Modernity and Emasculation

A new disease has crept insiduously upon humanity. I’m being generous by saying humanity. What I really mean is men; a disease has crept insiduously upon the men of today’s world. What do I mean? Well it’s quite simple really.

I was thinking about the movie, A Knight’s Tale (starring Shannyn Sossamon, Rufus Sewell, Heath Ledger) and how much wisdom there is embedded in it. If you haven’t watched it, please run out and buy/rent it. You’ll see this post in a new light. Basically, there was a jousting tournament and the winner would get to have the princess Jocelyn’s hand in marriage. In those days, when they said ‘may the best man win’, it was perfectly logical that the woman would choose to be with the best man. And the men rose to the challenge. If a man found a woman out of his league because he lost a challenge or wasn’t able to support her, he went away to make himself better, fully understanding that the woman would do the best she could for herself by choosing the best man in every situation. He’d ride gallantly away and wish her luck. He’d be a good sportsman and acknowledge his loss gracefully.

Now, men have been emasculated and are afraid of competition. If a woman picks the best man for herself, the left out guy will huff off in a sulk and rather than find ways to improve him self, accuse her of being ‘materialistic’ and a ‘gold digger’. He’ll sit there feeling sorry for himself, slagging women off about how they’re all the same. I’ve seen this happen a million times, and I think, stop moping and feeling sorry for yourself. Either you upgrade yourself to the level where you can attain the type of women you want, or you settle for a woman who is in your leaugue, but you can’t expect a woman to lower her standards because you’re not up to hers. According to Jeanette Winterson, ‘Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose.’ If you happen to be male, take it from me, your dignity is better preserved when you can own up to certain inadquacies and work on them. Wallowing in self pity is just really sad, and we will leave you for the better man. Hahaha.

Jane Austen remained single all her life because the man she loved couldn’t afford to maintain the standard of living to which she was accustomed. The husband-to-be-that-never-was did not resent her, because he acknowledged that there was no point in reducing her to squalor just for the sake of his own ego. So they conducted their relationship happily, pragmatically, and he never accused her of being materialistic or a gold digger. She was neither. She was a smart woman, and he was a smart man.

Oh for the days when men fully expected to have to compete for the things they wanted. Now they want women to make things easy for them and dive headlong into compromised situations to prove they aren’t ‘materialistic’. I admit, some women take things a bit too far, but for the most part, men have simply lost their balls. Some of them would rather buy a bride on ebay than spear a wild boar for the love of their life.

Spear me a boar, I say.

Love at First Sight, A Few Years Later

It takes someone who knows what they’re doing to incorporate aspects of travel writing and flanneurism with chic lit so seamlessly. This is my ooh, let’s see, third Lisa Jewell, and I’m impressed with her portrayal of London yet again. Not only does it reflect a keen sense of observation, an engagement with setting, it incorporates theoretic concepts that deal with city living.

What G. E. Debord described tediously as the Theory of the Dérive, and the natural influx and out flux release points of a city (or psycho geographical points) Lisa Jewell captures perfectly in this book, when her characters find themselves drawn inexplicably to Covent Garden Market or to The British Library or coasting along Piccadilly Circus. Her sense of place is very much real; each location in the novel symbolic in itself and it’s real life reputation, of a plot movement.

I especially like punchy dialogue between the characters, and the synergy between all the individual character’s plot lines and the larger context of the story. The result was right up Laughter Street; the book is hilarious! Considering that I picked this up in search of some good reading that wasn’t connected in any way to course work, I found it was the best thing I could have picked up…my sides are still aching!

While I was reading, it took a while for me to accept what she was doing with the story, even though I understood. She was telling a love story, but from the perspective of real life where people make mistakes, where signs kick people in the butt and they still flounder/make the wrong choices, where people regress many times before they progress, where love doesn’t make everything syrupy and perfect until it’s (almost) too late. Despite the candyfloss coloured love at first sight story line, the book is loaded with a quiet, soulful resonance – those characters were real people!

Nevertheless, after nearly 18 years of mixed messages, doomed marriages, dysfunctional families, and passed up opportunities, Vince Mellon and Joy Downer finally rediscover the love that began between them that summer in Huntstanton…

Vince & Joy is published by Penguin Books £7.99.

Like Discarding Knickers

Images from www.thestorkwearhouse.com

Almost everyone I know now has some sort of parallel life they’re living. Between Facebook, MySpace, Hi5 and MSN, people have the opportunity to choose what name they want to be called, how they want it spelt, and for how long they want that name to refer to them. When their screen name no longer suits them, it is discarded, yes, like disposable knickers. It makes me wonder (and please forgive me for the terrible cliché) what’s in a name? If changing our real life first and surnames didn’t involve the hassle of public announcements, appearances in court and tracking down every bank, telephone and gas company we did business with, would we change those too? If we use online communities to share what we think are the most interesting parts of our lives (apart from for confidentiality reasons) why do we chop and change our names? Do they detract from our fun-loving, happy-go-lucky online image? And what informs the pseudonyms we give ourselves? Are they suited to the mood we were in when we logged on, or to the nature of the new nugget of information we upload to share with the world? Or do they embody the sentiments we’d rather our parents had considered when they called us so and so? If names are as personal as they are said to be, then how are we able to disregard them even temporarily?

Or is that just the point? Do we dump our names temporarily sometimes to experiment with the freedom of being nameless, characters who can absorb and exhibit and experiment with different personas/characteristics? And if that's the case, aren't we then saying that our given names stifle and constrict us?

Apologies

Image from Google Images


I'm so sorry for being behind on my posts. Final deadlines had me averaging about 3 hours sleep per night, and no time for anything except work, work, work. As it is, I am catching up on sleep and trying to regenerate my addled brain cells which feel like they've been pickled in all the very bad coffee I've been subsisting on for the last three weeks. So...I'll be back shortly I promise. See you then.

xx

Exploring Erotica

Image from: http://www.citypaper.com/sb/91778/books_erotica.jpg

I was recently introduced to Black erotic fiction by a friend of mine at university and it started off a chain reaction of thought processes. I was curious. As a writer, I feel I have a responsibility to know what’s out there, so I read a chapter. She was reading The Sex Chronicles, and was so impressed by it that she ordered four more titles off Amazon when we went into the library to study. While this is in no way a criticism of people who enjoy this sort of literature, or indeed, of the genre’s authors, I think we have to think very carefully about the significance of such books.In the library, she showed me the corresponding website, Erotica Noir, where a prominent author of Black erotic fiction interacts with her readers, answering their sexual queries and also creates a forum where they can share their own real life erotic experiences. Although, admittedly, there was only one sexual image, the descriptions were vivid, each detail of every sexual act minutely described. And for all the protestations by the author on the sexual repression that women have suffered over the years needing to be challenged, I couldn’t help but think that this erotic fiction, while it may be liberating Black women sexually, also corroborates the historical (and media) image of the Black woman as a solely sexual being, a wench, a whore.

There is a fine line between sexual liberation and impropriety. Personally, there is nothing wrong with sex, except when it is turned into an exhibitionist movement. As I read the chapter of my friend’s book, it struck me that this was the textual cousin of traditional pornography. She was quick to assure me however, that this wasn’t porn at all. It was merely an expression of alternative creativity, linking her argument back to the concept of erotica as art. But how far can this go? Would that mean then, that such stories, or other images of the said erotica, if they were to involve children, would be absolved of all accusations of paedophilia? Also, how does the production and consumption of these stories stand up against what we would call our moral fabric? Are they a good behavioural manual for young Black women? What attitudes and mindsets do they sublimally assimilate from repeatedly reading these books? What ideas do they form about themselves, their sisters, their mothers and aunties within the greater context of society? Are these books not creating a multi-faceted dichotomy - a mass confusion between sexual liberation and endorsed baseness.

Black women everywhere are constantly fighting for respect, and are attempting to distance themsleves from the sex crazed image I mentioned before, which we see perpetrated mostly in music videos, but also deeply embedded in media semiotics. But how far are we actually getting?Are we not shooting ourselves in the foot by voicing our video-vixen dissent, and insisting on our respectability, only to write, publish and endorse this type of fiction? What image are we giving ourselves, especially as these books are plentiful in the Black Interest sections of book stores. If the adage about figuring someone out by the books they read were to be applied, then what should people deduce from looking at our shelves? What statement is our literary sub-culture making about us? Why should rampant sex be key to our literary manifesto?

This is not to say that all Black fiction is erotic, nor that all erotic fiction is Black. Neither is it to say that sex, or thinking through sexuality is wrong, but I find it hard to accept that erotica is any less objectionable than pornography. We really need to think about this, and make sure that our professions of decency are congruent across all areas of our lives.

It is entirely possible to say that I'm placing too great an importance on the image of Black women from the perspective of our reading material, and that after all, it's just sex; everyone does it as some point or other. What I'd like to know is this: what exactly do we mean by sexual liberation, and are we not, in all our methods of achieving this, overstating the point? What would sexual liberation look like? Even this erotic fiction which claims to libearate Black women plays charmingly into the very image we're trying to fight i. e. Black people don't read, but when they do, all they read is sex. Isn't true sexual liberation being a sexual being, among, not over and above, other things? Would true liberation not discredit the current definition of Black women as one of the synonyms of the word sex? I am not advocating censorship, I'm not accusing the Black eroticists of ruining society. I'm just saying we need to think, really think about what it means.

Comments and insights very welcome.

Potato Cider Anyone?

Potatoes from: http://www.umassvegetable.org/images/soils_crops_pest_mgt/crop/potato1.jpg

Bottles of wine from: http://blog.lightninglabels.com/blog/images/wine_5.jpg

A bottle of potato wine, made by an astral travelling old eccentric talks, quite legitimately, to Jay Mackintosh, who drinks too much, writes too little, and hallucinates a lot. Personally, I might have been inclined to diagnose malaria, except he hadn’t been to the tropics. But there isn’t just one bottle of wine talking. There are six, and unlike The Big Six (the men who fought to secure Ghana’s independence from British rule in 1957) the six bottles are called The Specials. Except the most special of all, the Fleurie ‘76 was actually made from potatoes. Fancy that!

I’ve never seen talking wine fictionalized in all my life, and it’s impressive. It’s really crass isn’t it, when an alkie says ‘I drank because the drink told me to’, but here, it works. The Specials rattle and talk to Jay from the cellar, they solve his problems, they tatse of magic and far away lands, and of the cosy kitchen of his youth; they contain layman’s alchemy.

It’s a really good book set between metropolitan London and rural Lansquenet. Apart from Jay’s status as a one hit wonder author and the power tussles with his media barbie girlfriend, it’s a touching story of the unravelling of a man’s past, and the congruence between his past and his future. Jay’s relationship with Jackapple Joe, and the love of gardening and wine making that he got from the old man, are an intersting way of showing us what the main character would become, and most importantly, why. I think it’s one of thos major considerations that many authors take for granted these days; why a character is the way they are, and Harris did a brilliant job with this.

The characterizatione? Spot on. Setting? Ditto. Narrative style and dialogue? Perfect. Needless to say, I truly wish I had written this!

P. S. There were blackberries in the supermarkets not too long ago. Perhaps I’ll try to make some actual blackberry wine, with fruit, not spuds. I’m sure there’s bound to be a recipe I can get hold of. That said, perhaps the bosses at Spuds’u’like should take a cue from this and explore a new business area – collecting the unsold potatoes at all their outlets, and brewing them into a special in-house ale. Layman’s alchemy, afterall!

Blackberry Wine (£6.99) is published by HarperCollins

The Prodigy Problem

Physicists from: http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/sea0215l.jpg

Nerds from: http://pisarek.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/nerds.gif




Aaaaaaargh. I hate child prodigies You know why? Because they make me look bad! Here I am at 21 struggling through the characterization in my first I-hope-someone-will-publish-this- novel, and there are 14 year olds composing music and conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Violinists who played Royal Albert Hall at 13. Actors and actresses who made millions before they were 5. All those gormless liitle people who at 7 are the Supermodels my friends and I will bever be. Disgusting. Absolutely sad.

I bet they have no friends and are like, socially awkward. I bet they have no conversational skills. I bet they’re all short-sighted in their left eye and long-sighted in their right eye. I bet they masturbate and can’t hold a plate of food level. I bet they have no idea how to relax and have a good time…normally. I bet you they’re suicidal, and have ugly toe nails. I bet their sense of humour is skewed. I bet they talk to their goldfish and eat paper. I bet they make bad house guests. I bet they can’t spell. Fancy that huh, they can’t spell? I bet they wouldn’t know how to use a can opener, or sew on a button, or drive a manual car. I bet they eat their bogey before they go to sleep. I bet they snack on old carpet and smell funny! I bet they wet the bed.

I think I'll go to bed now. So what if I’m sulking? I’ve been stuck in the library doing my dissertation for the last three weeks, and found out with a shock this morning that I had no clean jeans. So I had to stuff myself into an old pair of cargo pants, which have now grown considerably smaller in the wash…ahem! So anyway, I walked around today with a smile plastered to my face and my crotch aching like an injury. It really wasn’t funny. Tight trousers are bad. Do not wear them.

Which brings me to my next point. Having experienced for the first time what it feels like to wear trousers too small, and I’m a girl, can we not suppose, by deduction, that men who wear them are lacking something? I think we can.



If anyone has any ideas on how best to keep these awfully talented children from stealing my shine, please drop me a line.



OK so I'm tired. Good night!

On Being Still

This picture was electronically drawn by Erika Aoyama on April 5, 2003

Rhythmic beating of Conga,
Eyes toward the sun
The trek to peace continues
Till the earth be done.

We know the fingers of fear
Like the touch of a lover
Like the duvet on which we’ve learnt to rest
Roll over, roll over.

And in the silent waiting
We conspire with the dawn
Senses upturned and open
To hear the voice from beyond.

Rhythmic beating of Conga,
A wailing among the reeds
Gulping relief like water
Peace bathes us like the seas.



© May 2007