On The Brink

Oh post-scheduler, you save my life once again.

Anyway. Procrastinating found me this quiz. It shows you the percentage of votes one way or the other for each individual question rather than giving you a breakdown at the end, so look out.

Basically I am apparently abnormally naked. There is nothing I will not do, or have not done, whilst naked – with the exception of cooking. Somehow that seems to me just a bit weird. Also I’m convinced I would scald my stomach or get hot fat spat at me or something, somehow. So logistically it’s stupid and it would feel very odd. But skinny dipping, sunbathing, night swimming, sleeping, check check check check. I enjoy and will happily do all of those things, at least, on my own or in the presence of similarly-minded friends. I will get naked in the pool changing rooms, which are communal, without a qualm, though there are cubicles if you want them but the floor is wetter in there because they’re nearer the showers and they’re dark and I’m too blind when I take off my glasses.

Don’t go thinking I wander round naked all the time. I don’t. I just don’t have a problem with it.

Apparently I will happily talk about me being naked on my blog. Oops. Whilst I’m at it, I’ll also tell you about my new stockings…

(jokes. I have no stockings. I have no idea how to wear them without looking like a goth, or one of those people who thinks vintage clothing is for actively recreating a sort of 1950s-fakery-arcadia, or a prostitute or something and I am none of those things. It’s a shame because I think they’re kind of sexy but they’re probably a nightmare to take off in a seductive (or at least not actively off-putting) fashion especially if like me you’re about as dexterous as a mentally challenged goat).

…have some of the Notes I found on my phone.

Nine:

Rob says: “PESSAMIST: DIFFICULT IN EVERY OPPORTUNITY.

OPTOMIST: OPPORTUNITY IN EVERY DIFFICULTY”

(I love him but he can’t spell).

Six:

I wonder what of the music being made now will stand the test of time:? I have a theory that by and large the music that hits the charts now from less popular genres has broken through that particular barrier so maybe they will last?

(As you might have guessed the time stamp on this one is definitively the wee hours).

Eight:

I have actually developed a minor crush on that last guy becuase he takes photos of his pets and flowers :S !

Renegade Brass Band.

(talking to H at photosoc one night. Well, writing her a note, anyway).

Four:

Some kind of emotional dive bar I crank out the same feelings like cheap spirits or piss-weak beer in seedy profligacy. Discounts and doubling up so you get twice as much cliche for your cash and could drown your wretched face in the brine spilling from my eyes.

I imagine my heart skittering across a tiled marble floor – black and white, Italian, leaving a trail of shining scarlet blood, gappy, clotted, lumps and gouts and thin translucent trails between, and the toe of your shoe as you walk away, red on brown leather, pointed, shining.

(Jenny goes all emo ‘n’ ting).

Three:

‘Course you’re not, you’re not scared of anything. Box falls out of the sky, man falls out of box, man eats fish custard!’

(The first episode of the latest series of Doctor Who. As if you didn’t know).

Ten:

“…and every time we did it, it was destroying me inside…”. X’s testimony. Sex. Guilt. Oh, help.

Five:

Stressed is Desserts spelled backwards.

Seven:

Random Man At Bus Stop: What he’s looking at is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen, yet he can’t quite believe it and however much he loves it it hurts his eyes as it – she? – and now (if I ever wasn’t) I am extrapolating wildly, from my mute seat here in this bus in the slowly waking springtime heart of the city – walks towards him. The end. The beginning. Chapter One.

(Please tell me I’m not the only one that makes up stories about the people I see waiting for buses/on trains/on other journeys?)

Two:

You are the person that I love most that I’ve ever met. Shofolk sandals, £125.

(No, I don’t know either. I think one’s a quote from what is quite unreasonably one of my favourite books, and one is, well, shoes).

The rest of my notes are excruciatingly dull, the end.

Look at it one way, and I am interested in everything. Look at it another way, and I am a sponge. Look at it again, and perhaps I’m just a coward.

Because here is the thing: I don’t have confidence in my discernment between what, as culture, entertainment, pastime, beauty, oh-heck-I-can’t-find-the-word-I-mean, is worthwhile, and good, and interesting, and what is not. The thing is, it’s just likes and dislikes. I was talking about this on Fi’s blog, on this post here, just the other day. It’s only recently that I’ve started to be able to volunteer that I like this band or that artist, or knitting or poi or climbing or walking or poetry or whatever, without first testing the water, seeing if that’s ‘OK’ because of something the person or people I’m talking to has already said. And even now I’m scared of being judged, of saying to people whose opinions I care for, I Like Going To Life Drawing Classes or You Should Read Ted Hughes (it’s true, you should). So that’s one issue: I’m terrified of being ‘wrong’ about the things I like.

And the other problem is this, and I think it’s the more entrenched issue, and I don’t know whether or not it is a problem or what: if I like or respect a person, they’re a good friend or I fancy the pants off them or I just hold them in high esteem, I am then hugely influenced in what I am interested in by what they are interested in too. As I said in the comment I wrote which made me think about all of this, ‘Oh, you’re an intelligent, morally upstanding and attractive young man, perhaps I even fancy you, this must mean you have better taste in music/books/films than me’. I mean, what. It doesn’t have to mean that at all. So I pick up and get hugely enthused about other peoples’ interests and hobbies but due to a combination of paragraphs one and two there is very little cultural exchange in any of my friendships. I won’t have the balls to swap your Byrd for my Woolf, your skydiving for my parcours, your gritty realist inner-city drama for my Lark Rise to Candleford, or even suggest those things. You, dear new person, might never see me do fire poi or strip the willow or nervously eye a scree slope, consider it gravely, and decide to walk sedately down the mountain in case I cripple my knees, after all. Basically I walk into your life and I am interested in you and all the things you do so I greedily gobble it all up and have nothing to show you in return, and that’s not good enough. All I can say in my favour is that I don’t get interested in things I don’t find interesting. So perhaps, for example, I’ve spent the last year listening to folk and occasionally drawing naked men (yah really), but that doesn’t mean I don’t still do poi or knit or read (thanks C, incidentally, the Christmas literary tour is going very well). Next year, who knows, I shall probably have even more interests. Mongolian throat-singing or embroidery or caving. No, wait, never caving. Terrifying. I like caves when I know I will definitely be able to breathe and preferably have enough space to do star jumps and don’t have to swim along in the dark underneath who knows how many tonnes of rock. It’s fun being a magpie, I think too many people I know get stuck with the interests they’ve settled with, but I think it’s about time I started coming out of the closet and shoving interesting new things down peoples throats. Oh don’t look at me like that you know what I meant when I wrote it.

In all fairness perhaps I’m not like this at all. This is another one of those things where I can’t see myself clearly enough from far enough away to be able to tell. So…readers-who-know-me-in-real-life. Answers, please?

Another film that I have recently watched. Sadly I wasn’t completely awake or compos mentis at the time of watching due to mild inebriation and the fact that I was gradually acquiring one absolute bugger of a headache. Anyway, I enjoyed it, and it was interesting. One of those films that is slightly confusing when you start to watch it and then you feel terribly clever when you piece it all together and then rather stupid when you realise that everyone else got it when you got it too and you have no real reason to feel that clever.

Lots of depression, mental illness, and a possible parallel world, as well as various delusions and things. Those are the themes. It had the feel of a comic-book remake – I have no idea whether or not this is the case – due to the visual imagery and costumery used – some very strong visual tropes and metaphors and some very steampunk styling. Captivating characters, although none of them seemed terribly happy but then I rather feel that that was the point. And a it was nice to see an appearance from Jeff from Coupling (no idea what the actor’s name is, but there you go. Incidentally, on the subject of Coupling, it’s a great show, and furthermore the last series is definitely just as worth watching as the first three despite the absence of Jeff (though it would be nice to have more of a conclusive ending to Jeff’s story – or to see him again properly), very funny, although it makes me worry about my thirties already…!) although also odd to see him being serious and a grown-up.

I can’t really say much more without giving away lots of the plot, but you should definitely watch it. It feels a bit Neil Gaiman or Cory Doctorow somehow, and like I say, dystopic, dark, and comic-book-y, in an entirely good way. I very much enjoyed it. The DVD case compares it to Donnie Darko and other films and I can kind of see why but I’m not sure that that does it justice. Anyway, very enjoyable. Also, Eva Green – beautiful, as ever.

This is another film I watched recently. Obviously being The Road I didn’t enjoy it as much as I liked Avatar, because, let’s be honest, it’s about a man and his son slowly dying all alone in a post-apocalyptic, dead-Earth hell, where seemingly everyone is out to steal their stuff and also probably eat them.

It’s not wholly faithful to the book and there is, surprisingly (but also not that surprisingly) too much schmaltz – all this flashbacking to scenes before the wife/mother to man and boy dies, played by Charlize Theron and utterly, hopelessly, pathetically adored by Viggo Mortensen. One wonders what she ever saw in him. The cat is currently standing on my shoulder so I’m sorry if he takes it upon himself to contribute to this entry. A couple of we-are-going-to-make-you-cry scenes with a piano. And an ending that was ambiguous but in almost entirely the wrong way – not, Can I Trust You, but Can You Even Be Real? Now I can’t see the screen. Thanks, cat.

However, for a film adaptation of a book it was better than I expected by a long way and definitely worth seeing. Beautifully shot, and it threw up a lot of questions about morality, death, suicide, grief, love, and so on. Good acting, and maybe they missed a trick on some of the screenplay but the film is probably worth watching for one scene alone where they meet on their travels an old blind man and see the slowly changing morality of the boy and his father, separately, and also, just who is really in charge.

I have to say, though, if everything was dead, if all that was left was me and a few thousand other human beings, with nothing to eat but each other, the odd dead insect, and a dwindling supply of stores to loot for tins and the like, if I had the guts I would seriously consider suicide; I would certainly not make much effort to stay alive, just because, well, what for? The film managed to present suicide as actually the most sane and rational choice; Viggo Mortensen’s optimism was blind, naive, visionary, and utterly mad.

Anyway, if you’ve read the book, I would definitely at least consider watching the film. If you haven’t read the book, you should read it; and I don’t know whether or not it would be your type of thing. The cat is nudging my face now and definitely wants some attention, or more food, or something, so I’d better be off.

Gflawrence pointed me in the direction of this beautiful video, The Third and The Seventh. It’s sort of terrifying in the end, seeming so very artificial and hinting at the dystopic, I think.

Yeah, I should definitely have been an arts student some days.

In other news, bloody Nora, it’s still snowing. I am most unimpressed, I must say. I really, really felt like going out running today but it was just too icy to make it worthwhile. I do mean that – yes, me, running. I just really felt like it. I hate this snow. It’s not fun or pretty any more – it never was fun because I never got to sledge in it or anything, although it was pretty for a while. I’m bored now, and it’s just restrictive.

Anyway, it’s lunch time.

If you go and see it, you must, must, must see it in 3D.

It’s a visual spectacular – brilliant CGI, so well done that sometimes I could hardly tell what was and what wasn’t computer generated except for the fact that some of the things I was seeing just don’t exist on this planet, and couldn’t, either.

Arguably the plot is derivative and a little cliched, the point it makes hamfistedly obvious – don’t destroy the planet we have because it is what sustains us, literally – and some of the actual script is a little clunky or obvious.

But the thing is, the plot almost comes secondary to the absolute sheer beauty and spectacular nature of the whole thing. This whole different world that the writers have imagined up, with creatures that work in a whole different ecosystem and whose evolution you can, up to a point, actually guess at – it’s incredibly cohesive and some of the things they imagine are truly original.

I really enjoyed it – it was long, perhaps more than three hours, but it really didn’t feel like it, I was completely captivated. And so yes, if you get the chance, go – watch it. In 3D. And to be honest think of it like going to a show rather than like going to the cinema – forgive it its weaknesses of plot or dialogue and see it as, well, a spectacle. It’s amazing what they can do with 3D, and how they do it.

This is actually about dreams of things I would like to do with my life and not stuff I’ve thought whilst asleep and not accountable for what happens in my head. So here is a list, ranging from the mundane to the definitely-never-going-to-happen-but-wouldn’t-it-be-nice, of things I’d like to do some day, outside of the whole career-marriage-kids-die-happy thing. I’ve probably done a post like this before but it’s probably changed a bit, and I felt like writing this list, so here it is:

1. Learn to knit well enough that I can knit exciting clothes for myself and (sorry, kids) my maybe-some-day children (they’re going to hate me).
2. See a rocket being launched (albeit from a certain distance).
3. Travel round the world without going on a single plane (this is not particularly likely)
4. Be able to draw people that look not only like actual human beings, but also like the people they were originally meant to look at (to this end, I’ve joined the Life Drawing class at my university).
5. Know about wine – what’s good, what’s bad, what’s better, what those strange words mean, what goes with what, and most importantly, what I do and do not like (in slightly less vague terms than ‘this is nice’ or ‘this tastes cheap’).
6. Know one end of a camera from the other (ditto joining PhotoSoc). To be fair to myself I am my mother’s and grandfathers’ (yes, both of them) daughter/granddaughter insofar as they are all (or were) good and interested amateur photographers (my grandda does the photos for the Peoples’ Theatre in Newcastle and still develops the films himself in his darkroom behind the kitchen); and I’ve taken some not completely terrible shots in the past, but I would like to know more about the technical side of things rather than just be baffled as I am at the moment by all the strange numbers and symbols and moving parts on my grandfather’s old manual or the various DSLRs I’ve managed to get my hands on in the past.
7. Pretty-much-always be part of a half decent orchestra/choir.
8. Learn to sew and make my own patterns (because I like very few of the patterns you can buy in the shops because they don’t appear to be designed by anyone who really knows what’s going on in fashion right now – so I don’t know where Lucy gets her patterns!
9. Some day get a solo in the university chamber choir.
10. Learn to ski (seriously it looks fun and also I’m kind of embarassed that I can’t – it seems that everyone has been at least once and I don’t want to end up doing a Bridget Jones (although I’d be far better dressed, all sleek in all-black minimalist awesome skiing…stuff. Whatever people wear when they’re skiing) and making a fool of myself; it just seems like one of those things I ought to be minimally competent at).
11. Make a creme brulee – I don’t know why, I’ve just always wanted to try.
12. Have singing lessons and get vaguely good at this whole singing thing.
13. Go and buy lots of clothes in London next time I have money (Camden, Portobello Market, Oxford Street, and the rest. Perhaps I should go on a minibreak for one).
14. Climb all the Munros (mountains higher than 3000ft in Scotland)
15. Learn the first Cello Concerto by Schostakovich.
16. Go back to That Hamlet Near Morfa Nefyn (I can’t remember what it was called) on the Lleyn Peninsula, Wales – unbelievably stunning even in the rain.
17. Have my entire wardrobe consist either of things I have owned since forever or of things which I bought second-hand or sourced ethically (and be able to afford things like this)
18. Be able to paint/draw and be pleased enough with my efforts that I can stick ‘em up on my walls in frames and such. I would love to know how to handle oils well but I’ve lost the confidence I had as a child/young teen so I’ll work my way up from pencil and charcoal slowly, thanks!
19. Have a book published (why not? you know this blog is beautiful :P)
20. Habitually sometimes cook from a recipe – and an interesting recipe at that. Yes, I can make up delicious food from scratch using only lentils and cabbage and taters, but I would like to have to arse around for days finding a deli that stocks asafoetida or something, and then do finicky little things with this or that ingredient, and then unveil a dish of something so unbelievably perfect that it makes you almost cry, matched with the perfect bottle of wine (see no.5), and followed by a melt-in-the-mouth have-more-than-three-spoonfuls-and-your-heart-will-stop dessert. Preferably served with candles and Mr Right and not much else.
21. Live in London for a while.
22. Go to the Proms once in a while.
23. Go to bed every day feeling that I have accomplished something (I like that feeling in my life at the moment. I may be incredibly stressed but I like that I am getting things done)….

…which means I should get off the laptop now and go and do some more work. Is there anything I’ve forgotten?

As a student, I don’t get out of the student bubble much. Currently, in a small way, I am doing just that – having just watched Newsnight, as I would at home, I am now watching a documentary presented by Peter Capaldi about Scottish portrait art, and it’s fascinating.

Anyway, I don’t get out of the student bubble much, and I miss art. So next time I have a day or an afternoon to spare, and I don’t feel that I should be exercising or working, I will go and find myself an art gallery that I don’t have to pay to enter and just go and stare at the beautiful things that people can create. I love that moment when you see a piece of art that literally takes your breath away because it chimes so exactly with how you are feeling or what you consider to be absolutely and completely beautiful. And it’s not just limited to the wonderful things you see in the Sage or the Tate or the National Gallery; at my old college’s end-of-year exhibition I saw a photograph of the eye of a horse with a really shallow depth of field and such rich, beautiful colours and reflections across the surface of the eyebrow. It was, quite simply, arresting. And that is the feeling that I am looking for. So yes, I will find the time to go and find me some art.

And talking of which – yesterday I went to a life drawing class held by the architects. Apparently I’m not shockingly bad at this. So I shall keep going, and gradually I shall become bloody brilliant at it. Although next time I’m taking a pencil sharpener.