Cyber Space Relationships.

When I first went to live in America, in January 1995, it was like landing in Shangri la; the palm trees festooned the boulevards, avenues and strange street names, beginning with numbers, and the sun beamed down as if it was coming from enormous arc lights on a huge movie set.

There was Hollywood and Vine, there was Sunset Blvd and there was the Hollywood Sign; it was the realisation of some kind of fantasy.

Back in Blighty my family stayed and suffered the cold winds and icy showers whilst I sat on a swing in a garden reading and shading myself from the sun. It was as if I'd died and gone to heaven but the wife and children could speak to me by phone.

It was six months before I saw my wife who came out on a visit for a week which we spent in San Francisco – well actually Berkley; Beserkly they got to call it, but I didn't really like San Francisco even though my first impression was favourable when I visited the place before moving to live in Los Angeles.

After one year I returned to London for Christmas and found it quite hard to move more than a few feet from the radiator. I had anticipated the cold as I'd seen the news the odd time I got a chance to look at a television set, with news of Britain and footage of people in the cold wearing pom pom hats and anoraks.

In fact what I noticed when I came back that time was that everybody seemed to be dressed in dark colours and had very short hair. I think I had let mine grow a bit then even though I got to know a hair dresser down town who was from London. For some reason I let her persuade me in to having blond high lights put in which promptly turned yellow in the sun.

It's a strange place Los Angeles for things like that as the vast majority of men dye their hair and because of the sun, it would make the dye stand out – in fact I notice that it makes a lot of men look older when they dye their hair as it doesn't quite match their skin. There were also a lot of face lifts which were noticeable too.

Later on with the introduction of Skype, and long after my wife came out to live with me, we could speak to the grandchildren and see them at the same time. So I was still in heaven but the kids could see me there as we looked at the babies getting bigger.

I mention all this as I heard a strange story the other day: a granddad in America lives a few states away from his grand daughter; every evening, as he eats dinner, the grand daughter looks at him via Skype and he sees her too. Then before she goes to bed she hugs the monitor – it may be a lap top, computer or even a smart phone.

I think this disturbs me and makes me wonder where we are going as a human race. 

Is this the way we are going to communicate with one another in the future with everybody suffering from vitamin 'D' deficiency because they never see the sun, never get the chance to speak to people face to face and when they want an experience they simply look at it on a screen? 

If we really want to 'be there' we strap on something looking like a pair of goggles with electronic wires attached and really be there.

There are two really good TV series by Dennis Potter who wrote them not long before he died. One is called Cold Lazarus (above) and the other Karaoke. Each series is just four episodes – what the Americans would call a mini series; here it's called a TV Series. 

All written by Dennis Potter – all by himself, no 'show runner,' team of writers not even a script editor. In fact when he discovered he had but months to live, after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he wrote the two TV series in a matter of months.

If you are interested he was interviewed by Melvyn Bragg not long before his death about these two series, and his life and philosophy, which makes for interesting viewing.

The word Karaoke translates in to empty orchestra, by the way, just as (I think) Karate translates to empty hand; the former I'm sure of the latter not so confident.

I can't remember Karaoke too well, although I'll put a synopsis of the two TV series at the end of this post. 

Cold Lazarus is about a disembodied brain floating in liquid. All the experiences of life, movement and emotion the brain feels as an experience and thinks it is actually doing it.

Kind of reminds me of the granddad existing on a TV monitor in his grandchild's life. Her grandfather is a lap top – 'good night, lap top; see you in the morning.'

'Can I take granddad lap top to bed tonight mummy?'

'No you can't; his batteries are low – in any case Daddy wants to use him.'

I can see people in Starbucks every day; an island unto themselves sitting at four seater tables by themselves with their bags, battery chargers and baggage strewn over the other chairs.

I mean – can you imagine John Wayne with a lap top or a yuppie phone?

Here are the two synopses of the aforementioned titles – don't forget Potter was a genius, the writer of many TV plays and series including The Singing Detective and Pennies from Heaven which were both turned in to awful films. He was THE writer who used television – he forayed into the movies and the theatre but television was his medium.

Albert Finney in Karaoke - he is also in Cold Lazerus.

In fact that's his head in the main photo.

Karaoke.

Obsessive, self-destructive London television scriptwriter Daniel Feeld finds his health failing while involved with the post-production on his new TV drama, "Karaoke." A hard-drinking heavy smoker, Feeld is in much physical pain as he struggles with pancreatic cancer. Going about his daily routines, he has some odd experiences leading him to conclude that his fictional creations are erupting into real life. He overhears people speaking scraps of his own dialogue including young Sandra Sollars, hostess at a karaoke club run by petty thug Arthur "Pig" Maillion. Feeld fears Sandra could be threatened by "Pig" Maillion in a manner similar to scenes he wrote for "Karaoke" as his memory, fantasy, and reality overlap and inter-weave into a complex mental tapestry.

Cold Lazarus

Writer Daniel Feeld, first seen in Dennis Potter's Karaoke, returns three centuries later as a disembodied head. While technology has advanced in the 24th Century, global corporate control has brought about an austere, antiseptic way of life. In the year 2368, the terrorist organization RON (Reality or Nothing), seeks a return to the tranquility of earlier times. At the Masdon Science Center, a team of scientists led by Emma Porlock succeeds in extracting memories from Feeld's cryogenically preserved head - memories which are, in fact, scenes from Karaoke. Aging Martina Masdon, the tyrannical owner of the Science Center, and international media mogul David Siltz see the potential for the commercial exploitation of Feeld's memories. As Siltz puts it, "Who would want made-up stories from a hack when you can mainline into the real thing? At last, privacy has a true market value."

Dennis Potter