Monday 12 December 2011

Office at #19

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I'm fortunate to live in the People's Republic of Brunswick, a suburb in Melbourne inner north,  blessed by numerous public transport routes. My work is a mixture of writing and projects. My home office is the most productive place for writing,  but I am often called out for meetings in the city. I enjoy my time no the #19 North Coburg tram on its 30 minute dead straight trajectory into the city,  arriving like an arrive impaled on the flank of Flinders Street station. There's always an interesting array of faces and sometimes a curious conversation that tells me much more about the world than browsing twitter.

But particularly the #19 is a wonderful place to write.  Why is this? It's a combination of two factors. First is the natural rhythm of movement, which provides a phenomenological balance for the inner distractions of body and mind. And second, it's a moment of liberation from Windows. I prefer to write my first drafts on crude devices, like this Android Asus Transformer,  where it's harder to switch between functions. Ironically, in moving crowded noisy and unstable space like #19, I can really concentrate. I have to go back to Windows eventually, to do the fact-checking and hard word-smithing. But the #19 is most conducive for the first undercoat.

This blog is an occasional space to share what I've learnt about writing on a tram. It has mild aspirations to utopianism in fostering a space where thoughts can emerge in the open space of the public, rather than the idea factories of corporate media. There’s an even milder aspiration to utopianism in leaning how to work the Android platform. Certainly, the Google Corporation is the end beneficiary of this work, but relatively speaking this is a much more open alternative to Apple, with this tyrannous licensing practices.

I think this is my stop.