A Welshman in St Andrews

At The Doors of Babylon...

2010-07-08T22:08:00.006+01:00

So this picture represents my mind right now... Missing a certain someone quite rotten and also experiencing a brain meltdown from a 6 hour hunt for new frames for my ever deteriorating eyesight.

'Can you give me an invisible light, to keep me alive?'

This is what has just been transported into my ears by the voice of Jake Shears from the new Scissor Sisters album. It's slowly taking up the puddle of inexplicable babble that is my brain and making it rise into a surrealist painting of sexual gladiators waking from their slumber, calling me into the light, the light, the invisible light. Such words, spoken by Sir Ian McKellen in a Vincent Price manner presents me, not only with a 'gay Thriller' as the song has been called, but an opportunity to switch off from the ever confusing world of Ultra-extra-goldedition-thin lenses that one must have.

And here is where I go off on one of my rambling streams about certain song lyrics, maybe that's what this blog can become. Me, sitting in my darkened room writing down the ramblings of a lonely Welshman as he sits and listens to the music that makes him feel dirty and filthy, but oh, so gorgeous. That sounded a lot more seedy than I thought it would. I like it.

Right, back to the ramble. Night Work, the most recent offering of the brilliant Sisters. Just get it, it's all I advise you to do. I adore it, it's an amazing mix of 80's, filth, sexual reference and innuendo, amazing song writing, dance tunes and includes my favourite song of the moment 'Invisible Light', although not necessarily in that order...

With lyrics such as 'Harder you get, up in my sweat, never too wet to want it all' and 'You better take me, any which way you can', you could be, as some reviewers have, be blinkered into thinking this album is just about sex. Admittedly, they have described it as a sleazy album, but by just seeing that you miss the point I added in the middle. The amazing song writing.

Invisible Light

This is where I get back to the ever elusive concept of 'Invisible Light'. I adore the image of feeling the electric tension with my fingers in my mind. That is also another reason why I made the composite portrait above. This is me imagining fingering the tension of my mind, as I close my eyes I can slip into the world of the stream of consciousness where my fingers run through the ever expanding waterscape of the imagination. The ripples it creates make the words that come out into the surface of this blog. Every letter is buzzing with the kinetic dimension that bends my space of time. This is my receiving of the invisible light, here I am at the doors of Babylon thanks to Jake Shears. I am standing on the stage of the theatre of excess, looking at painted whores, sexual gladiators and the fiercely old party children as they awake from their slumber to debut the bacchanal.

I've found the start of my bacchanal, it's in this conscious stream, in the Land of a Thousand Words. The drunken revelry of Bacchus culminates in the pounding of the heart as the bass line as the continuous reminder of the reality that appears outside of these earphones as my mind stumbles aimlessly on its walk of shame through the roots of inspiration to try and find something to write about. And, as any drunken party goer ends up doing, what does it end up finding? It finds itself. Why write about anything else when the mind is the place of a personal infinite?

The steady flow of the sound drifts through the barrier of actuality and physicality to call out into the abstract of possibility and uncertainty. As the ticks, pocks, clicks and pops slowly retreat in the wake of encroaching fantasy, the inner voice becomes clearer, more pronounced, full of energy that has been reserved for the moment. He is ready to release his full potential after being freed from the chains of reality. As the rules of actuality are slowly receding into the mists, the liberated obscurity comes to the forefront. Here is where the full tide of reflection comes rushing through the barrier, there thoughts, memories, ideas and images rule the landscape to create more stains upon the page of my inspiration. The voice now becomes the clear orator, confirming the inner chemistry of my being. Words, letters, symbols and colours all combine to create each limb, each muscle which follow the strips of flesh to attach themselves to the bone with each connective sentence of sinew. Each crease is an unknown character ready to be translated when forced to flow down to the delta of consciousness. Every hair is made up of a single stream of complexes ready to be unravelled into the components of literary double helixes that complete the construction of my living factory of contemplation and introspection.

Can you see what I hear?

Please excuse me whilst I disappear into a field of my invention among the tired, poor, broken and huddled masses...

Thanks Sisters, you're amazing as ever.

Daylight

2009-06-19T22:57:00.003+01:00

Slowly breaking through the daylight, slowly breaking through the daylight.

I understand typing about daylight (and said breaking through it) at around 1 am is slightly ludicrous, but hey, when was my writing ever conventional.

I guess writing when it's dark presents some quite nice opportunities - when light isn't there then everything other than sight becomes important. When the lights go off you feel your way through a room that is now vibrating with potential chaos. The click of the lamp switch engulfs the space around into the disorientating chasm of pitch black periphery and grey gazes, vibrancy is lost as the synthetic glow of the computer screen transforms the world into glazed hues of insignificance.

I was reminded tonight by a wonderful woman's blog how much I miss being able to write as if no-one is reading, to just type how my mind wishes, to start my own trickle of synapse rain that slowly builds to the stream. She is marvellous, words are wonderful, I'm all fuzzy.

So...

2009-06-10T00:56:00.004+01:00

Lets start this summer as the last one ended shall we. On my blog, listening to music through my headphones and typing about absolutely nothing. Listening to the instrumental version of Here In My Room by the glorious Incubus there is no greater way than to just sit back, start typing and let the words take over. So lets see what we come up with shall we?

So last time this happened I started writing about streams of consciousness and the ways of thinking and it's still a subject that continually fascinates me. To imagine the imagination, it's a strange one when thought about logically, but then I guess that's the point. Nothing about it is logical, it is all completely abstract because no matter how hard I try and describe to you what I see when I visualize my thought process you are never going to fully know what is going on inside there.

It's full of shapes, colours but most prominently it is liquid. Whether it be water, thick paint, or clumps of earth the thoughts tend to intertwine themselves into a manifestation of fluidity.

As the music stops it forces me to fully concentrate on the words that I'm producing, in a weird state of synaesthesia they each mould into their respective forms in my consciousness in my constant struggle to visualise the imaginary. The clicks of the keyboard reverberate through the thought process, the sign of progress as the mind slowly works over thinking of what next to write, what next to uncover from the never ending layers of imagery.

Silence fills the air and closes in around the eardrums. Pushing and squeezing at the pressure, masking all thoughts. It glides through the canal and surrounds every thought and synapse, the omnipotent presence of the moment.

Darkness engulfs the room changing a once familiar sight into a masked labyrinth of possibility. As your prisms of understanding glide across the view of nothing they seem to focus upon everything.
Being deprived of sight and sound enhances the thoughts. As I strain to hear the encroaching silence each syllable of imagined speech becomes clear in the vision. The inner voice revels in this new environment with nothing to see and nothing to hear, he has the power to connect both realities. And yet, while hearing the silence you block out any other sound that may appear. You realise that the clock has suddenly stopped ticking.

Now that's the strange thing about just letting your mind run wild, in the face of nothing you find everything, the completely illogical. Like when you concentrate on the silence long enough, suddenly a clock seems to have stopped ticking? and no the batteries hadn't stopped because you when you think of the clock once again you can hear it ticking just as it was beforehand. In the area of imagination, anything can happen, it's like your own little adventure into Wonderland, although I haven't met any queens (of the heart kind or otherwise) or smiling cats just yet...

It's just a release to get things written down, a challenge to try and type what you 'see'. But I guess this is just another way of drawing, it's the mindscape of a portrait.

The fingertips translate.
The eyes examine.
The lips chant.
The mind ignites.

The Dark Knight...

2008-08-05T08:56:00.008+01:00

So I went to see The Dark Knight last night, a mixture of apprehension and excitement. I was really worried that my expectations were going to be too high. I really wanted Heath Ledger to live up to the hype, I'd seen clips, he'd scared me silly, so I was hoping that he would do the same but more in the actual film.

The answer: Yes, yes he did, by the bucket load. He was incredible, when my friend and I left the cinema we were actually lost for words on how to express our opinion, it was done through knowing looks, nods and grunts.

But anyway, this post isn't really about the film - I'm just going to assume that you are going to watch it as it is incredible. The main point of this post is about the couple sitting next to me, who if I said were slightly annoying, it would be a very big under statement.

Now, I don't mind people coming to sit next to you when there are no other spaces available, and I'm all for people sitting the same row, especially as my friend and I were on one of the best rows. But, I've always done this and I'm sure most people do it as well, if there is room for such a thing I like to leave one seat in between me and another group of people. It just gives a little extra bit of personal space and room for shifting about if you get a bit uncomfortable.

However, it seems that this couple don't really follow that and sat directly next to me, now I'm not a social recluse who shrivels up at any contact with a stranger, but it would have been a bit nicer if they left one seat, considering we were the only 4 on the row. Even more so due to the next few reasons:

After the initial, 'great' *rolls eyes* moment of them sitting next to me, I hear a little rustling and then a strange movement that I'm not accustomed to in the cinema. They had brought ice creams in. Twisters to be exact. My friend and I had a big laughing and high pitched squealing session about this on the way home, I seriously do not know anyone who brings ice creams into the cinema?!?! I would have thought it was highly impractical as you don't really know where it is going to drip! So that was my first moment of, oh no..... (although to be fair they smelt really nice - the ice-creams now, not the people! They had a non-odour really)

Secondly, and most annoyingly, they committed the one thing that I HATE the most. They whispered to each other questions about the film, all the way through the film. It was just annoying, I'm all for people wanting to discuss the film, but please do it after it has finished, or when you watch the DVD in the privacy of your own home. If you are confused about something, don't turn to your boyfriend and ask him questions about what is going to happen, when he doesn't know either! Just sit and watch, then it will become clear.

Now this whispering elevated to exclamations of what was going to happen. Everyone in the cinema was thinking it, as it was pretty obvious, but you build up your own suspense in your head you don't say things aloud such as 'The Driver!' when the whole cinema is quiet. Nooooo, oh really? I never would have guessed, thanks for pointing that out to me, just bloody wonderful.

The main point that caused me a lot of rolled eyes moment is this: Now I don't think I'm giving too much away here when saying that there is a scene when The Joker has his head out of a car window and has the the wind blowing through his hair. At this point he does look really quite manic (not that he doesn't in the rest of the film), but to top everything off the girl next to me whispers 'He's crazy!'. Well done my darling, well done, you've just got that The Joker is a little bit off his rocker *claps*, really intuiative. Now I'm all for people getting freaked out by him, it's the point, but please, please, try and keep it in with your inner voice rather than making it audible. Little sounds and gasps are fine but full blown statements are best left to when you are watching the film on your own, don't you think?

Anyway, sorry about that I just had to have a little rant - haven't done so in a while. So all in all, go see the film and if someone starts whispering just go behind them, lean in, and say 'Why so serious hmm?', in your best joker voice - that might freak them out of whispering.

Lovely literature...

2008-08-03T19:56:00.002+01:00

Another literature based post ahead!

So after posting on The Student Room I was reminded that I haven't really posted about my favourite book on the blog! Now, I do love quite a fair few books, but one that stands out as being really quite special to me is 'A Clockwork Orange' by Anthony Burgess. I know that he ended up disliking it immensely, but I have to say it started my interest in Burgess, leading to 'A Dead Man in Deptford' amongst others, so I'm very thankful for that!

So, why do I love a book about a violent rapist with a taste for ultra-violence and Beethoven so much? Quite simply, it's magical, arresting, intriguing, confusing, questioning. A big old smack in the litso with a great sweaty rooker.

The language is incredible, overwhelmingly delicious, if slightly difficult to start off with when you first encounter the Nadsat element.

Now one of my favourite parts is when Alex describes listening to music - it is astoundingly brilliant and encapsulates the undulations of classical music. I'll just leave you with that quote to ponder over, and hopefully you'll pick up the book - as much as cult legend has it, it isn't totally about violence you know!

'Then, brothers, it came. Oh, bliss, bliss and heaven. I lay all nagoy to the ceiling, my gulliver on my rookers on the pillow, glazzies closed, rot open in bliss, slooshying the sloosh of lovely sounds. Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh. The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my gulliver the trumpets three-wise silverflamed, and there by the door the timps rolling through my guts and out again crunched like candy thunder. Oh, it was wonder of wonders. And then, a bird of like rarest spun heavenmetal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now, came the violin solo above all the other strings, and those strings were like a cage of silk round my bed. Then flute and oboe bored, like worms of like platinum, into the thick thick toffee gold and silver. I was in such bliss my brothers.'

p.s. I still can't forgive Kubrick for missing out the last chapter in the film, unforgivable.

Wallpaper...

2008-07-19T22:50:00.007+01:00

It all started (and here we go with a huge loop of how my mind works, you have been warned) when I read a quote by the fabulous Oscar Wilde on someone's Facebook profile.

'If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being immensely over-educated.'

- The Importance of Being Earnest.

So while commenting on reading this particular quote my mind was cast back to Stephen Fry's (a legend by the way!) third Podgram entitled 'Wallpaper'. It centered around a certain Mr. Wilde, and one section around his aesthetic view of the world, in that things are not judged by what is good or bad, but what is beautiful or ugly.

When asked why there was such an upsurge in violence across America, Wilde's response was:

'because your wallpaper is so ugly.'

Now, it may at first glance, seem a humourous response, but when looking at it through the Aesthetic school of thought it makes a large amount of logical sense. Now, think of the world through the eyes of an aesthete, where you judge things by how beautiful they are.

You can see that nature has astounding beauty, wondrously singing notes of the perfect pitch through the ebbs and flows of the hills (Blimey! Where did that come from?), however you contrast that with the majority of human made objects that are ugly. We spoil the parts of the world that we touch, we do not enhance but in fact destroy the natural beauty that the Earth has produced.

So, think of growing up in this ugly, man-made world, where everything that surrounds you, the wallpaper that you are encased in, is ugly. If everything you see is ugly, then you in essence think ugly thoughts, you cannot see beauty, so therefore there is no good. You are forced to, to quote Mr. Fry, 'crap in your own nest'.

It is certainly an interesting point of view that can be thought upon for hours on end.

Now here comes my weird way of thinking again, and I must apologise but it will be another literature based point. After pondering this point about wallpaper, the light bulb sprung into life, an illumination made my literature cogs tick.

It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw--not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.
But there is something else about that paper-- the smell!

A quote from 'The Yellow Wallpaper' by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It's a short story, only around 6,000 words, you'll read it in 30 minutes but it is stunning. It illustrates the 19th Century attitudes towards women's health, both mental and physical (in more specific terms looking at the handling of post-natal depression). The story revolves around the narrator's confinement with her mental health and her eventual decline into psychosis. All centering around the thing that we've been talking about. (I say we like other people have had an input or something... Maybe it's the inbred teacher in me hmmm...)

Wallpaper. Of the yellow variety.(and yes that is supposed to be ugly!)

So, this story highlights what Wilde is saying (in some ways, it obviously takes a different stance on many other things, but lets just take it in the basic form). This wallpaper is the manifestation of her psychosis, the foul colour, the breakneck pattern that disappears into nowhere committing every design sin it could possibly commit. This wallpaper is ugly, therefore her thoughts are even uglier.

Give it a read.

So from a Facebook profile to psychosis, the range of things my mind travels through in the time frame of a few minutes never ceases to bewilder me!

The wonders of Facebook...

2008-07-12T16:57:00.005+01:00

The great thing about St Andrews is that there is definitely an international feel about it, you just need to look at the Fresher's group on Facebook and you can see that people are coming from all over the world. So, that is my first point really, how people from all four corners descend on this (tiny if you look at global proportions) town to have their university education, it truly is magical.

My second thing is to profess the wonder that is Facebook (or any other social networking site, but for this specific purpose Facebook is the ultimate master). Within seconds you can find your future classmates, there are already 639 members on the Fresher's group, 639 students of the class of 2012 are already in some kind of contact with each other. Then comes along accommodation allocation, you get the e-mail (University Hall by the way!) and there is flurry of activity. Everyone wants to know who is where and if they can find their future roommate or neighbour. I've already found around 12/13 who are in the same hall and 3 who are on the same floor, one guy who is 6 doors down from me. It's crazy how around 2 months before we all move in we can chat, 'chew the fat' to quote good old Holden, and get to know each other.

Also the fact that quite a few of these new hall acquaintances are American has also made the whole time difference thing come more to forefront for me. When speaking on the internet, or on the phone your concept of distance gets a bit mixed. You know that this person is thousands of miles away, but for some reason if you have a direct conversation with them the distance seems illogical. Or maybe it is just me!

But the distance then becomes logical again when you look at the time difference at the sending of messages through various Walls and other channels. Whereas I may be typing in the mid-morning, say 10.30 am, the person who I'm sending the message to will most probably be asleep be it, 5.30am in Washington D.C. or 2.30am in California. And yet all those barriers are broken down, that message that I left after my breakfast will be waiting for the person after their breakfast, when it will be afternoon for me.

One my friends in Art College did her final project on the passing of time, 'Tempus Fugit' it was called, 'Time Flies'... It certainly does in the 21st Century, the increasing web of communication demolishes all walls of time, the world is most certainly alive 24 hours a day.

Colourful Bookshelves...

2008-07-08T20:08:00.003+01:00

Talking about organizing books by colour in my previous posts, it triggered something that I had seen a few months a go while researching for an art project.

This is possibly the greatest bookshelf in the world, not for the content of the books, I'm sure there are bookshelves in the world full with the most fantastic collection of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and plays. But for sheer artistry, this is just breathtaking. I pulls at every creative nerve I have in my being, I would so love and be completely happy and content if I could walk through the door that is in my view right now, and end up in that room.

It would be the most perfect, colour abound, Narnia of literary and creative goodness.

Personality Types...

2008-07-08T17:23:00.008+01:00

Some on The Student Room posted a thread on personality types, which reminded me of the test I did a while a go to see what type I am. I have to say I'm usually really critical of such tests and think that they bear no real relation to the person involved as they are for too generalised.

However.

This time, I was totally surprised, taken aback, shocked, astounded, and yes, amazed. The type and the profile was me down to the very last word.

ISFP
Introverted Sensing Feeling Perceiving
The Artist/ Aesthete

So reading back through the profile of an ISFP, (Isn't it great to be just four letters... I suppose it is better than being known by a number.) and there was one point that struck me.

No it wasn't the fact that that 'life is not likely to be extremely easy for the ISFP'. Great, just wonderful.

Or the fact that 'almost every major artist in the world has been an ISFP', although that did strike a chord.

No. It was the statement that ISFP's can be 'intensely perfectionist'. Now this took me back to a GCSE Art lesson, which did make me feel quite old as it was around 2003/4, when we were having a tutorial on how to make a basic pot out of clay. While rolling out my clay, I was told by my teacher that I was 'just a little bit of a perfectionist'. I was a bit offended by the comment back then, but throughout the years it has certainly reigned true, especially through my art. Anyway, to stop me going off on a different point this led me to think about what perfectionist things I have done in general.

Now this may count as more obsessive than perfectionist, but I thought it would make a nice feature on the blog. I think only an obsessive perfectionist would actually do this...

My bookshelf in my bedroom. The container of all my lovely clumps of bound paper. The people that know me will definitely see this as a 'me' thing to do.

There is something wonderful that happens, something great bursts inside, when I can arrange my bookshelf so that different types of 'Penguin Classics', 'Penguin Modern Classics', 'Everyman Classics' and 'Wordsworth Classics' (when you fancy a book but don't really want to spend a huge amount of money on them, when I can arrange these series in their own little alphabetical order. Their spines are the same colour and design, a continuous line of subtle yet attention grabbing design.

Yes. I am aware that this is really quite sad.

Each 'series' is grouped in their own little family, with the authors alphabetical, so that for no reason apart from this, it just looks pretty.See now doesn't that just look really nice and neat. An art form of a bookshelf, sleek, sexy, easy to access, perfect design.

Now, it may be a bit shameful to admit that I find this next picture the best thing about my bookshelf (apart from the actual books of course). I just love how the line links each of the books and the bright orange Penguins just out at you.

Although, I must admit the fact that the line doesn't link completely bugs me just a tiny bit.

There is only one last thing that expresses my perfectionist attitude, and it also beings out my artistic nature. So a double-barrel of ISFP goodness. It is the fact that books that don't fit into the series, and can be done in such a way, are arranged by colour. YES, I know. But it is just one of those things that happens when an arty person is bored, it just makes things a little bit more interesting.

And to be fair on myself, there is only one section that is colour co-ordinated... (and not that greatly at that!)

So yeah, there we go.

Although people may balk at different quizzes and tests, it has to be said that these personality tests certainly ring true!

The wonders of a coffee shop...

2008-07-07T21:24:00.004+01:00

You know as much as I would like to rebel against the commercialism of the world, I have to admit to being a visitor of Starbucks. Not frequent, but occasional, mainly to meet up with a certain friend (She will most probably be reading this and going 'Is that me?' in the vein of Simon Amstell...) and have a good chat and catch up about life, friends, university, possible careers and then general gossip and people watching. I must also note that although we may be in this multi-national, multi-millionbilliontrillion coffee stop, neither of us buy coffee. Instead we opt for either a smoothie or a 'flavoured water', wasting our money on things that we most probably could make at home for a much cheaper price. But then, you get caught up in the whole thing don't you?

You go to a coffee shop, stop, place whatever you want to call it and you end up buying something of probably dubious quality for treble the price than if you bought the ingredients separately and made a nicer, healthier version yourself. As mad as this may sound, and as much as I wish I could say I would have no part of it, it is ingrained in our culture and generation, rather than going over each others houses and sitting around the table with a mug of tea or coffee and some biscuits from the tin as our families used to.

We are all caught up in our fast, retail orientated lives of having so much to do, but seemingly so little time to do it, we organise a rendezvous point where our calendars magically align themselves to meet.

Our modern day astrology I suppose, although without the whole stars, planets and signs element...

But to be honest, it is one of the few times I see this friend as the weeks pass, and I love it. It costs me an extra bit of money on something that can be drunk in 30 seconds, but who cares because you have the whole 'vibe' of being in the coffee shop. Our express pit stop, where you can either order to go, or sit down and have a well deserved (debatable I know) rest. And for people watchers like me, it's a haven.

So my friend and I will sit down with our drinks, sometimes on the stool facing the shop that this branch is located in, if we are feeling nosy, or on the comfy chair, where you sit back (or as far as you can without your feet leaving the ground *cough*) and just shoot the breeze, catch up, laugh, talk about the past, talk about the future and also the present. There is something about a coffee shop where you suddenly have a burst of energy to talk, communicate with an actual human being, something that is really quite rare in these days of MSN, Myspace and 'sitonmyFacebook' (to quote the wonderful Mr. Stephen Fry).

It is the hour or so that I can just expel any area that I haven't done with the person sitting opposite me for a while, leaving no stone unturned, although some stones take a little while longer to turn than others, due to my friend's amazing ability to suddenly forget a subject that we only talked about the night or two before.

It is a commercial, garish land full of grande and tall and frappamochachokes, a strange country where you have to pass a language degree just to enter through customs, but it is the one place where you can see people talk, laugh, actually communicate which is a truly magical thing nowadays.

I would still prefer it if I didn't have to spend money to have such a 'luxury' though.

Bring it on when I have my own flat, preferably in Edinburgh, and people can come over and for a mug of hot liquid, free of course, and just talk, talk, talk and forget about everything else in this weird world that we live in.

Oh, Mr. Joyce...

2008-07-02T22:49:00.003+01:00

I finished 'Dubliners' today. It's amazing.

Someone buy me plane tickets to Dublin please??

So I don't really know what to say, I'll write more about it when I'm less in awe of the legend that is James Joyce.

All I can say in my illiterate state is:

Go forth my dears and read it. NOW.

Sometimes things just start happening...

2008-06-28T11:36:00.008+01:00

You know, things just start happening sometimes don’t they.
11:08.
There comes a time when you are sat in your dining room, staring at the web pages on your iMac, staring but not looking, not recording, the music is playing ‘I speak in many tongues to many men, Argue with angels and always win’, you hear it but you aren’t really listening.
11:10.
This is the time that your inner-voice ponders in his own direction, he strolls through the lists of what really you should or even could be doing at the minute, leaving you to be an empty shell, the hollow man with eyes, which are starting to become slightly blurry, boring into the screen in front of him, the symbol of a generation, the torch holder of the Facebook and Myspace revolution. VivalaRevolucionandallthatcal. He strolls through your republic of conscience (to quote a certain Mr. Heaney), but the thing is in this Republic there doesn’t really seem to be old men with photographs of my grandfathers in their wallets, or a woman on customs who asks me to declare traditional cures and charms, and she certainly wouldn’t mention anything about evil eyes.
11:16.
Instead the inner-voice, him, it, me, wanders around with a checklist, top of it is ‘I really should read something right now, I really feel like it’ but instead of checking it off he follows a different little side route. He talks to me, because we, he, I, don’t really know what to read because I have so much to read, a bookshelf full of books ready to be handled, felt, opened, received, loved or hated. And there they are, in stacks in the bowels of my library, he, we, I, look through the books wondering what I should start, what he has started, what we have finished.
11:21.
He sees the book I’m reading at the minute, the bookmark of a torn piece of paper from an old sketchbook with a little yellow ochre kissing the edges, the remnants of a long disregarded painting, tester, playful moment of creativity, another time that he went wandering I suspect.Page136outofaround400andsomething, I, we, he really should learn to keep to one book until he is finished, so when we’ve finished wandering I will go back to that book.
11:24.
But that is the problem you see, I just want to read so much, we want to know as much as he can, I have such a thirst for knowledge that there isn’t enough time in the world for me to learn everything that I would want to.
11:26.
It might have gotten me thought of as a ‘geek’ or ‘nerd’ in school but who cares really, I just love learning, I adore words.
11:29.
In my Republic I look up through my inner-voice, he is your translator now, I see cloudy skies but they are majestic. The swirling thunderstorm of thought thriving off the synapses.
11:33.
It never really stops, the rain always falls, feeding the saplings of ideas in my cultivating forest of complexes. The water droplets are warm, they soak you through so you are drenched, the water running down your face as you lean your head backwards, eyes closed up towards the steady hydrant flow, each droplet of water causing it's own stream of consciousness down your body, seeping into the ground beneath feeding the roots. The exhaled sigh of comfort, this is where I think, my true home.
11:42.
Sit down underneath a tree, the trunk is your support, giving a little in its slightly spongy, damp condition. It is still tipping down, the continuous Shhhhhhhhh of my own private library. The area around me is warm, wet, wonderful, but my books are dry.
11:46.
Here is where I can just shuffle my shoulders, swivel my hips, engage with my surroundings as they mould to make me comfortable.
11:50.
But you know what that translation is enough, don't want you getting too comfortable in my world now do we? You know what I had a saying that I told a few people on what I thought about James Joyce's style of writing that I think I'd like to share. I find him amazing because he is so unforgiving to his readers, he doesn't really care if you don't get it because it's your own loss, if you really wanted to get it, you would go out and research the details and references. He has his own stream of consciousness that he has given the public access to, you can jump in and it's freezing, you can either get out with a towel that has been on the radiator, or you can acclimatise yourself with it, swim around, get used to it and enjoy it, enjoy the freedom of swimming through someone else’s stream for once, you might catch some fish to put in yours... Try it some time.
11:56.

Marlowe, Marlowe, Marlowe...

2008-06-26T00:49:00.005+01:00

Christopher, Christofer, Kit, Marlowe, Marley, Morely, whatever you want to call him. My literary hero. The one man in history I'd love to go back and meet.

The man is absolutely legendary, kept alive by his printed words but also his mysterious death.
'The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe' by Charles Nicholl, the book I'm reading now. An investigation into the mysterious circumstances of Marlowe's death by looking at the people who surrounded Marlowe during this period of his life. The Elizabethan underworld is fascinating, full of death, debauchery, theft and debts.

Now Marlowe himself, a supposed atheist and homosexual, definitely controversial for his time. I'd really love to go back and ask him about it all, find out what was true, what isn't. But then, you know that might destroy the whole mystery of him, he stands out in the crowd. (Actually, after typing that I don't think it would destroy the mystery, I would truly love to have a conversation with the man over some ale and a meat pie in the back room of some dark and dingy London pub) Sure Shakespeare is the famous one, but Shakespeare wasn't arrested for supposed atheism and he most certainly wasn't killed by being stabbed in the eye. Marlowe's life was just as dramatic and full of action as his plays.

His last view of the world, the glinting tip flying towards the eye that saw the world a bit differently, into the brain filled with thousands of words waiting to emerge onto the page. The blade sliced through his blood vessels and 2 inches into his brain. The searing white light engulfing his view of the attacker, the man who rid the world of a genius.

'It lies not in our power to love or hate,
For will in us is overruled by fate.
When two are stripped, long ere the course begin
We wish that one should lose, the other win;
And one especially do we affect
Of two gold ingots like in each respect.
The reason no man knows: let it suffice,
What we behold is censured by our eyes.
Where both deliberate, the love is slight;
Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?'

-Extract from Hero and Leander

Just beautiful don't you think?

So yeah, I don't really know what the point of this post really was, merely just spreading my love of Marlowe across the internet maybe... So yeah, check his work out, the man was a master of words and a sparker of controversy, what more could you want?

I'm sure there will be more posts about Marlowe in the future, I can't get enough of the man.

Books, Books and more Books...

2008-06-21T23:19:00.003+01:00

Although being a literature fanatic I only recently discovered the 'Visual Bookshelf' on Facebook. Upon this discovery, I was a little too excited to be honest, I thought that I was quite sad...

However, I spent the next significant time frame updating my virtual bookshelf trawling through my literary memory trying to remember what I'd read, and what I was planning to read. I almost went into literature overload.

Updating my 'Reading Now' I realised that I was still in fact reading 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' by James Joyce. It is really amazing, I love it, I just haven't had the time to pick it up for ages. Not to mention the fact that I'm like a 5 year-old at Christmas when I buy new books and have to start reading them as soon as possible, even if it means slightly forgetting about a current book I'm reading!

Well, my Visual Bookshelf, my identity through books really isn't it. It shows my tastes, my interests, almost everything about me except my face. It's quite strange really isn't it, how a bunch of paper bound in a cover, with some words cleverly organised over the pages can say so much about a person. Your reaction to a book gives you an insight into your own personality... I think I'm trying to be philosophical about it all, when really it's too late to be doing anything of the sort, and in reality I'm just talking about a Facebook application. Oh well.

A Bit of Art...

2008-06-21T15:40:00.001+01:00

Well, first off lets inject a bit of art into the blog, seeing as I've just finished my art course, it's quite appropriate don't you think?

Seeing as his art sparked a few discussions with my parents (in which I was supposedly being defensive...), lets look at the art of my tutor (or ex-tutor now, sad times), Brendan Burns. Now truth be told, I'm not a huge fan of abstract art, or usually the stuff that Brendan produces, but for some reason (maybe it's because I know the man, have seen the beach that is his inspiration etc.) I'm always truly absorbed by his work.

Liquid Light Series, Swishback (SM:862171. January 4th 2007)
Oil, wax and graphite on board

His main inspirations for his long series of 'coast' paintings is Druidston Haven, on the Pembrokeshire Coast, a beautiful place. If you ever go there, you feel even more of a connection to his paintings, they click into place and really do convey the acrobatics that your senses fly through while you are there.

Let me just have a quick diversion and say that his 'Liquid Light' and 'Taste of Sight' series are my favourites. Maybe their names are subconsciously playing to my love of literature and words... He likes his synaesthesia does Brendan, we had a (kind of) tutorial on it with him near the start of our specialism before our Ex Motus brief. We watched this slightly crazy video called 'Orange Sherbet Kisses' where this woman had all sorts of reactions to music, it truly was weird. Although I did find out from that video that Vladimir Nabokov was a synesthete, which fascinated me as his words are actually always so colourful and bright when you read them. Anyway, I'm divulging from the point! I do apologise about this by the way, you may get a series of ramblings from me quite a lot.

Back to the art work, I just want to reach out and touch it, feel it, squidge it. It brings out your internal compulsion towards the sea and everything linked with it. When you view the work, you can smell the salt, see the shadows, you are ever so tempted just to dip your feet in. His paintings aren't all about what you 'see', it's about what you feel, he tackles (and is quite successful in it if you ask me) the idea of trying to convey a feeling in the physical. He gives the conceptual a physical form.

As a little side note, when I tackled a piece of art inspired by the same beach I looked at the diversity of colour within the beachscape. There really is an abundance of everchanging colour within the coast, everytime the sun moves, or a cloud drifts across its rays the colours will dramatically change, it's truly amazing when you notice the little things like that.

So anyway, I think I've gone on long enough really, check him out: http://www.brendanstuartburns.co.uk/home.htm

If you ever have the pleasure of being taught by him, he is inspirational, he makes you laugh, you never want to do anything to disappoint him, he constantly challenges you and has a tendency for cheesy metaphors such as 'keeping the boulder moving' and 'you have the cupboard built, now you need to buy the ingredients', I'm sure he's also come up with 'today we are walking, tomorrow we dance', so in short he is the best tutor ever. He is the magic. I'm really going to miss him. Gah, a great start, getting me all upset!

Stick to the barnacles!

p.s. If you really like his work, buy his book:

Well, lets get the ball rolling...

2008-06-21T12:43:00.001+01:00

So, my first post on my brand new, sparkling blog. What to say.... well as you can probably guess from the title, I'm from Wales, and soon to be going to St Andrews to study English for the next four years. I am just a tad excited...

I thought I would set up a blog about the build up to going to St Andrews, actually going there etc. as when I was applying I thought that the blogs from people actually in St Andrews were really helpful in finding out what the place was really like etc. (I seem to like to use the word etc. quite a bit, hmmm... - also I'm a bit ellipsis mad) There probably will be some (or quite a few) posts about books and what not, maybe some art too.

I've just finished a Foundation in Art & Design, specialising in Fine Art, so with no more work to do on anything such as PRDs (Personal Reflective Diaries, the bane of my life for the past few month) I thought I would set this little baby up. (Oh my word, why did I use that phrase???) I got a Distinction for the course, I was a bit shocked to say the least, considering the state of my (almost non-existent) sketchbook. But a lot of people seemed to really like my final piece so I was really pleased with that.

I don't really know what else to say, except I really need to find a job soon. Blerrrghhh, the toils of being a student have already started and I haven't even moved up there yet!

Hopefully, you'll be getting more posts in the near future!