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.

Sometimes things just start happening...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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!