THE PHILLIPS PROBLEM

I admit that I'm struggling with this simplification business. It's not easy to keep my hands out my pockets and my purse in my bag when there are so many nice things everywhere, like new gadgets to make my life easier – except that easier isn't necessarily the same as simple.

It feels like it should be, though. Doesn't it? For instance, I would love an iPad. It would be so convenient – it's small enough to carry around, and has a battery designed to be carried around, and is therefore a lot more practical to carry around than my laptop, which dies quite fast when not plugged into mains.  But is it any simpler than what I already have? A smartphone and a laptop – and for emergencies, a notebook, pen and paperback? Is Kindle really simpler than old-fashioned paper books?

Certainly it's smaller and simpler to pack. But I'd be wary of reading in the bath or by the pool with a Kindle. Last time I checked, water and technology didn't get on too well. That was, after all, the tragic fate of my first smartphone. Yes, ink runs when wet and paper never dries quite flat, but if the book gets splashed, it's still readable. But the biggest problem with technology is that it becomes redundant so fast – there's always a newer, faster, better model being launched, and we can't even read computer code from a few decades ago, so how much will we have lost in another twenty years? At least books will still be in a recognisable language when their e-counterparts (and this blog) no longer load (or load as gibberish) because the coding is no longer supported by new platforms and programming.

Phillips in particular advertises that it creates simple solutions to life's problems. Call me cynical, but there has to be a catch or a lie in that – there's nothing all that simple about technology. Forget the problems of computer coding and its directional compatibility (ever noticed just how polysyllabic computer jargon is?), look at a car or a motorbike. More and more, they're run by computer chips. And computers, as we all know to our frustration, are temperamental little beasts. So our means of transport, including an increasing amount of public transport, are being controlled by machines that crash unpredictably, are constantly outdated and require specialist repair skills. It's all a far cry from the Citroen 2CV, for which the brief was very specific that it must be fixable using tools the average farm had. To me the Citroen is simpler – uglier, messier, noisier, less sleek and minimalist in appearance, but simpler in execution.

I like to have a certain amount of understanding of the gadgets in my life, so when they break down, I have more patience and better idea of how to fix them (CTRL ALT DEL, and hope to hell I hit save in the last five minutes). The trouble with a lot of new technology, especially computers, is that looks simple, the user-interface has become simple, and the working parts are hidden and inaccessible without knowing the secret – the key combination that will lift the veil when things go pear-shaped. This is simplicity of appearance, not of execution.

Having said all that, I would still love an iPad.

SIMPLICITY DE LUXE...?

I am a Deco girl. I admit it, I love Art Deco and its era – those wonderfully glamourous inter-war years of bull markets and excess and recklessness. It was a hell of an age, if you think about it, from the rebalancing of power with the enfranchisement and increasingly widespread employment of women, to Carter's discoveries in the Valley of the Kings. As usual, France started it with the Exhibition Moderne in 1925, from which we date Art Deco as a style, even if it wasn't called that then.

But when I look at Deco, especially early Deco, before the advertisers got hooked on the 'streamlining' thing, i have to wonder how on earth I can begin to say it's simple, or compatible with my stated aim of simplifying my life.

Deco is a style hung up on the exotic, on Africa, from Egypt's ancient treasures to safaris and big game, on Asia and the Orient. Yes, travel was, with giant steamers and the advent of Henry Ford's (relatively) affordable motorcar, suddenly a whole lot more possible for a lot of people, and there was wide world out there to explore. This obsession Deco has with travel might make it rich and fun and all things “luxe” but it doesn't make it simple or minimalist.

Of course, what we generally categorise as the Deco period covers the Great Depression as well. That didn't tone it down. It's when the mood is one of hardship and depression that Deco comes into its own: it's escapist, it offers affordable dreams of colour and light and style and luxury which are probably no less enjoyable for being merely dreams. We dream of what we desire but do not yet have, after all. (And having it, we no longer desire it – this is the eternally exploitable conundrum of humanity which keeps advertisers and manufacturers solvent).

Besides, designer Deco was for the rich, and when did a recession ever bite them to the bone? The rich, especially the super-rich, of whom there plenty in the inter-war years, always seem to manage to stay wealthy through these economic storms. While designer Deco was there for them, the rest of the world had knock-off high-street Deco. Clarice Cliffe crockery, all bright colours and modern, trendy shapes, was within the reach of most of the middle-classes. The radio revolution saw deco wireless sets enter more and more ordinary homes. The Great Depression may have nudged Deco down a slightly different route, but it didn't do it any harm.

So, knowing all of this, how can I still instinctively feel that Deco is a simple style? Is it the clean lines and simple shapes like a fresh breeze after the gothic fussiness of Victoriana? Or is it, actually, all about the very obsession with movement that makes Deco so hung up on the exotic? The feeling of just packing up and going, somewhere, anywhere, no matter the destination as long you travel, and travel in style.

(Don't tempt me. I would love to give in to that urge to just pack up and go, see the world, visit all the places I've not yet been. It's only the damn bills that stop me).

Travel, by definition, demands a certain simplicity – you can't fit your entire wardrobe into your suitcase, nor should you try to. Travel requires a hacking away of the unessential, and the more your travel, the better your definition of the unessential becomes. (I am already making mental packing lists for my bike trip in summer. Alas, all the lists in the world won't prevent a luggage space problem, which will require a rethink of the unessential).

Travel then was easier – borders weren't so tightly controlled and terrorism wasn't yet an issue. And journeys took longer. Flight was still in its infancy and aircraft didn't have much range before requiring landing and refuelling. It was all such a great adventure, made at a human pace, before we invented jet-lag. The diaries of the explorers of the age reflect this slower, simpler world; this enjoyment of the journey and their encounters, mundane and small, with the exotic.

Maybe this is where my love of Deco and simplicity can meet – in those wonderful lines and curves and exotic patterns and materials and rich colours – just fewer of them. And thus all the easier to pack in my suitcase.

RED ROSES AND BLEEDING HEARTS

I don’t like Valentines Day. Not because I’m single, or anti-romance, but because I don’t think V-day is actually romantic. Don’t get me wrong – I like getting presents, and flowers, and generally being spoiled rotten. I am a normal human, after all. It’s just Valentines I don’t like.

Call me high-maintainance, but if you’re going to give me flowers, I’d like it to be because you want to give me flowers, because I like and deserve flowers. Or chocolates or whatever it is you’re going to give me. I don’t want them just because of the date, because Hallmark and Cadbury and Interflora have wasted vast sums on convincing you that you have to.

This is the crux of it: giving me flowers is a romantic gesture that I will appreciate and that will absolutely win me over – if you do it for the right reasons.

If you give me flowers because you know I like them, or I’m having a tough week or just because. If you take me out to dinner somewhere local because I look too done in to cook, that’s sweet, and as the wine revives me, romantic. If you take me to the Ivy on V-day or my birthday, that’s just a cliché.

Romance is tricky, and like any good devil, is in the details, not the price-tag. This is good news for those of us who are tightening our belts and avoiding checking whether we’re overdrawn yet this month (again). Because the dirty little secret that the big companies are hoping we won’t discover, is that romance isn’t big expensive gestures and can be pretty cheap.

It’s in noticing your partner, not in noting the date: in seeing the fatigue and the stress and reacting to soothe them. It’s in hearing the chance comments about likes and dislikes and interests and pet hates and paying enough attention to absorb the information for future use.

(This is a  valuable sneaky trick that enables you to pull amazing surprises out of the bag when you want to, because they will have forgotten they told you about that and you look nearly psychic).

I’m not against the principle behind Valentines – that it’s good to show appreciation of your partner, that it’s good to make someone you love or fancy feel special – but that’s just what Valentines Day isn’t anymore. These days it’s about obilgatory conspicuous – and competitive - consumption, and there’s a lot of pressure to outdo last year and all her friends boyfriends/girlfriends (I say her because it appears from all the endless ads and articles that the most pressure is on straight men). Maybe I’m blonde, but I don’t see what that’s got to do with love or romance, or even appreciation. I don’t think you can quantify love by counting red roses or overpriced table d’hotes or even uncomfortable lingerie. But then, I’m romantic enough to want love to be non-commercial, and non-material. I want to think that love is, in essence,  actually fairly simple, if almost frightening in that simplicity.

So I shall be having an Anti-Valentines Day, refusing to buy, eat or attend anything with a bloody red or pink or heart theme.

And if you want to buy me flowers, wait until tomorrow.

CHAMPAGNE TASTES AND NO BUDGET

I am on too many mailing lists, most of which hold no interest for me, because they’re related to things I looked into or bought for work. They therefore go to my work email and promptly get deleted as being irrelevant. But recently (around payday, which is plain sneaky on the part of the companies involved) I got a couple of demonic mail-outs about clothing… And I am such a girl.

I like new clothes, new shoes, new bags. I don’t actually need any of it, but I am far too good convincing myself otherwise. It’s the Irish in me – I can justify almost anything. Especially the lovely expensive well-cut quality fabric items.

You see, I have always suffered from champagne tastes. More than that, I have Dom Perignon tastes. And in good months, a merlot budget. Mostly, not even that. One of the doubtful joys (who am I kidding? One of the really nasty downsides) of being a freelancer is this variation in the budget. It’s very difficult to restrain myself when I am getting money in, even though I can see the end of the contract and I know the money will cease to come in very soon.

Thus you see the dilemma: live it up while the going is good or be sensible and plan ahead. And quite possibly, in either case, discovering that the choice you made was wrong and you could have/ should have done the other.

I can see the end of my contract looming from here. The light at the end of this somewhat hectic tunnel does, from my current vantage point, appear to be an oncoming train. Hopefully  it will turn out to be one I can jump aboard and ride on out of here, solvently, but for now I can only wait and see. (Yes, and job-hunt. I know. Clearly. Enough with the bleeding obvious already)

Champagne tastes (okay, so I don’t like champagne. How about single malt tastes? I do like a good, mellow single malt whisky. Speyside Scotch or Irish, I’m not quite that fussy) run in the family somewhat. My mother blames her grandfather, who was a cabinet-maker for one of the luxury ocean-liner companies up in Glasgow, back in the day. His job  required a feel for quality, which appears to be hereditary. And dominant. Just my luck.

But it got me thinking, before binning the pretty pictures (3 hours of make-up and lighting and posing per pack shot) and “exclusive discount” offers, about the difference between fashion and style.

If I was only interested in fashion, in trendy, then the tap water budget wouldn’t be an issue – it’s Primark’s raison d’être. Granted, if my interest in fashion had to do with labels rather than appearances, Primark wouldn’t be much good, and I’d be down TK MAXX every chance I got.

My problem isn’t fashionable tastes, it’s not prosecco or cava – it’s champagne, it’s single malts. Rather it is, as snobbish and pretentious as it sounds, about style, about quality. I like leather shoes over plastic, silk over viscose – everything horribly expensive over every more cost-effective and practical alternative. I can’t afford it – and this is one of the classic conundrums of socio-economics, as illustrated in the Vimes Boots theory (Terry Pratchett, “Guards Guards”) which I’ll paraphrase: only the wealthy can afford high-quality boots which will still keep their feet dry in ten years, while everyone else buys the cheaper option and after ten years, has spent twice as much and still has wet feet.

And as I’ve managed to justify the idea that the fewer my possessions the more important the aesthetics of each item, this is a trap I’ve set and baited for myself. Which is all very well, if only I wasn’t quite so keen to walk into it. In my cheaper option boots – merlot budget again.

STYLE VERSUS SUBSTANCE

All this simplifying and editing has made me wonder about the quality equation and the importance of beauty. If I don’t own much, does what I own need to be worth owning? (Clearly yes, or why own it at all? But that’s being a bit too flippant).

At the end of last year, I was hunting for a new diary. As usual, I had my heart set on the one that was sold out in Europe, which I was nonetheless trying to track down from somewhere. During my ultimately fruitless search, I had a conversation with a colleague about the importance of the right diary. We were agreed our diaries had to be beautiful, without ever asking ourselves why. Surely it’s more important for a diary to contain the most relevant information and enough space for a hectic schedule than to have a pretty cover? Surely that would be the sensible person’s simple route to the right diary?

So via a couple of random Google links, this train of thought eventually pulled into a station of Shaker philosophy and the question of quality over quantity and style versus substance.

Shaker design is famous for elegant utility – they worked on the principle that "That is best which works best" and that "Beauty rests on utility.” These are nice, simple, clear concepts that go a long way to explain the finished products, but I came across two more Shaker dictums that really intrigued me in my current efforts to simplify.

The first is that you should "Do your work as though you had a thousand years to live and as if you were to die tomorrow."

And the second is If it is not useful or necessary, free yourself from imagining that you need to make it. If it is useful and necessary, free yourself from imagining that you need to enhance it by adding what is not an integral part of its usefulness or necessity. And finally: If it is both useful and necessary and you can recognize and eliminate what is not essential, then go ahead and make it as beautifully as you can."

These seem to be pretty good principles for a simplist to live by (or at least edit by). When I trained in film and narrative structure, it was drummed into us that every scene and every sequence needs to move the story on, whether by exploring a theme or setting up the next plot twist, everything had a purpose and must be placed so as to best serve the narrative. Is it so impossible to extend that into my life?

Granted, anyone’s life has multiple concurrent narratives going on all the time. That’s what makes us busy, rounded humans. But is that multiplicity of personas, the complexity it engenders, actually necessary? Or is it possible, however unpalatable, that a lot of what we have going on is fluff, window-dressing, a way to avoid the fact that what most us live is an unexamined life. Socrates would not be impressed.

So, if what little I own must be fit for purpose, then by Shaker principles, it should be as beautiful as possible. Quality over quantity, which only costs more in the short term. The confusion arises between quality and style. Or, to be more cynical and accurate, between style and fashion. We pay over the odds for designer labels, but what we get isn’t style, it’s fashion. It’s surface, not substance, because the nature of fashion is to change.

So to live a simple life, we have to buy into style over fashion, substance over style and, of course, quality over quantity.  Which brings me back to my diary. In the end, in an effort to stop wasting my time, I chose a different one. Not as beautiful, but stylish enough. I’ve made a note for next year – start diary-shopping earlier.

SAVE ONLY PLENTY

“It seems man can cope with anything nature throws at us, save only plenty” – Steinbeck, Travels with Charley

Is this the problem we have in the Western industrialised world? That life is too easy, the struggle for survival just a phrase we hear on nature programs and charity appeals?

Darwin’s theory of evolution is often paraphrased as “survival of the fittest,” which is an oversimplification, but at least lets us believe we understand it. Unfortunately, we seem have been misspelling it for quite some time now. Capitalism and commercialism work because they play on our hard-wiring for survival – we want to be the fittest (fattest, richest) – so we focus on wealth and possessions as the measure of our fitness to survive. Capitalism may have proved it’s more in tune with human nature than communism or socialism, but that doesn’t mean it’s doing us any tangible good.

When Steinbeck went on his second great American road trip in the 1960s, he was repeatedly disappointed with the progress of his country, not so much because of the progress itself, but because of the increasing homogenization of the previously differing accents and dialects of the regions, and the increasing waste and lack of respect for both people and things he saw as a side effect of the increased standard of living. This was many decades after Thoreau made pretty much the same point in Walden Pond, which remains the acknowledged work on the subject of simplifying and the natural life.

In the U.K, The Good Life was making the point back in the 1970s – that we are too dependent on big agribusiness and multi-national corporations in our urban commercial culture. This we know, if only because the interlocked international banking system proved the point in its recent spectacular crash and ensuing crisis.  If we import all our food, we are hostage to the first blockade. If we import all our power – petrol, oil, natural gas – we are hostage to Russia's power squabbles with ex-Soviet countries, to every new twist in the ongoing attrition in the Middle East, every coup in oil-rich regions of Africa. It makes us very vulnerable to international political and economic breezes. So surely, the obvious course for wisdom and long-term survival is to decrease our dependence on imports?

It seems an impossible ask on the individual level, because what can one person do against the status quo and government policy? We can simplify our own lives, opt out of the “survival of the fattest” by buying less, consuming less, owning less and above all wanting less. Bruce Lee, perhaps, put it best when he said that what matters “is not the daily increase, but the daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.” Okay, so his philosophy is not what he's famous for, but that doesn't make it any less valid.

I admit I'm having trouble hacking away at the unessential.  It's hard to cease desiring, to stop buying into as powerful a status quo as our material world. After all, we can't opt out of living in it. There are so many things I can see a place for in my life, but they're not necessary as I have a biological imperative to be the fattest/fittest, I also have a biological tendency to lethargy – in survival terms, the less we do, the more energy we conserve when we need it. So I'm going to try giving in to that – stop expending energy on wanting and acquiring, and conserve it to be spent on doing, on experiencing. Because in the end, I think I'm far more likely to regret not doing far more than we'll regret not possessing.

And if that means I have to make do and mend or do without, I'm certain Steinbeck was right, and I will cope admirably with all adversity, save only if I give in to plenty.

MINIMALISM = SIMPLICITY... RIGHT?

I am not a minimalist, but I do seek simplicity. How the hell is that possible? Isn’t it splitting hairs? Isn’t it making life overly complicated to differentiate? Which would be exquisitely ironic, if nothing else. (And how ridiculous of me, to seek simplicity when I work in an industry that thrives on the complicated - plots, shots, sets, effects and logistics – all to make something that has no material existence at all now everything’s digital).

However, just because complicated unreality pays my bills doesn’t mean I have to seek it out of the office. So I looked up both minimalism and simplicity in the Oxford Dictionary, just to see if I had the glimmerings of a point.

Minimalism:

1 a movement in sculpture and painting which arose in the 1950s , characterized by the use of simple, massive forms.

2 an avant-garde movement in music characterized by the repetition of very short phrases which change gradually, producing a hypnotic effect.

3 deliberate lack of decoration or adornment in style or design

Simplicity, on the other hand, is defined as:

1 the quality or condition of being easy to understand or do

2 the quality or condition of being plain or uncomplicated in form or design

3 a thing that is plain or uncomplicated

Okay, so the definitions overlap a bit, especially when it comes to design. But that’s not to say that minimalism is simply the extreme or fundamentalist form of simplicity. A simple kitchen has a couple of sharp knives and a peeler. A minimalist kitchen has one multi-purpose gadget from JML that chops and peels and probably minces and mixes as well. (Some people will argue about this. It’s my blog, purposes of understanding what I’m on about, my definition goes. Okay? Glad we sorted that out).

Minimalism as a life goal takes simplicity to a whole new level at which it can actually turn out to be quite complicated. I am seeking to de-complicate my life, so I will stick to the sharp knives and separate peeler, thank you, and not spend my money with JML. (Partly because spending money = broke = very complicated life, at least until payday).

After all, multi-functional isn’t necessarily more efficient. Multi-tasking is something we’ve all developed, but I don’t know

I suppose you could call it a Shaker approach, as per their dictum: “Don’t make something unless it is both necessary and useful; but if it is both necessary and useful, don’t hesitate to make it beautiful.”

The trick, which I’m still working on, is figuring out what is both necessary and useful in the context of a modern, urban life in a commercial society. When I do work it out, this blog will be the first to know.

So if simplifying is taking an Occam approach, then where does that leave the iLife? If I have an iPhone, does that mean my iPod is no longer useful or necessary (probably not necessary, if I’m honest). What about my camera? Does a laptop with high storage capacity obviate the need for DVDs, CDs and books? Does the Cloud mean my laptop’s hard drive is no longer strictly necessary, or just that its size is no longer so relevant? How much do I double up on gadgets and things in my life? Is there a genuine argument for doing so?

Sometimes. Summer and winter clothes. Seasonal changes, differing activities and purposes. Like everybody else, I am very good at justifying my possessions. Probably too good. It comes of living in a consumer society, where shopping is a leisure activity, and even in these straitened times we can tell ourselves we’re “doing our bit for the economy” by keeping the money going around and around. And that’s the trouble. Our economies are based on the circulation of money, on the requriement that money moves. The crash came because the money stopped moving. Debtors defaulted, investors kept hold of their cash as they didn’t see a return for them, banks stopped lending because they’d run out of money and the debtors were defaulting... The money halted and the system juddered to a standstill. Governments attempted to prop it up, but bits are still falling off all over the place. (You already know all this).

The going has got tough. So surely we should all imitate the bumper sticker and go shopping? Go be my guest, I won’t join you. Unless it’s something I actually need…. Which is where that pernicious power of justification comes in.

So: the rules are changing. If it’s not essential, like food, then it must be replacing something that needs replacement, like clothes, or serve a particular purpose for which nothing I currently own would be suitable. I don’t have an example yet, but I am absolutely sure I’ll find one soon. Probably something expensive as well.

The idea is to end up with some space in my cupboards, on my bookshelves, some time freed up from things I don’t need or want to do, and a closet containing clothes I can and do wear. So far I’ve not been very good at it, but it’s a work in progress. Insulating myself from destitution, should my job vanish and not reappear, is a potential perk if I can get this right.

The idea is to end up with what I actually use and need and want to be comfortable, with none of the complicated and extraneous bits and pieces and mental fluff that takes up too much time and effort and results in this urge to jack it all in and go riding.

Simplicity, not minimalism. Knife + peeler, not one fancy complicated mulit-functional gizmo. And I guess hard drive, not the Cloud. It’s simpler, after all.