The Restore Point Of The Soul; An Influence Map Made Of String And Brown Paper

1. I have problems with technology, as I do without just about everything else, from my ankles to my perpetually-lost glasses to my bank balance. But I'm also stubborn, and I have ridiculously low standards where appearances are concerned, having, for example, regularly, and thoroughly embarrassingly, worn odd shoes to work during my years as a teacher. So perhaps it's an expression of my personality as much my incompetence that I have no idea at all how to take fox-orion's lovely template for an Influence Map at Deviant Art (*1) and turn it into something as useful and thought-provoking as he and quite literally hundreds of others have done. (There's a fascinating collection of these at Mark Kardwell's excellent blog "Bad Librianship Now!"; you won't regret going there, I really do assure you, and you can use the UK Blog Of Honour link to your right to do so. *2) Instead, I've been reduced to producing the quite pathetically amateur Influence Collage above, but that tells a truth in itself, and so it goes. Still, in the name of full and emasculating disclosure, you really ought to compare, if you can stand the aesthetic pressure drop, my efforts with those of the estimable Dusty Abell below;

*1:- http://fox-orian.deviantart.com/art/Influence-Map-Template-174550753
*2:- or just cut'n'paste http://www.badlibrarianship.com/2010/09/influence-maps.html


2. I'm putting up my rather sad example of the craft here for two reasons. Firstly, if you've not come across the many wonderful examples of this meme, it's a conceptual infection well worth exposing yourself too. Secondly, I've found the process of working out exactly what constitutes an influence so profound that it can, to take but a few mighty examples, compel the elbowing of Shakespeare, Camus and Machiavelli out of the frame to be an extremely productive procedure. It inspires evaluations which the normal business of scrawling out top-ten lists while at mind-numbingly banal social occasions doesn't touch upon. Given that there's simply one side of paper to fill, political correctness and artistic snobbery goes out of the window, which can only be a very good thing indeed. Are the Beatles too damn obvious to own up to? Can I truly not find a comic book from after 1993 to present as an example of overwhelming excellence? Can I really include The Spirit despite the wretched racism of Ebony? Do I have to own up to being such a profoundly white, book-loving Scottish male from the lost lands of 1962?

Well, the answers, for good as well as ill, are inevitably; no, no, yes, and yes, I do.

I'd highly recommend your having a crack at this business yourself, though I'm sure most of those reading this will of course have come across these Influence Maps and pondered their own take on them anyway. I've found it all an exceptionally enlightening business, and in a week where the most recent piece on m'other blog was about the creeping arrogances of the unthinking blogger, it's an extremely useful method of finding my own personal Restore Point. In fact, I suspect that I may well be having a crack at another Influence Map where my tastes in British comics are concerned, but that'll be a matter for ThatRemindsOfThisOfThis.

KEY

1. "The Amazing Spider-Man" # 8, by Stan Lee & Steve Ditko
2. The Beatles, of course, and also Ian MacDonald's peerless "Revolution In The Head"
3. "Groundhog Dog"
4. "The New Gods" # 8, by Jack Kirby
5. "The Daily Show", with John Stewart
6. The Peter Gabriel-era Genesis
7. "Very Well, Alone", and indeed every cartoon ever by David Low
8. "Batman: Mad Love", by Bruce Timm and Paul Dini
9. The "I Want To Believe" poster from the X-Files, but not for the series, but rather because I do want to believe in that inspiring forteana, just as I regret that I can't
10. "Arcadia" by Tom Stoppard
11. "TV21"
12. The essays of George Orwell
13. The Christopher Eccleston "Dr Who", a fine and fallable companion during a difficult time indeed
14. Gore Vidal
15. Billy Wilder, and "The Apartment" in particular
16. "Arms And The Man" by George Bernard Shaw
17. "The Spirit" by Will Eisner
18. "The Man In The High Castle" by Philip K Dick

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