jetlagged gobsmacked backtracked

I’m not long back from a week-long trip to the Guadalajara Bookfair, still feeling jetlagged and gobsmacked by the cold, still aglow with traces of the vivid pinkgreenyellowblues, the tequila and lime and sunshine of Mexico, still drugged by strange time zones so that I suddenly nod off midday, come sharp awake just as my head hits the pillow – in a state of displacement. <:::::::and having written that, went down with a stomach bug…

from which I’ve now recovered to find Christmas and multiple deadlines approaching like a pile up waiting to happen and the cold so cold and in this state I am honoured and delighted to be starting to guest blog here, having kept some notes and shot some film on my flip camera during the week, so will include flashbacks thus:::::::::::::: >

I’m on an airplane half way to Mexico, thinking about place, thinking about the millions of people on this earth right now in transit somewhere, some cruising for pleasure, some homeless and wandering, some cosy on trains and planes, some lost in transition, some in silent reverie, some tapping on laptops or watching virtual worlds.

Across the aisle from me a man with a laptop a bit like mine appears to be composing music. He wears big headphones, taps a while, makes intricate movements with his hands, playing a very delicate air guitar, then smiles to himself. Next to him his daughter plays on her Nintendo while on a murky screen in the centre of the cabin the credits of Harry Potter roll. In a tin box hurtling through space we do what we’re used to doing, at home with ourselves and our technology, till the batteries go. And still, going abroad, preparing to step out somewhere warm after leaving somewhere cold and wet, travelling for twelve hours to arrive just 6 hours later… this is still extraordinary magic.

<:::::::::::on the way home I meet Pablo and his mum, Irena, him at twenty on his first flight ever, first chance to test his English on a real Englishman, him shaking with fear and joy at the amazement of take off, his first view down onto clouds, caught up entirely in the actuality of this flying place::::::::>

I’m going to the Guadalajara Book Fair to give a talk on a panel about e-readers.

I’m thinking about worlds of imagination as found in books and what worlds we’ll build in future, and also on my mind are life decisions. The kids have left, the house seems large and knackered from all those years of family life, needs either to be jettisoned, exchanged for some smaller, funkier space, or refurbished and recommitted to. (All that flaming property angst we fortunates go through, lucky enough to actually have shelters to flog.) Every week we seem to imagine a different future for ourselves.

And at if:book we’re talking about new kinds of story structure. What narratives work for lives in which we can walk with one person and chat to another on the other side of the earth; where we may have to travel less but can have multiple online personas and boldly go virtually.

if:book is involved in the development of an iPhone app which does geo-loating things so it’s feasible to publish a story that knows where you are and shapes itself accordingly.

And meanwhile those Hardyesque plots involving fateful missed opportunities become ever less plausible, though later this week I’ll hear of two digital friends who arranged to meet at a restaurant but still managed to miss each other, one inside one outside all evening, both with batteries low…

(And here I am right now struggling like mad to get to grips with the method of posting here, let alone the nature of place in the digitalwigitty age, feeling like one inept futurist, wanting to get this first post up and over.)