Sanne Vloet :: Meal Prep With Me: 12 Quick & Easy High-Protein Recipes + PDF Guide!
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Sanne Vloet :: Meal Prep With Me: 12 Quick & Easy High-Protein Recipes + PDF Guide!
Alien Nation (1986)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Filmmakers/comments/1nb3ooh/what_are_the_risks_of_waiting_decades_to_start_a/
I (32M) am currently working in an unrelated career, but I am writing on the side and planning to make some short films with as much of my free time I can. I am saving for retirement with the idea that, around 50-55 years old, I will "retire" into a filmmaking career, perhaps with or without starting by going to film school. The idea would be that I won't necessarily have enough money at 50-55 to retire for the rest of my life, but that I will have enough to supplement a more risky and lower expected earning film career doing something I deeply care about.
Some of you may recognize this as the "barista FIRE" strategy, with the idea that I will be working more not less. I don't ever really want to fully retire and lay around, but I would love to switch to work I care more about.
I am wondering if there is anything that will bite me in the ass later about this plan. Will age discrimination make it impossible for me to get entry level roles in film productions in my early fifties? Is networking with other early career filmmakers at that age unrealistic? Is being, let's say, a DP too physically demanding a job to do in my sixties? Are there considerations I am not even thinking to ask about?
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Keep working your day job, start making movies.
I didn't go to film school. I was 55 when I picked up my first camera, I'll be 62 this year. The first 4 1/2 years I shot 12 no budget, no crew, shorts and several music videos, teaching myself everything about filmmaking including cinematography, editing and color correction. I started shooting my first feature a year and a half ago, and it premierred this year at the Hollywood Reel independent film festival where it was nominated for "Best Film". I won "Best Director". It was made for $4k, without a crew.
I did this all the while while working a fulltime job, living in mega expensive Los Angeles.
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You have no idea what position or mindset you will have in 18-23 years - that is a very long time and you're still pretty young. You could easily sour on the idea of filmmaking by your 40s/50s. I would say just start making shorts now honestly and see how you like it.
I picked up a camera when I was 35 and I'm now 37 with 2 low-budget horror shorts that have screened at a number of reputable genre fests.
In some ways I wish I started sooner but I don't think I had the maturity/patience and definitely not the money to actually make anything when I was younger.
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The biggest risk is probably self-funding a vanity project when you FIRE, without having ever done the hard yards to learn the craft, and never understanding why it didn't turn out the way you hoped.
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No one is promised tomorrow. And the only way to get better at anything is: do -> fail -> learn -> do again on continuous repeat. For most, it takes a long time to get really good at anything.
That being said, please don’t read this as encouraging you to quit your job now. Filmmaking can be a fast track to first-world poverty and a seriously challenging way to make a living. The whole adage about “do what you love and you won’t work a day in your life” is mostly bs. You run an equal if not greater risk of soiling something you love by turning it into a job.
Good luck whatever you decide to do.
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The biggest risk is that you’ll ruin your retirement.
You can’t pull from an IRA or 401K early without paying both income tax and a penalty. When you start a filmmaking career that late in life, you’ll struggle to contribute to social security and when it comes time for you to pull social security for retirement, your monthly will be very low.
This career is physically demanding when you’re starting out and a 50+ can only do so much, let alone someone who’s 60+. Yes there are plenty of 50/60 year olds who work in film, but they’re not PAing, gripping a low budget music video, packing up a small van with equipment late at night, etc; they already did that in their 20’s/30’s.
Plus, in the US, you’ll need to get your own health insurance, which at 50+ won’t be cheap. You can get Medicare in your 60’s, but you still need to supplement it.
On top of that, your overhead in your 50’s will be considerably higher than it is now. Do you have kids? A mortgage? Car payment? Medical?
Realistically, your income will drop down to near zero when you start a filmmaking career in your 50’s. Who can survive on that with penalized pulls from your retirement plan that you will need in your 70s+?
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In my experience, the only time I really see older non-film people waltzing onto a set is if they're paying to be there one way or another (writing, self-funding, providing equipment). I don't really see someone DPing in their 50s/60s with zero experience, but of course never say never.
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If you didn’t start painting until you were 50-55 vs started painting today… what types of paintings would you make when you are older?
The stories will be different, but your capacity to create good art will be night and day different.
I started making movies at 11. I didn’t stop. I will probably make my best work starting in my 50s. You don’t have to make expensive art to make meaningful art. Meaningful art doesn’t have to be meaningful to everyone or anyone to be meaningful to you.
Start making the most affordable version of one dream idea right now. Today. Chances are you won’t die this week, but the odds don’t get better the more decades you wait. There is a version of what you want to make that you can make now. Go. Create your dreams. Start small. Start doable. Noodle. Have fun. Make art.
What are you waiting for? You deserve to live your human experience and make movies.
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I think you're going about things the right way. Ya gotta eat, right? As long as you're actively working on skills and product that benefit your end goal, keep at it.
As for discrimination for being 50-55 and starting out, at this point I'd highlight the fact that you won't technically just be starting out at 50-55. Instead, you'll be leveraging the past 20 years of experience, and making a full-time go of it.
20 years is a long time. You never know what opportunities will come your way. Keep working your craft, taking classes, and putting yourself out there with the time you can spare.
Life's a marathon, not a sprint.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/series/a-new-start-after-60 The Guardian runs a regular column called A New Start After 60. It might be an interesting read.
A new start after 60: after a decade of rejections, I got my first novel published. Now I’ve got my dream, I won’t stop!
After a successful career as a talent agent – representing Michael Parkinson, Ulrika Jonsson and Adam Ant – Melanie Cantor became disillusioned with TV. So she took up writing – and refused to give up on her passion.
At 61, after a decade writing four unpublished manuscripts and receiving hundreds of rejections from agents and publishers, Melanie Cantor got an email in 2019 from the literary agent Felicity Blunt. “It started off positively and I was just waiting for the ‘but’ to arrive, but it never did,” Cantor says. “She said she wanted to represent me.”
In 2020, Dorset-based Cantor’s debut novel Life and Other Happy Endings, about a woman with three months to live who spends her remaining time writing letters to those who have wronged her, came out. Its publication was the culmination of a lifelong fascination with writing.
“My father was an artist and even though I couldn’t draw for toffee, words were my creativity,” she says. “I used to write stories and poetry. When I was given a guitar at 15, I even wrote songs. I never thought being a writer was possible, though, since the only option if you were good at English in the 60s was to become a teacher.”
Rather than work in education, Cantor became a secretary for the theatre publicist Peter Thompson and developed her own roster of clients. In the 90s, she made the switch to talent management, founding her own agency that represented everyone from Michael Parkinson to Ulrika Jonsson and Adam Ant. Yet by 2008, she was becoming disillusioned and decided to take a new direction.
“The industry had moved towards reality TV and I just wasn’t as passionate about work any more,” she says. “I had just turned 50 and having spent so long working on other people’s interests, it was time to do something for me. I decided to get back to writing.”
My writing wasn’t poetic like the others. But I did make everyone laugh Aside from a manuscript in 2001, after being inspired by the bestselling comedy novel The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, Cantor hadn’t written anything long-form since she was a teenager. She decided to enrol on a writing course to hone her skills. “I spent five days in Oxford and it was eye-opening,” she says. “We had to read out the pages we wrote every day. It was so embarrassing when it got to me because mine wasn’t poetic like the others. But I did make everyone laugh.”
After meeting an agent through the course, Cantor was encouraged to write a manuscript that focused on the celebrity world she had worked in. “It almost got picked up by HarperCollins but failed in the sales and marketing tests and that was devastating,” she says. “I went out and got drunk and met someone who told me: ‘Rejection is what makes you a writer.’ I’d learn that over the next decade!”
Drawn to creating characters and plotlines, Cantor wrote every day, regardless of the rejections, with her dog Mabel by her side. “Writing brought me such pleasure,” she says. “Even if it was just for myself, I loved living with these characters and when I wrote it was so meditative, I would lose track of time. It’s only when I finished a draft and pressed send – to an agent – that it got scary.”
Cantor produced three more manuscripts before she began working with a freelance editor, who helped shape Life and Other Happy Endings. It was published, however, as the Covid pandemic hit and she was unable to attend any events to meet readers. Happily, her follow-up comic novel, The F**k It List, which recounts a new start for a 40-year-old single woman who decides to become a mother, is about to be published.
“I’m so excited to connect with the readers and keep telling these stories of powerful, independent women,” she says. “Not everyone will like your work but I’m so thrilled to be able to entertain the people who engage with it. It makes all that rejection worth it.”
Now 66, Cantor is working on her third novel and a screenplay adaptation of The F**k It List that she is hoping will get picked up. “Now that I’ve started, I won’t stop,” she says. “I want to show people that failure is simply part of the journey of life. If you keep going, time, luck and talent will combine in your favour.”
https://www.reddit.com/r/Filmmakers/comments/1nb3ooh/what_are_the_risks_of_waiting_decades_to_start_a/
Go make a movie
As near as I can tell the one thing that holds back fledgling filmmakers is that they do know what a movie is but they don't know what a story is.
A story is a day in the life that becomes a unique problem that is resolved in the end.
Consider Night of the Living Dead, where we start with Barbara and her brother at the cemetery and then a ghoul that moves like a zombie attacks them, and Barbara escapes to a house.
The final resolution to her story is that Barbara gets killed by ghouls that move like zombies, one of whom is her brother.
Have someone do something they do all the time, challenge them, and have them face the challenge and either overcome it or succumb to be subjugated by it or learn to live with it or run away from it or be killed by it.
Your first movie will not be great. Accept it.
Make that first movie and then make your second movie.
DO NOT let your lifelong dream movie passion project be your first movie.
Learn to paint before painting a masterpiece and learn to make movies before making your masterpiece.
Make practice movies. Get the feel for it. Get in the flow of it.
The easiest visual story is to clean something that is dirty or rearrange something that is in disarray.
It is dirty. It takes work to clean it. In the end it is clean.
This is carried to near extreme levels in the first episode of Jeeves and Wooster, but the story is that Wooster's regular life is aloof and messy, a new valet is engaged to start this morning, and he cleans up the house and then cleans up hungover Wooster.
Dirty becomes clean.
Amazing!
You must understand that the tools you have, probably all in one device, in your hand right now, are good enough to make a decent movie.
A movie need not be a feature film or fifteen minutes or epic or psychologically deep, and it does not have to look like a million bucks.
Look at Troma.
Go make a movie.
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Most people who want to make movies seem to believe they must wait for permission to do it.
Here's permission:
Go make a movie.
Before you decide to turn this into who you are and throw your life into it, find out what it is and how it is done by doing it.
Find out if you really even want to do it.
Make little movies and do it often.
If you find that you don't like it, change your plans.
If you find you do like it, make more little movies and by the time you get to the cutoff at 50-55, you'll have a more realistic idea of what it is and how it is done, and you'll have a reel showing that you can do this work, and you can include that in a resume/cv.
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I’ve been noticing this too with a lot of young filmmakers and I can be accused of this too. They got a concept but don’t have the story nailed down. Think about that and what that actually means.
I notice this with a lot of shorts from young filmmakers. They have the idea in their head but something just didn’t translate onto the screen. They have all the technical aspects of making a movie nailed, a strong concept but the actual story just isn’t there and feels disconnected. I believe the disconnect is that they know their movie inside and out and see what it should be, but the viewer doesn’t. This then creates a feedback loop; the audience is wrong not my short!
Another thing I see on here is “see my new short!” And it’s another travel/vacation video. Again, nails composition, editing, grading etc but there’s no story. It’s just shot after shot of their vacation. You can still craft a tale out of these so it becomes more than another in the sea of travel videos.
This is one of the hardest lessons to learn and honestly I still say the only way to overcome this is to be aware of this and just keep making movies and always improving. Don’t try and make a complicated movie and make smart decisions.
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No dinero = No movie. I'm STONE broke, man. I'd love to shoot just a small film, but I know nobody willing to act for free, and nobody willing to lend me a mirrorless camera.
There are probably at least some theaters that put on plays in your general area, possibly some acting workshops. Good actors love to create and if you have a compelling concept I find they're not as concerned about the money. They love the craft. Sometimes they need footage for their reel.
That's what I did with my first short - I attended some workshops, met some actors. Then I got some volunteers for the crew from a film school in the state. I met my DP in a class on how to make short films put on by the local film society.
You could always shoot on a smartphone, even a used or borrowed one.
All that said, you do need to at least try to feed everyone decently. And you get way better commitment from the production team if you can pay them at least something, however little. (It will differentiate you from a LOT of other beginning filmmakers.)
No matter how small a production, you will learn a ton and be on your way.
https://www.reddit.com/r/write/comments/1kj5ix6/your_idea_is_not_your_story/?share_id=Lt4lDSFTosgv7p-qv6apD&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1
Your Idea is NOT Your Story
Every time you write do it to be a better writer than you were the last time.
Every time you write a story, write an ending and know how the main conflict will get resolved.
Your idea or the basic synopsis of an outline or pitch is not the story.
I often see folks asking about the quality of their general story idea here and in other subs.
When people ask others if their idea is good they do it like a trailer... but there is no product beyond the trailer.
Does it matter if others like or dislike the basic idea that hasn't even been outlined or plotted?
No, it does not.
Lord of the Rings can basically be reduced to: a small guy has to throw away a piece of trash and it is really difficult.
Would you want to read that if somebody asked you if that was a good idea for a story?
Luckily JRR Tolkein did write it despite the almost ridiculous simplicity of the idea it is built from.
Whatever you want to write about that interests you is probably the best thing you can write about.
If it truly moves you, it will probably move others.
If it surprises you, it will probably surprise others.
If it scares you, it will probably scare others.
If you genuinely find it funny others probably will, too.
But don't just write something about some subject that intetests others unless it actually interests you, too.
If you like vampires, write your vampire story.
If you like the uncertainty and weirdness of first dates, write a first date adventure.
If you like cruise ship mysteries, write a cruise ship mystery.
Write what you know, and enjoy writing it.
If you don't know the subject and/or find the researching and writing joyless or even pointless, then (unless it's for school or some necessary report or blog or whatever for work) it probably isn't worth your time to write it.
But it's NOT what the story is about that makes it good, it is the way it is written.
So I love this idea because it is very ingenious, it is not mine:
Scientists on Earth are developing a new weapon which would explode light and that scares Aliens and they come to warn us and threaten us and stop us.
If we would explode light, that could cause a chain reaction that would effect all light, everywhere in the Universe, at the rate of quantum tunneling, and that would destroy the Universe.
Humans ignore the warnings and so the Aliens use electromagnetic manipulation to reanimate the recently deceased to attack Humans, instead of direct confrontation from the Aliens.
This almost leads to a worldwide panic.
It just ends there; this is the basic breakdown of Edward D Wood, jr.'s Plan Nine From Outer Space long and wide considered by many to be the worst movie they have ever seen.
The final bit that I left out is:
Instead of a worldwide panic, an alien spaceship catches fire and blows up... but it is just one of the many alien ships... and then it just ends.
Ed Wood was long considered the worst director and screenwriter who ever lived, though, nowadays thanks to direct comparison with movies like "The Room" and "Vampire Men Of The Lost Planet" readily available at the touch of a finger, we can see that he wasn't all that bad--but was bad--but also had a few glimmers of obvious genius in his work.
What to do with your idea:
A story goes: situation leads to conflict leads to resolution which becomes a new situation or resolves the entire story.
When the primary conflict is resolved, the story ends.
Scene is long and drawn out like a setup and sequel is abrupt like a punchline and it either leads into a new scene or concludes a chapter or ends the whole story.
Your primary conflict and what it leads to could be anything at all but I want to illustrate with this classic exercise:
Get a man up a tree and have him realize he is afraid of heights. Now get him down.
Situation: Man climbs tree. Primary Conflict: Man is scared of heights and cannot get down. Resolution to Primary Conflict: Man gets down.
When the primary conflict is resolved, the story is over
Scene is his climb and sequel is the realization he is afraid to climb down which leads to scene he ponders a way down leads to sequel it won't work OR sequel he gets down.
If it's sequel it won't work and he is still up the tree then that leads to scene he must try something else. Perhaps a stranger will come by and he can ask them to help him down which leads to sequel the stranger climbs up the tree to help or runs away to get help or throws a rock at the man causing him to fall and he is down.
If it is sequel the person climbs up the tree to help, that leads to scene you now have two people stuck up a tree tying to figure out how to get down.
If it is sequel the person runs away to get help then that leads to scene the man wonders what kind of help will come which leads to sequel the person returns with a tool to help the man get down or the person returns with more people.
If it is sequel the person returns with a tool that leads to scene setting it up and sequel the man gets down.
If it is sequel the person returns with an axe and/or a saw that leads to scene cutting down tree or cutting limb from tree which leads to sequel man is down.
If it is sequel person returns with another person that can lead to scene two people help each other climb up the tree and sequel all three are stuck.
Or that can lead to throwing rocks at the man or forming a human ladder or getting the fire department or stopping traffic to get a ladder off a work truck or confusion about the nature of the emergency bringing a poison control unit out to the tree and they park their truck next to the branch so the man can climb down and just before he reaches the ground they grab him and strap him to a gurney and then they go through all standard poisoning emergency activities like feeding him ipecac and pumping his stomach or maybe the army gets called in and there's a miscommunication about troop movements leading to a huge war or maybe a portal to parallel universe opens and the man walks through it and he becomes the tree and then he finds another portal and it comes out two feet above the branch he was already stuck on so he goes back through and no portals open again anywhere ever or maybe anything you can imagine.
But when the primary conflict is resolved, when the man gets down, however he gets down, the story is over.
The hero may get the girl and the gold but as soon as the primary conflict is resolved--as soon as the plans are transported, delivered, and acted on, the story is over.
Consider the plans from Star Wars IV: A New Hope, the recovery of which were Darth Vader's initial reason for overtaking Princess Leia Organa's Corellian Corvette The Tantive IV, plans which she input into Artoodeetoo that "he" had to get to Obi-Wan, plans that Obi-Wan Kenobi had to get to The Rebels, and it was in an attempt to deliver the plans to the Rebels that, along with Han, Luke, Chewie, Artoodeetoo, and Ceethripio, Obi-Wan discovered the remains of Alderaan as an asteroid field, and when Han Solo decided to pilot the Millennium Falcon over to a small moon, to recalibrate the obviously malfunctioning--or was it?--hyperdrive, they all together discovered that it was not a moon but a space station, but that's impossible because it was over 2,000 km across, and then they had the opportunity to rescue Princess Leia, who they did rescue and who knew how to extract the data from Artoodeetoo, and the way to the secret Rebel stronghold hideout where they need to deliver the plans to, Yavin IV--coincidentally the Death Star's next destination because they tracked the Millennium Falcon--making Obi-Wan redundant, so Darth Vader killed him, which raised the stakes for Luke, who saw Obi-Wan fall, and to whom the stakes were now as high as they already were for Leia, who underwent torture and saw her home planet destroyed, and so, she told Han how to pilot the Millennium Falcon to the Rebel stronghold hideout where Luke would become a Rebel pilot, and, there, implemented the plans for their initially intended ends in Luke's destroying The Death Star, which was the space station they had already been aboard, you'll recall, where Luke had seen Obi-Wan fall, and so, Luke got his revenge, and so, Princess Leia got her revenge, since that was the space station that destroyed her world, and so, Darth Vader's dreams were dashed, and so, the plans, from the very start of the movie, no longer mattered because they were Death Star destroying plans and they had been used to destroy the Death Star, in a way that tied-off a bunch of loose-ends at once in a satisfying climax, and the story is ALMOST over: the medal-giving scene seems to just be there because John William wrote a heroes' march and they had a bunch of extras standing around, and some unused dress costumes as opposed to the uniforms and casual-wear costumes worn elsewhere throughout the movie, and so, George Lucas opted to include the medal-giving scene in the movie, but that is not the case and the story did not truly end when the Death Star blew up because Artoodeetoo was the main hero, you see; it was that little droid who first embarked on the adventure to deliver the plans and who went with Luke into the Battle of Yavin, and he was injured in battle so, after the Death Star was destroyed and Luke landed and got his hero's welcome, Artoo was carefully pulled from the X-Wing and Ceethripio offered to donate any gears or servos that might help his friend recover, and so the medal-giving scene gives final closure on the story not only when Artoo jostled happily, concluding the conflict of his injury and recovery, but when the protagonist, Princess Leia--who gave Artoo the mission and underwent torture and had her homeworld destroyed to protect the secret that he carried--smiled at him and we, the audience, know what that smile really meant, and that is when the story ends... Chewbacca barking was absolutely tacked on, what a scene-stealing hack!
That was one sentence. Did you notice?
The preceding story description will only really make sense to someone who has both watched Star Wars and read the official novelisation.
Your writing will only get anywhere if you rewrite your story so that it can make sense to someone who doesn't have your personal frame-of-reference and cannot imagine through your mind.
A sentence is a noun and a verb: a thing and an action.
A story is a series of statements about characters and/or things doing things with other characters and/or things with other characters and/or things and/or for other characters and/or things and/or to other characters and or things and/or against other characters and/or things generally for the benefit of themselves or to aid or injure some other character and/or thing, or for some greater ideal than themselves in self-sacrifice for faith.
Do this for every character in every new scene:
Who? Do this for every character and every action and every perspective.
What? Do this for every character and for every object mentioned and for every specialized location.
When? Do this with every sentence. Maintain a chronology as a fluidly ordered sequence-of-events and actions, and make sure the reader knows the time of day.
Where? Do this for every location, every character, and every object.
How? Do this for every action and for every sequel and for every situation and for every conflict and for every resolution.
Why? This is unimportant unless you really want to spend the time psychoanalyzing your idea of your character and maybe plotting an entire life history, and perhaps even going so far as inventing a whole history and prehistory for your entire world.
Some do.
Consider the chronology of these examples:
The shot that made [EXAMPLE VILLAIN]'s head explode like a snowball thrown hard at a brick wall was fired after [CHARACTER EXAMPLE] picked up the explodiola gun from the table. [CHARACTER EXAMPLE] had leaned forward to grab it by extending their arm across to it, and then they cocked the hammer back whlie they were turning around. [EXAMPLE VILLAIN] called [CHARACTER EXAMPLE] a weenie and, then [CHARACTER EXAMPLE] said "Hasta mañanas, Poopsie!" and finally put their finger to the trigger and then squeezed it back. [EXAMPLE VILLAIN] had been performing [STOCK "EVIL ACT"] and wouldn't stop.
[CHARACTER EXAMPLE] leaned forward and extended their arm as they reached their hand across the table and then grab the explodiola gun, they spun around, cocking back the hammer, and then faced [EXAMPLE VILLAIN] performing [STOCK "EVIL ACT"], and they wouldn't stop, they had, in fact, called [CHARACTER EXAMPLE] a weenie; so [CHARACTER EXAMPLE] said, "Hasta mañanas, Poopsie!", stuck their finger to the trigger and squeezed it back, and then [EXAMPLE VILLAIN]'s head exploded like a snowball thrown hard at a brick wall.
ynab code
8ede89f3-4b65-42c0-b154-6034ed753200
so stupid
if she's noticing there's something elusive that's making it hard for me to do the things we're trying to do that she can't really solve, then of course we need to try a different way. But i can't even relay the information to stay on course, without her, because to me it's much more complicated than it is to her. So it's like either we solve it or we don't I think is what she means.
Anyways it feels like being a bad person. It feels like I'm either being bad to yourself or a bad person to others are the two choices my brain makes when really...?
realize what's actually important to you
i didn't care about other people's facts and links and data and what they had in their brain, i cared what I had in mine. I needed to hear what I said and made and let myself record myself and my process when I had the chance. So I had instructions for later when I panicked and couldn't find a way - it's like a virutal space in exchange for a physical one because sometimes I forget the root of that comfort of being able to find your first step. Voodoo. If someone is given space to hold something in themselves no matter where they go, that is just any first step, that will allow them to do all the other eventually good steps. And it's kind of not fair. That kind of peace. At the right time right body right place.
But anyways when I sit down it should be just to sit. Not to do anything! Not to consume or create or type or engage.
to do list: _ add up????? nah it's more chill now. but still. in general. _ peacock, apple, audible, ... _ one by one sort _ one by one sort _ computer storage _ irl storage + ask? + tell _ go dt!
< depop qr < packed 4 packages < found the uhaul money < applied like 12
https://app.dataannotation.tech/workers/projects
Ai Trainer Projects
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YRszVlHrB2bE5g_p2y-OB3VX05STECJrrr5H42HLu1k/edit?ref=review.firstround.com&tab=t.0
5 Minute Communication Interview Question
I’ve been doing this question for years and now have seen over two hundred different answers. It’s without a doubt my favorite interview question, because it only take 5 minutes and tells me a remarkable amount about candidates. Even though it’s not a technical question per se, I still give it to every programmer I interview.
Setting Up the Interview Question: Here’s how I set up the question: “I want you to explain something to me. Pick any topic you want: a hobby you have, a book you’ve read, a project you worked on–anything. You’ll have just 5 minutes to explain it. At the beginning of the 5 minutes you shouldn’t assume anything about what I know, and at the end I should understand whatever is most important about this topic. During the 5 minutes, I might ask you some questions, and you can ask me questions. Take as much time as you want to think it through, and let me know when you want to start.”
When I give this, I usually emphasize each of these points multiple times, with a real stress on their goal: have me understand what’s most important about the topic.
Empathy: As they start explaining, I make sure to have the most vacant look on my face possible. I do not give any “uh huh” or “I see” kind of interjections that underlie most conversations. A star candidate will pick up on this and ask if I understand so far. On the job, these star candidates also are the same kind of people that empathize with customers and think about it in all the work they do once we hire them. Conversely, weaker candidates think that communication is a one way street, and lose sight of their audience. They end up being the hardest developers to work with just to understand how they’re solving a problem, much less have a constructive argument with them.
Explaining by analogy is a shortcut some of the best candidates use. One example I heard while someone was teaching me the basics of poker was to take advantage of the fact I had played backgammon even though I hadn’t played poker. He talked about how in backgammon all the pieces on the board are exposed information that both players can see, but in poker you have hidden information. These type of explanations go a long way towards quickly communicating an idea with all kinds of implications very succinctly.
Goal Directed and Organized: It is amazing how many candidates will not pre-meditate before diving into this interview question. Once the trigger happy type candidates get going, they don’t have any kind of bulleted list or outline in their head of what they hope to get across. What’s most incredible about this is how accurately it predicts disorganized and non-goal directed behavior on the job. I’ve been over ruled a few times by my manager on a hiring decision, and this question was a harbinger of things to come. Conversely, the people that think it through and have a few crystal clear points are amongst the best people I’ve worked with. They are not just easy to communicate with, but get results in their work.
Leaders Have the Guts to Say No: For senior positions, I will ask a question early in the 5 minutes that is a complete tangent and has little to do with their goal. A star candidate will politely steer the conversation back on track. This seems unfair since they’re in an interview and just doing what they’re being asked. In reality though, the very same thing happens often in real work. None of us innately know what is most important about a topic, and it’s key to have confident people on the team that add focus to conversations when someone asks an inessential question.
Stacking Up: Usually only 1 or 2 out of every 10 candidates will do well on all these points. That has held true after giving this interview question over two hundred times.
Related Reading: I have written a guide to Hiring Engineers. Check it out if you liked this question. Also take a look at Interview Game Plan. What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team: “The paradox, of course, is that Google’s intense data collection and number crunching have led it to the same conclusions that good managers have always known. In the best teams, members listen to one another and show sensitivity to feelings and needs.”
https://centre.upeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/7.1-what-google-learnt.pdf
What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team: research why some work groups thrive and others falter.
Charles Duhigg (2016): Like most 25-year-olds, Julia Rozovsky wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her life. She had worked at a consulting firm, but it wasn’t a good match. Then she became a researcher for two professors at Harvard, which was interesting but lonely. Maybe a big corporation would be a better fit. Or perhaps a fast‑growing start‑up. All she knew for certain was that she wanted to find a job that was more social. ‘‘I wanted to be part of a community, part of something people were building together,’’ she told me. She thought about various opportunities — Internet companies, a Ph.D. program — but nothing seemed exactly right. So in 2009, she chose the path that allowed her to put off making a decision: She applied to business schools and was accepted by the Yale School of Management.
When Rozovsky arrived on campus, she was assigned to a study group carefully engineered by the school to foster tight bonds. Study groups have become a rite of passage at M.B.A. programs, a way for students to practice working in teams and a reflection of the increasing demand for employees who can adroitly navigate group dynamics. A worker today might start the morning by collaborating with a team of engineers, then send emails to colleagues marketing a new brand, then jump on a conference call planning an entirely different product line, while also juggling team meetings with accounting and the party‑planning committee. To prepare students for that complex world, business schools around the country have revised their curriculums to emphasize team‑focused learning.
Every day, between classes or after dinner, Rozovsky and her four teammates gathered to discuss homework assignments, compare spreadsheets and strategize for exams. Everyone was smart and curious, and they had a lot in common: They had gone to similar colleges and had worked at analogous firms. These shared experiences, Rozovsky hoped, would make it easy for them to work well together. But it didn’t turn out that way.
‘‘There are lots of people who say some of their best business‑school friends come from their study groups,’’ Rozovsky told me. ‘‘It wasn’t like that for me.’’ Instead, Rozovsky’s study group was a source of stress. ‘‘I always felt like I had to prove myself,’’ she said. The team’s dynamics could put her on edge. When the group met, teammates sometimes jockeyed for the leadership position or criticized one another’s ideas. There were conflicts over who was in charge and who got to represent the group in class. ‘‘People would try to show authority by speaking louder or talking over each other,’’ Rozovsky told me. ‘‘I always felt like I had to be careful not to make mistakes around them.’’
So Rozovsky started looking for other groups she could join. A classmate mentioned that some students were putting together teams for ‘‘case competitions,’’ contests in which participants proposed solutions to real‑world business problems that were evaluated by judges, who awarded trophies and cash. The competitions were voluntary, but the work wasn’t all that different from what Rozovsky did with her study group: conducting lots of research and financial analyses, writing reports and giving presentations. The members of her case‑competition team had a variety of professional experiences: Army officer, researcher at a think tank, director of a health‑education nonprofit organization and consultant to a refugee program. Despite their disparate backgrounds, however, everyone clicked. They emailed one another dumb jokes and usually spent the first 10 minutes of each meeting chatting. When it came time to brainstorm, ‘‘we had lots of crazy ideas,’’ Rozovsky said.
One of her favorite competitions asked teams to come up with a new business to replace a student‑run snack store on Yale’s campus. Rozovsky proposed a nap room and selling earplugs and eyeshades to make money. Someone else suggested filling the space with old video games. There were ideas about clothing swaps. Most of the proposals were impractical, but ‘‘we all felt like we could say anything to each other,’’ Rozovsky told me. ‘‘No one worried that the rest of the team was judging them.’’ Eventually, the team settled on a plan for a micro gym with a handful of exercise classes and a few weight machines. They won the competition. (The micro gym — with two stationary bicycles and three treadmills — still exists.)
Rozovsky’s study group dissolved in her second semester (it was up to the students whether they wanted to continue). Her case team, however, stuck together for the two years she was at Yale. It always struck Rozovsky as odd that her experiences with the two groups were dissimilar. Each was composed of people who were bright and outgoing. When she talked one on one with members of her study group, the exchanges were friendly and warm. It was only when they gathered as a team that things became fraught. By contrast, her case‑competition team was always fun and easygoing. In some ways, the team’s members got along better as a group than as individual friends. ‘‘I couldn’t figure out why things had turned out so different,’’ Rozovsky told me. ‘‘It didn’t seem like it had to happen that way.’’
‘‘We’re living through a golden age of understanding personal productivity,’’ says Marshall Van Alstyne, a professor at Boston University who studies how people share information. ‘‘All of a sudden, we can pick apart the small choices that all of us make, decisions most of us don’t even notice, and figure out why some people are so much more effective than everyone else.’’ Yet many of today’s most valuable firms have come to realize that analyzing and improving individual workers — a practice known as ‘‘employee performance optimization’’ — isn’t enough. As commerce becomes increasingly global and complex, the bulk of modern work is more and more team‑based. One study, published in The Harvard Business Review last month, found that ‘‘the time spent by managers and employees in collaborative activities has ballooned by 50 percent or more’’ over the last two decades and that, at many companies, more than three‑quarters of an employee’s day is spent communicating with colleagues.
y.combinator blogs
First Round Review https://review.firstround.com/
A Smart Bear blog https://longform.asmartbear.com/
Lenny’s Newsletter https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/
https://www.reddit.com/r/burial/comments/1g09ei0/what_style_of_beats_would_you_class_burial_untrue/
Untrue Beats are 100% 2-step Beats, if you want "clearer" versions of Burial Beats you should go for El-B/groove chronicle/Noodles stuff.
Can recommend a few songs to get the Idea:
El-b - Express
El-b - Amazon (very very interesting beat if you Can decipher it)
DJ madness - Im Happy (Steve Gurley Dub mix)
Lenny Fontana - Spirit of the Sun (Steve Gurley Ballistic Beatz Remix)
El-b -Buck and bury
Groove Chronicles - 1999
Groove Chronicles - Millenium Funk
Feel how it almost feels like the beat hesitates ? Thats what you need to get to.
You just bought a digitakt 1? Download a 2-step drum pack. Study the Beats and try to remake them in the DT. Once you comfortable, try making your own Beats using the formula you just found.
Once you are Happy with your Beats, start changing the drums, replace a hi hat with a bullet from a gun hitting the floor, change the snare for some Shadow of the Colossus Monster FX, basically make the drums your own personal palette.
Once you have enough to make your own pack you Can start working on the other elements of Burial tracks.
You will notice outside of the background noises and pads they all have a very simple structure that imitates a very standard 2-step track. So work on that (I am purposefully ignoring the ambient tracks because its a whole other process). Work on the basic structure of your track.
After the beat, that would be the Hook and the bass. Burial usually use jungle type bass... Really easy to imitate. If you wanna make your bass more personal, same idea that you did for your drums, use unusual stuff like some Sword flinging through the air sound low passed for example.
Then the hook and the actual melody will be your very own sauce.
Add some pads, sprinkle some noises all around your track and here it is, a burial inspired track.
Oh and I forgot mention, everything is off Grid and kinda loop-ey which is not ideal for the digitakt... But you can get more than halfway there.
The octatrack would be the ideal burial tracks making machine.
https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/interviews/el-b-unedited-transcript
El-B/ burial (2009)
Can we have a quick recap of how you got to the point of releasing records? Were you London born and bred?
El-B: Yeah, South London born and bred. My dad's an old muso: he was a saxophonist for many a band, the most famous one being Incognito but he played with all sorts, with Ginger Baker's Air Force - we'd hear some crazystories about that, man… Now, one time he'd done a gig and the promoter had run out of money, so he'd got paid in studio equipment, and he said to me "alright, you've got chucked out of school, you're doing fuck all with yourself, bumming around, get on that equipment and see if you can turn anything out of that" 'cause he knew I was mad creative - and that was it, game over. I was 15.
For the next couple of years I knocked around with the Dale brothers, Colin, Mark and Trevor - they were all radio DJs, Techno DJs, promoters and producers, Colin was on Kiss FM and they raised me really, gave me my first schooling into that kind of world. After that I moved into Drum & Bass where I was still unheard of - I was giving those guys demo tapes, and it wasn't going further beyond that. Then, suddenly, in 1996 I met Noodles, he got one of my demos, thought there was some potential, got me in the studio, and just like that our first three releases were proper hits, underground club hits. We had status but also notoriety because these tracks like 'Stone Cold', 'Angel Body', the Myron 'Get Down' remix were so out there compared to anything the Garage scene had heard before - we were pushing the kind of jazzy boundaries, taking the jazz and the soulfulness as far as we could.
Yep, and that was the next metamorphosis, to bring that to the fore. When me and Noodles split up I took that heaviness back into my own corner, 'cause I was a loner now, and I perfected it. I perfected this new sound, and I stamped it with a name and a Pacman ghost logo just to save it from being another white label, to give it some identity, 'cause I knew there'd be a series of them - red one, green one, yellow one, all that - so people could go "oh it's them guys again"… basic marketing, you know. And boom, it went through the roof, and it started a whole b-line cult movement thing. [Later] when out of curiosity I went back to the beginning, to the first example of a bassline being put into a garage tune in a really vicious way, which was "Reflex Action LIke A Snake" [a remix by Zed Bias of ES Dubs' "Standard Hoodlum Issue"]. When I finally got to meet him and question him about the tracks, he said the only reason he made them tracks was because he heard 'Stone Cold' which was the first bassline tune I ever played around with. Before that he'd been a jungle producer and he said "I'd never realised you could do garage like that" but he made the switch and started putting his energy into that and, that was it, between him and me that was the beginning of the bass style that's lasted to this day.
And were you involved with the Croydon scene that took those basslines into Dubstep and therefore made that sound global?
El-B: Hatcha and them, they're my family. I knew all them before all of this, I used to go into that shop [Big Apple] when I was just getting into computers. Not the younger ones, Skream and Benga, I didn't know them guys - they're kids who came into the shop later, and started bringing their tunes in, really fucking talented youngsters. But the original crew were the lot that bought the shop, that did it up and started it in the first place, which is Arthur [Artwork], Hatcha, who was the first main employee in the shop, and this short guy John who was the owner, and this other guy who used to sit upstairs and work with Hatcha.
With the younger kids, it's a weird thing, I've never really met 'em properly, although they know everybody, they know my people, I know their people, but when it comes to meeting properly there's something to do with the reputation, the facade that comes with the name, the sort of psychological starstruck-isms that you might get. So one time we're in the club, I'm with my boy Roxy, and I'd said to Roxy "look, Oris Jay's over there, go and say hello", and he's "naaaaah! I couldn't!It's Oris Jay man!" and a bit later I'm talking to Oris and I go "yeah I'm here with Roxy, you should meet him" and he's all [mock bashful, looking away] "yeah in a minute, in a minute… ". And they're nervous of each other because of the hype, because of the gas as we call it, they've been gassed up. And same type of thing we have when, say, there'll be [FWD/Rinse/Tempa supremo] Sarah Lockhart in the middle, Benga on one side, me on the other and we'll both be just like [diffident voice] "hi!" "hi!" and leave it at that. It's not like there's any trouble, I've heard from plenty of people that we've both placed our respects as it were, but that's just how it is sometimes. All it'd take is one call, one "alright man how's it going, we've been meaning to talk for a long time!" and it all gets squashed, but so often on the scene nobody's talked to each other, nobody's broken the ice yet.
And what about the social networks of the old Garage scene? You've said before that faces from Garage pop up in Funky clubs…
El-b: Yeah - they are behind the whole works of it. I've got a little girlfriend or two around town, and they like to listen to a bit of Funky - well, a lot of it, actually - and to cut a long story short and say it quite bluntly, I've been fucking to that "the whole night… the whole night… " tune [Crazy Cousinz' "Do You Mind"], I'd fucked to it a few times before I found out that it was Pale [Paleface] who used to hang around that the Ghost studios way back, which is quite ironic. And then I went clubbing, I didn't know where I was going, my friends just took me to any old Funky rave in Brixton. We walked in there, the party was live, it was kicking, loads of women in there, going off - and I was brand new, I was like "wow", this is refreshing coming from the Dubstep scene where everyone looks like they fell out of Glastonbury, plus I was the old guy in the dance. I'd been in there five minutes when I heard the MC go "shout to Unknown!" - now MC Unknown is one of the members from Hijack, the original UK hip-hop group and also one of the goons in the video for [sings the Pied Piper song] "do you really like it, is it is it wicked", so he's back - I mean he's always been on the circuit doing any bloody thing he can, but I hadn't seen him for years and already out of this we're now going to do a project together. Then you had PSG, just jumped up behind the box with a microphone in his hand, don't know where he came from, aint seen him in years. And the DJ was a big old guy, can't remember his name now but he's a friend [from Garage days] too, and it went on like that til it got to the point where I hadn't announced my arrival or anything, I've got my little glass of drink and I'm dancing with a girl back here - but they've spotted me and they're shouting out and they're playing all the old stuff. And it's cool, it's nice, it's like being back at home again in a weird way: I'm in a new house but all my family's back in there. And the club that I was in turns out to be [Garage producer / DJ since 1993] Martin Larner's and so it goes on, there's just names and names from your past, every conversation's like "oh hello, what's going on here then, yeah we'll have to link up inna studio, yeah it's business on again, OK!" [page break]
So why did Garage disperse in the first place? You told me before it was the aggression of your tunes and basslines that changed the scene.
El-b: I've been told that so many times I start to believe it now. I mean, you look at it now and it's nothing amazing, it's just the way the cookie crumbles. I've watched Zinc do it, I've watched it happen to a tune or two of ours… Benga's done it but nobody's copied him which is great. I'm talking about when you do a tune that's got two things: it's not just powerful in weight as a club hit, but it's really different to anything you've heard before, so it's got an impact and that impact changes the scene you're in by altering the sound slightly. Zinc's "138 Trek", you know [he sings/beatboxes] "dung-tsikka-dung-du-gungun-gung" - nobody had heard anything like that before that tune came out, and everybody copied that sound. And it was kind of the same when we started doing those beats that were [syncopated, offbeat] "dum-dum-chak dum-dum chak" - we used to call it the Conga rhythm, a tribal rhythm - I guess it was a Reggae beat, a Bashment beat really - but when you started putting that to the breaks it went off. And everyone started doing that exact same thing, nicking our drums and all. I watched it happen as well to my old partner Jason Maldini from the Jungle scene. When I first went to the Jungle clubs it was Jun-gle, with the samples, you know [he beatboxes the various classic Jungle breaks], Funky Drummer, Apache, Amen Brother. Now, he was the first guy to distort a kickdrum and snare and programme it [beatboxes again] and Alex Reece and everyone started doing those steps too, and then everyone else started nicking his drums and it changed and re-sculpted the sound. And that's what it takes to sculpt a scene. I was really surprised when I heard Benga "b-b-b-b-b-boo-boo-booo-booo", I thought "ah everyone's gonna want to sound like that", but then nobody jumped on it - which was great. I mean it was a shame, because I'd love to hear loads of tunes that sounded like that because that style really suited me, but fuck that - it's cool, it's nice to see a hit just being left alone and everyone just stick to do what they do best. Whatever I might say about Dubstep there is a nice bit of freedom in that music. Even though it's so ignorant and harsh, there's a nice potential to do different things in it.
And that's maybe one of the things that's allowed Dubstep to go international where other sounds like 2-Step haven't so much…
El-b: Yep. When you've travelled to Europe or the States a lot, you begin to pick up a feel, you know what sound is from where. In the states they'll go "yeah that Jungle it's good man, it's hard, it's all good, but it's too damn FAST, you can't dance to that shit", and they have the same thing with the Dubstep, it's a bit too Balearic [he regularly uses this term to refer to hard, instrumental Techno] for the big majority. But in Europe they're a lot more like us, a lot more dirty and grimy, a lot more gutter and bit gritty with it, so they can swallow that man. And that grit is why we're the best in the world at producing indie stuff too - the indie bands we've been producing out of this country in the last few years are just the best in the world without a doubt. The gritty, London style indie rock, Americans just don't seem to do that well. Then of course you've got Japan too 'cause they're open-minded, they're great.
So what were you doing after Garage died down and Grime and Dubstep began to take over?
El-b: I wasn't putting nothing on the street. I had so many records out, it didn't bother me, if I could make a living doing something else it didn't bother me at all. I'd worked myself to the bone for four or five years churning out beats and I had boxes and boxes just of tunes that I'd made, and a good third of them are total filth - although a third were just shite - so I was fine just doing studio bookings. We built ourselves a nice fucking studio, man - I had a long back garden, a studio flat with a kick-arse back garden, 200 foot long going right down the back of it - a big room about the size of this [gestures around], another room for a drumkit, big glass bit you could look through, air conditioning, spotlights, carpeted, canvas walls, and it was just plush. We built it with our own hands and just did studio bookings there - £20 for the hour from about 2002 when it started going shitty. 'Cause the Ghost reign went from about 2000 to 2002 - come 2003 and it was all washed, come 2003 I wasn't doing shit - so it was just studio bookings from then till about two thousand and… six? Know what I mean, that's about three, four years solid of studio bookings. So through doing studio bookings I got to work with every rapper in the city. So Solid been through, Big Brovaz been through, Rodney P, Skinnyman, Chester P, Dee Double E, Dirty Doogz, they all went through, Big P and Skeme, they all went through - anyone south of the river.
And were you not tempted to do Grime beats when that started getting a profile?
El-b: Ah hell no, never. I'm surprised I've even been doing Dubstep beats, even that to me is like going back to hanging out with the Dale brothers - and even then the techno we used to listen to was a lot more tasteful, like Felix Da Housekatt and shit, before Jeff Mills and all them motherfuckers came in and had their rein. It was sophisticated stuff, and it was a serious crowd and all, real class - you would have women that you wouldn't even dream of approaching, damn, some serious-looking babes. But everything changes once again, like the Jungle, like Garage, it got sweaty, it got harder, it got harder, it got harder and then it PFFF fragmented off and everything wasn't as strong.
So what brought you to start putting out those Dubstep sides in 2006 or so?
El-b: I was totally out of the game, I didn't know what was going on, and by this time new guys like… N-Type and Skream and shit were creeping through, and I'd never heard of them, I wasn't paying any attention to them either, but all of a sudden my phone just started ringing - for DJ bookings. And then it was "Have you got any of the tracks, any of the old tracks lying around, do you want to release an album of old Ghost stuff" - which is what's finally coming out in a couple of weeks. So it called me back - and the reason it called me back is that Sarah Lockhart, who had been fighting and supporting and running the whole Dubstep movement from the start, had finally got it to a good level where she could fill up a venue like the Ministry Of Sound, and export records all over the world. All of a sudden it's "Dubstep", and it's refreshing itself and it's got a bigger fucking crowd that it ever had. So now they book me for a Ghost set, playing in a "nostalgia room" - me and Zed Bias and Oris playing all the old classics to kids who aren't old enough to remember.
But in the meantime you're working on House tunes too?
El-b: Yeah that's what I'm persevering with seriously man - we've got vocalists back in the studio, full songs, Kiss FM in the daytimes style, like Incognito House tracks, almost gospelly even, US style House tracks but with a UK sound too and still with a ghetto edge. It's going great, too. And what I've got too is this new formula, I've popped off something new that you aint never heard before, which is going to tear clubs to fucking shreds. There's some stuff that's good that you just can't dance to but there's some stuff that's just really bloody dancey, something where you might not even like it but you can't help it, you have to move a hip or an elbow or something [he demonstrates, moving on his chair, progressively more animated] - like when you hear "b-b-b-b-b-boo-boo-booo-booo"[the bleeps from "Night" again], as soon as it kicks in, people who don't listen to that music are "oh I know this one", or even if they don't know it their foot starts moving. It's one of those sorts of appeal, it's infectiously bouncy - and it comes from Colombian Merengue-style Salsa music, which is obviously just really fucking dancey. So I'm just tearing shit out of these Colombian tracks - I'm taking fragments and influences off these Colombian tracks and throwing them into a house tempo which is only like 5bpm faster anyway, and the result is… Wow. Wow! The result is amazing, I aint never heard nothing like it. You hit play when my lot are come round - and my lot are very greazy, road, gangstery rappy type guys, drug-selling type guys, they don't listen to that shit, they aint got time for that shit - but when I put this stuff on they're like [he starts to bounce in his chair even more animatedly, sly grin on face] it gets the black blood in them going, they're like "fuckin hell what's this? I don't like House but this has got to move 'em!". And there's some little Spanish man singing "a teco teco", little quick fills in it, it's crazy, you got to hear it. I been pressing the hell out of them at the moment.
And why do you think that this Latin influence is growing and growing in UK music? Is it to do with the growing Latin American population? Peckham, Brixton, Walworth - they're full of South American shops and clubs now.
El-B: Well the reason why I've got the samples is 'cause I listen to Cumbia, Salsa all day every day. My friends think I'm stark raving bonkers 'cause I never turn this shit off - and the reason why that is is, well… My dad used to be in a very famous Cuban Salsa band, so I grew up with it, but also my daughter's half Colombian, and I went to school in Colombia for about two months to learn Spanish, dodging bullets and shit, in the hood. So that's probably why, it's just grown on me, my family and shit, know what I mean - with my daughter, and my babymother, she's got two sons from a marriage before I met her, so I kind of had one kid and got myself three. So for me, it's my family there, that's my Latin influence. But also my grandad's Nigerian, I'm quarter Nigerian, so that's where the tribal beats on the Garage thing came from, but as well he would always be playing lots of Soca, Merengue, that kind of shit too, so again the Latin influence comes back around. But anything that they talk Spanish on, I'll probably be into - Salsa, Cumbia, I'm crazy, I just need to be locked up, I can just never get enough of it mate. The only thing I can't handle is when it's all synthesisers, cause of my dad being such a jazz freak, them playing jazz in the house all the time, and the one thing I can't take is that Dave Sanborn modern jazz kind of shit running off a drum machine and shit. Certain types of music you can't make electronically. But yeah Saturday night just gone I was there man, I go to these Latino raves by myself - they think I'm fucking crazy, like "what's that white boy doing over there?" just skanking out having a dance up in the corner [sniggers at the ridiculousness of it], but they know me, man - they know my face, they know my babymother. I think it's the best music in the world but I keep it to myself.
But my new tracks, they sound so good, they are the way they are because it's samples. Sample the fuck out of it, take segments, reconstruct them Colombian riddims so it sounds exactly like it's a whole Salsa song but it's totally rebuilt in House form with a House kick behind it - job done. It's serious. 'Cause the only way to do it properly with that impact in it is to have the full autheticness to it - otherwise it's just going to sound like electronical imitations, and I hate that. I mean I've tried it myself to do the proper "ba-papa-bam-ba-bam-bam… " [sings and mimes out a bouncing Salsa piano riff], I've been "right, instead of using a sample let's find the chord and see if I can play it myself on the piano", but it's always going to sound like the cheaper version. It sounds like the tacky, cheaper, one-finger note version, 'cause you're not the musician.
Going back to you playing your music to your friends who are a bit gangster, who live a hard life - is the input of people who live like that important for club music or pirate music, do you think?
El-B: Nah. Nuttin to do with it. Nothing-to-do-with-it. It just seems to revolve around rap. Rap only. That's them. It's just rap music that seems to have that appeal, and that's only half of rap music as well. One of its main selling points seems to be the negative image that it flaunts, and how certain kids with not much substance in their lives gravitate towards that. And they pay me money every day these kinds of guys - I mean, I've banned guys from bringing firearms into the studio, we've never actually had a fight break out in the studio but we've had guys come in, put a knife down on the side and do their lyrics. You have guys who are talented and they end up in jail, you've got guys who are not talented but they persistently carry on, spending loads of drug money because they've been watching too much MTV, chasing the dream - I've seen em all. Whatever the story, I've seen em all. But the rap thing's interesting, because I've played a big part in it, even though I'm not known to - only by the streets, but I'm not known to by the industry, for what the fuck industry we havein this country. There aint no fucking UK hip hop industry, cult, movement or scene, really - no labels, nothing. Even Rodney P and Skinnyman and them boys have always struggled; we've got R&B stars who can't get picked up for anything cause they can't see a market here for it either. So without being nothing but notorious in the streets for giving you a kick arsemixdown, no, I aint really known for rap. But I've been playing a big part, a big part in the underground gangsta rap scene coming out of this city.
We have got guys who are up-and-coming stars who are going to keep climbing and climbing til you see them on TV alongside some American rappers or something. Pacman is one of them, Giggs, and Blade. All of em know each other, all of them work with me, and I've supported them and preached their name from the very first time I ever spoke to them - and those three are the biggest gangsta rap stars we've got. There's probably about three more to come after, but they're the ones that are next to come, just around the corner, coming at you now. It's not grime, it's hip hop. It's rap. BUT it's not getting touched with a bargepole by the industry because it commands - not even influences, but commands - the kids to go and do bad things, it's real bad, man. The rappers say "I'm just reflecting the neighbourhood" or "I'm reflecting my life" or "I'm just telling you what I see, what I've been through" - which is cool, but the kids loveit, and it tells you that life is about selling cocaine, and about having your gun to shoot it not to have it in the cabinet, it's about being about your tings and shooting it, if you've got it shoot it off and do that [flicks Vs] to the police. And Giggs is one of the few left on the road out of somany who are all in jail and so many who are dead. I mean, anyone gets their head blown off in the neighbourhood, I get the full story, 'cause I'm going to know somebody who knew him through the studio bookings I do. And the things I hear are just boring me to tears by now, 'cause it's just the same old crap, you know: well he robbed him and heblew his head off over a babymother drama or 'cause he stepped on his trainers or some shit like that - and it's all bullshit. It's all bullshit. But that's the way it goes, man, and I hate to say it but the music really does scratch my back for me - you got something to do in the house on a Sunday morning, your wife has dogged you out and made you feel like a piece of shit or something, just put some of that on and it'll release the tension. It really does the job. I love it, it gets you ready for a Saturday night [too] man, it's serious - it gets you ready for a Saturday night clubbing in South London. Prepares you for what might be around the fucking corner.
But I love it, it's great stuff - and it's one to watch out for, 'cause they're all doing this [middle finger] to the industry, because they know the deal. I've preached this to them so much: ignore the record labels, don't watch the magazines, don't worry about anything promotion-wise. Magazines'll promote whatever the fuck they feel like promoting, they need something to talk about, they've got to fill a magazine every month, so no matter if it's positive or negative, as long as there's something exciting to write about they will write about you. So you're always going to get promotion, have the Benneton effect, go against the grain and you'll get loads of publicity through that. It's cool, you do you - but they are not going to touch you with a bargepole. As long as it's black-on-black murder you're promoting, selling cocaine you're promoting, police are always going to want to get you in that cell and shut you down and record labels aint going to touch you with a bargepole, promoters are never going to have no gigs, you're never going to have no club nights or nothing, understand what I'm saying? So they know now: it's pay for it ourself, or else we're not going to do nothing. It's put yourself up the ladder or you're not going to get up the ladder. And making a pop record's not an option - because you've got to get in where you fit in. If you're the softy and you try and be the gangsta, you're going to be exposed and you're going to be shut down, and vice-versa. If you're the gangsta and you try and play the pop card, you're as good as that one track, and when that track there finished and you don't bring in those units, we all know what the record label's going to do - shelf your monkey arse; that's you, bruv.
So it's good, like I always tell them, to not watch all the MTV shite, that's not you. Don't watch 50 Cent, that's not you. That's not how it runs in this country. You aint ever going to put an advance payment on a house on any advance cheque any record label's ever going to give you, those days are donenow - so they know now: they're putting their hard-earned money they've made on road into moving boxes of CDs themselves. And they're moving some fucking boxes, or they're beginningto move some boxes. SRD distribution who do some Garage labels, they called me and I told them about Giggs two years ago, so they got his album "A Walk In The Park". They called me again and said "we got the Giggs"; I said "good, good on ya - you'll eat from that, you'll eat well, everyone'll eat a piece from that", and 8000 flew out the door in four weeks or some shit like that, and they're still pressing them now and they're still selling all the way up to Scotland and units to Ireland and all across to Europe, it's gone crazy. So of course they call me up and go "have you got anybody else that you think'll be the next one to pop?" so it's starting to bubble on that sort of scene. And it's something that whether you agree with it or not, you're not going to be able to hold it back. Kids want it, it's what the streets demand. Now I'm telling all the rappers who are doing their own albums, coming through my studio: you do that album as hard as you fucking can. You do what you wanna do. Don't bar any swearwords, talk about what the fuck you want to talk about, and you put whatever you want to put on the front cover - because nobody can shut you down. And you won't sell if it's soft in any way. You have two or three tunes about girls on there, you aint going to sell. If you're trying to be a backpack rapper or breakdance rapper or some fucking Lupe Fiasco - aint going to sell. Because Rodney P and them boys been doing that for years and look where that's gone. Because now the streets are full of criminals, full of young little black kids getting thrown in jail, now the streets is rife with weed and crack cocaine and everyone just smokes and bums around and gets up to some kind of mischief. And it's what the streets demand now, whether you like it or not hard shit sells, it goes out the door and the kids fucking love it - and it's a sad thing, cause it's like America out here at the moment.
And do you see this as a real shift in society for the worse, or is it a trend - something that might burn itself out?
El-B: Nah, it won't change. Poverty and violence never burns itself out - it just gets worse. And that's what it is, it comes with living a life like that, you can relate to everything a rapper says in his rhymes - no money, babymama, police beating me up, my cousin got shot in his face - you can relate to that 'cause that shit happens to you. It's always going to be there, it'll just get worse - new rules now. Just new rules. Not long ago, I was doing a little clubbing Latino style by myself, and I bumped into my mate, in Brixton outside McDonalds. He said "what you doing?" I said "going to the party there", so we went to have a little look at the party and there was about ten kids hanging about outside, and when I say kids, that word is not to be taken lightly any more. I mean, when some seventeen, eighteen your old rough little black guy tells me to move the fuck out his way I'm moving, 'cause it's dem man dere got the thing down their pants, and it's dem man dere who's dumb enough to put you in the bloody hospital, not no guy our age - with someone our age we can try and talk our way out of it, and if a man forces you to, you give him one of them [swings fist] and slide out of there, do this man-style. But these kids are crazy, so my mate says "before we go in there, I got to go back to the car and get rid of this bloody chain", 'cause it's really shiny - and it's not 'cause we're scared, but it's because if one of them goes WHAM [mimes yanking chain off] then the whole night's ruined, then we've got to chase people and I might have to hurt somebody and all of that shit. So he's the bigger man, but he's putting it away because when those little mo'fuckers demand [squeaky, lisping voice] "respect", then they're going to do that shit to prove it to their next little mate.
So this rise in violence being wanton, unpredictable - that impacts on people who are into club scenes that are, more or less, positive in their outlooks too?
El-B: Yeah, well, it's true what they say about the violence and Garage. It ruined a lot of careers, a lot of careers. Now I don't know if the music caused it or reflected it, but as the basslines got darker you had more youths in the club coming out of their corner going 'I'm going to rob someone or stab someone'. My generation is Norris 'Da Boss' Windross, it's MJ Cole, Mike Ruff Cut Lloyd, Dreem Team - now, a lot of these guys were out of jobs by the time So Solid were there - and by the time So Solid hit the charts, they were way gone: I see so-and-so man's got a nine-to-five, see him driving a white van 'cause there's always bills to pay. But apart from that [the violence] don't have no influence on me, because I still live in the hood. I amfucking hood. I might have white skin, but all the black guys know me, I don't give a shit if I'm the only white face to be seen for a hundred miles - which is usually the case! They all know my name, I know them, and if some guy's got a gun down his pants I don't give a shit. I'm not being rude to nobody, I'm just a music man, here to provide a service and that doesn't bother me. I've done DJ sets in a club where you've got a gang of rowdy guys and they're young and they're putting their hands on your records - when they feel like they want to hear the tune again they lean over and spin it back then look at you like "what?". We've all had it, a hundred times. But to me that's love - I'm playing some good shit, gwan then, spin it up, we're all going to hear it again. Fuck it, you want to hear it we're all going to hear it - that's love. It's better than having a quiet crowd, god damn it!So no, ghetto doesn't really bother me - it's my people, you know?
So for you personally, does that environment contribute to your music?
El-B: Oh it does. It does. It has a hold on my music, yeah. If I live in the streets and I am the streets and I grew up in the streets then it's all there is in my head. I think the most excited I've ever been was when I was about sixteen, and my mum kicked me out so I got a little flat in a horrible high-rise block - but inside the apartment was gorgeous, carpets and big plants and shit everywhere, I did it real nice, splashed white paint through the whole fucking thing, just nice and plain. And I had my studio set up in there with a window view and the view there out of the sixteenth floor was crazy. And it was over the whole… I could see Brixton, Stockwell, Clapham, I could see 'em all - it was a grimy view, and that view went in here [points to eye], out my hands and into the music. Without a doubt, man. I used to just sit there and watch the view, and some of the fucking ideas I came up with were nothing but ghetto beats, man, you could blatantly hear it. Yeah of course it has influence, man!
Even for the listener… Take Dr Dre, and all that, that "bum-ba-bum-bum-bum" [he gets up and goes into a lolloping lean-back walk around the room as he sings and claps out a g-funk beat], that Snoop and Dre laid-back sort of shit - I always hated that kind of hip-hop, but then I went to Los Angeles. Big palm trees, t-shirt sleeves down here and everyone's walking like this [leans back into a cartoonish pimp roll], a little bit slower than on the east coast 'cause it's so goddamned hot, and everyone's just laid back. And it sounds like the way people walk "bom-ba-bom-bom-bom" [pimp rolls, sings and claps some more]. Or you can turn on the radio and it'll be a 24 hour rap station where they play nothing but Miami Bass [beatboxes a booty electro rhythm with "work it work it, hit it hit it" sample] and that stuff I hate even more, but you can understand how the state creates that sound with palm trees and bright sun in your face all the time, it suits it perfect "bum-ba-bum-bum", it's the music of the environment, no doubt. Same with the Salsa, you go down South America and you've got wild dogs and chickens running around and shit, guys with big fucking sharp knives slicing some big fruit on the corner all that [make rhythmic slicing sound] and hairdressers playing music out on the streets and all that shit, cutting hair [mimes haircutting with bandy-legged Salsa hip twitch] and the shoeshine boy [mimes again] - it's just very… very villagey and scruffy, and it suits the music "ga-dang-da-gang-ga-ding-da" it just goes in perfect! Same thing time and time again. It's the same reason dubstep goes down so well in Japan, 'cause it's the technology centre of the world, and that music's starting to sound a lot like techno right about now. Those boys are going to have more and more Japanese fans than they can imagine soon!That shit's just real Balearic now, I need a whole pack of Nurofen to be going to a dubstep rave for more than a couple of hours now. I do my shit and I go home, go in, get a quick juice, do my thing, go home. It's a shame but I'm dubstepped out at the moment man.
What about the side of dubstep that isn't just rave, though - Digital Mystikz, say, the people who are really dub?
I like that shit, and I like the fact that they've got their own sound, their own little corner in that world. That's great - same with my boy Scottish Steve… Kode 9 - he's got his own sound, his own little corner. Really deep and leftfield, he knows what he's doing. [page break] Kode 9 is someone else venturing from dubstep into house at the moment - do you connect with what he's doing on that front?
It's a different thing - he's on that electronic sort of tip, while apart from the Salsa beats the house we've got going is much more classic American-sounding, big chords, all that sort of shit, full song verse, bridge, chorus.
And the names that you pick out as favourites in any scene, whether it's Kode 9 in dubstep or Bloc Party in indie rock - they're all people who carve out their own sound, they're not generic…
El-B: Well that's just being a marketing mind behind a record label maybe - I like originality and I like difference. And that's the thing in this country, if you have your sound, if you're original in your own sound, if you do it in character then we can market it. It's like I say to my vocalists - if you're just a good singer then you'll be a good voice on a good record and that's it. That's fine, you know big lungs, big fat black singer voice, gospel voice - but there's only so far they can push it in the media side of it. It's imaging, marketing, that's it. Everybody wants to fuck Mariah Carey, everybody wants to fuck Leona Lewis, everybody wants to fuck Christina Aguilera, everybody wanted to fuck Aaliyah - there you have the product. It's like I say to the girls, certain vocalists of mine, I say: you're great, 'cause you write the songs with the catchy choruses - which is always a fucking bonus 'cause we needthat - you write the good songs, you sing well, on stage everyone would want to give you one 'cause you look a million bucks, and that's the three of the four elements that you really need… but the fourth one is the character. 'Cause if you've got a great personality and a lovable personality then people in the industry will want to do things for you, they'll think of you when something's going down on the table, know what I mean? It's good to be liked in the game. A lot of people might say El-B's a fucking ignorant bastard, they might say El-B's stark raving bonkers, but when the cards are on the table they'll say honest, nice guy who'll tell you it as it is and won't fuck about with you none in any way.
And a degree of trust between people is what provides the glue in music and club scenes… ?
El-B: Sure. One of my female friends, one of my young girlfriends is young, she is on the young-arsed side. Now her and her young-arsed cousin and her young-arsed mates, they'll listen to that Funky day-in and day fucking out. They know all the artist, all the names of the tunes, all the release dates, all that shit. She is myeducation, and I refer to her when I want to know about DJ-who-and-where and what tune is done by who. Now, it's good because the stuff that she's playing, I think "that shit you listen to is really fucking mature", my mum'll listen to the exact same stuff. So it's from the bottom of the age scale to the top. Any adult will say that "the whooole niiiight" ["Do You Mind"] is a good track and a good video - even if it's not a complete song, it's a proper track, it's thumbs up for that product no doubt. When you go to the Funky club now, you'll hear a few tracks from UK Garage, from my era, and you'll hear a few old American classics too, they mix it all up and it all sounds the same in certain ways. There's some classy shit going on there, I'm really shocked. One club recently, every hour they would throw in three or four tracks of old school Garage, "Celebrate Life" and "Pleasure" and some of our old bits in there, and then when they split back to the House, the House just overshadowed the Garage - it made it sound very one-finger, push-button, toy-sounding, you know… and the production on a lot of the House stuff when it came back in the mix was just so much more classy and lush and well-put together with big chords and lovely harmonies and shit. It's better. It's just better. That comedy element to the old Garage stuff just sounds [grimace] … I'd just rather listen to the House now. I mean it's great the nostalgia, everyone's like "waheeey, I know this one" and all that but that's about as far as it goes now for me. The only thing I can listen to now and think "ahh this is brilliant" is the odd one, "Stone Cold", "Pleasure"… and then all of Todd Edwards.
Todd Edwards is an interesting figure because he's both outside of but vital to the UK Garage movement - have you followed his music all the way through, even the strange vocoder Electropop-House he has done?
El-B:Yeah, all good. We're getting a remix off him for one of these Funky tracks we've got coming, the first one with a full song on. Everyone's like [awestruck voice] "Todd The God" but I was just "fuck that Todd The God shit, bollocks, let's get him". I said to my vocalists, "you've met him, I know him through working with Karl Brown, just get on the email and ask him right now!" and straight away he said "yeah! Just send me the acapellas through" and give man his phone number, email all that shit. 'Cause he's in New York and he's got big name for himself people are like, "ooh no, leave him to do his thing, he's got his sound" but fuck that, he's down with whatever's sounding positive. Same as all the Americans are, don't matter how famous you are, they're like that man - "if it's moving somewhere positive and it's sounding hot then I'm involved!" - that's what they're like out there.
And that's how they've kept their scene solid for 20+ years, I guess…
Yeah, they all promote each other, they're all on each other's records, they all feature on each other's products, they all wear each other's merchandising, they know how to make money, Americans - they know about merchandising and marketing and promotion and I love that. That's what I'm trying to preach to all these young rappers now. First step is fuck the majors, you got to do it yourself or you aint going nowhere; second step is find a producer that knows the fine details of it and get a sound, get a producer that does the beats that you marry with perfectly and stick with it, that's your sound; and then after that get an image, because eventually people are going to want to dress like you and walk and talk like you so get an image that's strong now. And it goes on, fine details and more fine details, so that's what I tell them guys: pay attention to Jay-Z, watch the Americans. Don't watch what the fuck they got round their wrist, you understand? Watch the lighting in the video, watch the graphics, watch the girls dancing in the background, how many of them there are and where they are: put your mind behind the fucking scenes is what I'm telling them, recognise what they went through to get that video on the TV.
It sounds to me like you think as much about structures of the industry, social structures, as you do about musical structures!
El-B: More! I don't think about making beats, I never think about making the tunes. I'm like a painter. You know the way artists are, the debates about art - I could talk about that all day long, I used to go to galleries since I was ten years old man, 'cause I'm originally a sculptor and a drawer, I do great comic book kind of illustrations and that, all my life I've done that shit from before I started doing music. But a good painter, a painter who's deep bordering on insanity might just let their mind go black, totally blank when the paint hits the canvas. Just blank. If you're in a shit mood that day then some angry, tense painting's going to come out, and if you feel nice and happy that day you're going to get good flow on the canvas with some soothing colours - but the man's not thinking what he's doing when he's doing it. And that's like me, when I'm doing a beat I don't think - if I'm in a hard mood we'll have a hard tune, if I'm in a nice mood we're going to have a nice tune. And anything other than that I'm thinking, right, is a DJ going to be able to play that in a club, when that bit drops is that going to move the crowd, I want them to scream on that piece there - can my man stick that into his DJ set there? And I'm thinking all the DJs I'm going to get it to blah blah blah, the magazines I'll be in, reviews, interviews blah blah blah, that's what I'm thinking man, that's how Noodles trained man to think, he was the business side of the duo. And I learned that I have to know all that, know what publishing is, know what mechanical rights are, know who's invoiced who, whose name is on what, the workings, the mechanisms, knowing what is what. That is what I'm thinking about when I make a tune man. And that also means know how to write a song with a kick-arse chorus that'll be infected in someone's head so they can't stop singing it when they walk down the road, know what it is to record that, know what it is to record a three part harmony, know what it is to write a verse that climbs [he's out of his seat again, moving around the room, miming the movement of the song] to a bridge then HITS you hard with a chorus, then drops back down to the verse and then we take that journey again up the bridge and HIT you again with the chorus. All these things is what I was doing while the Garage scene was in the shit, when kids was getting shot in clubs and promoters weren't having it, that's what we were doing - we were writing songs with the vocalists, the studio bookings again but in the night-times now, recording R&B songs. Just demos, for the singers' portfolios, maybe get themselves a publishing deal or an artist development deal, writer deal or something, just for hobby's sake for me, just for the learning curve - which is great, man, and now we're putting everything we learned in that onto the House, and you've got full songs in the House and it sounds great! Sounds like Kiss FM primetime to me!
So in fact you maybe even see the business structures and musical structures as one and the same - part of the same machine?
El-B: Yeah maybe… yeah. And the thing is if you want to know any of that shit you've got to want to enquire, you've got to want to learn it, you've got to go out there and find out. It's the easiest trick in the world to just be some studio boy with a big fucking spliff hanging out of your mouth, and tell you the truth as long as we've got some big bag of weed in our pocket and some food to eat we happy to just sit in there pressing buttons and just rot in the fucking studio. That's what a real producer's like, what a real engineer's like, pale and gaunt from being underground all the time, that's how we do man - so you know you've got to want to go outside and get involved. I was probably content when I was with Noodles, sitting inside pressing the buttons, I was just seventeen, eighteen, I was content getting the envelope full of money every so often - but that's not right, it's not the way it's supposed to be. But man, when we split up, it was good - I mean when we was together I thought it was good just rolling up to a club and them going "yeah Groove Chronicles [wrongly stated as Groove Collective in the print edition of this feature], how many you with, go straight through!" but when I split up with him, man, fucking hell I was making four, five, six grand a remix for major labels. That was something else. That was my fee, fine. I copped a five and half once, a six once off Sony BMG, but for them two, three years it was four, five grand remix every week. Every week. But I don't care about my record when it's done, it's not like a tune is my baby - if it does more than 10,000 copies then it's my baby! And now, my real thing is I want to make pop music, like real off-beam pop music, big time songs. Timbaland shit, you know, ghetto bass, but real songs. I've got a friend who does that, writes for Sugababes, people like that, and it's as hard as anything, and it's really fucking hard to break into. But if I'm going to sell, it means I've got to be serious about music, you know - like I said about the Colombian tunes, you can't fake what the musicians have done, the real musicians, you can't fuck with that shit. Even just playing the Congas from when I was 4 years old is enough for me to know that. You can make all the techno, all the one-finger computer beats you want, but you can't fuck with musicians and real songs.
The first time I heard El-B's garage tunes was in the late 90s. I loved those tunes. He had a darker style than others, colder and more hypnotic. His drums were like a dark art. You knew that if you got one of his records it was going to be special. Some producers have methods that just silence people and El-B's got that. The space in the tune, the subs, the cut up vocals in the emptiness. . Those tunes were rolling in a way you can't describe. They were rough and deadly but also sort of graceful and eerie, and they sound dark in a car. Perfect underground music.
El-B and Steve Gurley were the ones, I just wanted to make tunes like them. They had everything good about jungle and garage but it sounded like the future and still does. El-B had his tunes and his label, kept a low profile and made classic records. He brought other producers through too. He's done a lot for UK underground music .
When you got the vinyl with the Ghost logo, it was like you were in on a secret. you could get deep into them.
Its time he got proper recognition. This collection on Tempa shows a new generation what he was about and how legendary those tunes were.
There's a lot of unheard new El-B beats too… . . he could probably be a UK Timbaland if he wanted - he does street music with a darker UK edge to it. He can hold his own ground alongside big US R&B & Hiphop producers. But it was the garage where he took it to the next level.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Chandler
Raymond Chandler
"Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious—an innocent who knows better, a Romantic who is tough enough to sustain Romanticism in a world that has seen the eternal footman hold its coat and snicker. Living at the end of the Far West, where the American dream ran out of room, no hero has ever been more congruent with his landscape. Chandler had the right hero in the right place, and engaged him in the consideration of good and evil at precisely the time when our central certainty of good no longer held."
"Chandler disliked the servility of the civil service and resigned, to the consternation of his family. He then became a reporter for the Daily Express and also wrote for The Westminster Gazette. He was unsuccessful as a journalist, but he published reviews and continued writing romantic poetry. An encounter with the slightly older Richard Barham Middleton is said to have influenced him into postponing his career as writer. "I met ... also a young, bearded, and sad-eyed man called Richard Middleton. ... Shortly afterwards he committed suicide in Antwerp, a suicide of despair, I should say. The incident made a great impression on me, because Middleton struck me as having far more talent than I was ever likely to possess; and if he couldn't make a go of it, it wasn't very likely that I could." Accounting for that time he said, "Of course in those days as now there were ... clever young men who made a decent living as freelances for the numerous literary weeklies", but "I was distinctly not a clever young man. Nor was I at all a happy young man."
In 1912, at the age of 24, he borrowed money from his Waterford uncle, who expected it to be repaid with interest, and returned to America, visiting his aunt and uncle before settling in San Francisco for a time, where he took a correspondence course in bookkeeping, finishing ahead of schedule. His mother joined him there in late 1912. Encouraged by Chandler's attorney/oilman friend Warren Lloyd, they moved to Los Angeles in 1913,[16] where he strung tennis rackets, picked fruit and endured a time of scrimping and saving. He found steady employment with the Los Angeles Creamery. In 1917, he traveled to Victoria, where in August he enlisted in the 50th Reinforcement Battalion Canadian Expeditionary Force.[17] He saw combat in the trenches in France with the 7th Battalion C.E.F. (British Columbia Regiment).[18] He was twice hospitalized with Spanish flu during the pandemic[19] and was undergoing flight training in the fledgling Royal Air Force (RAF) when the war ended.
After the armistice, he returned to Los Angeles by way of Vancouver, and soon began a love affair with Pearl Eugenie ("Cissy") Pascal, a married woman 18 years his senior and the stepmother of Gordon Pascal, with whom Chandler had enlisted.[12] Cissy amicably divorced her husband, Julian, in 1920, but Chandler's mother disapproved of the relationship and refused to sanction the marriage. For the next four years Chandler supported both his mother and Cissy. After the death of Florence Chandler on September 26, 1923, he was free to marry Cissy. They were married on February 6, 1924. Having begun in 1922 as a bookkeeper and auditor, Chandler was by 1931 a highly paid vice president of the Dabney Oil Syndicate, but his alcoholism, absenteeism, promiscuity with female employees, and threatened suicides contributed to his dismissal a year later, after ten years with the company.
In straitened financial circumstances during the Great Depression, Chandler turned to his latent writing talent to earn a living, teaching himself to write pulp fiction by analyzing and imitating a novelette by Erle Stanley Gardner. Chandler's first professional work, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in Black Mask magazine in 1933. According to genre historian Herbert Ruhm, "Chandler, who worked slowly and painstakingly, revising again and again, had taken five months to write the story. Erle Stanley Gardner could turn out a pulp story in three or four days—and turned out an estimated one thousand."
Wandering up and down the Pacific Coast in an automobile I began to read pulp magazines, because they were cheap enough to throw away and because I never had at any time any taste for the kind of thing which is known as women's magazines. This was in the great days of the Black Mask (if I may call them great days) and it struck me that some of the writing was pretty forceful and honest, even though it had its crude aspect. I decided that this might be a good way to try to learn to write fiction and get paid a small amount of money at the same time. I spent five months over an 18,000 word novelette and sold it for $180. After that I never looked back, although I had a good many uneasy periods looking forward.[22]
His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. His second Marlowe novel, Farewell, My Lovely (1940), became the basis for three movie versions adapted by other screenwriters. Literary success and film adaptations led to a demand for Chandler himself as a screenwriter.