At The Doors of Babylon...

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

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.