Dad was impressed. I could tell from the look in his eyes and the fact that he didn’t have any questions. Just a piece of advice.
“Son,” he said, “if you can make this work, you open a can of worms that will eat you alive if you don’t implement proper safeguards. This kind of technology has the power to obliterate all Internet and computer security. Nothing will be safe anymore. All electronically processed information on this planet will be open to anyone who has that technology. People will want to have it and they will be ready to kill for it, and those who have it will not want anyone else to have it too. Please promise me that you will not share MINDY with anyone without talking to me first.”
I wasn’t quite sure what the fuss was all about. I thought Dad was blowing the problems that MINDY might cause totally out of proportion, but I wasn’t in the mood to have a discussion on that right then and there, so I just said, “I promise.”
After breakfast I finally got out of my smelly clothes. I put on my running gear and went for a jog in the park for half an hour. This time there were no fans around who would film me, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t being watched.
I wanted to improve MINDY’s ability to track people, and I wanted her to be creative about it. Tracking someone who was carrying around a mobile phone, or an Oyster Card or anything that had an RFID chip built into it, was reasonably simple, but that wasn’t really tracking people, it was tracking devices people were carrying. I wanted MINDY to be able to track people even if they had their wallets stolen and left their mobiles on a train. Before all this sudden-rise-to-fame thing had happened, I had been working on a fairly complex face recognition algorithm that went way beyond mere face recognition. The idea was that once the program had positively identified a person’s face, it would then also register and analyze that person’s clothes and the way they walked. Each person has a distinctive way of walking that can identify them almost as accurately as a fingerprint. Then there is their clothing. If the person that is to be tracked is wearing a green hoodie then they’re pretty easy to identify in a CCTV feed even if they have their back turned to the camera, unless they’re by some freaky coincidence surrounded by dozens of people who all wear green hoodies, in which case the algorithm would take a closer look at the way everybody walked, and thus keep track of the trackee. At least that was the theory, and it was time to finally put it to the test. I wasn’t going to make it too easy for MINDY. I just took a selfie in the mirror, wearing a green hoodie, black track pants, and green running shoes, and I advised MINDY to track me. She had to figure out how to do that all by herself.
There were no CCTV cameras in our street. The first camera that caught a glimpse of my back was on Grand Avenue. At the end of Grand Avenue I turned left and made my way towards Muswell Hill, a very busy area with lots of bigger and smaller shops and restaurants and plenty of CCTV cameras in the streets. The area was even busier than usual. Train drivers were on strike, so people went on foot wherever they needed to go to, or they took their cars or a cab. Traffic was gridlocked both on the roads and on the pavements, and the fact that the bin men were on strike, too, didn’t help because the pavements were littered with three weeks’ worth of uncollected bin bags.
I carefully negotiated my way through the pedestrians and cars along Muswell Hill Road and Muswell Hill Broadway before I took a right turn into Muswell Hill and then a left turn into Springfield Avenue and into Alexandra Park. This is where things would get tricky for MINDY. I had been going in an almost straight line in an easterly direction since I’d left home. Now that I had entered the park where there were no cameras, a stupid algorithm may have expected me to come out at the other end on Bedford Road. MINDY, however, was supposed to be smart enough to deduce from my speed and from the clothes I was wearing that I was going for a run in the park and that I was most likely to re-emerge at the same end I went in after 20 or 25 minutes and make my way back home.
And that’s exactly what she did.
She was such a clever little girl.
The Gospel According to Ginger – 12
The next morning it turned out that Mom’s optimism (‘Maybe it’s not even going to be so bad’) had been completely and utterly unfounded. A few hours earlier ,Julian had appeared on Late Night with David Letterman, and when asked why he had come alone and not with the rest of the band, he’d said, “They only let us out one at a time now.”
While this humorous albeit inaccurate reply was enough to amuse David Letterman and make his studio audience roar with laughter, it didn’t fool the folks back home. When I woke up and checked my mobile, my Twitter was ablaze with @ mentions asking me why we weren’t in America with Julian and whether the band had split up. I made a public service announcement, telling my followers that Puerity had not and wasn’t going to split up. By the time I got out of the shower I had 600 retweets, mostly from fans but also from @BBCNews, @CNNbrk, and, curiously, from @JulianMonk himself.
Julian had also sent me a Direct Message: ‘NY is awesome! Wish you guys were here. Love, Jules.’
I didn’t want to reheat the discussion on why he was there and we were not, so I simply wrote back to him, ‘Have fun and stay safe. See you soon. <3’
Then I made my way down to the kitchen to get some breakfast. When I walked down the stairs, I could hear Mum shout into the telephone.
“She is not available ... No, she will not be available later ... No, please contact their manager, that’s what he is there for ... Well, you’re going to have to call him in America then, won’t you? ... No I don’t, and please don’t call again!”
She slammed down the receiver. The phone started to ring again immediately. “George! Do something!”
Dad was standing at the open front door, talking to two teenage boys, 14-ish, pimply-faced, both wearing their school uniforms. On a weekend. In the Middle of the summer holidays. Puerity fans, obviously.
“Sorry, guys,” he said, “but not at the door. Please respect our privacy.”
When one of the boys saw me appear behind my dad, he stage whispered, “There she is!” to his friend, put his hand over his mouth and giggled excitedly.
“Let me take care of this, Dad,” I said and motioned him back inside where the phone was still ringing off the hook. I looked at the two boys. Their eyes were wide with excitement, and their braces glistened in the morning sun.
“What can I do for you guys?”
They both kept staring at me, visibly star struck, until one of them nudged the other with his elbow.
“Oh, um,” the nudgee finally said. “H-hi. I was wondering if we could ... if you could sign our CDs?” They both held up pens and their copies of Original Sin with trembling hands.
“Are you cold?” I asked.
“What?”
“Your hands are shaking.”
“Oh,” the blonde said. “No, we’re just excited, that’s all.” They both looked at each other and giggled awkwardly.
“Right,” I said and took his CD. “Name?”
“What?”
“Your name.”
“Oh! Liam! I’m Liam.”
“And I’m Matthew.”
I signed their CDs and said, “Just so you know, Liam and Matthew, it’s very rude to knock on people’s doors before 9 a.m.”
Their silly smiles gave way to sheepish looks. “Sorry.”
“In fact, it’s very rude to knock on people’s doors at any time.” I handed them their signed CDs back. “This was an exception, okay? Now go and tell your friends that I kicked your tiny little arses, so they better stay away.”
“Yes. Thank you, Ginger. And sorry again.”
“All right.”
I closed the door and turned around. Dad stood in the doorway to the kitchen.
“You really shouldn’t encourage them, you know?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said and kissed him on the cheek. “But they were so cute, though.”
I sat down at the kitchen table, poured myself some coffee and picked
up the newspaper. Under the main headline Start Spreading the News there was a huge picture of Julian effectively shutting down traffic on Broadway as he was giving autographs outside the Ed Sullivan Theater right before his appearance on Letterman.
“I’ve had it!” Mum walked into the kitchen and slammed the phone down on the table. “I’ve unplugged the damn thing. Why can’t these vultures just leave us alone?”
“Sorry ‘bout that,” I said.
“Oh shut up, you silly goose.” Mum kissed me on the forehead. “It’s not your fault. Who was at the door?”
“Just two fans.”
“I hope you sent them away.”
I nodded. “After I gave them the autographs they came for.”
“Don’t encourage them, Emily!” Mum said.
“I’m sure they won’t come back tomorrow asking for more.”
“You don’t know that.”
“So what are you going to do?” Dad asked and sat down next to me. “Now that you’re a millionaire?”
I looked at him. “Excuse me?”
Mum and Dad exchanged bemused looks.
“My goodness,” Dad said, “You don’t even know it, do you?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about your album topping the charts in 39 countries at the moment. Tholen told me on the phone before he went to pick you guys up in Rome the other day. Apparently you’ve sold four million copies so far.”
“Oh really?”
“Aren’t you excited?” Mum raised an eyebrow.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess. I mean, yeah, having lots of money is very nice and all, but I was never in it for the money. None of us were. We were just playing music because it seemed more fun than hanging out at the street corner and getting drunk. But then this whole TV fame thing happened and people started throwing money at us, and it’s all very different from what I expected it to be. I mean, Julian clearly loves the attention, and it’s amazing what it’s done to Tummy’s self-confidence. However, I suppose Michael and I regard a million quid more like damages rather than royalties. It’s compensation, at best, for the freedom that we lost and for a job that is very, very hard.” The doorbell rang again. “See what I mean?”
“I’ll take care of this,” Dad said and went to answer the door.
“So anyway, I’m really looking forward to not having to grin into a camera for a couple of weeks. I just want to stay in for a while and not do anything I don’t want to do.”
“Will you be going back to school next term?”
I frowned at her. “What are you talking about? Of course I’m going back to school. I still want to go to uni, so I will have to finish school.”
“I’m just asking,” Mum said. “Because things will have to change once the school holidays are over. If you want to concentrate on school, you will have to cut back on playing concerts and appearing on TV.”
“Things are already changing,” I said.
* * *
In the following days life went on, and it turned out that things were exactly as bad as we had anticipated. Fanboys and fangirls between the ages of ten and twenty kept ringing our doorbell and asking for autographs. I never sent them away, which didn’t go down too well with my parents. They didn’t think it was a good idea to sign autographs at the door because it would encourage more and more fans to call, and that it would never stop until I put an end to it. However, I had come to view things quite differently. These were not only fans, they were customers. Most of them wanted me to sign their copies of Original Sin, which meant they have bought it, which meant they were largely responsible for the insane amounts of money I had or I was going to have soon. It only seemed fair to show my gratitude by not sending people away when they asked for an autograph or to have their picture taken with me. They didn’t take an undue amount of time out of my lazy staycation, so it didn’t bother me much to answer the door ten or twelve times a day. I didn’t have much else to do anyway.
A lot of fans, especially the boys, also brought me cards and flowers and little presents, most of which were very sweet and touching. I was quite lucky that I only had a very moderate amount of creepy stalkers who would send me very explicit love letters that were really borderline porn, or even pictures of their genitals with their phone numbers scribbled on them. On the pictures, that is. Although there was one bloke who actually wrote his phone number on his dick before he took a picture of it. I’m not denying the creepiness of that kind of behaviour, but in defence of my fans, even the crazy ones, I have to say that they always respected my physical space. None of them ever touched me inappropriately, like putting their hands on my boobs or my bum or whatever. Most of them even asked if it was okay for them to put their arm around my shoulder when we were taking a photo together. So, having pictures of male genitals sent to me was pretty much the worst thing that ever happened to me in terms of fan behaviour, and even that was sort of hilarious.
I never told my parents about the dick pics, obviously. They were annoyed enough as it was with me allowing our front door to become a kind of public place of worship, even though they were out at work most of the time, and they only ever witnessed a fraction of all the house calls our fans were making. What they did notice, however, was that whenever they tried to plug the landline phone back in, it would immediately start to ring, and it was always some stupid journalists from The Sun or the Daily Mail calling to ask stupid questions. So we left our home phone unplugged for the time being, which my parents thought was an untenable state of affairs, and they kept urging me to stop answering the door and encouraging people to violate our privacy. What they chose to ignore was the fact that house calls and phone calls were two different things that were done by different kinds of people. Fans never called me on the phone. If they lived nearby, they came over; if they didn’t, they’d talk to me online. It only ever happened twice that I opened the front door and some journalists were standing there asking me stupid questions about Julian and Puerity and whatnot, and whenever that happened I told them, “I don’t have anything to say. Follow me on Twitter,” and then I’d slam the door in their faces.
So yeah, I didn’t really mind all the fangirling and fanboying at all. I was grateful, because it was a nice feeling to have people tell you that they liked what you were doing, although I wasn’t really doing much in those days. It was Julian who did all the doing, but although he was basically touring the United States as a solo artist, he remarkably often used the word ‘we’ instead of ‘I’, and that wasn’t a majestic plural or anything. When he was talking about our music he was indeed talking about our music and our band, not his. Only when he talked about his personal views on politics and religion and life, the universe, and everything, he said ‘I’ rather than ‘we’ because he knew he wasn’t speaking for any of us. And when he said things like ‘What we must realize’, ‘What we must understand’, and ‘What we must do’, then he suddenly spoke for all of us, you me, every person on the planet. He then became that sort of messianic figure, that spiritual leader, that wise old man, that 17-year-old wise man, who seemed to have a vision for all mankind; a vision for a better future in a better world with prosperity and happiness for everyone.
His message didn’t go down well with everybody, especially not with a lot of very old, very religious people, no matter if they were Christians, Muslims, or Jews. His message did, however, resonate very well with young people, people under 30, regardless if they considered themselves to be religious or not. The reason for that was that he gave people a world view that was deeply rooted in reality and in reason, without any of the supernatural, esoteric, philosophical nonsense that didn’t have anything to do with the daily lives of real living people. He took the divinity out of Christianity and the esoteric out of the spiritual, and he repackaged and rebranded it into a new product that appealed to an insane amount of perfectly sane people. Julian managed to do that by talking to people in a way they could understa
nd.
If you tried to talk to any reasonably sane person about having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, they would slowly back off and say, ‘Okaaaaay,’ and then get on their mobile and write a status update like, ‘I just met a crazy person, LOL.’
A personal relationship with Jesus Christ, what the hell did that even mean? Julian wanted people to have personal relationships with real people, with family, friends, neighbours, with other people that they could actually talk to, not with some idol that had been dead for 2,000 years. He managed to talk to people about compassion, friendship, dignity, and morality in 21st century language and in a way that made these concepts accessible to anyone who was willing to listen. The Times titled ‘Common Sense Christianity’ on one of its front page articles that sought to examine the cultural phenomenon that Julian Monk was turning into. Another newspaper had this iconic picture of Julian on its front page, standing on a stage with his arms spread out like Jesus on the cross. The headline for that one read ‘Julian the Redeemer.’
Idolism Page 22
