Wallpaper...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.