Following the white rabbit

This post is a virtual notebook

2009-06-16T13:06:39Z

"The calling of art is to extract us from our daily reality, to bring us to a hidden truth that's difficult to access - to a level that's not material but spiritual. That's what poetry and music do, and that was the first calling of religion. Religion works on some people but not on everyone, because it says, stop thinking and accept what I tell you. That's not valid for people who want to think and reflect. Art is a better way of achieving that, though the aim is the same."

Wise words from Abbas Kiarostami.

Notes from the wilderness

2009-06-03T11:35:26Z

It's been forever and a day since I did anything even approaching a normal update. That is, not including a quote from somewhere or other, or vaguely mentioning something that's not really relevant beyond noting it for posterity.

So. What have I been up to?

I finished my last exam on May 27th - this semester I only had two, and whilst they weren't a walk in the park, they weren't as taxing as what went before. What went before consisted of five essays, four of which were due on the same day (May 12th), the other on April 20th. The May 12th deadline was hellish, despite the fact that I got them all in on time. I think I gave the first three adequate time in terms of writing and researching. Drama and Medieval will be average, as the questions were dull and really didn't inspire me in any way. For language, I feel like I hit upon an interesting idea and executed it reasonably well. It's a tad rough around the edges, but I ran out of the time and energy required to properly go through it with a fine-toothed comb. I hope I pull it off - I wrote with enough confidence and self-assurance in my use of cognitive poetics to get a decent mark either way, I think. Theory was the essay that really might suffer. I wrote it in one goe, in 14 hours straight, sitting in the library jittering with caffeine and sugar. I feel like my research was sound, focusing around Foucault and Said, the ideas of literature, culture, tradition and the author-function. It's just a case of hoping that my drug-addled body distilled the contents of my overloaded brain down into enough of an argument, as the question didn't exactly throw any straightforward lines of attack out there. Time will tell.

I'll hear back on June 19th, when I also get my exam results. I got the April 20th essay back - I got a first in it and was pleased as punch. It was a straight-up literature essay that I'd been researching for over a week, so that felt gratifying. On or around April 20th I also received two other cool pieces of news. 1.) My dissertation proposal had been accepted, and I'd been allocated the supervisor of my choice. 2.) I got all my first choices for my module options in my third and final year. Happy times.

I've spent the post-essay/exam days putting my life back together, a phrase I'm at risk of overusing of late, but it's bloody accurate. This term (post-Easter) has taken a lot out of me physically and mentally, so it's been sheer bliss having the come-down. Staying up to stupid-o'clock in the morning reading books, comics, the internet, getting up after lunchtime, spending my days lazing in my bedroom or sitting room or in the park with friends and housemates. It's not without reason that the third years say that the end of second year is the most difficult part of the course. Or at least, I hope not! Next week is going to be filled with the inevitable drunken end of term fun, as everyone has their final house-parties, socials, BBQs, nights in the pub etc. I reckon all of my housemates ate going to disappear back to their respective corners of the country on about the 21st or 22nd, leaving me alone in the house for a week. Speaking of which, I need to find somewhere to put all my stuff during July and August, as my mum isn't driving at the moment and can't move it all back to London. Annoyingly, we're only moving two doors down, but have a two month gap between contracts. I should get on that...

On a closing note, I've been reading a few things: Shame by Salman Rushdie, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (this one surprised me and was actually really really good), The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy and American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Comics wise I keep coming back to both Phonogram: Rue Britannia and the first two issues of The Singles Club. I love how I get something new out of every reading. There's always something I didn't spot before, or some line of thought that eluded me, or just a delightful little detail in the artwork. I enjoyed Marc Ellerby's mini 'Chloe Noonan: Monster Hunter', and chucked a copy at lowey for his birthday. I thought the general humour and style would be to his taste, and I was correct! He and airlight are on the Scott Pilgrim bandwagon, which I still am not, despite everyone waxing lyrical about it on the internet. I'll get there eventually. My housemate has been shoving The Memorykeeper's Daughter at me for months, so I will probably crack that open next.
Music wise... as ever I struggle to sum up. Hm. I've been listening to a load of Belle and Sebastian, interspersed with Okkervil River, In The Aeroplane Over the Sea, a few Bon Iver tracks. Which is almost embarrassingly indie looking at it like that, but the sunshine and my housemate next door's taste for RnB does that to me. My other housemate keeps blasting The Pipettes and Hot Chip and other highly danceable stuff through the floor, which equals fun times. I think, though, the song that will encapsulate these past new months will be the dreamy Já Sei Namorar, by Tribalistas. It's gone through a cycle in terms of house affections. James introduced it me, Cordy got obsessed, Natasha was at first unconvinced and has since been converted. It preserves that sensation of lounging around in the sunshine, feeling young, having finished your work and relishing the summer ahead.

On an ACTUAL closing note, I had a fight with vodka the other night, which it thoroughly won, stealing my memory and ability to walk in a straight line, and leaving me with a fair few bruises. I'm such a dolt.

Brain buzzing, sleep desired.

2009-04-12T01:07:20Z

It feels like a night for staying up, for watching to see if the sunrise is worth capturing on camera, talking and reading and idling the hours away. But travel and sleep pull at my body and for once I just don't want caffeine.

Tomorrow, tomorrow. Some will rest, some eat chocolate, some will worship, others will just appreciate the day off. Some will feel vaguely confused and wonder what they think, but not me. No, I've got it all tidily worked out - the hours of thought, the alternative options - been there, done that. Tried it all. Got the T-shirt, thankyouverymuch. I suppose a week or so submerged in the Catholic undertones of my Irish family's town naturally reiterates the atheism I admitted and committed to three years ago.

I'll close with some (translated) words from Sartre, from Huis Clos/In Camera/No Exit first repeated to me by airlight who knew her audience well.

"GARCIN: I "dreamt," you say. It was no dream. When I chose the hardest path, I made my choice deliberately. A man is what he wills himself to be.

INEZ: Prove it. Prove it was no dream. It's what one does, and nothing else, that shows the stuff one's made of.

GARCIN: I died too soon. I wasn't allowed time to--to do my deeds.

INEZ: One always dies too soon--or too late. And yet one's whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are--your life, and nothing else."

And if that's not an encouraging Easter message, I don't know what is.

One of those days

2009-04-03T14:26:28Z

I should be writing an essay but instead I am just reading poetry, drenched in the sunshine.

The National Curriculum seems to be working

2009-03-06T12:45:18Z

In a lecture on irony yesterday, the lecturer first used an example from 'A Modest Proposal' by Jonathan Swift. She asked if we were familiar with the text, and a few cursory hands were raised. Her next example for analysis was 'My Last Duchess' by Robert Browning. She again asked if anyone was familiar with it. Three quarters of the lecture theatre put their hands up. She was taken aback and wondered why so many of us knew it. There was quiet laughter as the realisation spread that we'd practically all studied it at GCSE. Five or six years ago, almost 200 fourteen and fifteen year olds were sat in GCSE English lessons in classrooms across the UK, reading 'My Last Duchess'. Little did we know that several years down the line we would all smile in recognition at the 56 lines, at university, in a stylistics lecture, on a cold Thursday afternoon in Nottingham.

Death

2009-01-27T02:13:29Z

Today I found out that a girl I went to high school with has died. I wasn't particularly close to her, and probably best knew her in about 2000/2001, but I feel sad nonetheless. Her name was Gladys. I gather that she was sick for a long time, and that not many people knew about it. I only hope that her close friends and family are enduring. I don't remember the last time that I spoke to her, but I think that we parted on good terms.

History

2009-01-24T15:35:46Z

Watching Obama's inauguration set my mind wandering back to London, to my A-level History classroom of two years ago, to Miss Richards and her scrutiny of African American civil rights from 1865 to 1980. I thought of her, small Welsh bundle of energy that she is, with friends or colleagues watching the historic moment. In the same way, during Obama's campaign I'd thought of her down in her little corner of West London, teaching 17 and 18 year olds about Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and all the other figures. A school friend and I agreed that she was surely using Obama as an example, an argument, a discussion point. We might email her and try to get a whiff of her enthusiasm.

***

As my lack of entries probably indicates, I'm back at university and am increasingly busy. Exam season was filled with the usual tripartite of reading, essays and exams. It's all over now and I've been celebrating by doing laundry and cleaning my room. Clearly I'm living on the wild side. Reading week next week, to be filled with parties and hopefully Richard II. Then back to lectures, which I'm looking forward to, as well as the warmer weather that must be on the way.

A good point

2009-01-18T02:13:25Z

"'I don't understand how you find the time to pursue so many things to a fairly geeky level.' To which I could only say I don't understand what everyone else does with their time."

An old favourite

2008-12-28T00:47:54Z

"It is a lonely idea, a lonely condition, so terrifying to think of that we usually don't. And so we talk to each other, call each other, call each other short and long distance across land and sea, clasp hands with each other at meeting and at parting, fight each other and even destroy each other because of this always somewhat thwarted effort to break through walls to each other. As a character in a play once said, 'We're all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins'. Personal lyricism is the outcry of prisoner to prisoner from the cell in solitary where each is confined for the duration of his life."

Tennessee Williams prefaced his play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with an essay entitled Person - to - Person. The above quote is taken from it. I first read it about three years ago and it still resonates.

Short stories

2008-12-21T23:01:41Z

I've changed the theme of my livejournal once again. Only, this time, I spent ages picking through the CSS document of one of the default themes, tweaking it here and there, changing font styles and sizes. Problem is, now I'm tempted to just keep on fiddling with it rather than being satisfied. As when I started teaching myself basic HTML, I found the entire process really quite enjoyable.

In other news, I've realised recently that I need to start writing/sticking things into my notebooks again, as my creative impulses have been itching lately but refuse to be sated through writing. I think I need that more physical creativity.

I've read a lot of short stories over the past few months; Joyce, Kafka, D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield and so on. I used to loathe the form, until a few years ago when in response to my complaints, a wise teacher introduced me to a couple of really good ones. A few by Doris Lessing, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; that sort of thing. These days I am an utter convert, which reminded me of another teacher of mine. I mentioned him in an entry in 2006:

"He openly admits to having gone through a crisis midway through his English degree at Leicester University, when he got sick of reading novels. Nowadays he says he tends to not bother with novels, choosing only to read essays and short stories"

I've not gone off novels to any degree, but I appreciate his point more than ever.

All the writing I've ever done has always been fragmented and in snippets, so perhaps I will toy with the short story form. I've grown to hate the lengthy character descriptions of Dickens and the endless countryside vistas of Hardy. I want the emotion and the psychology, unreliable narrative, free indirect discourse, a blurring of lines between character and narrator, movement into and between minds. Epiphanies, moments of being, sudden self-awareness; whichever label you prefer. That is what catches me, at just over nineteen and a half.

Reads of 2008

2008-12-19T00:24:26Z

Here follows my favourite reads of 2008. In no particular order:

The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst.
Trash by Dorothy Allison.
The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot.
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis.
Atonement and Enduring Love by Ian McEwan.
Regeneration by Pat Barker.

Fingertips are burning.

2008-12-16T00:05:35Z

I spend so much of my time analysing dissecting breaking down interrogating investigating. It feels like a long time since I created anything.

Recession

2008-12-14T20:33:32Z

My life in Nottingham, though now in an actual house rather than on campus, remains something of a bubble. I've obviously been aware that the economy is in recession, yet I didn't really *know* it until returning to London today. Family friends are being made redundant; my sister has lost her Saturday job; the shopping centres are quiet and shops are closing down in my local area. When you're a student, you're always poor, so why would you notice the falling wealth? Aside from the rising food prices, everything seemed much the same to me, up in the Midlands. But down south, my corner of the city seems subdued.

Night

2008-12-09T12:30:30Z

Why does one feel so different at night? Why is it so exciting to be awake when everybody else is asleep? Late–it is very late! And yet every moment you feel more and more wakeful, as though you were slowly, almost with every breath, waking up into a new, wonderful, far more thrilling and exciting world than the daylight one. And what is this queer sensation that you're a conspirator? Lightly, stealthily you move about your room. You take something off the dressing-table and put it down again without a sound. And everything, even the bed-post, knows you, responds, shares your secret. . . .

--from 'At The Bay' by Katherine Mansfield

featherfinyipp @ 2008-11-17T18:12:00

2008-11-17T18:20:53Z

Today I rose relatively early and took a few hours to myself. I walked to campus with a housemate, as we had a lecture on 'Modernism and the Short Story'. Afterwards I popped into the library to check some information in a book I took out last week and bumped into about three friends. On the way home I made the mistake of trying to take a shortcut through the inside of the hospital, rather than walking through the carpark, as it was raining. As a result I got hopelessly lost and arrived home far later than intended. I then played several levels of Unreal Tournament, which I have discovered to be horribly addictive and mindlessly fun. One of my housemates also does English, and we have a big essay due in this week; we met in the kitchen and made strong cups of coffee and procrastinated by watching Countdown. I then dropped in on another of my housemates who was having problems with her maths coursework, trying to write and use functions in MATLAB. After watching and trying to help for a while, I have returned up to my room at the top of the house, and after one last match of Unreal Tournament, I am ready to face Romanticism once more. That was my day so far, although who knows what time it'll actually end.

Offending the Audience

2008-11-09T22:00:14Z

Yesterday, I saw Peter Handke's 'Offending the Audience' at the theatre on campus:

"The Austrian playwright Peter Handke's 1966 play Offending the Audience isn't a play. The actors do not play characters. The stage does not represent some other place. The time of the action does not unfold as though it were some fictional time. Time passes as it passes in real life for the audience. There is no illusion. There is no play.

How do we know this? The actors tell us. When the curtain parts, four actors come out, the house lights come up, the actors stare at us and they tell us that this is not a play, that the stage does not represent some other place, that the time of the action does not unfold as though it were some fictional time, that time passes as it passes in real life for the audience, that there is no illusion, that there is no play.

Handke's play (or whatever it is) is an hour-long polemical lecture about the theater, taking place in a theater, that tries to be as unlike theater as it possibly can be. We are asked to abandon every expectation, to be the subject of the actors' gaze the way that they are usually the subject of ours. There is nothing offensive in what is represented on the stage; the offense of the title is that nothing at all is represented."

It was great. Offending the Audience was double-billed with an original piece of writing by a girl on my course. Her play was called Nowhere Warm, and I knew most of the cast. It was enjoyable, and well produced, but Offending the Audience will be the piece of the billing that endures in my mind. At one point the entire audience ended up on the stage, which still contained the props from the previous performance. Some of us lay on the hospital bed, some of us sat on chairs. Some stood around. The actors moved around the stage and around the seating, throwing in asides and confiscating mobile phones that went off. One unsuspecting man rang an audience member who didn't put his phone on silent; one of the actors seized it, put it on speaker and asked how the caller felt about being an actor on stage now.

Fitting words

2008-10-22T14:41:00Z

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

FYI

2008-10-09T01:17:33Z

Sir Richard Eyre guest lectured at my university today. I can inform you all that the blogosphere terrifies him.

Words from the wilderness

2008-09-30T14:09:57Z

I still don't have any internet in my house, although the wireless router arrived today. Hopefully it should be up and running by Thursday and I shall return to cyberspace.

"Alas! 'Frailty thy name is Genius!' What is become of all this mighty heap of hope, of thought, of learning, and humanity? It has ended in swallowing doses of oblivion"

From Romanticism: An Anthology, edited by Duncan Wu.

I have decided that I am going to do a postgraduate degree, probably in 20th century literature.

Post-travels update.

2008-09-06T21:12:31Z

I got back from the US almost two weeks ago and it was great fun. Edinburgh was also busy and enjoyable. For some reason it cost me less than last year, which was a very welcome surprise. It was very rainy as has been the rest of the UK this summer. Florida was very humid, which actually was quite handy for preventing my contact lenses from drying out at the end of the day, although at about lunchtime I'd always reach a point of "I've had enough of this damn heat now, thanks". It was pleasant being able to amble about in the evenings without having to wear any extra layers of clothing. We then travelled up to New York which also boasted some glorious sunshine, happily bereft of the humidity of Orlando. We could only afford a few days up there, so it was a case of packing in as much as possible. I really ought to do justice to my trip with a proper post about them but I am always loathe to recount my recent adventures in detail for some reason. Perhaps at a later date.

Since my return I've moved my stuff up to my rented student house in Nottingham. My sister and I have adjacent rooms on the top floor of my family's house in London, and have done since about 2001. Last week we swapped rooms once they'd both been redecorated, as mine is bigger but largely unoccupied whilst I am at university. So I've been adjusting to my new room. It's smaller, with a sloped ceiling, but has the advantage of a sort of improvised window-seat that I have always coveted. Now at least I can curl up and read in the alcove, with a view across the rooftops. Moving almost all of my worldly possessions twice within such a short space of time was tiresome, but at least I'm set up for about a year now. I'm going to Ireland on Monday to visit my grandparents for a few days. I'll get lots of reading done if it is anything like my usual Irish trips.

I really really enjoyed The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst and absolutely recommend it. I also treated myself to a couple of Tamora Pierce books whilst in the US; she writes young adult fantasy and was my author of choice during my early teens. Unfortunately she is no longer published in the UK, so I was pleased to get my hands on a couple of her recent books that I'd not read. Robin Hobb's 'Forest Mage' provided my annual summer fantasy fix - I got into Hobb a few years ago and avidly consumed her 500+ page fantasy tomes. Since about 2005 I forced myself to slow down and treat myself to one Hobb a summer, as I've basically caught her up in terms of her output as Robin Hobb. Wikipedia explains: "Robin Hobb is the second pen name of novelist Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden (born 1952 in California) who produces primarily fantasy fiction, although she has published some science fiction. From 1983 to 1992, she wrote exclusively under the pseudonym Megan Lindholm. Fiction under that pseudonym tends to be contemporary fantasy. In 1995, she began use of the pseudonym Robin Hobb for works of epic traditional European Medieval fantasy." 'Forest Mage' was good, but not great. I think I'm just not getting on with the protagonist of her most recent trilogy, but if you've any interest in so-called "epic traditional European Medieval fantasy" then you really should read The Farseer Trilogy, consisting of Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin and Assassin's Quest. The US covers look a bit dire, the UK ones are quite nice (John Howe artwork, no less) and they are just so good. Let me know if you read them.

Videos for your consumption

2008-08-09T03:15:46Z

This song's been around for a while but is now being released as a single. It has a pretty cool video to go along with it. You can watch said video here ---> http://www.vimeo.com/1379593

The way this song works is that it winds along in a not-particularly-interesting manner until right at the end when it suddenly rocks the fuck out and transforms itself into a hulking beast of an awesome song for 45 seconds that are totally worth it.

Additionally, shame on me for not endorsing Blood Red Shoes' latest single. 'This Is Not For You' is one of the best songs the band has ever produced. They've been sensible and released it as a single, albeit with a limited edition run. They also had the decency to do it equal justice with one of their best videos to date, too - http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z8nnZuRvrg

Now do yourselves a favour and watch the damn things, as I spared you all irritating embedded players.

On the rise

2008-08-03T00:29:19Z

I'm embarking upon a five hour train journey up to Edinburgh tomorrow, and I am still bereft of my mp3 player due to My First Mugging (tm). Last year I spent most of the journey unconscious, aside from talking to the middle aged man sharing a table with me in the breakfast car about my A-level results for the best part of an hour. Heavy celebratory drinking the night before, as you may recall. I am taking 'The Line of Beauty' by Alan Hollinghurst with me, which should last at least for the trip up. Lately I've read:

Franz Kafka: Stories 1904-1924, edited by J.A. Underwood
The Sweet Shop Owner by Graham Swift
Hotel Du Lac by Anita Brookner
Behind The Scenes At The Museum by Kate Atkinson

I also read a couple of short stories by Doris Lessing, and a bunch of old issues of New Scientist, that my mum bought for 5p each from a charity shop. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is typically Joss Whedonish (read: awesome). airlight's birthday weekend was lots of fun, and this week I've been half-heartedly sorting out stuff for my trip to the US, as well as meeting up with friends for catching up and drinking. Hotel Du Lac woke up my ever-present wanderlust. I'm looking forward to continuing exploring and getting to know Edinburgh.

I think that's everything for now.

Nature or nurture?

2008-07-06T21:22:23Z

My mother reads all kinds of random shit on the internet. As do I. It's a common feature of daily internet usage. My mother just emailed me the following link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement

I really had no other option other than growing up a geek, did I?

(My degree-in-progress is in English studies!)

Recent japes.

2008-07-02T23:50:40Z

Since getting home to London I've been having a mixed time. The first week was marked by my restlessness and struggle to adjust back into family living. I locked myself away for most of the week, sustained by episodes of House and lots of books. This week I've been out and about a lot more; a gig, picnics in the sunshine, cocktails by the river, dinner at an old friend's house. I fill the hours. I've recently read;

Trash by Dorothy Allison.
Dancer by Colum McCann
A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews
Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut
Regeneration by Pat Barker (highly recommended)
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Love, etc by Julian Barnes (well, this will actually be finished tonight).

The Yeti fans among you may be interested to know that I was on the tube the other day and Andy was on my train, wearing a hilarious pair of very large plastic-framed glasses. They looked like something prescribed by the NHS in the 1980s. He was on the same platform as me, and sort of wandered past, prompting me to wander past him in turn, to double-check my hunch. He then sat opposite and a little way along from me on the train, confirming my suspicions. I didn't say anything, as I can't say Charlotte and I have ever built up the same rapport with Andy as with say, Harmony, or John.

Walking to the bus stop today elicited memories of running for the bus, on dark December mornings. You get good at hearing buses in the distance, if you're a London school-child. The slightest hint of that soft hum and build of an accelerating bus engine, or a glimpse of the red smudge amidst the traffic on the horizon is enough to set you off. Battling the inevitably heavy shoulder bag and cumbersome school-shoes, scores of us would freeze for a split-second, tuning into those tentative signals of the vehicle's approach. Then a sudden surge and swell as we hurl ourselves towards the bus stop, fumbling desperately for bus passes or ten pence coins as we run, for these were the days before Oyster cards. Some are superstitious, avoiding manhole covers that lie in batches of three, slaloming around the leg posts of road signs and never stepping on the cracks. Others, usually including myself, forsake the pavement and run alongside the curb, half in the gutter, risking being pinned against parked cars by oncoming traffic. At least this way we can flail our arms madly and demand that the oncoming bus slows and stops at the bus stop. You play up the desperation if the bus has pulled off already but is waiting at traffic lights, you pound on the double doors and look pleadingly at the driver, hoping he'll be a decent one who'll let you on. I caught the E2 bus for 7 years, and one older driver would often just wave me on without checking for my pass or a fare. On other occasions there would be an uptight demon of a woman, who would shout abuse at noisy kids and council-estate mums with prams, struggling to get down the narrow bus aisles. Most often, the bus drivers were faceless men, waving us past with a grunt, resentful of being scheduled to drive during the school runs. Once I sat on a stationary bus for half an hour, as the white-haired Greek bus driver halted the vehicle in the middle of the road that led down from the bus station to the main drag, refusing to move. He was protesting his wages, or his hours, or his impending dismissal. I don't know, I didn't care. I sat and stared down at the canal, recalling the incident from several years ago when they pulled a body out of the water.

Music

2008-06-24T00:55:49Z

"People don’t buy music because of skill. Mostly, they experience music as a loud, rhythmic noise that causes them to dance, or to relive past memories, or as atmospheric background, or to experience emotions other than those directly caused by their situation. Sometimes they experience it as literature, as collections of words that tell stories or offer new ideas."

The literature metaphor is slightly tired, but is as equally relevant in describing my relationship with music as the rest of the passage is. It's not comprehensive, but it's something.