High Expectations

When meeting new people, especially in large-ish groups, theres a time when trying to impress, making an effort to be likable, social, being somewhat overly polite (natural in these situations), and the usual small talk is spent, and you feel it's time to leave. It's a weird moment, you could go on but if you do, our real selves start to appear, along with all our flaws. There's a fear there, that or you could just run out of things to say. If things turn down, theres usually someone who shows themselves indirectly - getting seriously drunk, doing something stupid like daring someone to throw knives between their legs etc. You get the idea.

If you think about, it's really just a futile attempt at actually communicating (getting a reaction), born out of a weird kind of expectation that the night should end on a high and everyone should be best friends with everyone else. Ultimately you leave unsatisfied and a bit disappointed, and maybe a bit insecure because you thought you weren't engaging, funny, interesting, whatever enough.

I actually like it when there's nothing more to say, I like the silence. Thats a little test of mine, to see if they 'get' the silence actually being a nice place to be. A comfortable silence is always good. It means we've stopped trying, and now we're opening up, taking off the mask. But then again there'll always be people who just need to talk, and can't stop. A headache at times, you need to pace it right in manageable doses. Bombarded by constant stimulation (artificial or otherwise), it seems like we're turning into machines, 'on' all of the time with no off button. If we dare to stop, there must be something wrong with you.

The fat guy, tramp, and other people on the edge of society

We were on the train to central, it was packed full of people going about their lives. There were some young guys talking in some foreign language being a bit loud and lairy, snickering under their breath. I noticed a man standing at the end of the carriage looking a bit dishevelled and realised he had a huge split at the back of his trousers. I don't know if he knew it himself, but I think he knew the whispers and snickering were directed at him. I can't laugh or take pleasure in this kind of thing. It could be some very overweight person, there may be an odour, or they simply could be shabbily dressed. It's quite common unfortunately, and you really notice it on the tube. This may sound patronising, but I really do feel sorry for these people.

I remember another man, he was quite old and small, his clothes were covered in dust, it looked like he'd been beaten up. You could see he had sewn up some tears in his clothes. I always wonder how these people came to be the way they are. What kind of life have they had? And it dawns on me that they may not have anyone, no family, friends, people who might care for them. To die that way would be a real tragedy. Alone. Unfortunately there are thousands like them.

There's a character played by David Niven that resonates with this in the 1958 film Separate Tables. An astonishing performance, completely uncharacteristic of Niven. He won an Oscar for it.

Finding your way home

A man lies face down on a brown carpet floor, his face obscured. He's in one of those cheap roadside motels. I know who he is, no doubt. For a moment the thought that he might be dead crosses my mind, but he gets up, looks into a mirror, and proceeds to live the day as he normally does, on auto pilot, in apathy, as if the universe is indifferent...

...And then it happens again, but to another man I know, not unlike the first. The circumstances are never explained. Why this repeating motif? Drifter, nomad, hack, survivor, the rolling stone and his hat...I know this man.

Oh, Brothers...

I had this red strawberry cider the other night (the night of 'ambiguous'). I was just going for some air waiting for the others to come out, when I got a few serious stares from some guys passing me in the pub. Alright, nothing wrong there, very nice to get some attention. After a couple of goodbyes from a few friends, three of us went back in, after another round, an arm wrestle and a bit of banter, Rei came out with something along the lines of 'look at you, with your red lips, you look like a geisha...'. I thought it was just the alcohol running up my blood circulation. When I got back home I saw what everyone saw. Bloody hell, I looked like I'd just sucked the blood out of someone, like a vampire. They were bright, bright red! It wasn't my lips but the nasty food dye in the drink. I went around with this for a couple of days before it started to fade. Oh, Brothers! Talk about Tru Blood.

Playlist of an era

Love the incidentals...

I love Ambiguity

I was a bit drunk last night. It was around 2am, my ears were ringing (and still are) from standing too close to the amps at a friends gig, and I could feel the alcohol taking its toll. One thing it doesn't touch though is my head, it's always clear. I wasn't really tired, so I just lay there in that quiet stillness at night, that time when thoughts come to you...

I've always liked the word 'ambiguity', it's meaning. Like a faint familiar smell, half remembered from childhood, yet you can't really put yout finger on what it is. Maybe recently watching Mad Men had something to do with it (love that series) and Stephen Poliakoffs Capturing Mary. That word always comes to me when I watch these programs. Yet, I was thinking, can something be truly ambiguous?

Main Entry:	ambiguity
Part of Speech:	noun
Definition:	uncertainty of meaning
Synonyms:	anagram, double meaning, double-entendre, doubt, doubtfulness, dubiety, dubiousness, enigma, equivocacy, equivocality, equivocation, incertitude, inconclusiveness, indefiniteness, indeterminateness, obscurity, polysemousness, polysemy, puzzle, tergiversation, uncertainty, unclearness, vagueness
Antonyms:	certainty, clarity, clearness, definiteness, explicitness, lucidity

Hmm, I always thought the word meant something undefined, or indefinable, something almost neutral, unbiased. Isn't something that you thought was indefinable, just that because you don't know how to see it, to decipher it, to define it within what you know of the world.

Certainly Mad Men has an agenda, however subtle or nuanced. Yet it's done with such care and attention things are left for you to decide. Maybe that what it is, it's not preaching or coming from certain dogma, it's not patronising or treating you like some mindless sheep. Non-judgemental? Obviously we live in 2010, not 1962, politics, society etc. was different back then and the writers of Mad Men have certainly pointed those out. But, it's up to me to make up my mind and it asks questions about what we think of is 'right' or 'wrong' today...very clever stuff.

Capturing Mary on the other hand is an open ended book. I was talking about this with a friend while we were in her car, 'what does it mean?', 'why did she give that man so much power over her?', 'what was Poliakoff trying to say?'...so the conversation went on, 'we can talk till the cows come home, we won't be any the wiser' I said, to cut to the point. It stopped there. I love ambiguity. Nothing is set in stone.

Clarity in not knowing: what, where, when, how, why

Looking back at the work I've done, I've now realised that the more I know, the crapper my work gets. I really didn't know wtf I was doing back then, I was feeling my way through stuff, if it felt right, it was. There wasn't all this bullshit talking and self conscious over analysis. People really do talk alot of meaningless shit these days, they do it for the sake of it and because 'it's good to talk'. Please, give me a break. Talking is seriously overrated (have I just contradicted myself from my last post?). I look back and I see stuff I've done and I ask myself...'was that me? I did that? where is that person?'

Specifically speaking, women in education, there are simply too many of them, all of my tutors bar one pompous arsehole, about 90% of students at uni are female. This constant over emphasis on yapping on about the what, where, when, how & why is killing intuition and creativity. Is it a female thing? Honestly, I think it is together with this culture of talkshows, self-help and pseudo-psychology, throw in remenants of feminism, and there you have it.

Intimidation Confirmed

Remember the graduation dinner a couple of months ago?

I was supposed to go out to a thing with some mates last Sat, but decided I couldn't be bothered to suffer the wrath of someone unnamed. Little did I know who else went along to the thing, when around 8 at night I got a txt from said mates telling me they were in the pub up the road inviting me to join them. Now, a bit apprehensive (that particular pub usually looks a bit rough at best), decided to go out into the pouring rain.

Blah, blah, blah. Said mates had brought her boyfriend (the one that fancies me), Rob (unattached twin), and a madman who I briefly glimpsed making faces through a PizzaHut restaurant with his girlfriend (Keiran). Anyways, things seemed to go the same way as before, everyone talked to babyface mate, all ease, but as usual things weren't so easy when it came to me (even the madman met his match). Oh woe is me. The boyfriend probably had a few too many and started with some shoulder leaning action, slightly unnerving but I just ignored it. Maybe these guys needed a few more drinks before they could muster the courage to speak to me. Seriously, I went down there with a big old t-shirt, leggings and trainers, I looked like I'd just woken up. This is Saturday night, everyone was dressed to pull. Come on guys, I am that scary? wtf.

Maybe we should all wear ridiculous masks like Shyguy. Doesn't he look like some homicidal x'mas elf/gnome about to pull a knife.

You want mash potatoes? You make it!

What do you do when even your own mother says..."you were asking for it" ?

Turn the other cheek, lay down like a dog and take it...this is how guilt for the last 25 years of ignoring your own children is thrown back at me...as guilt. What an inconvenience to her. It's my fault as a woman of course. So the cycle begins again.

Can you imagine a situation where you wanted mash potatoes, but oh no, you had to mash them yourself? Not peel or cook them, just mash them with a masher. Could you? But then, you had to share them with the people who took the time and effort to cook the beef stew and carrots and peas that you requested the night before. Whatever. "Make sure you get the lumps, do it properly, there's lumps in it." Blah , blah, I'll just sit in front of the computer and stare at my Facebook while I do this. "You're not doing it properly, did you put the salt in?" Urgh! I'm not doing it now! "Why don't you do it properly son?" URgh! Blood pressure, while I sit in front of Facebook, rising, sweating, stress, I can't take the stress, why are they bitching all the time!!!...

Then the violence begins here. All over a fucking bowl of mash potatoes. All because he couldn't take the 'stress' over being 'criticized' about a fucking bowl of mash potatoes.

Can you believe it?

Oh btw, seriously there is nothing going anywhere in his life (or Facebook) where it would justify such disgusting behaviour.

When words are no good

Film is dead says Will Self

Trying to shut myself off from the repulsive commercial pop classical music concert my mum was watching on tv, I came across these words in the Times Review:

Film is dead...

I don't usually like reading any newspapers least of all the overly self-conscious Times, and I usually find Will Self (yes, that's his name) a little annoying and somewhat verbose, but these words immediately jumped at me because I've been feeling this slow creeping death for the last couple of years. But it is more than just the endless run of 'bad' films, as Self points out, it's a wider cultural loss of a centre, culture seems to have become decentred, fragmented.

Will Self: "Then I looked back on a childhood, an adolescence and an early adulthood when movies were a way of thinking about the world, a multi-dimensional style guide, a source of cool and kicks - and most importantly shared references. Without the common horde of film references - quite as much as popular music - it's difficult to see how my generation would cohere atall.... ...the sadness is at the loss of a specifically collective experience, just as when there were only three terrestrial television channels, people would all watch, then discuss the same programmes, so up until the 1980s you could be certain that people would all have seen the same films more or less the same time. To understand this loss you have only to reflect that the expression 'shared culture' is really a tautology."

Tautology? Looked it up but none the wiser. Still, you get the gist of what he's saying. He sounds nostalgic doesn't he. This shared culture of my generations childhood is now being regurgitated. Nostalgia is big business now. I'll go back to this in another post. Eavesdropping on his teenaged kids and their friends:

"...I have no sense of films centrality for them; instead they are at the vortex of so much full-motion imagery - on tv, computer screens, games consoles, CCTV, 3G phones - that the silver screen hovers only in their mid-distance, a ghostly presence unless animated by the next big novelty spectacle."

So films need to compete with all of this other media. Here comes 3D bringing what's on screen literally in-yer-face, blind us by turning up the contrast, deafen us with even louder and more precisely engineered sound effects and editing, crank up the THX so much that we shake off of our seats...jesus, it's as if they literally want you to 'feel', 'experience' something, anything! This sensory bombardment just leaves us numb and dissatisfied. And they play the same tricks every time, we become desensitised, it loses its effect. So, we move onto the next thing, searching for meaning, something to share.

"Rather than bring our imaginations with us into the auditorium, we abandon them at the door."

The experience of alot of recent film is becoming passive. Lay back and think of England...like being fucked by a machine, it asks nothing of you except your body. There is no heart or soul.

The luxury of making a pact

A friend was clearing out her stuff from another friends place. She found a load of stuff from 20 years ago including a photos album of her first years in London back in the early 80s when perms and leggings were big. She told me she left out of anger, a need to get away from her family. She didn't do it alone though. Her sister also was amongst the flatmates, friends, boyfriends, strippers and casual relationships in the photos. Theres a key there. This came up in conversation and she made the point that anger is a good motivator. Sure, but would, could you have done it if you hadn't had your sister there?

It's always easier to take risks when you're taking them with someone else, someone you know and trust. There's always that other person to encourage and support you onward, and vice versa. She was fortunate to have that someone. It's these times when I feel totally and utterly alone.

Rush Hour Meditation

My previous post reminded me of a convo I had a while back with a friend about 'getting away from it all', the rat race, the daily ordeal of getting to work - rush hour. Pausing for a minute I confessed to a liking for that moment, where you are almost unconscious of where you are and what you doing, you are in the swarm, scrum, caught up in the flow of life, of humanity. I remember saying it was a bit mad, but theres a kind of bond there, you become part of a massive movement of people. Weather desired or not it's pretty irrevelant, it just is...maybe that's part of it's magic.

Duplicate Paradise

After a long day setting up an exhibit, me and a friend wondered down to Borough market, somewhere I had wanted for a long time to go visit (food being something I love). It was a quiet weekday so there weren't so many stalls or people. The usual cafe that my friend went to was closed, so we found a coffee/chocolate shop. It was one of those trendy places where everything was made from 'aged & battered' wood. We sat there for while, talked, and it just struck me that every detail of this place was designed, there was nothing left to chance. Lighting came in the form of drop down raw bulbs with trendy designed shades. It was purposely dark and in the background you could hear jazz music playing. It felt totally contrived and empty. The tea was nice, we had a sample of some cocoa nuts...nice. I just couldn't stand the place.

I don't know what I was expecting. Maybe something with a bit of edge, something raw. I made this comment to my friend. I liked those places where not everyone had a guaranteed smile, that you weren't sure if they were going to be friendly or not. Places where it was a bit dirty and people used a plank of wood because it did the job not because it conveyed a certain meaning or attitude that was in vogue. They even had books for people to read spread nonchalantly on one of these 'battered' wooden tables, and a comments book filled with kids drawings. Sweet.

My friend, on the contrary, liked this.

Maybe I don't like paradise, but I knew as I left that place that there was another one, an exact duplicate in some other trendy part of town.

Respect

Don't know where I saw this, but I've had the image of an old man taking his hat off as a sign of respect in my head. This always reminds me of going to my grandmas funeral. On the way there in the car procession I noticed a few elderly men doing this, or stopping and holding their hand to their heart. I remember thinking at the time how it seemed like I'd travelled a couple of years back to a time when people showed respect, curtesy, manners. It just seems such a contrast now. I was quite moved by it, just strangers passing by, which is why I've never forgotten it.

As we approached the cemetary, as part of tradition, we started throwing 'ghost money' out the windows. Not the fake looking printed money, but plain squares of paper with a square of gold leaf in the centre. Proper 'ghost money'. This was paying respect to the people who were already dead there, telling them to welcome another soul. We got a few disapproving looks from people, but of course they didn't know.

Tennis in the rain

There are some physical things you do that really make you feel good. This is one of them. I don't know what it is. Maybe the combination of total concentration on the ball, the sheer physical work and a total disregard for the rain pouring down on us...something about it is exhilarating.

...I just realised what I said in the first line, you naughty ppl;p

Am I scary or something?

Three of us were out on a graduation dinner with a bunch of my friends mates who I know in passing.

I've known this for sometime, or suspected it, but now I know for sure. I think I intimidate people, but especially guys. I really don't know what it is about me. I'm not loud, or attention seeking, I try be friendly and join in the convo. But I really never seem to get the same easiness as my other friend who knows these people as much as I do. Maybe it's because she looks like shes just out of high school, with that round baby face of hers and that naive innocence. I suspose that makes people more at ease, unthreatened. Do I intimidate them somehow?

The convo turns to Becky (baby face) finding a BF...I started conplaining about guys being wusses and it always being upto the girl to make the first moves, Rei (the one with her mates and BF) completely agreed...she met her BF on the bus and she had to make the first moves otherwise 'they' would never had happened.

God how many times have there been some guy, who so obviously was attracted to me, but never had the fucking balls to do anything about it!

Fucking story of my life. WTF is wrong with me?! Am I just meeting the wrong people?

Lowest Common Denominator

All my worst fears have been met. I keep pushing myself to believe better of people, but it always seems to come to disappointment. One thing I've learnt these past few days is if you want attention, keep it big, colourful or have hundreds of them. I have none of the above. Unfortunately, selling out on my principles wasn't my intention. Maybe I should have afterall. At least I'd have something to show after three fucking years. Money really does make the world go round.

What the fuck do I do now? I feel let down. I trusted these people. Maybe I should have a bonfire and burn everything I have done. It's all pretty worthless. What a complete waste of my life.

All that is solid melts into air. Again and again.

Survival of the fittest

I've been asleep for the pass three years. Feeling a kind of numb apathy. I've just realised this now. Why? Because everything I have done meant nothing to nobody, even me. Whats changed? The real world begins here. Now the stuff I've done means something to someone, even if I don't believe it.

I'm feeling competitive. I haven't felt like this since before uni. Wtf have I been doing these past fucking years?!

This reminds me of you...

Who were you?

Passing

Have you ever seen or met someone who you thought you knew, was so familiar, but actually never saw them in your life before?

Well this is what happened. Unfortunately, I never got to know this person. It was my last few months at uni, everything was coming to a head, deadlines, setbacks, thing's had to be finished, done. There was no time to even think.

I was meant to set some downtime to remake some pieces that got thrown out by the arseholes running this joke of an institution, but like this person, it never happened.

Everything's finished, over. Fucking regrets, I hate them.

Back from the living

I have had time to post, but haven't been in the right mind to do so. Always the case when you're working to deadlines, it consumes every thought. I have two more before I'm cast into the proverbial sea of postgrads looking for cracks in doorways. I just hope my wavering faith in people to look beyond the obvious and the hard sell bullshit isn't shattered when I finally go pro. How much is luck and how much is effort?

That's it for now, I'll be back...

Hhmm...to...Woah!

It was a friends Bday, she kept going on about this film '500 Days of Summer', so I bought it, had a sneaky watch before I wrapped it up. It was cute but a little bland, I fell asleep towards the end, managed to watch it through though...I love the actress who plays Summer, but I just don't get why it's anything special. Maybe I need more tension, I don't know.

In the same week I got another film through the post, something I'd seen on one of those late nights when you don't feel like sleep, I love these random times when you discover something special. Anyway, it was This Sporting Life, 1960's British New Wave, with Richard Harris. You couldn't get more polar opposite than this, that said in both these films the guys in love do get rejected.

Now that I think about it, this reminds me of a French film I saw a couple of months ago 'Dans Paris', I didn't see the ending though. There were thing's in it that I saw in my relationships and those around me family or otherwise. The younger brother who introduces the film is just like someone I know, little manipulate rat!

What it is about me that I need this tension, a certain harshness of reality, something raw...maybe I don't like being sold happiness. Bah! Maybe I'm just a misery (with a wicked sense of humour of course).

Fortune Pisses On Me

Since the last reality check, I have slipped and fallen on my back, thought I had broken it, couldn't walk for two weeks. My old man had a heart attack, has just come home and started smoking weed again, is imagining evil spirits everywhere (even in me), tried to jump out of the fucking window...what else could Fortune throw at me?

I swear I am going to die soon.

How can I say this?

A real bit of reality here. I have just been attacked by my brother. This has been going on for years, nothing new. He doesn't like to hear the truth, and I am the only one who dares to say it. I just needed to say this, I don't have anything else to add.

Candlelight, Snow, Chekov & Other Thoughts II

I have to mention one of my favourite books in recent years: Philip Marsdens Spirit-Wrestlers: A Russian Journey. There's a particular bit at the beginning which I go back to continually in my thoughts:

Each morning in the yard below my flat, there now appeared a woman with a broom who replaced the wintry scrape-scraping of snow shovels with an odd litany of shouting. 'May the devil take you! The devil dance on your grave! Jokers! Criminals! This isn't a country, it's a prison!'

Such was the vitriol of her cries that it occurred to me that she swept the yard not because she had to, but out of some desperate need for self-expression. When I talked to her, it turned out she was the widow of a former Soviet ambassador to Brazil.

I bought the book on the back of a review in a newspaper, I really didn't know what to expect and was completely fascinated and moved by Marsdens encounters with the people he met along his journey through Russia and the Caucasus.

What seems to connect everything I have read so far, things that I've caught on to, is the reassuring presence of humanity no matter where you are, it seems absolutely intrinsic to us. Even in the worst circumstances (the earthquake in Haiti recently). On the other hand, the cynic in me would think of it in terms of human selfishness (instinctual need to survive?) as an absolute guarantee balanced by human compassion and altrusim. Maybe that's what makes us human, no wonder we get ourselves into so much trouble!

--thought break--

Two moving war films come to mind here.

One surprisingly from 1985 Russia: Come And See (Idi i Smotri). A disturbing, dream-like film, capturing the disbelief, confusion and insanity of terrible events through the eyes of a Russian peasent boy. I've read a few reviews for this and some have complained about the acting being wooden and the Nazi characters being OTT stereotypes. I don't see it personally. Maybe it's our moderate, cosy, polite democracy trying to keep things level headed and objective. 'Overly emotive' I hear them say, 'Russian propaganda'. Knowing what happened to these people, I don't think they have the right to tell them how to feel. It is a kind of revenge film. Expressing the utter outrage and misery of a people treated with such brutality, they are the only ones who could make a film like this. I've never been so angered by a film, and maybe that was the point.

The other is a Polish one from 1957 called Kanal. I loved the people in this film, it was a kind of last chance ditch rallying cry before the madness and eventual dispair of the inevitable. Set in Warsaw it tells of a group of resistance fighters who find themselves in the sewers of the city trying to escape the Nazis. Part of a triology, I haven't managed to get hold of the other two films yet.

Candlelight, Snow, Chekov & Other Thoughts

We had a power cut the other week for over 15 hours. It was snowing and the whole country seemed to be at a standstill. So, having been reduced to using the old gas cooker to sustain myself as best I could and a few candles for light, I thought I'd go through some old favourites of mine. Anton Chekov popped up. A short story would do me fine I thought. Reading this reminded me of a time back in my early twenties when for some reason or other I developed a fascination for Russia.

This massive expanse of land that was neither Europe or Asia: a place between continents, seemed wild, romantic, mysterious. I was a bit of a history buff back then, and having grown up with cold war films and the vague shady politics of the day, Russia was also dangerous, harsh, a place of extremes and contradictions.

I went through a couple of books (incl. Chekov), but none of the big names like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky, I don't think I was ready for that yet. Most were political/war: Orlando Figes monumental A Peoples Tragedy, Stalingrad by Antony Beevor, Intimacy & Terror: Soviet Dairies of the 1930s...

I even remember once some reps came to the door from the communist party. They were holding an event including some screenings of old Russian films, and I so wanted to see a particular film that was listed, I just said yes. God, what was I thinking? When I got to the screening room I had a good look round at the demographics of the people who were there: women, women, and more women, of the wolly, feminist kind. What does say? I really don't know. I can't actually remember the name of the film now...famous as it is...the one with the baby in the pram rolling down the stairs and the red flag against b&w film? Oh, yes, Eisensteins Battleship Potemkin.

All this politics seems far away now. I read 1984 a couple of years later and it felt as if I had read it before. Maybe because I was so familiar with totalitarian stories through films and books, it wasn't shocking as it may have been back when it was published.

I just had a thought. About the definition of 'democracy' and 'freedom'...another post maybe

Symptons of the Day

A strange thing happens when the sun disappears under that horizon. Danger, sex, heightened senses, possibilities not open until darkness falls. People seem to switch their brains into a different mode, like they've been on auto pilot for the day and now they're allowed to become themselves again. The rules of the day don't apply anymore.

A friend was on the train, about 10pm, she was accosted by a guy who thought he could take certain liberties (even with other passengers present on the train). Nothing serious happened thank god. Another friend, who by day is quiet, serious, hardworking, admitted to having a bad habit of getting completely plastered (drunk) most nights, and on occasion running down the street in high heels with nothing on top but a bra.

I feel this change too. Especially past midnight, when the streets are quieter, as if waiting for something magical, exhilirating to happen. Maybe it's the darkness, the shadows, the way the light or lack of it transforms the streets, the qoutidian becomes a playground for our desires. It's a collective thing too, a kind of authorised madness. We become social again, animals...