Losing my Nerve and Feeling Melancholy

So I'm taking a break from being an agony aunt for a while. I get to be the moany one, and you guys get to rub my back and tell me it'll be alright. I have the first three chapters of my novel ready to send off. It's sitting on my desk with my CV and coverletter, waiting to be sent to an agent who's curently accepting new submissions. I've spent countless hours poring over the pages, making both major and minor adjustments. I almost know all 100+ pages by heart, I think it's ready. The other God-knows-how-many-pages are mooching around my hard drive, waiting for that special attention that will make it a completed book. My profs at uni have seen it and think it's great. They gave me a first for it for goodness sake. I've had one agent look at it, and even though it's not even the sort of thing she takes on, she's said that she can definately see it doing well if I send it off to a more relevant agent. Sounds great right? Except I don't feel so great. I'm shit scared. What if I don't get a deal? But worse...what if I do? I've always been a private/shy writer. I hardly ever show any work to anyone, so you can see that there's a massive dichotomy there. How do I become the published writer I want to be, and remain able to keep all my work to myself? That's like eating my cheesecake and having it, right?


Maybe I could use a pen name. You know, make up a name for myself. But then I can't, because that would make mockery of Mummy and Daddy and Grandpa C and Grandma O and all the other literary/artistic/creative people in my family. What would all their hard work mean if I just discredited it by attributing my work, on recognition, to names that bear no relation to theirs? In case you haven't noticed, I hold legacy and family values in very high esteem.


Another problem. If I used a pen name, I'd feel like an incredible fraud. I'd feel like I never really wrote any of it, that I found an old manuscript somewhere written by this other anonymos person with the strange name and tried to pass it off as mine. A pen name wouldn't match up with the name on my phone bill, my bank account, my passport - it wouldn't be congruent with the name I've written carefully on every text book and exercise book throughout my school career. It would have no context and no history. The work wouldn't be something I created so I wouldn't be able to take ownership of it.


So I can't use a pen name, you see. But I still don't want to show my work to anyone. Why the hell can't I have my cake and eat it. I don't like this grown up world where you have to rationalise things and make concessions for your ambitions. I feel like throwing the mother of all tantrums and perhaps I will. Then when I'm done, I'll suck it up, stick on some massive sunshades so that no one will see me, then go and post the damn thing. (This is the part where frustration with myself is directed at the work itself).


On the flipside, I have the book launch all planned - the guest list, the venue, the concept, everything, and I can assure you it's FABULOUS. I even know what I'm going to wear and how the photos of the event look. I have a whole marketing plan for the book mapped out. I know what the competition prizes will be. I've had long, stimulating conversations with the people at the book signings. Told you I'm a weirdo.


Jeez, oh man, I have problems!

Terror on Tuesday Morning!

Images from Google Images

Early on Tuesday morning I was at the airport, seeing my sister off. Online check in made it such that we didn’t have to queue for hours and hours, so after baggage drop off, we went in search of something to eat. We ended up in Café Italia (or something – it was too early to be fully conscious) and had very nice croissants and teas.

So it came time to say goodbye. I was struggling not to cry, being the pathetic cry baby that I am. Just to delay the final moment a bit longer, we went to the loo. Funny how even at that time of the morning, you still have to queue for the women’s loos…I swear, we spend to much time in there, it’s embarrassing. Anyhow, while I was standing there thinking of how I really shouldn’t give in and cry, this woman walked out of one of the cubicles. I recognised her uniform to be a Wetherspoons one.

To my near heart attack shock, she walked out of the cubicle, after I had heard various forms of scraping and groaning, and just sauntered out of the bathroom. SHE DIDN’T WASH HER HANDS!!! Oh my goodness, I was instantly awake. I thought I would faint. I thought of all the meals I’d eaten at various Wetherspoons pubs, and all the future meals I was likely to have there, and then I felt sick because clearly, they could very well have been handled by an urban savage who doesn’t know that it’s UNACCEPTABLE not to wash your hands after you’ve been to the loo.

You don’t expect that I swallowed my shock did you? As soon as I had finished (and washed my hands twice to make up for her lack of personal hygiene) I marched straight into the Wetherspoons and reported her to her manager. I also reported her to the bathroom cleaning lady who tut-tutted. I was being stroppy, you say? I beg to differ. There are very few things more disgusting/repulsive/unforgivable/offensive/torture-worthy than a fully grown woman who has poor standards of hygiene. Eww. I feel sick just recounting this. This is how it went:

Me: Err, hi, are you the manager?
Manager: That’s me!
Me: Hi, sorry, this is going to sound weird, but I was just in the bathroom, and one of your staff – that lady wiping tables over there – she didn’t wash her hands when she finished in there.
Manager: Well I can safely tell you that the first thing she did when she got behind the bar was wash her hands; it’s part of our staff policy to wash hands as soon as we get behind the bar.
Me: That’s fair enough, I appreciate that, but you have to understand that for your customers, it doesn’t inspire confidence in your company to see such poor standards of personal hygiene from the staff of a food serving establishment. I’m now having convulsions thinking of the number of times I could have been served a pint or a steak or a chocolate cake by someone who went to the loo, amid gurgly noises, and didn’t wash her hands…I feel defiled!
Manager: Yeah, I understand, but she definitely washed her hands.
Me: Well, I just thought you should know.
Manager: Thanks, I’ll still speak to her about it, though.
Me: Thanks!

And I left. Guess who’s not going to Wetherspoons anytime soon? One because, I’ve been to Wetherspoons countless times, and the staff don’t always wash their hands once they get behind the bar, whatever the company thinks its policy is. I’d know if they did; it’s the sort of thing I notice. Two, because last time my sister and I had their breakfast, the eggs were flaming orange and I’m now inclined to think (in retrospect) it’s because they were contaminated. So what makes this time any different? Why should I believe that she washed her hands when she got behind the bar. After all, the poor manager had to say that, it was his get out of jail free card.

Notice to people out there – if I catch you being a dirty urban savage, I will report you! You can’t poison the rest of us who enjoy eating out, just because you can’t be bothered to do the right thing. And rinsing your finger tips under a cold tap isn’t enough either. You need to WASH those hands under a HOT tap with SOAP! And then you have to hold your hands up and not touch anything, like surgeons when they’re scrubbing in for surgery. Any questions on how to do this can be answered by watching a few episodes of Grey’s Anatomy or any other medical dramas. Parents, please teach your kids these things, or else, they’ll be judged for being lax and germ-ridden.

Uuuuugh. I am so grossed out. I shall stop typing now because I feel myself getting meaner and more disparaging….Maybe I’ll put together an alternative guide to dining in London. It’ll be called Where Not to Eat Because You Are Likely To Get Popped Off By Malicious Pathogens, and the list will be the names of restaurants where I’ve spied on the staff and discovered their appalling habits. Any establishment that doesn’t appear on the list, people will know it’s safe to eat at (for the time being, at least, or until I catch them trying to kill off their clientele with toilet bacteria). Good idea, don’t you think?

On Books That Challenge You

I was in a bit of a reading rut, recently. You know when that happens, it's like you can't concentrate, you really want to read but you're intensely bored etc. So anyway, I started reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (thanks Uncle Geoff!) and The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Moshin Hamid and have now finished both. It's unforgivable to descend to banal platitudes when talking about great books and literature, but oh my God! They were amazing. Please drop whatever you're doing, scrape together your last pennies and go out and buy these books. The Reluctant Fundamentalist, I'm proud to announce has made it onto the Booker Longlist. I haven't read Gifted by Nikita lalwani yet, which is the other Penguin title on the list so I'm not sure exactly which one I'll be rooting for, but it will definately be one of those. I know The Grumpy Old Bookman isn't overly enamoured of these literary prizes, and neither was I for a while, but I really feel Hamid's book deserves some major recognition.


Anyway, back to Kingsolver and Hamid. I think what I enjoyed most about their books is that they've done something different with first person narration. The prose was beautiful but not contrived, poetic without being ridiculous. Kingsolver narrated the story of the undoing of an American Baptist family in the Belgian Congo, by giving each of her characters their own unique voice with which to tell their story. The overall effect was of sitting round a table at some family's reconciliation meeting, getting their different perspectives on what they went through. Because each of them used their own lingo, and explained their thoughts and feelings, we got valuable insights into the character's motivations, which as I've mentioned before, is very important.


Hamid's book appealed to me simply because I have a particular fondness for eavesdropping on stranger's conversations. I love sitting on the bus, in a restaurant, on a plane listening to what the people around me are talking about, how they're saying it and guessing at why they're saying it to whom they're saying it to. (You don't get to judge me, by the way!) So we see Changez, the protagonist sitting at dinner with someone, telling him about his life in America, how came to fall out of love with the country, or possibly, how the country fell out of love with him. It felt like I was sitting at the table next to them, listening. The setting is Lahore, the two are eating dinner, but at the same time, it's New York, because the stories of his youth (which he's telling) transport us back there with confidence, mastery, and a little bit of nostalgia. It's a brilliant twist at the end, when the talk turns to secret plots and conspiracies, that the unnamed dinner guest pops off Changez. Everything is implied of course, it's all very poetically done, but I felt awed and excited at the end at how it all worked together.


Another theme that ran through both books, was the concept of 'otherness' in societies; what constitutes it, what perpetuates it, whether it can be overcome, and if so, how. The Price family kids in The Poisinwood Bible were set apart from their peers at school because they were labelled the preacher's kids. In Kilanga, in the Belgian Congo, they were set apart because they were the only white family for miles around. The local people of Kilanga and the Prices found each other equally strange until they learnt to identify common factors in culture: love, respect, generosity, patience, and use those to guide their relationship. In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Changez was one of a few non-white students in his class at Princeton. When he was headhunted by the valuation company Underwood Sam, there was him from Pakistan, and Wainwright, from Jamaica, both trying to navigate the balance between who they were as proud young men from elsewhere, and how that fitted into the cosmos of work life, New York, and America after September 11.


Both books, without making a song and dance about it, tackle what it means to be a stranger in societies other than one's own, how extended abscence from one's place of birth and prolonged residence as a foreigner changes one's perspectives, and by default, allocates psychological/emotional energy to seeking out exactly who one is, what one believes and why. In the light of how the world is today, the Global Village, for lack of a better term, things like this are worth thinking about, and not just in a token, flippant way.


On that note, I'd like ot hear what you all think about issues to do with diaspora, otherness, and culture, in whatever form they occur. Also, what role do you see books/literature/creative arts playing in such issues? Should they tackle those issues full on, as a stated premise, or should it be done more subtley?

Rosbif

Here's the very humble beginning of a short story. This is hugely experimental for me in every way. 1) I never share work 2) Especially not on the internet and 3) This is the first time I'm attempting to use a male protagonist. So on that note, while you lot clap and cheer me on, this is it, provisionally called Rosbif:



If this were one of his films, Russ would instruct his camera man to treat the lady with procedural filmic respect; the kind where they view her from down up. From her ankles, up along a long thigh, to her neatly nipped waist, to her proverbially heaving bosom, to the base of her throat, to archly pursed lips, to the large wateriness of her eyes, oh! And this is why he was shocked. Because her clean little feet, coaxed into those brown wedge sandals, contrasting delightfully with the metal leg of the chair she had them wound around, did not prepare Russ in anyway, to reach the top of the shot, and find at the end of his visual appreciation, she was nothing but an urban savage. The red of her nails, the red of the meat, red flashed in the eyes of a gouging beast…

He retched onto the floor.

There’s nothing more repulsive than the sight of a woman eating meat.

*

‘You alright there, sir?’

Blink. ‘Yes, thanks. Quite alright. Just fine, thank you. Thank you.’

The waiter hesitated. The eye of his manager was upon him. Customer service, customer service, ringa-ringa-rosied around his psychology like the proceedings of a ritual and prevented him from jumping out of his skin. Vomit, eugh! ‘Are you sure, sir? I’ll just get you a glass of water while I get something to clean that up.’

Russ watched the waiter leave, and concentrated on the departing sound of creaking shoes. Then, on the approaching sound of cumbersome, chaffing thighs. He found it more productive, given the circumstances, not to dwell on the fact that he was the afternoon’s spectacle. People would go home and say, ‘So I was in this lovely little bistro in Russell Square today and this dude went and lost it all over the floor…’

Consider words like Disgusting, Revolting, Gross, Pathetic. It occurred to Russ; that people might speak those words later on in the day and remember his face, his favourite jeans, the sight of his elbows towering high in the sky as he rested his palms on his thighs and the revolt of his stomach shot the projectile toward the ground.

And in all the commotion that he was determined not to take any notice of, the scarlet woman sat there staring at him. Just impudently looking on, while she masticated her meat and scribbled in her notepad, like she was on celestial business. That word, that filthy word, surely, must have been coined with unsavoury connotations in mind. He stared back down at the floor, contemplating the offerings of his gut. It would serve her right, Russ thought, if he scooped them up with his side plate and novelly conditioned her hair.

***

And there you have it folks. That's most of what I've got for this one so far. Bear in mind that it hasn't been edited or worked on - this is th rough deal. I have a few other ideas, but thy need a bit of mulling over. Feedback and constructive criticism are very welcome, as are any questions/guesses on where you think the story might be going...

Living Dangerously

So I'm working up the courage to post some actual work on this blog i. e. I'm toying with the idea of posting a short story, or excerpts of a short story and not just opinion articles. But I'm still thinking about it, I'm not sure. The only reason I've mentioned it is so that I'll be forced to actually do it because now I feel like I've semi made a commitment.

Tick tick tick tick tick

OK, mind made up now. I shall post the beggining of a short story I just started working on. It's all going to be very fresh and very raw because I literally only got the idea (for the story and for sharing its creation) last week. But anyway, it'll be a little journey with me on a work in progress. It'll also be a new experience for me because I'm intensely shy about sharing and I like to pretend I'm not working on anything so I don't have to show it to anyone.

Also, I'm working now so there'll be no sitting up all night writing and re-writing because I have to be alert in the mornings. I won't be able to deliver a dazzling piece of glory, boom, all at once. Unless I post one I've already written (and here's one I made earlier)...no. It's all about the process. We shall see it unfold together, and it would be lovely to hear any feedback or any crazy guesses on where you think the story might be going based on the first snippets.

Bedtime for me now (*sulk*) but see you again soon.

xx

The Big Bong and Other Nonsense

Disclaimer: I do not take drugs or endorse drug abuse. The views expressed here are simply a matter of principle.

Images from Google Images

Hands up who thinks journalism has gone to the dogs? Ah, I’m glad to see you all agree. Last week, the front pages of most of the newspapers were awash with cries of angst from petulant journalists. Apparently, some MPs and other people in positions of power took drugs in their youth. Big freaking deal; I don’t see how that’s newsworthy. And I don’t see how it has any bearing on their trying to enforce new drug laws now. If they were caught rolling spliffs in between sessions at parliament, and found to be passing laws based on fantabulous ideas their stoned minds came up with, then we’d have a problem. If they were eating magic mushroom risottos at lunch or using cocaine as sweetener for their lattes, then we would have every right to call them hypocrites. But for stuff they did at uni? Give them a break, guys. They weren’t responsible for the country back then; they were just students. Now that they’ve successfully waded through experimentation and found the ambition which has landed them in positions of responsibility, there are plenty of other things, I’m sure, that would have looked better on the front pages. Cue the violins…

I’m asking special permission from the powers that be, to line up every single person that slandered the poor Jacqui Smith, gag them with cold oats, jab them with truth serum, and then interrogate them as to their hallucinogenic past (or present, as the case may very well be). I’d then take their inevitable confessions of guilt, plaster them all over the front pages, and call the journalists themselves hypocrites, for calling other people hypocrites, because they spent their days at uni doing exactly what they’re trying to crucify other people for. The only hypocrites here, are the people pointing fingers. Arguably, journalists are also people in positions of power – they inform and shape opinion everyday. If they stopped ‘dabbling’ in weed thirty odd years ago, would they think it was fair for the public to cast aspersions on their morals today? Probably not. So why are they whining?

And this is not by any means, in support of drugs, please remember that. It’s just me observing, that the death toll in Iraq has obviously sky rocketed to a level that’s ubiquitous enough to be boring, the property ladder is not any easier to get onto – nothing to report there, crime has gone both up and down – they can’t decide which is which. The press has tired of its usual contingency-plan, space-filling material, so they now need to work retrospectively, to dredge up ancient personal history, which wasn’t anymore relevant to anything then than it is to anything now.

Now that ‘offenders’ are older and wiser, they have every right to try to reclassify the offence, because they have the benefit of experience. Been there, done that, know better. Who knows how many people will be saved by its being a more serious offence? Some people simply won’t touch it because they don’t want to get into trouble. It is actually responsible of them to try to address the issue. Imagine if in a few years from now, eight year olds were puffing lye in the toilets. The journalists would have a field day about how the government didn’t make enough of an effort blah blah blah. Imagine what a lame excuse it would sound like if Jacqui et all said, ‘Sorry, we felt it would be hypocritical to enforce weed laws because we smoked it as teenagers and hance didn’t feel we had a right to stop others from doing so.’ Imagine the very same journalists calling them lax lazy buggers, crying about abandoned duties to society etc. So why is it that when they are actually trying to do their duty, they get attacked?

Another stupid moment in journalism was in the Telegraph two weeks ago, when an article proclaimed that students in Tony Blair’s school were expelled or suspended for posting a clip of themselves on YouTube smoking weed. If I worked at No10, I would sue for defamation/slander/libel/the whole lot, just on principle. a) The fact that his children attend(ed) the school, doesn’t mean that he owns it and b) his kids weren’t even involved in the incident in anyway. They just used his name, as a hook for a negative story, which, in the light of his recent stepping down, is as tasteless a crime as speaking ill of the dead, if you get my drift. Was it really necessary to include the Blairs when there was no connection in any way?

Before my grandma retired, she worked as a broadcast journalist, and made history by being the first woman in Nigeria to run a TV station. She knows a thing or two about journalism. Her theory is this: opinion is free, but fact is priceless. We were equally appalled by the two stories I mentioned above. How did they pass the whole line of command and get into the papers as they were? Why didn’t the editors do something? I know we’ve come a long way from then, but in Grandma’s day, you’d have been fired for attempting to pass off such conjecture as journalism. What’s happening is that the type of reportage used to cover whimsical celebrity behaviour, is creeping up on real news. It’s potentially dangerous and needs to stop. Take a few minutes to think of the repercussions…

Incidentally, while we're on the topic of journalistic demise, those awful, purple, brain-addling evening papers need to be got rid of. Where are all the environmental campaigners? Surely these are trees we’re killing! They litter the streets and make London look messy, especially with the rain. Walking home is like one ugly plod through papier mache quicksand. We were just fine with our morning (blue) Metro and (orange) Evening Standard, thank you very much; their distribution remains a tidy, orderly affair, and doesn’t turn the city into a pictorial of chaos in hades. One would have thought that the (purple) papers pass-on value means that you don’t need such a massive print run. The poor dudes (and dudesses, if that’s a word) practically maul you at street corners, because they’ve been told they have to shift their stash – a stash that still wouldn’t be halfway dwindled if you handed three papers each to every UK resident. Plus, most days, the content is just an extension of trashy telly in print. The only thing I find interesting, is that anonymous article, ‘Life in the Square Mile’. I always used to take one, just because I had forgotten that I still have a choice; they’ve become such a large part of the Everyday, a given, like a (red) London bus. Also, because short of keeping your fists closed and shoved deep into your pockets, your eyes behind shades to minimize eye contact, and your walking pace at competition speeds, the chances of reaching a tube station between 4 and 7 pm on a week day evening un-purpled are slim to none. Ignore them and read a book instead – much better for the posterity of your mind!

Horror Scopes

Image from Google Images

This week, I have been conducting an experiment. And now I have re-proved to myself something that I know already; that all this horoscope business is pure nonsense. Why did I experiment with something I already know, you ask? Because at 8 am on the Piccadilly line, the only thing you get to read is bits and pieces over someone else’s shoulder. I have not fallen in love, quarrelled with my work colleagues, made a ton of money, or had an argument with my family; all of which a varied cacophony of myopic gypsies insisted I would encounter. Perhaps it has something to do with the quality of the viziers I experimented with; mass market visions reproduced a million times over in the free daily papers that colour the mornings blue and the evenings purple. But I know better than that really – I mean, you can’t blame the blandness of the food on the bluntness of the kitchen knife, but I was trying out this new thing where you give people the benefit of the doubt for ooh let’s see…one two three…benefit of doubt time over. Horoscope hocus pocus is all crap, and coming to an even stronger conclusion than before my little experiment, I now understand why the lives of certain people I know are messed up. It’s simple really – they live according to what those things say. How long are these things anyway? Max 300 words (and that’s being very generous and givey the benefit of the doubty) mind you; yet they cleave to it as though it’s the quiddity of life itself.

I think those things are dangerous and should be banned. Sometimes, we under estimate the potency of words, and under value our minds ability to reorganise our lives into either confirming our fears or exaggerating unrealistic notions. I feel about horoscopes the way some people feel about prosperity/doom and gloom preachers; both prevaricate from one extreme to the other. All of a sudden, your life is expected to lift off and become perfect, or your demise is waiting round the corner for you, sniggering at your expense. The brain is powerful. When we read, the words don’t just evaporate off the page and turn into some sort of silent language that our eyes receive. They go and take up residence in our SELVES. So when the stupid witch says to you, oh watch our for love today because there’s a fairy in your venus, or whatever, you smile coyly back at the guy on the train who’s smiling at you. You then think that ‘something happened’, that you ‘met someone’, when in fact, nothing happened, you didn’t meet anyone, and his smile was just the auto-programmed grimace that city people have adopted as a contingency plan for when the avoidance of eye contact with other commuters mistakenly occurs. What you can’t possibly know, the possibilities that your brain can’t then access (he might be psychotic, he might in fact be married with three kids, he might not have registered that he grimaced at you) are blocked, because the viziers words have formed a disconnect between what’s really happening and what you’re expecting to happen. Hence you see things off centre.

You trip on the pavement because you weren’t looking and all of a sudden, you knew it, you just knew something bad was going to happen today. You have a stomach ache because you chose to eat prawns in a dodgy restaurant, and wham, finally, here’s proof that someone at work wants your job, someone is trying to poison you, someone mixed printer ink with your balsamic dressing when you went to the loo. By reading these things, you sacrifice a part of your brain where objective appreciation would have resided, and fill it with paranoia in all directions, both for good and for woe. Especially in the morning. People cut veritable slices of their consciousnesses and hand them over to words which carry forces which don’t know anything. They accept that this generalisation of themselves, propounded by the astrologist or whatever, is superior to their own common sense, to their own in-built sensibility.

If these horoscope things are sooooooo fantastic, why don’t people turn to them when their relatives lie dying in hospital, when they are cash strapped and hiding under the kitchen table from debt collectors, when bombs go off? If you’re going to pray when things are bad, then you might as well ask the person you pray to for direction and guidance in the things that puzzle you. If when we pray in desperate situations, we see the radical difference it makes, why short change ourselves in the Everyday with the astigmatism of guessing? It’s all a question of perspective, really.

What say you? Feel free to agree or disagree – this is not a communist blog.

The Thing About Gigs...

Graduating from university is one of the best experiences of my life, better, even, than those lovely themed birthday parties of circa age 6 and age 7 fame. Graduation has provided the most beautiful climate in which all the aunties’ and uncles’ generous streaks can flourish. Not to say that they weren’t generous before…it’s just a trip to be getting all these gifts and gratuities when it’s not a birthday and it’s not Christmas. I think I should graduate more often. Ahem!

So anyway, yesterday morning, my cousin called. Her mum had bought us all tickets to see Lauryn Hill live in concert. Sweet, I thought. The concert was to start for 7. We were standing for three hours before Ms Hill deigned to make an appearance on stage, which didn’t go down well with me. Being new to this whole working week thing, my Sunday evenings are really precious, and I couldn’t help but blame her this morning when I woke up and a desire to molest the snooze button overwhelmed me.

But that’s beside the point. What the point is, is that I lived to see the day when I would agree with my Dad’s opinions about music. He’s long maintained that most modern music is flawed, because live performances never hold up to the studio mastered versions. In his view, it should be the other way round. Out of respect for Lauryn Hill, I’m having difficulty confessing that it was crap…but you go right ahead and put two and two together. Imagine if I didn’t have this overwhelming sympathy for Lauryn Hill, and she was some other random pop floozy, prancing round on stage with in a weird wig and a mac. Imagine what I’d have said then. But I can’t say it, so you’ll have to make the words up in your head, because I won’t have her slandered. I won’t.

After the last gig (i. e. not Lauryn’s, the one before) I went home and deleted all my music by that artiste, because he was a fraud. He played his CD and cursed along to it. That’s not what I paid for. Lauryn’s was marginally better, though not great. She kind of shout-rasp-sang along to a live band, which was her only salvation. Yes she had a sore throat, but I dare say she’d have given a better show overall, if the sound technician weren’t both deaf and incompetent in equal measure. The poor woman had to shout over the music constantly. She kept motioning to him to say that she couldn’t hear herself. Rather than adjust the volumes, he adjusted the Pringle jumper on his chest and nodded his head as though this was the culmination of his life’s work.

Apparently, there are some explosives that work through sound. They reach such unfathomable decibels that they cause matter to implode and turn to dust. This might have been what Mr Sound Guy was trying to achieve. As a result of his deafness, here is a list of places in my body where I felt pain:
kidneys
T5 lumbar vertebrae
calves
lymph nodes
frontal lobe
base of my neck
I also suffered from extreme thirst.

I don’t know what’s happening to live music, but I shall stop going. Does anyone else find that they come away disappointed? I don’t want to have to throw away all my music because the artistes have discredited their own worth. Now, unless it’s a small private gig with competent technicians and artistes who still remember what projection and mic technique are, count me out. The only live gig’s I’ll be attending will be the ones I co-ordinate on my sound system. My layman’s manipulation of graphic equalizer buttons has never yet left me with the sort of symptoms I experienced yesterday. If you've gone to a really bad gig, or have anything to say about live vs. studio music, I'd love to hear about it in your comments.

Nevertheless, I still made it to work on time. Phew!

Voyage to Clubland: Investigating Peep-Show Theory

Images from: Google Images

I was out clubbing again yesterday for a friend’s birthday. When we got there it was quite empty, but we had to take advantage of the £10 before 11pm deal, because the promoters threatened ominously that it would be ‘more thereafter’ and being broke in a chic studenty type of way, we had to ensure that we’d still have enough money on us to pay for the night bus home.

So we got in, hissed at the £2 charge for coat check (it’s usually £1, the cheeky gits!), found a good spot to hang and began to sway lightly on our feet in the way that clubbers do when they enter a party space. It’s code for, we’re here now, we’re open to see what’s gonna happen tonight, DJ play something that will change this sway into stepping! In other words, it’s like the warm up before the athletics.

As the club filled, the DJ’s set progressed from upbeat Soul to velvety RnB/Hip-Hop, and with this progression, came a progression in the dancing. At this point, we were all dancing, screaming along to the lyrics, and listening out for what the next song in the mix would be. It was somewhere at this point, amidst all the activity, that I noticed that the clubland gender roles became more played out than ever.

For guys, a large part of the clubbing experience is voyeurism and for girls, it’s performance.Perhaps I have always known this, but it became more of an articulated thought than a vague idea last night. As someone who likes watching people, I’m very shy about being watched myself, so when it came to the part where the lyrics were telling the girls to ‘wind for me’ and ‘jack your leg up’ and ‘back that ass up’ and ‘work it like you’re working for dollars’, I took a step back and perched on the back of a sofa. I then realised that all the guys were either perched on the same sofa, or up against a wall, watching the spectacle going on. A guy friend pointed at one if my friends and said, ‘Wow that b**** looks fiiiiiine,’ so I said, ‘Errr, yeah, I understand that you mean she looks nice, although maybe I’d have used different words to describe it.’ She was of course, naked. She was ‘having fun’ sexually dancing – exhibiting. He was ‘having fun’ inspecting the anatomy and mating rituals of a prize b**** – voyeur-ing.

Every so often, during a particularly dramatic contortion by one of the girls, a guy or a couple of guys would latch them selves onto her behind and simulate a sex act. Then all the other guys would whip out their cameras i.e. Oh the pleasure of sight both for now and here after! Don’t get me wrong, I love dancing, and mucking about with friends, but the focused attention that seems to demand that you dry hump and pseudo-copulate on the dancefloor kind of kills it for me. Being clung to by another being impedes my movement, so when all that starts, I’m more than happy to go back to people watching. There are always so many things to see: elaborate avoidance schemes, successful linkages, attention seekers, the cool kids, the kids who can pretend they’re cool because it’s dark, comical drunken virtuoso, all sorts!

After a while, all the guys were asking me what was wrong, and why I wasn’t 'having fun'. It wasn’t enough for them that I just enjoy kicking back and watching the scene (even though they know what I’m like already). On top of that, it wasn’t enough that I happen to be mildly scoliotic and aggravated winding on the dancefloor means hell to pay pain-wise the next day. It wasn’t enough that I fell on the stairs yesterday, and my knee got hurt because I landed awkwardly on it while trying to protect the chocolate cake I was carrying at the time. None of that was enough, they swarmed round me like flies, pestering, trying to force me to ‘have fun’. Trying to get me to do the whole ‘I’m sexy all up in the club bit’ so they could sit back and watch. Oh hell no! Not last night.

What was funny was, I did get up and dance again, but my dancing wasn’t valid because I didn’t ‘get low’. I didn’t proffer my bottom to the first available taker, I didn’t jump onto a sofa and bend myself in half. Stepping my heeled feet and midi dress, moving my arms, nodding my head, mouthing along to the lyrics, snapping my fingers, moving my shoulders, flicking my hair, swaying my hips lightly – none of that constitutes dancing, apparently. Someone said to me, ‘come on girl, put your back into it.’ So I said, with a huge smile ‘Sorry, I don’t grind.’ ‘Ugh,’ was his response.

The birthday boy sidled up to me and said, ‘I used to think too much when I was younger too, and it’s not good for you. Try and have fun.’ Granted, he was drunk.

‘I am having fun,’ I said. ‘I’m enjoying the music, I’m enjoying being with everyone. And look, I am dancing.’

‘No you’re not, you’re depressed,’ he declared. ‘Here, have some more alcohol then you’ll be dancing properly.’

I rolled my eyes (privately of course). Another cliché: buy a girl a drink and she’ll lose all her inhibitions. For goodness sake, I come from Opobo, where local moonshine, is the preferred alternative to Listerine. The Irish afterall have their ales, and we have our gin.

‘I’m fine hun, seriously, thanks! Stop worrying.’ I waved my hands in the air and started doing the electric slide and he looked at me as though he really wanted to believe me but somehow, I wasn’t making that possible.

Sigh! I looked around. Another girl had lined herself up with a ledge and was giving it the same attention she would give to a man under the right circumstances. The guys were moments away from dribbling. They had forgotten about capturing the image on camera for later. They were focused on the right now, broasting in lewd concentration, being stimulated by their sight. After about three minutes, someone began to film it. Then she made a show of not wanting to be filmed (as though she had NO CLUE that she was being watched before) and then carried right on with romancing the wooden ledge, with even greater alacrity, I might add. One brave man stepped forward and welcomed her posterior with his crotch. ‘That’s what I’m talking about,’ the other guys said. So it would appear, I thought.

Eventually, I decided to leave, because frankly I was tired, and I just wanted to go to bed. Why people can’t seem to accept that it's a valid choice for a girl to come into a club and just chill, like I was doing, is beyond me. Maybe because unspoken club rules state that the guys are supposed to be pleased/pleasured by what they see, and the girls are supposed to provide the entertainment. My lack of performance (on their terms) was robbing them of a fraction of the £10 value they came in to behold, and it struck me as all very problematic. The guys paid £10 to see some good booty, the girls paid £10 to have the undivided attention of a room full of horny men.

I suppose most girls love to be watched and ogled at, but I’ve never been most girls and I make no apologies for that. I really don't enjoy being watched. I’m not a tomboy at all – I do love my heels, a nice frock, makeovers, etc, nor am I particularly interested in being controversial, but I find it difficult to accept that if I’m not consciously trying to make a guy imagine having sex with me, then I’m contravening some sort of ‘fun having’ rule. If you asked any of them about last night, they would claim that they’re not sure whether or not I had fun. And I would beg to differ. I so did, because I got dressed up, danced (on my terms), hung out with friends, took silly photos, listened to good music, and got some fodder for my blog! It probably sounds like I’m being disparaging of the club experience, but I’m not; I actually like going clubbing. I’m merely trying to deconstruct it and find out what the point is, for the different people who go there. Why they go, what they percieve as fun (and why that is). Also, if they’ve ever actually stopped to question the shape their assumptions about clubland behaviour take i. e. do they ever consider that they might be playing a role that's dictated to them by the club space, and by media semiotics surrounding similar spaces (e. g. music videos)? What happened to the days when most dancing was about movement, rhythm, skill and not latching on to the tail end of the nearest mother ship?

I suppose the idea about meditation in clubs in my poem below (Nightclub) came true in that I reached a new gender role discovery. I would also like to refer to my post (Exploring Erotica) below for the topic of respectability. Some girls complain about the way guys respond to them in clubs. Granted, there are lots of losers who do unprecedented letching (heck they’d hit on a duck if it waddled past), but for the large part, guys respond to the signals that the girls are putting out. Note to women (again!): if you don’t want to be mistaken for a stripper, don’t act like one and then pretend to be offended when you’re treated like one. At a certain stage of your life, you should be able to make cognitive assessments about your behaviour. If you’re going to act out a part, be prepared to deal with the repercussions.

About the unprecedented letches, though, while I was minding my business waiting for the night bus home, a bald, sweaty, rotund, drunken weirdo staggered up to me and began to interrogate me. Even after he had established that I wasn't Halle Berry, Samantha Fox, Shakira or Beyonce, he asked me if I'd like to go home with him. I declined politely. 'Is it becaue I'm ugly?' he asked. I didn't respond. He then tried to help himself to a handful of the chips I was eating. 'Stop it,' I yelled. 'Go away! You can't just stick your hands in other people's food.' 'I only want one chip,' he said. I shut the take away box and glared at him. Thank goodness, I shut it before he could get his grotty fingers on my food. 'Oh, you slut,' he said, shaking his fists, then he disappeared. Last time I checked, there was nothing slutty about eating soggy chips in a full length black coat and no make-up, so I didn't need to be offended, because he was clearly the one with issues, mostly, those to do with cider-induced altered perception. If I had been pole-dancing on the bus shelter, then maybe he'd have had a point. But I wasn't, so he didn't. Oh ye women, take note.

And that, my darlings, is it from me…for now.

Smooches,
xx

Mediocrity Polemic: In Praise of Shoddy Work

Image from http://montanalibraries.org/ILLTraining/images/j0196394.GIF

I just watched A Beautiful Mind for the first time. It was brilliant, and I think Nash really was a genius. I’m about six years behind Hollywood, but never mind, I’m trying to catch up. What I came away with was a question: What is the difference between achievement and recognition? Until John Nash’s tutor posed the question to him, I had never needed to consider that they were two distinct entities. It’s almost logical to take it for granted that the two are interchangeable; so logical in fact, that it takes stepping back to extricate one from the other.

On stepping back, I realise that it’s a distinction that needs to be made more often. Take contemporary fiction for example. There are a few authors I’ve read, whom if I were their teacher, I’d write ‘Stop being lazy and apply yourself’ in red across the top of their paper. But whether or not I think their work is mediocre, they have awards, endorsements and reviews (celebrity) that seem to suggest that they are good at what they do. In that scenario, their recognition implies that they must have achieved extremely high standards of work, when in fact, they might not have.

In the same way, there are geniuses working away all night, churning out masterpiece after masterpiece, yet because they don’t yet have a public platform, it may be possible for an anonymous observer to play down the excellence of the work; simply because he can assume that if the work was reeeeeaallly that good, then surely it would have been noticed by now.

I think this separation of achievement and recognition can and should be be applied to most creative fields. There are popular singers, writers, producers, film makers, actors, designers etc that make one think, how in the world did they get a deal? Or maybe the undeserving heroes used to produce top quality stuff until the critical acclaim and recognition made them complacent? And on the flipside, there are incredibly talented people we know who’ve been banging at the doors of opportunity for ages and haven’t got the recognition that their work deserves.

In Emile Durkheim’s paper, ‘The Functions of Crime’ he insists that crime actually serves a purpose in society. Stay with me here. According to him, punishment of criminals acts as social organisation, deterring the general public from doing the same. Crime also helps in the governance of societies because it reveals the negative changes that have occurred in morality (by measuring collective responses etc) and enables them to facilitate better security services for the average citizen. I have decided to appropriate this concept (the concept of crap stuff having a purpose) to my appreciation of untalented geniuses.

Rather than continue to rant and rave about how the prominent people with disgraceful work shouldn’t be where they are, I’ve decided to learn from them, to use them as inspiration and I think this is something we can all do. If they, with all their half-arsed work can get a record deal/get published/get exhibited/get cast/get awarded/get endorsed/get signed, then so can the rest of us. Their mediocrity is actually a good thing about them because it serves a purpose; it gives the rest of us hope that if they could hoodwink the world with their nonsense, then we can sure as hell bless the world with our excellence.



P. S. The psychiatrist who had Nash committed in A Beautiful Mind was called Dr Rosen. There’s a well known article called ‘On Being Sane in Insane Places’ written by a David L. Rosenhan. Is that a (reality to fiction) coincidence? Or does the scriptwriter happen to own the same books as me? Strange.

Nightclub

photo from http://www.gordonbarker.com/new_images/nightclub.jpg

While I was in a club recently, I started thinking about what the space meant to the people who were there, what it represented, and why we had all chosen to spend four to five hours of our night there (apart from the 'obvious' pursuit of fun). I didn't go in there planning to go all Lefebvre and intellectualize a night out - that's just nerdy - but it randomly occured to me during a mini dancing time-out to catch my breath. As the idea occured to me in Kabuki (which means Japanese theatre) I had hoped the poem would be a Haiku (Japanese style of poetry) to match , but the words didn't quite work out like that. Anyways, here it is! x

Nightclub

Den of meditation
Nectarisation of desires
Boiling down, sweetening slowly
Like jam.

Space of mixed anthems
Consciousness individualised
Me, my, mine, to group dancing
Startling clarity.

Most irreverent of decibels
Sinewy lyrics, testosterone rhymes
Latent distraction a blank silence
To ponder life.

Subversion of curse
Wallflower to observe, flanneur
Crowd watching and cross referencing
Mental resource.

Cocoon of darkness
Shock of flashing lights
Subconscious epiphany brewing
Unlikely oasis.



© June 2007

Quorn Shoes - How Far is Too Far?

I've had a lovely week bumming around Brighton with my sister. We walked on the beach, got leered at by random weirdos, had ice creams and hot dogs, wandered round the Laines and ate entirely too much tiramisu.

Wandering round the Laines was interesting, and I thought I'd bring back a souvenir of my exasperation for you guys - a picture of a vegetarian shoe store. Now come on! I think this might be on par, if not slightly more ridiculous than ideas like communism, fair trade organic gluten free sashimi and those hideous jute 'ghana must go' bags that Louis Vuitton is trying to turn into a handbag trend. So not happening!

While we should respect animal and plant life on earth, people have forgotten that animals are subject to us, to humans. Why should there be vegetarian shoes? I refrain from being mean about vegetarian food; I thought Quorn was the height of food substitution but shoes? It is the cow's fate to give us meat, milk and leather. Not using this leather because we feel sorry for the cow is the latest addition to what I'd like to call my 'Catalogue of Modern Man's Inferiority Complex'. It's because we've forgotten that we are the boss of the cows, and not the other way round, that we can pussyfoot around them and shortchange ourselves of good footwear, just because, sniff sniff, we feel sorry for the cows. If anyone bothered to ask them, they'd find that the cows are actually very happy to keep us in top quality, beautifully stinking leather shoes, belts and bags.

Barring dietary allergies, I don't know why anyone wouldn't eat meat, but as I said, I won't be mean about it, because we must be respectful of people's preferences etc, but taking the aversion into shoes goes to far. If you don't eat meat, don't create things that look and taste like it (Quorn) but aren't it - that's like eating your cake and having it (or is it having your cake and eating it?) and its very confusing for some of us. But why do there need to be vegetarian shoes? Last time I checked the dictionary, being vegetarian was a dietary preference, not a movement. In the light of this, is it possible or right, even, for vegetarianism to be extended into non-dietary areas? It's whimsical. What if meat eaters decided that they'd only use clothes, stationery and other products that contained some sort of animal component? Would that be allowed? I don't think so.

I mean, kudos to the entrepreneur of this venture. It's very good niche marketing and all, but Quorn shoes? I mean, really! Strangely, I found it oddly charming that such a shop should be established in Brighton. Strangely, Brighton always reminds me of what I imagine a conglomeration of Camden/Soho/Covent Garden would look like. Edge, funk, alternative & random bottled and sprawled out by the sea.

The Orange Prize, 2007

Congratulations, Chimamanda. Well done on winning the Orage Prize. I am very proud of you. To all indiginous Africans who in our own little way, work everyday to do positive PR for our continent, to all other people who are working to make this possible, and to everyone who is willing to believe that we're not all kwashiorkor victims, I say God bless and keep the faith.

Big White Fog

Images from www.almeida.co.uk

After I saw this play, I realised that my opinions from a previous post (Origins and Where We’re From) might actually be flawed. Theodore Ward’s Big White Fog, directed by Michael Attenborough, no less, has had a grand welcome from the literary circuit. It was discovered quite recently to have been written before A Raisin in the Sun, which until now was known as the first Afro-American mainstream play. Basically, it covers the experiences of the Mason family, when Vic the father ties up his family’s life savings in Marcus Garvey’s shipping line which never materialised. He ended up losing the money, his children dropped out of school, and his daughter began to play pay-per-touch with her body to help her mother take care of the younger siblings. Of course the very same father turned round and called her a whore, complained to his wife that she should fix the kid’s leaking shoes etc, conveniently forgetting that it was his royal highness who kicked them to the bottom of the poverty line in the first place.

The subtext and the inter-family relations outdoored all the most pertinent issues of the time: Black on Black attitudes that came with different shades of lightness of darkness, the political climate, etc. But what made me think the most were Vic and Dan’s opposing views which related directly to my post. Vic was following Garvey and trying to claim Africa for the Africans. He got promoted to something like Overseer of the Grounds and Goats, ahead of their planned return to Africa. Dan, however, declared that he was American because he was born there. In a nutshell, Big Whit Fog dramaised the conflict between The American Dream and the Back to Africa schools of thought, and how the different ideologies affected the Mason family during the Depression.

By the end of the play, I had moved from siding with Vic to siding with Dan, at least somewhat. Dan thought that The Garvey idea was just another way of perpetrating segregation, and a hoax. I now agree that from-ness is not always absolutely about where your parents are from, but a combination of factors. And so I stand corrected. It was silly for Vic to assume that he would automatically be a land baron in Africa, and silly, I think, for the Garvey squad to bestow such an honour on him; it wasn’t their place. It betrayed a condescending attitude towards the people who were already living there – why would Vic and his superiors assume that those who had been in Africa always and never left would gladly step aside and relinquish agricultural control of their land to strangers? The notion also irked me because it took the quintessential standpoint of Africa as a table top that many ignorant people tend to adopt. Did Garvey know how large Africa was? Did he know that there are way over 15000 different cultures rooted there? Did he know that he wasn’t the only one with his eye on the prize, and that it wouldn’t be so easy to just waltz in?

I am not yet a Garvey scholar, so forgive me if my rants are off the mark, and I will go away and do some reading; but these were the issues thrown up by the play (which I have on trusted authority) as being quite historically accurate. Nevertheless, Dan turned out to be right, and there was a huge cathartic situation at the end, where Vic got shot (served him right; I liked him, but it was poetic for him to die), and his son Les, and his other friends resisted eviction by the Mayor’s cohorts.

The only factor that I found slightly chilling, was that the last scene seemed like a thinly veiled attempt to endorse socialism. I mean, come on! But I won’t get into that today; my opinions on socialism etc tend to degenerate very fast into expletives, and this is neither the time or the place, so I shall spare you the aggro.

That said, it was possibly the best bit of theatre I’ve seen so far. The set was the work of a brainchild. It felt like we were sitting in someone’s living room, eavesdropping on their conversations. Without any gushing or histrionics, I’d encourage everyone to go and see it. Believe it or not, there are some hugely comic scenes in there, what with the snide old grandmother and her pearls of wisdom.

Big White Fog shows at the Almeida Theatre until 30th June, 2007.
Tickets from £6 - £29.50
http://www.almeida.co.uk/

A Tale of One City

Conglomeration of intellect and wit
With Billy Bryson in Foyles Bookshop
The sound of travel writing and jokes
Cheery bibliophiles high on the smell
Of new paper, varnish and ink.
Drunk on silence, queueing for autographs
While a nameless crazy scholar rocked on the floor,
Marinating in his own stink.

**
A stroll through Soho in the evening breeeze
Latent with distraction, ‘Dirty White Boy’
Emblazoned on Old Compton Street
Yummy cakes in windows, flip flops on our feet
30% off strawberry sauce and ribs
Rainbow artwork objectified the gay night
Their hands clammy in clasp, making a point
Gazes held slightly longer, longer in assessment.
**
Rounding the night up with music and drinks
Mojitos and shots of Absinthe are both green
So imagine my shock in Marketplace Bar
Where existential shit smirked from the walls
Taunting the Drum and Bass
Threatening sound barriers
WOOD stencilled onto wood in jest or silent reproach
Philosophy not love, residing in weird places.
**
Three stages of a night, in the womb of Londinium
Randomness and beauty, a tale of one city

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

Origins and Where We're From

iRepNigeria image from http://djchronic.podomatic.com
Crossroads image from www.tauw.org





Ok so I've been feeling very patriotic lately. Maybe that's a part of growing up. Your body matures, your emotions develop, your mind expands and then gradually, without being fully cognizant of the process, you become AWARE. In my case now, I'm becoming very aware of the ways in which the richness of my culture informs who I am. I heard a famous figure today (I can't mention names) say that who he is has has nothing to do with where he comes from. His parents were born in Jamaica and he was born in the UK so he thinks they are Jamaican and he is British. Wow! I couldn't disagree more. Yes, he's British. But essentially, at the very core of him, on a fundamental level, I say he is Jamaican. Citizenship and nationality are two different things. It's simply not possible to come from a different place from your parents. You came from them, so you come from where they come from. Period.