You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Uni’ category.
So I haven’t blogged in a while, and I’m sure you’ve all missed my witty and insightful prose. I recently started my Honours year at uni, but that’s actually a rubbish excuse for not writing, since I did very little of it in the six months I sat on my ass and watched Gossip Girl and One Tree Hill. I’m only just getting back into the swing of reading and essay writing, and the fact that this year, there is actually a subject, and umpteen brochures and handouts about how to write ‘academic’ prose, is a bit intimidating. Writing in the academic is something that I never really thought about, I just did. In year 12, my english teacher constantly told us to avoid using the personal pronoun, the ever subjective ‘I’. It seemed a bent of the VCE english program that all subjectivity must be erased, distance and objectivity were essential in getting a high study score. I think at Uni this idea changes a little. You are, perhaps, allowed to state that “it is my intention to argue that … blah does not indicate blah but rather I think that it shows us blah, and opens up new avenues for rethinking blah.” Rather than the year 12 “The aim of this essay is…” bit. However this year is a new thing altogether. Not only are you encouraged to use personal pronouns, you’re encouraged to have an opinion. Not just that, you’re required to invent something new, to put your thoughts out there, to argue them, to take a stand. In 12,000 words, or thereabout, in a structured thesis with an appropriately academic tone. But hey, say what you feel, an claim it as your own, don’t fob it off onto someone else. Sounds cool. Except I think in the last few years, I’ve become an expert in doing the exact opposite.
In general, I’m a pretty non-confrontational person. I don’t like conflict. So instead, if somebody is bugging me, I bottle it up inside and then end up doing the dreaded confronting, and having it out with them. Sometimes, if they bug me right off, and I’m so mad there’s steam pouring out my ears, then yes, I will have it out with them then and there. I have a history of marching up to teachers, school principals (my friend Marita will vouch for this), church pastors, conservative liberals, and shooting my mouth off. But I don’t generally feel any better after doing it. So what gives?
I’ve been thinking lately about another area that not only do I not confront, I actively avoid. And that is, telling the people that I love how I feel about them. Why is it easier to tell some red-neck american that they’re a racist twat and you’d like to see them bludgeoned than telling somebody you love that you love them? I mean, love is good thing, right? It’s a positive emotion. So why is that the thought of this kind of confrontation, this use of the subjective I, of giving my opinion, makes me want to wither into dust and disappear? Why does it make me feel so effing terrible? I mean, if somebody came up to me and told me they loved me, or were in love with me (which has pretty much never happened), I can’t imagine feeling bad about it. I mean, I might feel bad that I didn’t reciprocate, if that was the case, but in general, I’d probably be pretty chuffed. Yet somehow, when confronted with the thought of doing this very thing, I balk. My personal pronoun just isn’t going to spout out the words ‘I have feelings for you’. Instead, I’ll stick to an objective tone, telling them that they’re a great person, that what they’re wearing looks good, that that guy totally doesn’t know what he’s missing out on if he doesn’t go for them. But ‘I love you?’. Hell, no.
Part of me wonders if there isn’t a bit more to this. Like, the fact that the people I tend to fall in love with are highly inappropriate people to fall in love with. They are, in general, the wrong age, have the wrong kind of relationship with me to even go there, they’re the ‘wrong’ gender, and of the wrong sexual orientation to reciprocate. So, I keep my mouth shut, and listen to songs like the one I just posted on facebook, Mace Spray, by the Jezabel’s, and let my feelings float over me. But they don’t really go away. And so I wonder, would I feel a whole lot better if I just fronted up and told these people how I feel? Part of me feels like it would be a weight off my chest, but then I remember the red-neck pastor and the school principal and think that perhaps I am better off refraining. Maybe the aim of this essay isn’t to give my opinion, after all.
I don’t have any answers to these questions. This wasn’t a statement that I’m going to break this cycle. In fact, I realise that this blog, as far as structure goes, is a pile of shit. How did I get from year twelve essays to inappropriate crushes? Well, never mind. Sometimes it’s nice to write things out, then post them for the whole internet world to see. Even if you’ve just admitted something highly inappropriate.
I’m pretty sure that there’s somebody, (theorist, philosopher, etc) that thinks that unless something is spoken, it doesn’t exist in actuality. And I think it’s a common belief that talking about something makes it more real. Once something is said, it can’t be unsaid. There’s power in having a voice, that’s certainly true. So I’m not going to take back what I’ve said, because at least, in this part of the world, I do have a voice. And even if I don’t tell my totally babe-ing neighbor that they’re hot, or close friend that I have feelings for them, or tutor that I’d like to mind-fuck-them – directly, this might be a step towards doing something about it.
(As my friend’s Robyn and Sarah will vouch for, Gigola (which screened last week at MQFF) was an effing terrible movie. But I have to say, the part where she seduces her psychiatrist was hot. Especially since her psychiatrist was a highly inappropriate person for Gigola to fall in love with. So despite it getting a rating of shit out of ten in terms of narrative, it might have scored a point or two in that department. Hello, Ana Padrao.)
I wrote this blog paper for my uni subject: The Digital Mediascape, and figured I may as well post it here for fun!
Digital Media in the Museum Space: The Melbourne Museum Titanic Exhibition
In this blog paper I wish to draw attention to the museum and the ways in which digital media is impacting the sense of the authentic or the original which is thought to be the essence of museum culture(1). In their discussions on the museum space, both Allison Griffith, George Macdonald and Stephen Alsford explore the ways in which museums are utilising digital media in conjunction with authentic artefacts in attempt to get closer to the ‘real’, or to recreate the past in a more dynamic way. In their view, “diverse media are required to capture and communicate the many facets of culture.”(2) From this angle, digital media is seen as enhancing our experience of cultural artefacts by reconstructing historical and spatial context. It helps create an interactive experience in which we can be ‘immersed’ in a simulation of time or place and thus get closer to the ‘real’, or to authentic experience. IMAX can be seen as the epitome of this notion in that it “enables visitors to “enter” (immerse) themselves both physically and psychically in the experience.”(3) In this paper I am interested in questioning the validity of this idea. Does the heightened sensory experience simulation offers enhance historical and cultural understanding?
In her article “The Morphology of Space in Virtual Heritage”, Bernadette Flynn discusses the way that history is increasingly being mediated through simulacra(4). In this sense, as soon as we place anything behind glass in a museum, it’s presence as an artefact signifies an absence. While we have an authentic artefact before us in a brightly-lit case, we have lost context; its surroundings, the temporal and spatial environment it belongs to(5). The artefact thus becomes simply a sign, pointing to a lost referent. As Flynn says, “in this era of digital technology and connectivity, access to heritage is increasingly mediated through the consumption of signs, electronic images, and simulacra.”(6) This idea can be seen as similar ideas to Baudrillard’s idea of simulation. Baudrillard’s theory states that “simulation corresponds to a short circuit of reality and to its duplication through signs.”(7)
The upcoming Titanic exhibition at the Melbourne Museum is a good example of the ways digital culture is currently interacting in the conventional museum setting. The exhibition comprises of a number of ways of ‘accessing’ the past:
The first, most traditional and arguably authentic element of the exhibit comprises the actual artefacts from the Titanic. These act as signs that refer to the historical event.
Original artifacts in the exhibit.
Secondly, the exhibit contains images of the actual Titanic ruins. These are simulations in that they are digital copies that point to the original.
Film footage / photo’s from dive to shipwreck.
The third stage of the exhibit comprises reconstructions of the Titanic cabins. Here we are getting to Baudrillard’s idea of simulacra, as the reconstructions can be seen as “substituting the signs of the real for the real”(8) . As Flynn asserts, in our culture a 3D scale model is seen as “the hallmark of authenticity.”(9)
Reconstruction of a Titanic cabin that is part of the exhibition.
Interacting with these more conventional museum elements is the IMAX 3D film Ghosts of the Abyss. Made in 2003, the film follows director James Cameron and a crew of scientists and filmmakers as they undertake an exploration of the remains of the sunken Titanic. The film employs digital technology, both in the sense of filming the ruins, but also combines this documentary footage with digital images of ‘ghosts’ of the titanic on the night of its sinking.
In this way, the IMAX film can be seen to enter what Baudrillard calls the hyperreal world of simulation, where “a network of artificial signs become inextricably mixed up with the real elements.”(10) This literally applies toGhosts of the Abyss, as the film mixes artificial digital imagery of the ‘ghosts’ with ‘real footage’ of the ship. We are in a world where the real is almost indistinguishable from the simulation. There is a blurring of boundaries and a layering of fiction upon fact as we layer media upon media. In this sense, in the hyperreal are no longer able to make a distinction between the real and the imaginary. To take this analogy further, the fact that James Cameron directed the fictional Hollywood blockbuster Titanic (1997) further entangles us in the labyrinth of simulacra. Our relationship to the historical event has been remediated through both the archiving and cataloguing of artefacts that refer to the event, and the fictionalising of that event into a movie. I would argue that this has largely altered the perception of the historical Titanic in our collective cultural memory. The later 3D film by the same director creates more of a linkage between the real and the simulation, evoking both a nostalgia for the actual and the fictional.
Returning to the role of Ghosts of the Abyss in the museum space, I think this interaction between the film at IMAX and the museum exhibit is a good example of the various stages of simulation – from original to reproduction. We have the historical event being mediated through objects in the exhibition space and remediated in the IMAX. In this sense the real is enhanced or improved upon through 3D technology so we enter this space of the hyperreal. When questioning whether this experience gets us closer to the past, I am interested in the idea that the presence of the simulation and the screen only reinforces the absence of the real – only increases our awareness of the screen as a substitute for the original. With IMAX as an increasingly prominent feature of museum culture, is it possible that the closer we try and get to recreating the real experience with digital and virtual tools, the further we get from it?
This situation is addressed somewhat in Flynn’s discussion. While she notes that our access to the aura and enchantment of the original object may be lost in our new simulated way of seeing, she adds that we gain “the experience of navigation, immersion or vertigo as another form of “losing oneself”(11) . This leads us to question whether the idea of the original versus simulation is truly significant in terms of authenticity. While the reconstructed Titanic cabins or the IMAX 3D erase what Walter Benjamin saw was the enchantment of the original(12), does it instead immerse us in a different type of enchantment that is equally stimulating to our imagination? Macdonald and Alsford suggest that digital culture serves to make the difference between the original and the copy incoherent; “the whole question of original vs. replica, reality vs. simulation, has yet to be thoroughly examined, particularly in the context of a society where the digitization of information offers to make the difference meaningless in some circumstances.” This could be seen as the same idea that Baudrillard suggests when he says that “the impossibility of rediscovering an absolute level of the real is of the same order as the impossibility of staging illusion. Illusion is no longer possible because the real is no longer possible.”(13)
When evaluating the effect of digital media on our museum culture, I think it is important to keep these ideas in mind. Whilst Baudrillard suggests that simulacra signifies the impossibility of rediscovering the real, I believe this could equally apply to museums as they stood one or two hundred years ago. While original museums may not have had simulations and 3D technology to immerse us in ‘the idea’ of history, they still positioned us to view culture and history in a certain, specific way. As Alsford and Macdonald point out, museum’s have always had an active role in cultural and historical representation, mediating our experience of the past; “even selecting which artifacts [sic] to display, as a representative sample of a subject, is an act of interpretation.”(14) The increasing inclusion of digital technology in the museum can as such be seen not as a radical diversion to original modes of representation, but the natural development of that representation as technology opens up more expansive and immersive ways to access the past. Further, as Griffiths suggests, the idea of immersion harks back to periods before archival museums, thus situating IMAX in a chain of “longstanding…illusionistic exhibits such as dioramas and period rooms.”(15) Thus, the history of museum culture and simulation can be seen as not so divorced from one another after all.
End Notes:
1) Griffiths, Alison. (2008) ” From Daguerreotype to Imax Screen: Multimedia and Imax at the Smithsonian Institution ” Shivers down your spine: Cinema, Museums and the Immersive View, Columbia University Press, New York, p231
2) MacDonald, George F. & Alsford, Stephen (1995) “Museums and Theme Parks: Worlds in Collision?” Museum Management and Curatorship. 14:2, p137. .
3) Griffiths, 2008, p218.
4) Flynn, Bernadette. (2007) ” The Morphology of Virtual Space ” in Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage: A Critical Discourse eds. Fiona Cameron and Sarah Kenderdine, MIT Press: Cambridge, mass, p349.
5) Flynn, 2007, p350.
6) Flynn, 2007, p349.
7) Baudrillard, Jean. (1994) “The Precession of Simulacra”, in Simulacra and Simulation, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, p27.
8) Baudrillard, 1994, p2.
9) Flynn, 2007, p349
10) Baudrillard, 1994, p20.
11) Flynn 2007, p362.
12) Flynn, 2007, p349.
13) Baudrillard, 1994, p19.
14) Macdonald & Alsford, 1995, p143.
15) Griffiths, 2008, p207.
Bibliography:
Baudrillard, Jean. (1994) “The Precession of Simulacra”, in Simulacra and Simulation, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, p1-41.
Flynn, Bernadette. (2007) ” The Morphology of Virtual Space ” in Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage: A Critical Discourse eds. Fiona Cameron and Sarah Kenderdine, MIT Press: Cambridge, mass: 349-369.
Griffiths, Alison. (2008) ” From Daguerreotype to Imax Screen: Multimedia and Imax at the Smithsonian Institution ” Shivers down your spine: Cinema, Museums and the Immersive View, Columbia University Press, New York: 195-231.
MacDonald, George F. & Alsford, Stephen (1995) “Museums and Theme Parks: Worlds in Collision?” Museum Management and Curatorship. 14:2: 129-147.
Web Sources:
http://www.titanicmelbourne.com/ Accessed: 19/04/2010
http://titanicmelbourne.com/gallery_exhibition.html Accessed: 19/04/2010
http://museumvictoria.com.au/titanic Accessed: 19/04/2010
http://screenrant.com/wp-content/uploads/imax.jpg Accessed: 28/04/2010
http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/ghosts-abyss/trailer Accessed: 19/04/2010
Filmography:
Ghosts of the Abyss, 2003, James Cameron
Titanic, 1997, James Cameron
Regina Spektor’s new album is coming out in six days – yep, that’s right, six days! I’m not sure if it’ll be in Australia then too, but I hope so! Otherwise a download will have to suffice until I can get my hands on the real thing.
I love introducing people to Regina when I get the chance. The first time I heard her was at Emily’s place and I remember being struck by how beautiful and unusual her voice was. In first year I wrote a ‘music memoir’ piece for creative writing. Even though I don’t really like it, I’ll paste a paragraph or two in since it explains my Regina obsession:
” The Consequence of Sounds.
October, 2006.
Six weeks of high school left, and my favourite time of day is the walk home from the bus stop. Juliet, my thirteen year old sister and I, share the earphones of my ipod between us and dawdle on our way; stopping to get hot chips at the milk bar, skirting around the footy oval and weaving our way through the naked trees by the tennis courts. We are listening to Regina Spektor’s Soviet Kitsch album. On it’s cover, Regina is surrounded by Russian Babushka dolls, swigging from a bottle of vodka and looking mischeviously back at the camera. She is Russian/American, growing up in Moscow and now living in New York. Her lyrics are a minefield of pop-culture and literature references; she sings about everything from Hemingway to Oedipus to Samson and Delilah. Her songs are thoughtful and intelligent, and she is the first artist introducted to my insular musical world that makes me want to scream ‘oh my God, this is music!’ everytime I listen to her. I am an immediate convert only seconds after hearing her mix of classical piano and ecclectic punk at a friends place. Unexpectedly, Juliet my jumps on my bandwagon. When we get home, we grab out the bongo drums, instil ourselves in the lounge room by the piano and begin rapping out to one of Regina’s crazy songs, ‘Pavlov’s Daughter’ or ‘Consequence of sounds‘.
March, 2007.
I am at university and fast becoming, in the words of Regina an ‘incurable humanist’. I feel liberated from the suffocating environment of my small Christian high school. Although i had a great group of friends there, I always felt like a square peg in a round hole. At uni, everyone is different -there is no ‘right’ way to be. I no longer feel that I have to fit into a mould. I am starting to think for myself, really think, for the first time. I can behave how I want, wear what I want. Uni is a forum for self discovery. I am overwhelmed by the amount of knowledge in the world and how little of it I posess myself. But the prospect of how much there is to learn thrills me. I find myself with a ridiculous grin on my face just by being among people who are, although all so different to me, so like me. I want to jump up and down in my tutes with sheer joy at the discovery that other people think in the same way as me, have the same questions as me, appreciated the same things. I sit there and listen to people describe and bring to life thoughts and feelings that I share. I want to shout ‘Yes! I feel that too!’ It’s like someone has written‘You are not alone!’ across the sky. “
In retrospect it’s somewhat dramatic, and I think that piece was a lot more about me than the music (probably why I didn’t get the best mark for it). It’s interesting how music becomes the background of life though. Looking back, you can connect a song or artist with a certain part of your life, and all the associated feelings or emotions that were present at that time. My music taste seems to be constantly evolving. There’s some CD’s that I don’t really like to listen to anymore because they remind me of low times in life. But Regina has been one artists who has had a big effect on me in both happy and sad times. I think it comes down to the fact that she embodies the different = beautiful ideal. And I like that alot.
This is the music video for Laughing With.
New revised extended draft! Thanks for the helpful comments guys. 
____________________________________________________
It happened again today. You caught yourself remembering. It is her again; hands plunged into the kitchen sink, her fingers flicking the soapsuds. She is laughing, splashing tiny drops of water onto the bench, the floor, onto you. You can hear her laugh distinctly. It’s tinkly, like the sound of the dishes clinking in the sink. Her hands flutter when she laughs. Long and graceful and light, they skitter effortlessly across the water like they do the black and white keys. They tap lightly against the window pane or her cigarette. Flick, splash, flutter, skitter, tap. The memories come sharp and quick, like a slideshow on a projector, shuttling through your mind, getting faster, mixing themselves up, absent of any sense of order.
It was Martin who introduced you to her. The Martin you used to work with at the factory, who had long hair and who was always drunk and looking for his next kick. You were at one of his parties. The one’s that you used to go to only when you were sure you had nothing better to do. They were all the same; dim lighting, sweaty faces, heavy metal in the background. You’d seen her earlier, a slim figure clad in black across the other side of the room, her features animated in the midst of conversation. ‘She’s a painter,’ Martin said in your ear when he’d noticed the direction of your gaze. ‘Pictures, not walls.’ Several beers later, he’d propelled you over to her and disappeared, giving you an encouraging thump on the back. The painter was small and delicate, with angular features and an air of quiet unselfconsciousness. A painter, you would later discover, who favoured impressionism over realism, yoga over pilates, and Katherine over Audrey Hepburn. She held out her left hand instead of her right and when she articulated a slow hello a puff of smoke escaped her lips.
Perhaps it was her slightly smudged red lipstick, or her gentle enigmatic smile, but something about her put you at ease. Loosened by the beers you’d drunk, you began to talk. You were overcome, for some reason, by this skinny child-like woman with her smattering of freckles and clear, intelligent grey eyes. Overcome with an urge to try and convey something to her. Something meaningful and specific, although you weren’t sure what. You paused, haltingly, at the sound of your own disjointed sentences, suddenly feeling like a fool. But she was attentive and encouraging. In the end you stopped teetering around the edge and dived headlong into a conversation largely made up of isms and wild gesticulations. When you finally surfaced, you realised that you really had no idea what you were talking about. But she didn’t seem to mind. That night, you left feeling inspired, soaked with some sense of change. You felt as though a little something inside of you had opened up, something you hadn’t quite known was there before.
II.
It was a house you knew you would belong in right away. Open-plan, with polished boards, high ceilings and lots of north-facing windows. And it was cluttered, not in a stifling way but in a comfortable, familiar way. This house was lived in, it seemed to say. In the kitchen a row of colourful teapots and faded china sat on display, the kind with hand painted roses on it, so thin that the edges of the cups and saucers were almost translucent. They reminded you of the ones your grandmother used to use and of hot Anzac biscuits straight out of the oven that she always served with tea. Through the hallway framed portraits lined the walls, impressionistic ones that you hadn’t seen before. No, they weren’t hers, the painter answered with that same smile as she led you to the spare room. It was raining the day that you moved in. You arrived dripping wet, garbage bags stuffed with clothes, your back bent with the heavier weight of all you were trying to leave behind. The painter opened the door. ‘Welcome home,’ she said. And as soon as you stepped inside, you knew you were.
On Saturday mornings, the painter sat in the armchair beside the window, flipping meditatively through an art book. Monet, Renoir, Van Gough. You watched her sometimes from the stairwell, safely hidden by the angle of the door way. Her blonde head would always be highlighted in the sunlight that filtered through the window, a cup of tea in her hand, her eyes sometimes closed. It was the mornings when her mind was the clearest, serene and pure, waiting to be filled with the images conspiring in her unconscious. You wondered what colours were forming, blotting onto her mental canvas, tentatively at first, then faster and faster; an explosion of joyful enthusiasm. She would tell you later that on those morning’s she was certain of some kind of supernatural presence that pervaded the room. Did you know what she meant? No, you had said. You didn’t believe in the supernatural. She had touched your arm with soft fingertips and you had flinched slightly. It’s there, she said, you just need to sit very still to feel it.
I’m posting some of my half-assed creative writing on here and anyone, friend or foe, is welcome to tell me what they think. I have a draft due next week for Uni and I’m thinking of using this as the start.
****************************************************************************
It happened again today. You caught yourself remembering. It was her again, in that black and white checked dress. The knee-length one with the cinched waist, her favourite. It was a party, one of Martin’s. You aren’t sure which, they were all the same: dim lighting, non-descript metal reduced to a dull roar in the background, red faces bright with perspiration and excitement. You see her from a distance across the room, speaking to Martin earnestly. A puff of smoke escapes her lips. Red lipstick is smudged on her glass. Martin is drunk, his hair long and unruly, his eyes ablaze. They are eighteen and nineteen, it is the youth of the nineties, backed with a century of teenage rebellion. And they are no different, the boy with the Nirvana t-shirt and the girl on the couch beside him. Tomorrow she will probably be doubled-over in the bathroom all morning. But tonight she is embarking on a new phase of enlightenment, inspired by the clarity only alcohol brings.
Now you are remembering something else. Her hands. Dancing. Her fingers flicking the soapsuds, splashing tiny drops of water on you from the kitchen sink. Her laugh. It’s tinkly, like the sound of the dishes clinking in the sink. Her hands flutter wildly when she laughs. Long and graceful and light, they skitter effortlessly across the black and white keys. They tap lightly against the window pane or her cigarette. Flick, splash, flutter, skitter, tap. The memories come sharp and quick, like a slideshow on a projector, shuttling through your mind, getting faster, mixing themselves up, devoid of any sense of order.
************************************************************************
I’ve spent about two hours staring at these two paragraphs and rewriting them til I’m fairly sure I’ve eviscerated them completely. New eyes are needed.
No more dumb posts where I pretend to say something profound after cut-and-pasting a definition from dictionary.com. Well, for this week at least. Now it’s time of a good ol’ whinge.
Mondays this semester are officially my worst day of the week. To begin with it’s a brutal 9am start and a twenty minute wait for a coffee at Castro’s. This is vastly improved by a four hour break of nothingness before I attend my Sex and The Screen tute of horror, in which the level of debate each week approximates to: “um, I think, like, that movie, like, shows how women are like, objects of the male gaze.” (No, really?)
But my favourite class of all has to be the 5 til 8pm ‘Writing through Character’ workshop where we discuss subjectivity and the joys of psychoanalysis and attempt to relate them to the process of under-graduate creative writing. Yes, clearly the Oedipus Complex has wide application, but must Freud invade the sacred space of the creative writer? I think not.
What really shits me about this class is the total amount of wank that people actually say. Is there a metaphoric threat of castration in this 19th century Russian short story? Is there a homoerotic sub-plot in this text? Do women really write with more attention to detail than men? Could a man have written Jane Eyre? Maybe Charlotte Bronte was a man! People actually care about this. Isn’t that the kind of thing you should be talking about in creative writing, you ask? Well, maybe you’re right, and I should not be in this course. I just really don’t care about whether or not Tim Winton’s characters encapsulate Tim Winton’s entire personality or perhaps only represent aspects of his personality. I mean, GOD!!!
In desperate need of a revolver or a change of attitude, I forced myself to look at this three hour block of hell through new eyes today. I will join in with the wank, I thought. I will say whatever I am thinking, face those blank faces with defiance, and add to the entire scene of pretentious wankiness with my own unique slant. So, I contributed to the workshopping with the most helpful and constructive criticism I could. I used phrases like ‘visually evocative’, ‘strong unique narrators voice’ and ‘beautiful metaphoric language’. ”This piece of writing reads as though it was written under hypnosis.” Was one of my enlightening contributions. Someone laughed. And it wasn’t with me.
But I left class feeling better. Perhaps there is a sense of freedom in succumbing to being a pretentious Melbourne Uni student creative arts wanker. Talking through your ass. Yes, I can do that. In fact, this blog is testament to the fact that I do it at least semi-frequently. And, lets face it, I do care about wanky things – postmodernist intellectual banter and analysis of the ‘ism’s’. Why not embrace it? In the words of Emiliana Torrini, today has been okay.
PS. People, don’t be afraid to comment on my posts! I have had like a hundred views of my blog in the last two days and no comments for months. I can’t quite figure out what’s going on… :D
“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture” ie. ridiculous, impossible and idiotic.
So began one of my creative writing lectures in the subject “Writing for Real” last semester. The guest speaker, whose name is lost to me, began his hour long speal on music reviewing by contesting criticisms the genre recieves, which are largely encapsulated in this phrase. Describing music in terms of its audible qualities is difficult, just as is verbally describing any of the senses. How do you explain to a blind man what colour is? He has to see it for himself. Well, I agree with nameless guest speaker on this. I am increasingly interested in music writing, but not terribly competent writing about it in a technical way. Last year, I wrote a personal essay about a few episodes in my life that have happened over the last couple of years. Each section had an accompanying soundtrack to it; as in, i described the music I was listening to, how it made me feel and how it related to my life. Well, the feedback I recieved from my tutor went something like “this is interesting, but it lacks punch. I’d like to hear more about the music and less about your life.” Intersting. Perhaps this could be applied across the board to all of my writing. ME. ME. ME. Well, it is difficult to remove myself from my writing, everything I say/type/pen is filterted through my own distracted and critical consciousness. Each thing I say is tainted by my own personal bias. How else can one write? Objectivity is almost impossible to attain. Even percieved objectivity is still self-conscious subjectivity. How does one erase the hand of the author?
Music writing I suspect is just the same. After all, reviewers, no matter how conscious they are of making critical judgements rather than value judgements, are still evaluating their said song or artist through the filter of their own ears and musical tastebuds. After thinking about this excessively last semester, I have come to one conclusion. Screw Objectivity. After all, it is often the most subjective, biased and ridiculously blinkered points of view that get the most attention. The peacemakers, on the otherhand, who try to soften the blow of a bad review with neutral wording end up sounding bland, insincere and unopinionated. Germaine Greer, for instance, says the most utterly ridiculous, biased and subversive things and ends up splashed across the front page of every tabloid. I’m not saying we should all start ripping Mrs Obama to shreds, only that sometimes a subjective opinion can be more interesting than ‘beige wall’ reviewers. Neutrality is overrated, Switzerland.
Back to the topic…..
Despite the fact that I am perpetually on the search for new bands to listen to and it seems like I continue to discover them long after they have debuted. In fact, after going through my boyfriends 300+ CD’s and knowing less than a quater of the bands (most of them 90s British rock), I feel incredibly under-educated about music, despite considering myself to have a fairly broad musical taste. Truth is, I get in my niche`s and not even the lure of Triple J can coax me out of them. I wont stop listening to an album til I’m good and ready. After that, it’ll sit untouched in my pile of CD’s, gathering dust while I move onto the next awesome artist I discover about five years after everybody else. It’s a cycle I’m finding quite impossible to break, actually. Quite embarrassingly, I’d almost never listened to Oasis, Blur, New Order or The Smiths until they were pushed upon me, and subsequently only started raving about them sometime last week, about a decade too late. So, here is a list of my current (but in reality out of date) albums of the month.
A couple of short reviews:
Rilo Kiley Under The Blacklight – I haven’t listened to alot of Rilo Kiley’s other songs, the first one I heard was ‘Portions for Foxes’, featured on Grey’s Anatomy. The other handful of songs such as ‘A better son or daughter’ and ‘Does he love you’, although sung by Jenny Lewis and thus pleasant to listen to, had a whiney teen-punk quality to them that irritated me a little. Under the blacklight in comparison, is flawless. The songs are more upbeat and at the sametime more soulful, the electric guitar leads prominently in nearly all the songs and the range allows Lewis’s voice to be fully appreciated. ‘Silver Lining’, ‘Close Call’ and ‘Under the blacklight’ all have very similar rhythmic qualities, following the same pattern with the chorus being just a few drawn out words. ‘The Angels Hung around’ is a little bit Dixie Chicks because of Lewis’s country lilt, while ‘Monkeymaker’, ‘Dejalo’ and ‘Smoke Detector’ are fun rock songs with suggestive lyrics “I’ve got a tongue if you wanna taste it.. I got a place if your ready to go” & “I was smokin’ in bed… I do the smoke detector”. Overall its a sweet combination of fun rock, really awesome guitar and beautiful soulful singing. It was termed by some shite media site as Rilo Kiley’s “sexiest album ever”, and being ignorant of the others, I won’t disagree!
Ladyhawke – Ok, so I jumped on the Ladyhakwe bandwagon and yes, she is a touch pretentious in the ‘how much can i reference 80s pop culture’ kind of way, but the music is fun. Not to mention catchy. I think I walked around singing “bang bang bang on the wall” for about a week before I managed to slap myself out of it. She’s like The Ting Ting’s; pop for those who are too cool to listen to actual top 40 pop. And better, too. However the start of ‘Back of the Van’ bears a remarkable resemblance to Fleetwood Mac… (maybe that’s why I like it.)
Tori Amos Under The Pink - So, the amazingness of Tori Amos, evident to most for the past decade, only became known to me recently. Infatuated as I was, I wrote my feminist theory essay on both her and PJ Harvey and so doing a short review of this album is going to be difficult! Personally Under The Pink is my favourite album, probably because I feel that the songs are some her most significant. Her lyrics are imbued with the reality of female desire and the consequences for woman who do not conform to fenine social codes, exploring themes such as social rejection, neglect, abuse and rape, as she does similarly in her first album, Little Earthquakes. Amos sees her openess on these issues as a rebellion against the oppression of both religion and patriarchy, discourses which have attempted to silence women and deny them sexual expression, rendering them voiceless passive objects. Amos brings tradtionally unspeakable female desire to light in ‘Icicle’ wher she sings ‘and when my hand touches myself, I can finally rest my head. And when they say take from his body, I think I’ll take from mine instead. Getting off, getting off, while they’re all downstairs singing prayers.’ Here she highlights the construction of the female body as ‘lack’ or absence and in need of purification by a male saviour. My favourite song other than ‘Cornflake Girl’ is ‘God’. The verses begin with ‘God sometimes you just don’t come through, do you need a woman to look after you?’ On the musical side, I don’t think I need to say much other than that Tori Amos is pretty much the most talented and amazing pianist in the modern world, and once you hear her there’s no going back…
The emptiness of the blank page scares me. But not as much as the fear of what I might put on it, what messy and awkward prose might stain its pristine whiteness if I write. I both love and fear writing. My fears are the same, probably, as any other writer. I fear my own clumsy wording and awkward sentence structure. I fear that I am utterly deluded in my aspirations to be a writer. I fear that the words may stare back at me, accusitory, forcing me to face the pretentiousness of my own writing. But what I fear most is my inability to adequately express my interior thoughts. For days, weeks, months, something will be burning up my insides, screaming at me to be written, but I will hedge. I do not believe that my random whims are worthy of being set out on paper, but more than that, I fear that there is something in me that I long to tell the world, but that I will not be able to do it justice.
I have spent the past two years writing on the same topic. I cannot name, identify or summarise what exactly it has been. But in my fiction and non-fiction, the same sentiments seem to be coming through. Even through the journeys and thoughts of other characters, these are explicitly personal to me. I am seeking to discover meaning, like we all are. But I seem to be going about it in a strange way, by constantly searching for an imperfect role model. For some reason I feel this will help me come to terms with my life regardless of where it leads. I have written about the adolescent and adult journeys of women who have lived a life outside of the mould I have been brought up in. I have been fascinated with the events of the past and the way in which they affect the present. I find something both poetic and real about the idea of the butterfly effect. I spend hours discussing it with my friends, my family, tracing the events that have led to me being the person I am today. What small event changed the course of your life without you realising it? I wonder constantly about this. A person you met, a meeting you turned up to, a night you decided to stay in or go out. The possibilities are endless and to a large extent this is a pointless exercise. Whether you believe in predeterminism or think that everything is random, you could go on forver analysing. Or at least I could. But I haven’t lived very long. I don’t have enough life to examine and I find myself fascinated instead with the lives of others. So far these have been lives that are ordinary and yet I have found something gripping in them. I wonder if this is the process of discovering the history of people you knew before, and finding them changed in your eyes because of it. I wonder if it is only interesting to me and if to everyone else these concepts are basic and not worthy of thought or analysis.
In a week’s time I have to workshop something for my creative writing class and already the clamp of stress is starting to squeeze me. I have nothing to say that hasn’t already been said, so why bother? I do not have the ability of some of my classmates, who can make the simplest, tiniest thing in life become tangibly and amazingly alive through the medium of language. I have nothing to offer, and I feel overwhelmed. Maybe I should open a cupcake shop… 
A random image for your enjoyment….
My head is just above the surface. Any second now the water will creep up my neck, lap against my chin, splash into my mouth, and I will begin to choke, splutter, cough… before I am helplessly consumed, I cannot see, and my head dissapears beneath a dark murky lake. The surface will look smooth and undisturbed. But underneath I will be fighting for my life, against the sea monsters that have come to life beneath, and the reeds that swirl up with a force of their own and snag my ankles, dragging me down, down, down…
Ok enough of the fantasy. The essays are coming to get me, you get it. 14,ooo words. 1,500 of them later I can safely say … its a hopeless case. Especially since I spent last night writing a paper to present on the wrong topic on the wrong week. Oops, sorry, idiot, your presenting NEXT week. But good on you for doing this weeks reading too. And writing a paper on it, now you might actually be able to contribute to class discussions. For once. GAH.
I wish I was Rory Gilmore right now. I’d bury myself alive in the library until it was all magically done. It’s just an impossible task, despite my fascination with everything I’m studying. I want to sit back and immerse myself in ‘the good the true and the beautiful’ …. oh … the sublime as well, without having to write a thesis on it.
And I keep finding things to do, like go visit my sister, go to my friends gigs, go on a date or three, go shopping on brunswick street, check facebook, talk on msn, write a blog, get depressed about how I’m not going to splendour in the grass, that i can’t afford to go to the gold coast with Bec, Katie, Doug and James and visit Tom (but I just might anyway), and that I’m in serious danger of being ‘a smoker’ (yeeeck). There is also the lovely distraction of dreaming about what I’m going to do in semester break: learn french, learn the violin, read 1001 books to read before you die, watch every episode of scrubs, run a marathon, paint a mural, go on a mission trip to cambodia….. you get the idea.
Well its been a while since I’ve written anything substantial. In fact i suppose the word ‘substantial’ could quite well be questioned for its legitimacy . This is a blog after all.
My life has changed drastically in the last week due to the fact that I moved out of home. I now ride to uni, on my grandmas awesome vintage bike, tears blurring my vision as the cold wind rushes past me.. working up a sweat clad in my cosy trench coat, the autumn leaves swirling around me as i cruise past Melbourne museum, Brunswick and Lygon streets. I live with an Indoenesian couple and their kid, Audrey, and so far its working fine. But it’s not the same as being at home. I have to constantly watch that i clean up after myself and don’t leave a scerrick of mess anywhere. The apartment is lovely, on Victoria parade, with a roof top pool and gym. No complaints there.
..
But I have also left Chirny williams ( as of tomorrow) and I’m starting work at DFO, Spencer Street. This has only happened in the last couple of days, it wasn’t part of the plan. So im now feeling kind of nostalgic, after all Ive been at Chirny for 3 years. i might be back there , but i doubt it considering i don’t intend on moving back home. Thinking about all the people that have been there since i started: crazy Cheryl, gorgeous Melissa, my second mum, the beautiful Michelle, Fabbo, the lovely Stacey, Steph – who became my favourite person in the world for a while, then Nat – who became my favourite person in the world for a while too, Steph Chu who is too lovely for words, Bek and Orsh, two of my best friends now, and Adriana who is top quality too. I kind of feel its the right time to move on though…. i hope. I’m feeling a little displaced though. I think I could describe it that im in the ‘buildingsroman’ part of my life, to use a lit term… the buildings-roman novel is a ‘coming of age’ novel, about the time when a person passes from childhood to adult hood (not puberty, lol) but travels through the events that will shape them as an adult. I have pretty much gone out on my own, without much help or guidance from anyone, and now its up to me to figure my stuff out for myself. It’s kind of exciting, a little scary.
Right now I can’t stop listening to The Cardigans and The Audreys. Two completely different bands, but they are both amazing in a way that i can’t explain! When i listen to The Cardigans I somehow feel content with life and its inadequacies. Not that they glorify love and loss, but they contend with it in a poetic way, they make it beautiful. You don’t have to be in a relationship to understand this love. it is the love and conflict in all relationships, the friendships, the ‘are we more than friend’ships, the one night stands, everything. They make me think alot about love, and i dont think its what i really see in relationships around me. I see convenience. Anyway, know the person that i love the most is someone who won’t ever reciprocate, but when I listen to The Cardigans, as corny as this is going to sound, i get this kind of beauty out of that sense of loss. This idea also makes me think of something from Dostoyevsky’s ‘Notes from underground’. I really did NOT enjoy this book, but it did raise a coupel of interesting ideas, one being when ‘the underground man’ asks whether man might enjoy suffering just as much as happiness. I think in some kind of way, i agree. I’m probably going to look back on this and cringe at my own sopiness, but time is of the essence and i had to get this sentiment down in some shape or form.
I love the city. I love the fact that I realise how little i know about the world. Everyday I learn something new, a cliche that i could never actually say in high school. I am astounded at how much I have changed in the last year and a bit. If i were to write a timeline of significant experiences that have occured in my life thus far, a completely disproportionate chunk of them them have occured in the last year.
I get a ridiculous kick out of just being among people at uni who are, although all so different to me, so like me. I want to jump up and down in my tutes with the sheer joy that someone else , that other people, think in the same way as me, have the same questions as me, appreciate the same things. Its like this huge wake up call saying ‘YOU ARE NOT ALONE!’ I always felt like that in school, although i had the loveliest group of friends and most of the people in my year level were great, that I was just a bit out of the mould, i didn’t fit the prototype school would have liked, I was somehow different (not in a superior way, more in a problematic kind of way). I was interested in things no one else seemed to be interested in. The things everyone else was interested in bored me. At uni, in my classes, everyone is different. There is no ‘right’ way to be. You can’t be too weird. I get to sit there and listen to people describe and bring to life thoughts and feelings that I share, and I want to shout ‘YES! I feel that too!!’ This is going to sound nuts, but it is so liberating. I no longer feel like I have to be a certain person that I’m not. That I have to fit into a little mould, a nice little version of myself that would suit other people. I can think how I want, behave how i want, wear what I want. uni is a forum for self discovery.
Anyway, with those thoughts down i shall push on into the big wide world of overdue essays.
thanks for listening 
Recent Comments