Fuel price hits a record high! But who cares?

Resistance is futile (the Daleks)

Around this time last year, I was writing about the rising price of fuel, and about it being a proxy for a general feeling of unease regarding the future. I don’t know if it was my own personal future I was talking about, or if I was picking up on the zeitgeist of the western fuel-driven world – in other words picking up on what the news-media were telling me to get upset about.

My alarm was not unjustified, I thought – the price of petrol having hit a record high, at around £1.38 per litre, and it seemed incredible to me that it was costing more to fill up my car than I was paying for the mortgage on my house. Last weekend though, the price of fuel reached a new high of £1.42 per litre.The difference now however, is I’m finding it harder to get upset about it. Even the sight of long queues of panic buyers on the petrol station forecourts this afternoon – result of government “advice” to top-up just in case the proposed strike of fuel-tanker drivers goes ahead – leaves me unmoved.

I don’t think this is a sign of world-weary fatalism on my part. Fatalism implies a resignation to one’s fate, while retaining the awareness of an ongoing menace, like sitting with an unstable bomb in your basement. You know it’s going to off at some point, and though you tell yourself you can take it – that life is but vale of tears, and then you die – subliminally, we still resist and resent the presence of that bomb. It still gets under our skin, and eventually it makes us angry and ugly, and ill. No. Fatalism isn’t an attractive way to view the world; it’s more of a last resort, I think, when the way we see the world refuses to shift out of bottom gear.

What I think I’m feeling now is more of a letting go of those things I cannot control. To stick with the motoring metaphor, we’ll call it getting into second gear. We accept the world changes, that fuel, like fine single malt whiskies, become prohibitively expensive and occasionally scarce, that rich nations become poor, that the healthy fall ill, and those we love are taken from us.

But second gear is still a long way from cruise control, and we might worry that in becoming so passive and withdrawn from life’s events we also risk losing our essential passion for life. We no longer rant, we no longer cry, but equally such passivity can insulate us from all the things that remain in the world to be joyful about; we no longer laugh at jokes, we no longer take the time to stand and stare at the beauty of things, we become dead from the neck up, we become impotent, incapable of a bone-hard arousal, let alone making love to the world with the all the spirited abandon of our youth. And who wants to live like that? It’s inhuman.

It’s not about being passive then – not entirely. It’s more about not resisting what happens – which isn’t the same thing. We hold an image in our minds that defines what we think is good for us, what we think we want for ourselves, and if we’re not careful anything that doesn’t fit that narrow minded model, we try to protect ourselves from. We resist it. We reject it. We throw up the shield of our ego in an attempt to deflect it, but it breaks through with a force equal and opposite to the strength of our imagined defences. So, we take the blow and absorb it as a dark energy, which transforms into an imagined injury. But imagined or not, we take it deep into our bones where it make us weary and sad.

So, rather than remain in passive second gear, we need to snick our mind quickly into third gear. Rather than being simply passive, we must redefine our state of mind as being one of no longer offering resistance to those aspects of life that don’t fit in with our narrow view. We open our arms and welcome the whole of life, the good and the bad of it. And in not resisting life, we find there are more things to be joyful about, rather than less. And the bad things? We no longer label them as bad, but more as object lessons on the road to a growing awareness of the nature of life and how we can best relate to it.

When the wind blows, the meadow does not stand firm; the grasses part and sway, and the wind passes safely through, leaving the grasses upright. I’m sure Lao Tzu has a better aphorism for the same thing, but you know what I mean.

Getting into third gear is difficult of course, because – to stretch that motoring metaphor possibly to destruction – there’s no syncromesh on the box we were born with and we have to spend a while grinding those gears before we can find it. But when we do find it, we get a kick, and a sense of movement like no other. Of course third gear’s still a long way from the fabled luxury of cruise control, but at least it comes with a sense we’re finally heading in the right direction.

If you resist what happens, then you will always be at the mercy of what happens, and your happiness or unhappiness will be determined by the world.

Ekhart Tolle. (A New Earth)

Michael Graeme

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Living Consciously

When I was a youngster, starting out in the world of work, one of my fledgling tasks was to take a piece of paper into an office where a bear of a man would put a stamp on it. This quaintly old fashioned act of bureaucratic officialdom would then release some widgets into my possession. My widgets were always needed urgently. So were everyone else’s. But I never got my widgets right away. There was always a problem. I had the wrong piece of paper, it was the wrong signature, it was the wrong phase of the moon. The rules changed every time. The guy was playing with me. I always had to come back, time and time again to stand before the bear-man and his rubber stamp, then go away with my tail between my legs to explain, humiliated, to my boss that the man would not give me my widgets.

I hated him. He was terribly overweight, stank of cigarettes, his hands were stained a sickly yellow. His skin was sallow, his teeth black. He was ugly, and he had a bad temper. He was a heart attack waiting to happen, and forgive me but I hoped it would happen soon. And he thought I was a useless greenhorn kid of seventeen, unsure of himself, easily fobbed off, and to be fair, I thought this about myself as well, and hated myself for it, while he probably thought he was pretty cool.

Our relationship was never going to be an easy one. Getting widgets out of him was a nightmare, but it had to be done. Our mutual problem was that we were both living unconsciously. I thought he was an inferior human being, and he thought the same way about me, which made me feel pretty worthless about myself as well. None of this was spoken of course – it was more an awareness that passed at a subliminal level – communicated through the halting tone in my voice, in my body language, even in the sweat on my brow, while his self possessed superiority came at me in long unsettling waves, pulsing from his obnoxious bulk.

Later on though, I came to see him differently. I’m not sure how, and it was a gradual thing – not a revelation or anything – but eventually, I found a way of looking closer, of raising the level of my consciousness. And he became a man like any other, a mother’s son, perhaps even a father to children of his own. He would laugh, I suppose – though I never saw him so much as smile – but we all laugh at things, don’t we? He was probably bored with his job – all he did was sit in this grey, sour smelling office and stamp bits of paper all day. It must have driven him mad. It must have made him say to himself every night when he put on his coat and turned off the light to go home: there must be more to my life than this?

I won’t go so far as to say I found a way of actually liking him, but I did come to respect the humanness in him, respect his right to breathe the same air as me, and I tried to see more in him than my own ego had previously permitted.

As for my opinion of myself – equally important – I decided I was okay too. I wasn’t a genius, nor a demi-god or anything – I was just this human-being, like him, both of us making our way as best we could. Together we had a job to do. I had to deliver the piece of paper, get him to stamp it, then I could get my widgets. This was how we met and interacted in the world-machine. I’m sure his opinion of me didn’t change very much and he remained entirely unconscious of my being, as well as largely delusional about his own, but my new found confidence in myself, and my egoless respect for his right to simply be did bring about an unexpected change and, crucially, an easing in the anxiety I had always felt in my dealings with him. Instead of sitting, staring at me with glassy, bloodshot eyes and pointing out the bureaucratic shortcomings on my little piece of paper, he would grunt, then reach for his rubber stamp.

And I would get my widgets right away.

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Walking with the enlightened ones

Dodgy word: Enlightenment. In new agey circles, it’s touted as the ultimate goal of all those expensive retreats and meditation seminars, or those long years spent in monkish self-denial, sequestered with books and DVD’s on the million and one programs of self-improvement. It’ll take you a while, decades maybe, but eventually it’ll come – the realisation – the enlightenment if you like – that enlightenment itself cannot possibly come from an accumulation of “stuff” – be they methods, or secret knowledge, or special Yoga mats.

It’s like trying to put a fire out by throwing petrol on it.

You’re only going to make things worse.

This is not to say enlightenment is a foolish aspiration. Indeed it’s the one noble thing, consciously or unconsciously, we’re all moving towards – the one noble goal in the whole confused mish mash of human endeavour. But what is it? Well, I think I’m coming close to a definition of it now – which isn’t the same thing as becoming enlightened of course – but anyway: so far as I can work out, it’s a state of mind, a way of seeing the world through fresh eyes, eyes born anew out of a rare state of grace.

Some people are fortunate enough to be granted glimpses of it, but their grip is tenuous and the vision goes away, leaving them amazed, but they also bounce off it into a kind of wilderness where they’re left doubting the validity of their experience. They wonder if they weren’t deluding themselves, they wonder if they weren’t suffering from a self-induced psychotropic hallucination. I count myself among their number – temporarily amazed, then self-doubting, and all I can do now is study the words and the curious aphorisms of those who have gone before me in the hope I’ll be granted a clue, one reliable signpost on the outskirts of the forest, that will allow me to navigate my way safely and securely back in. But those aphorisms can be hard nuts to crack – like: “The way that can be named is not the true way,” according to Lao Tzu’s enigmatic opening of the Tao Te Ching, which makes me wonder if looking for a signpost isn’t a waste of time anyway – and I should just plunge right in.

For those gifted individuals who have permanently attained this state of mind, there is no sudden recoiling to an aftershock of doubt. They have all the time in the world to be absolutely certain what they see, their enlightened vision, is true. They don’t need to believe in it because it’s not about belief. It’s about experience, and knowing.

But knowing what? Well, putting it crudely, it’s knowing that our true selves are already perfect, that they don’t actually need improving in any way, and that our true self is immortal. Such an insight as this has a transformational effect on the psyche. It doesn’t change the world before our eyes, but it makes us infinitely more compassionate in our dealings with it. And instead of everything causing us pain or confusion, and seeing nothing out there but an existential waste, we see instead the wonder of the universe and the meaning of it in everything. And the meaning of it is the universe awakening to a knowledge of itself through us.

It sounds good, doesn’t it? A good way to live – and I’ve often wondered why, if such a state of mind is real, then why isn’t it better known? After tens of thousands of years of human evolution, why haven’t we all attained this delicious state of grace yet? It’s suspicious, perhaps? What’s even more suspicious is the enlightened ones us tell us theirs is not an exclusive club, that you don’t need a million dollars to join, that we can all achieve this state for free. So why aren’t we signing up in droves? Well, it might be free, but it’s not easy, and the difficulty lies in what we most identify ourselves with.

Have you ever heard the phrase: I don’t know who I am any more! Or how about: I need to know who I am, or I need to find out who I really am, or I need time to discover my true self – I’m sure the angsty characters in my novels have all uttered these corny lines at some point, but there’s nothing profound in them – indeed they are all meaningless. The path to enlightenment is littered with the bodies of those who were looking for themselves.

In his book “The New Earth” Ekhart Tolle tells us: If you can be absolutely comfortable with not knowing who you are, then what’s left is who you are – the being behind the human, a field of pure potentiality, rather than something that is already defined.

Does that make sense to you? The being behind the human?

Most of us spend our lives seeing an image of ourselves, unaware that it’s an image reflected back to us from the mirror of the world, and we’re unable to differentiate between that image and the person doing the looking. When we sit down to meditate and we’re barraged by all those inconvenient thoughts, and we tell ourselves: No, I don’t want to think about that right now – who is the silent watcher of those thoughts? Who says I don’t want to think about that? The silent watcher is what’s left when we can be absolutely comfortable in letting go of everything else.

The true self is a form of awareness, it’s a realisation of our self both in and of the world and crucially, a realisation of the psychological nature of reality. The only difference between stuff and thought is the frequency at which energy vibrates, because energy is all there is, the conscious energy of the cosmos. It’s this realisation that enables us at last to take the unimaginable vastness of the universe, to make sense of it, and pack it into William Blake’s grain of sand – no – into less than a grain of sand – into nothing.

So why can’t we do this? What’s stopping us? With all those self help books out there why hasn’t any one of them delivered the key? Is it because all this talk of conscious energy and the psychological nature of things is bunkum? Possibly, though I’m inclined to think we have to reckon with the possibility that it’s not. So again: what’s stopping us?

Well unfortunately the self help industry is no different to any other part of the material world. It’s become integral to the way we actually live and is therefore, paradoxically, of no use whatsoever to anyone really trying to help themselves out of their existential wilderness. All economies – even those that were once the most ideologically opposed to capitalism, are now rushing to embrace the ultimate opium of the peoples – not, as Marx said, religion – but just stuff, material stuff. And in this respect, even new-agey pseudo spiritual stuff is no different to the fatuousness of designer footwear.

You think it may be just the thing you need to fill that hole in your soul, this new material thing, but having made your purchase you realise it isn’t. So the next time you’re looking at those sexy new training shoes, or that seductive new-agey book, and considering handing over your plastic for it, ask yourself who gains here, and what part of my self wants it?

One of the most difficult things to grasp on this mythical road to enlightenment is that we are not our thoughts, or our memories. Sure, we can all think things through and come to conclusions based on a mixture of logic, experience and intuition – that’s how this piece of writing is coming together. But it would be wrong of me to conclude that it defines the part of me I call my unique self. Twelve months from now I’ll probably have forgotten what I’ve written here, while the self I think I am will still be with me.

I look at pictures of myself as a child, and I can no longer remember what I was thinking or feeling at the time the picture was taken. I recognise the likeness, but if thoughts or memories are anything to go by, the person in that photograph no longer exists. Yet here I am, self evidently still around, still gathering memories which will likewise fade over time.

And as we grow older, this habit of forgetting intensifies, the conversations we had thirty years ago, even the relationships we shared all fade to a ghostly transparency. But does their loss render the self we think we are any smaller? No. Do we wink out of existence when we can no longer remember our first kiss, or that first magical time we made love? No.

Could I lose all memory, all faculty for logic and reason, and yet retain the awareness of my self as an individual being?

The answer, say the enlightened ones, is yes. Indeed, we can go further: it seems we are happiest when we can let everything go. We become our truest self when can forget the false self we think we are. The road to enlightenment therefore is not a road at all, not journey, not a search. It’s a moment of awareness, and it’s a letting go. Then we wake up to the dream of the world, instead of being unconscious to it.  And we discover a more lucid way of being.

Letting go?

How can I let go, you ask? How can I afford to float off into a self-indulgent contemplative bubble? Sure, it would be great. Instead of taking it up the ass every day at work, I’d like to do what my instincts are telling me: tell the boss to shove it. But if I don’t get paid, I don’t eat, I lose my house, and that contemplative bubble isn’t going to keep me and the kids very warm when we’re sitting at the side of the road. Enlightenment’s fine for a monk sitting in a cave with no rent to pay. But in the real world?…

Okay, okay I get the message.

It’s no use saying the world is just a dream, that our purpose is to wake up to that fact. The world is as it is and letting go doesn’t mean dropping out of it. Enlightenment is useless if it can’t help the needy and the oppressed who are already entangled in the guts of the world-machine. And is the world that bad, if it’s technologically sophisticated enough to feed such a staggering number of people, and still allow them time to contemplate their place in the universe?

No. Enlightenment is about living consciously, of seeing everything there is to see in objects, in people and in the events of our daily lives. And if we can all live, consciously, then the world will become an infinitely better place.

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Paypal and Prurience?

Censored! Navigating the rules on obscenity.

There’s an interesting thing going on at the moment between Smashwords – the online seller of independently authored ebooks, and the payment facilitating company, Paypal. Paypal, themselves under pressure from the major credit card companies who underpin Paypal’s business, have asked Smashwords to pull every title from its files that contains anything they (Paypal) consider to be obscene. In particular they’re talking about (deep breath and close one’s eyes) bestiality, incest, rape or underaged sex.

If Smashwords doesn’t comply then Paypal will sever all links with Smashwords. Smashwords uses Paypal as a means of paying its authors their download royalties. Smashwords is understandably concerned by this as it will mean they can no longer process payments to any authors – even the ones who don’t write the smutty stuff. It’s argued by Smashwords that while the topics highlighted are unpleasant and socially unacceptable, this is effectively a form of censorship, and to be honest, though it troubles me that such material is available through outlets like Smashwords, it’s difficult to see it any other way.

Credit card companies, and Paypal are privately owned financial institutions and have, in modern times, risen to become the life-blood of online international commerce. But that doesn’t mean they, and their shareholders, are qualified to decide what is obscene. That’s for elected governments and their legislators. Every country has its local laws defining what you can and cannot write, and it is these legal standards that should be our guidelines. However obscenity laws are always open to interpretation, and also seem increasingly ineffective in our globalised online world. But we cannot allow corporate culture to become the guardians of human culture, or we forfeit our souls. The difficulty is that what constitutes “obscene” changes with the times and the shifting social mores – which are arguably shaped by what people see, hear and read in the first place. It’s a complex equation, iterative and probably non-linear, verging on the chaotic – definitely not the sort of thing that can be modelled by the simplistic algorithms of the business world.

D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s lover was famously banned for obscenity in 1928, and only released in 1960 after a landmark trial in which one of one of the prosecution’s arguments was: would you like your wife or servants to read such a book? The implication was that a reading of Lady Chatterly would encourage wives and servants to cross the social divide and make love to each other more often – clearly something that was unacceptable in those days, but a little outdated now. If you read it now, you’ll perhaps agree that the language and the sexual acts depicted in this story were certainly daring for the times, but those acts were between consenting adults involved in a powerfully emotional relationship, and wouldn’t cause any problems with the censor now.

Perhaps that’s the safest way forward then: only write about what’s legal, according to your local laws. If in doubt, check it out, or leave it out. But is that good enough?

No, it’s not.

Many books rely on a crime being committed in order to kick start the plot – like detective fiction for example. Murder is a nasty business and not something we’d want to encourage, but it’s depicted all the time in seemingly ever more grizzly detail – both the act of killing itself and the subsequent probing analysis on the mortuary slab. Yuk! If you’re watching TV tonight – count how many murders there are.

Clearly the test of criminality is insufficient.

Is it just a question of sexual crimes then?

No.

Themes of rape are unfortunately also a regular feature of even pre-watershed soap opera. The writers of these dramas claim they wish to depict real life issues, of which sadly, rape is one. But why don’t soap operas also deal regularly with themes of bestiality, incest or underage non-consensual sex – which are also real life issues? Why should these be hidden away in a dark cupboard?

Is it a question of how they’re portrayed then? Must the perpetrator always get their come-uppance? Is it the apparent glorification of bad things that’s the problem?

Ah! Now we’re getting somewhere.

There’s clearly a social dynamic here – certain things are still on the back burner, waiting their time before people are generally comfortable discussing them. Rape is in the open, but the other taboos are not. And if you’re an independent author who wants to push these things into the public eye, then it’s how you treat them that’s the important thing in determining the kind of reception you’ll get.

I think the key phrase here is “prurient interest”. Is your treatment of the subject matter aimed solely at sexually arousing the reader? If this is the case then it might be said you’re trying to convert someone to your way of thinking by engaging their emotions. And if your way of thinking is to condone illegal acts by making them look in any way pleasurable, or acceptable, you’re straying into dangerous territory and you should think very seriously about what you’re doing.

In the UK the law on obscenity is covered by the Obscene Publications Act of 1959. This is the same act that was used to challenge Penguin books, who were determined to publish the unexpurgated version of Lady Chatterly in 1960. The Act isn’t an easy one to read. It speaks in a convoluted legalese about the likelihood of a reader being corrupted, and balances this against the literary merit of the work. To a layman it seems very much open to interpretation. It does however try to focus on the intent of the work and its likely effect, then leaves it to a jury to decide. I have to say though, for a writer trying to explore what he can or cannot write, it’s not very helpful.

What then are we poor indies, intent on pushing the edgy boundaries, to do?

Well, in America there’s a legal mechanism called the Miller Test. This is a test applied in three parts and asks: Is the material aimed solely at the prurient interest? Does the material contain anything that a normal person is likely to find offensive? And finally, is the work without any literary or artistic merit? Material answering “yes” to all three parts is considered obscene and you can probably be burned for it. If it answers “no” to any one of the three parts, then you’ll probably get away with it. Although a little easier to follow than the UK law, in practice the Miller Test is still open to interpretation, and relies on a jury at the end of the day to provide the input on what is and is not socially acceptable.

I sometimes find my own stories listed on Feedbooks, side by side with books whose covers depict nude ladies in provocative poses. Their titles are unambiguously pornographic. Now, I’m not a prude and my only real concern here is they probably make my own work look lame and tame and uninteresting. But how does this material get past the Miller Test? And what about my own work? How does that compare? What about that final love scene in the Lavender and the Rose? Gulp!

All right – so I had to download and read one of Feedbook’s free “erotic” titles for research purposes. Let’s call it Young Ladies in Love, by Tessa Tuttle – it being an account of the seduction of a straight girl by a Lesbian girl, both contemporary consenting American adults in their twenties. The plot consisted of a series of loosely linked and explicitly depicted encounters between the protagonists and ended, somewhat abruptly, with a message from the author directing you to their paid website where you could download the full story for a fee. (I didn’t bother) There wasn’t any character development to speak of, other than the straight girl becoming more Sapphically inclined.

On the other hand, in the Lavender and the Rose – well, it’s a complicated story,… some might say incomprehensible,… but there are some love scenes in it – of the consenting heterosexual kind, also some Tantric stuff, and a climactic (is that the best word?) bisexual denouement between the three main characters – two women and a guy. Strewth!

Okay – to the Miller test: Michael Graeme and Tessa Tuttle in the dock.

Part one: Does the work cater purely to the prurient interest? Tessa Tuttle’s Young Ladies in Love? Self evidently, yes.

Michael Graeme, how plead you regarding the Lavender and the Rose? Not guilty your honour. Explain? The Lavender and the Rose is two hundred thousand words long, the descriptive sexual content less than five percent. My readers would most likely nod off between love scenes.

Michael Graeme you are released. Phew.

Tessa Tuttle you remain in the dock.

Tessa Tuttle. Does your work contain scenes that a normal person would find offensive? Chief witness for the prosecution: Michael Graeme – well, em,.. no your honour. I found nothing offensive – just frank descriptions of girls making love. Counsel for the prosecution: But what makes you think you’re normal, Michael Graeme? It sounds pretty filthy to me. Are you not simply a dangerous libertarian? I’m sure some people would find the thought of two ladies making love repulsive.

Hm.

Tessa Tuttle, you’re not out of the woods yet, and remain in the dock. We’d better move on to test three in order to settle the matter.

Tessa Tuttle, is your work entirely without literary merit? Witness for the prosecution, Michael Graeme: Absolutely without any merit whatsoever, your honour. Tessa Tuttle protests: Michael Graeme, you’re a highbrow snob. I claim my work is very artistic. Is the act of any form of imaginative creation not in itself artistic?

Hm.

Tessa Tuttle,… you argue your case very well. And you’ve convinced the jury of your artistic integrity. You are released.

So, my own work doesn’t disturb the ripples on the Miller Test pond very much, thank goodness. Even Tessa Tuttle, purveyor of charmingly low grade prurient smut escapes. But clearly there are other works that wouldn’t. Test two would be most open to interpretation by a jury, representing a cross section of society, who would be capable of reaching a consensus on what was considered obscene. I think Paypal’s proscribed bestiality, rape, incest and underage sex would all fare very badly here, especially if the overall work also catered solely to the prurient interest. But test three, the question of what constitutes art is still troubling. It’s like asking someone the meaning of life? Can any one of us reasonably answer?

Having said that, I quite like the Miller Test, but obviously most of us would rather not end up in court in order to be subjected to its rigour, or to have our rude scenes read out to our faces, in public. Blush!

My advice to independent authors then is not to write anything you’d be ashamed to let your mother read. That goes for your blogs as well as your books. But since I don’t follow my own advice on this I have to go a stage further. When writing your love scenes make sure that what your fictional protagonists get up to is within the law in your local area, and if it isn’t, make sure any sex and violence you depict isn’t glorified, and isn’t the raison d’etre of your whole book – thereby appealing purely to the prurient interest of your reader. If you want to write prurient stuff – and many do – then that’s okay too, but definitely don’t have your characters doing anything you could get arrested for in real life – according to your local laws.

But to return to the question: should we indys or even bloggers not be allowed to write what we want online? The answer has to be no. The online world twenty years ago was anarchic, and peopled by bright techy characters who generally knew what they were doing, policed by people who didn’t and were running to catch up. That’s changing now. We’re trying to connect the entire world. It’s a social experiment, and some of that anarchy is going to get smoothed out in the cause of the greater good. No matter what we feel as individual authors, we have to subordinate ourselves to the law, and stop thinking we can hide behind the apparent anonymity of the internet. Because we can’t. Write something that fails the Miller Test, or which the Crown Proscution Service thinks it can successfully challenge under the Obscene Publications Act, and they will find you, and they will drag you before a jury of your peers.

Jung tells us we all have a darker side, dark corners of the unconscious wherin we hide all those things we’d perhaps be ashamed of airing in public. Jung tells us it’s better to have those things in the light, where we can look them in the eye and acknowledge them as part of ourselves. That way they lose their power to make us act in socially unacceptable ways. But he wasn’t talking about publishing our demons for all the world to see. If you’re plagued by dark demons doing unspeakable things to animals or non-consenting human beings, then by all means write about them, but keep your musings private. Don’t put them online where your demons might damage someone else. Obscenity is like a penis. (Michael blushes) We all know that half the population has one, but it’s socially unacceptable to go waving it about in public. If it’s something you feel you really must do in order to preserve your creative integrity, then seriously, you have to be very careful who you show it to.

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