Cartoon Gravity 43

Although there has been a decent amount of activity on here these past weeks, it has been a while since the last actual newsletter. The dam now bursts, as I am brimming over with enthusiasm for a great many things. So this is less a newsletter than an extended blurt.

The Secret Commonwealth by Phillip Pullman

I was tempted back into Pullman's world by Lev Grossman's piece for the Atlantic. The Book of Dust trilogy straddles His Dark Materials; Book 1 is set before, covering Lyra's birth and introducing Malcolm Polstead as a boy trying to save the baby during a massive flood, books 2 and 3 are set after the events of His Dark Materials and feature Lyra and Malcolm as adults. The Secret Commonwealth is the second book and it reads like a cross between a Tintin adventure and Raiders of the Lost Ark. A comparison to the original trilogy is tricky, because His Dark Materials was earth-shattering, but this new trilogy, so far, is at once lighter in tone and, if possible, angrier. If you're looking for a really fun escape from current affairs in the company of someone who knows exactly how shit the world is and who the real villains are, then this is the place to run to.

Small Prophets

Very very occasionally, a show comes along that feels like a singular vision. Mackenzie Crook's Small Prophets (BBC) is one of those. I'm not going to tell you anything about the story, because I knew nothing going in, but every performance is pitch perfect, the script is a work of genius, and the tone balances on a knife-edge. Alongside Mackenzie and the actors (who are all brilliant, but Michael Palin deserves a special mention), I want to highlight the design, by Lucy Spink, which bursts out of every frame. The show was also executive produced by Chris Gernon, of this parish.

The Bride

Another singular vision, this by Maggie Gyllenhaal. Again, I didn't know very much going in, but the joy of this movie is watching a film-maker create the movie she wants to see, as opposed to the one execs or focus groups might prefer. It might be too much to say that the tide is starting to turn in Hollywood, but I have seen a number of movies recently that care less about adhering to a predictable story structure than they do about providing a unique experience. The Bride is not a perfect movie, but it is so thoroughly exuberant that it doesn't matter.

Pure Hokum

I wrote a piece about Pure Hokum a week or so ago, and now the website is nearly built out and ready to launch. It's going to be the umbrella for the different story universes I work in, a way to give people an overview of what I'm doing and how it fits together. The company itself is an unusual beast; I'm resisting the urge to call it a production company, because that seems too straight. Really, it's a world-creation engine, one that exists because the community has chosen to fund it through Kickstarters and subscriptions. Pure Hokum is the place where Pleasant Green connects to other story worlds: audio fiction, prose, films, games. The site will be the home for all of that, including the next Lovecraft Investigations crowdfunding campaign this spring. I'm hoping to launch this week, so that it's up and running before Crowley and Mythos 4 land.

Claude CoWork

This one is probably controversial. But I had a birthday this week (they seem to happen every year with alarming regularity), and I have decided I have reached an age where I no longer care. Over the past couple of weeks, I have been diving deep into the world of Anthropic's Claude Cowork. If you don't know what that is, it's likely because you don't care, and so I am not going to force you to pay attention. Suffice to say that I am not using Claude for anything generative because, morality aside, it's simply not very good at it. What it is staggeringly good at, though, is processing task and project management and acting as a de facto assistant, telling me what I'm supposed to be doing, what deadlines are approaching etc. And it also turns out to be incredible at decoding the arcane requests of the fulfilment house I'm using for the Kickstarter and furnishing them with bespoke spreadsheets that would have taken me literally days to figure out. I can literally show Claude the fulfilment request and it will dig around in all the Kickstarter info, surface the data it needs, create a new spreadsheet and present it to me to check and send off. All of which seems miraculous to me.

What is also miraculous is how good Claude is as a creative sounding board. To qualify that, "good" is doing some heavy lifting; Claude, faced with a story idea or a script problem, is bad at coming up with good ideas, but pretty good at recognising bad ones, and very good at diagnosing problems. It's not a replacement for a human being, but I don't have a human being sitting next to me while I write. And being able to go "What about this?" and getting any kind of cogent response at all is useful. Under analysis, I realise I am solving 99.9% of the problems myself, which is how it should be, but the act of "discussing" them with Claude is similar to sharing thoughts aloud to another person - it's not that the other person gives you answers, so much as articulating the question properly gets you a long way towards digging up the answer yourself.

In the past couple of weeks alone, and largely thanks to the knotty problems of Kickstarter shipping and fulfilment, I think Claude has probably saved me a day or two. And yes, I'm concerned about the energy use but, on balance, the number of internet searches I would have had to do to figure out weights, distances, freight requirements and European VAT regulations, easily adds up to a far higher energy cost than I spent on Claude.

Per Cal Newport, I don't think this stuff is going to take over the world, but it is a really useful tool when put to the right use.

French Lessons

A few weeks ago, I started one-on-one in-person weekly French lessons. I have always wanted to be able to speak French properly, but I am working off a foundation of 1980s GCSE French (actually, I'm not sure I even did it for GCSE), so have never had the guts to even try speaking aloud in Paris. This is going to be an ongoing journey, but I am really enjoying it and I can feel incremental improvements, and growing confidence, week-on-week.

This was always one of those bucket-list things, that I never imagined getting around to. I'm very glad I did, and I recommend each and every one of you pluck something off your bucket-list this very day and put it into action - if not now, when?

I think that's me for the week. I'll leave you with this video, for lovers of contraptions (just wait for the first percussion break) and the extraordinary vocal ability of Daveed Diggs.

Fuck it, send.