze and turn it into a page from a diary. It can take a packet of Munchies and turn it into a museum.
Here is a list of things and people mentioned in that talk (in approximate order of appearance):
- Boring Conference
- Russell Davies
- Interesting
- “Boring conference sells out in minutes” – The Independent
- Ed Ross
- Lewis Dryburgh
- Peter Fletcher
- “Excitement As Boring London Event Sells Out” – Sky News
- Tim Steiner
- “Saif Gaddafi arrested in desert after month-long hunt by Libya’s new government – The Telegraph
- “Disgrace as official Boring Conference is really interesting” – The Sun
- POPism: The Warhol Sixties (Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett)
- How I Escaped My Certain Fate (Stewart Lee)
- John Cage
- Georges Perec
- Species Of Spaces (Georges Perec)
- An Attempt At Exhausting A Place In Paris (Georges Perec)
- No News (Adam Buxton)
- Powers Of Ten (Charles and Ray Eames)
- Vintage British Argos 1985 Catalogue
- Filming Locations In About A Boy
- Robert Opie
- Museum Of Brands and Packaging
“The transformative power of attention” – I’m going to use that phrase all the time. Where did that phrase come from? I must have stolen it from somewhere.
JAMES WARD: I LIKE BORING THINGS 
I did it. I paused at 11:44 and said the missing sentence out loud. I found it surprisinfly hard to do your voice. My attempt sounded much too nasal and not at all flattering. If I do it again, I will try a Sean Connery voice instead.
‘Transformative power of attention” if it wasn’t you, then it could have been the folks at It’s Nice That…it is nice that.
http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/the-lost-lectures
‘Transformative power of attention’ made me think of Gilbert White. Not sure if you of know of him, but he was a naturalist who lived in Selborne in Hampshire in the 18th century, in what essentially was a kind of marooned community as Selborne was largely cut off from the outside world for large parts of the year. Anyway, he produced these fantastically detailed journals full of intensely observed natural phenomena, in which the smallest tracts of land became like vast canvases. He called his technique ‘watching narrowly’ which seems to fit perfectly with your own aesthetic.
Cheers for the site.
Thank you, “watching narrowly” is a beautiful phrase. I’m not familiar with Gilbert White, but think I probably should become familiar with him.
I think Alan Moore would agree with that – his theory on understanding the world is that you take one of two choices – either travel as widely and frequently as possible, or stay in the same place your whole life, watching it change with the passing of time, people and technology. He, as Northamptonites proudly tell anyone who will listen, chose the latter.
I too read out the missing sentence in an attempt at your voice which was much closer to Ken Livingstone or Henry’s Cat. I enjoyed the talk though, very much. Thank you.
Love it!
A bit belatedly, but here is the story of why this blog post (in a chain of other things) led to my buying the DVDs of Series 3 of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle: http://reprog.wordpress.com/2012/09/19/how-i-came-to-buy-the-dvd-of-series-2-of-stewart-lees-comedy-vehicle/