Photoshop and fun

Ava Gardner collage I had some fun making for Bron’s 17th Birthday. Bless photoshop.

So. Here’s an excerpt from a blog I wrote a month ago but decided not to post:

“Only two more semester now. Approximately 30 more hours of sitting, self-loathing, in tute’s full of wankers telling me exactly how not to write like a cliche, until everyone is writing in the same unique way.

When will the end come? Months of finding myself in Readings or Borders, compelled every time to march straight to the new journals and anthologies, opening them to the contents page in order to scan it for names that I recognise. Yes, I know that name. Had a tute with him last semester. She was at that seminar last month. That guy won that competition recently.

Then it’s  over to the classics stand, eyes scrutinizing the spines with their famous names. Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Flaubert, Forster. Time to inject myself with some more 20^th century fiction. Stuff myself with it till I’m suffocating with words, sentences, clauses, possessive nouns, cliches and idioms.

I write less and less. I sit down once a week at the most, with laptop or pen and paper. It makes no difference; the weight of the entire literary world bears down on my shoulders, heavier and heavier each time. Instinctively, the pen freezes. The words are wrong. They are all wrong. I haven’t used enough of the five senses. My adjectives are overdone, the sentiments that should be there haven’t come out right. I am not clear, not precise. I didn’t put the reader there. They were not with me. They were not there. That metaphor was over used, that entire sentence over worked. Fuck. I say it silently under my breath several times. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

So. Self-indulgent, yes. But my little *creative writing crisis* reached it’s frenzied  summit about a month ago, when I realised that I had actually started to hate the one thing that I’ve always loved.  Nothing about it was fun anymore. It was all academic. All about failure, criticism, insecurity, bogus academia, prestige (or lack of it), some ridiculous idea of what it means to be “a writer”.

Worst of all I couldn’t tell whether it was outside forces (Melbourne Uni, Creative Writing tutorials etc) that were doing this to me, or whether in fact I was doing it to myself. Putting myself in this world, this literary, academic world has truly taken all the joy out of writing for me.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Melbourne Uni. Subjects like Sex and Gender have fundamentally changed the way I see the world. Today I walked home contemplating the ideas that I had this time four or five years ago, thinking about the person I was then, and I found that I couldn’t recognize myself. I pitied that person, that person trapped in a confining belief system that was destroying them. By some kind of grace I’ve been allowed to go to Uni and do a degree that has literally opened me up from the inside out.  Why let anything destroy that?

I know that I can write. I can write fiction when I want to, but I can also write damn good essays. I can think critically and put those thoughts down on paper with clarity. Feeling unworthy because I throw a few too many adjectives in now and then is ludicrous.

When I was fourteen or fifteen my brother and I spent our school holidays making up stories together. One he started he called the “Island Series” was about a community of families that lived on this little imaginary farming island. We drew maps and pictures of all the characters and the way that they all related to each-other (cousins, best friends, lovers, etc). Then we’d each pick a character and start writing from their perspective. We’d make up plots and each take on the parts of different characters. We planned for these things to be novels, and I think they often got to about ten or fifteen thousand words or so before we got tired of them and started something else.

Writing those stories was one of my absolute favorite things to do on winter school holidays. Getting lost in an imaginary world which I could create and explore through writing had to be about the greatest way I could think to spend my time. From primary school til late high school writing these long, novel-esque narratives about familys and relationships and adventures was all I did.

At uni that all went away. Instead of writing more, I wrote less. Each semester I’ve painstakingly churned out 3,000 words for assessment, something I wouldn’t have thought twice about as a kid. Sure, perhaps the quality was considerably better. After all,  I had to think about language and sentence structure and originality in a way I never had before. At first, although it was hugely challenging, it was invigorating. I learned about different styles of writing, different avenues I could take. But somewhere in the last three years the love of creating things with language fell by the wayside, got lost in the angst of making sure I was writing the “right” way.

One of my saviors in the last few weeks was reading Mr Paul’s self-published book “Trippa”. Sure, it wasn’t perfect. It didn’t always get the grammar right. But it was fun. Clever, honest, page-turning. It reminded me of how much fun writing is. It was enough to make me realise that there’s a fundamental joy in writing that I want back.  Like, if I could somehow shed this infected skin of academia and all the insecurities that have slowly grown all over it,  if I could get back to that pure, raw excitement and love of writing I had when Chris and I wrote the Island stories, then something great could happen. I could do this, for real. Take the stuff I’ve learned and mix it in with the fun. Leave all the other stuff behind.

I’ve decided that I won’t be doing honours next year. And in all likelihood it won’t be in creative writing if I ever do. For now, all that pressure has to go. I’m not going to worry about publishing, about any of that shit. But over the semester break I’m going to spend some rainy days drawing up character profiles and dreaming up fantastical plots. And maybe then the words will start coming back.

If I hear another song about angels

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.

Today has been okay

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

And she shall be called woman

Recently I was accused under the cloak of humour of being a pretentious Melbourne University post-modernist. How did I manage to get that title? I wondered, after being raised in a conservative Christian family and attending a sheltered Christian school both of which maintained fairly fundamental views on every topic from creation to conversion? Well apparently this has happened in the space of two short years of brainwashing under the secular system. But I think it would have happened anyway; I’ve always questioned everything I’ve been taught about religion. Even in year eleven legal studies when we studied marriage and had to discuss the Biblical rules about sex and marriage, I couldn’t accept a piece of paper legitimising the carnal act. After two years of quiet rage, with the help of various people who are more articulare and insightful than myself, I recognise the source of this justifiable anger.

 

 

I know some of my friends have simmered with quiet frustration watching the race to the altar that occurs amongst Christian’s from the age of about eighteen onwards. Why? Because it’s plain stupid when you have the rest of your life to find a partner be fruitful and multiply. But we all know the Christian view on sex and why they’re all rushing down the aisle; set with a legal acknowledgement of their union, our barely-out-of-high-school Christian couples now have permission to shag. Oh, joy.

 Don’t get me wrong; I can see the good side of this rule. It seems ideal in a perfect world: finding your one man (or woman) and living happily ever after – no fucking around necessary. Or at least that’s what they say. But I have always felt there has to be some deeper reason behind this absolute insistence on virgin weddings. Thanks to Tori, Stu and Gender Studies, I think I might have figured it out.

 I was lucky enough recently to have one of those classic conversations where the ingrained nature of religion really hits you. Say something provocative like “I don’t believe in marriage” around a group of Christians and it’s not hard!

“What? You don’t believe in marriage? Don’t you want to have sex?” Er, I think there’s a way around that Sherlock. But never mind. The conversation followed was more interesting. 

Q. Why do you think you have to be married to have sex?

A. Because the Bible says so.

Q. Why does that mean you have to do it?

A. Because the Bible is God’s word.

Q. Why would God make a rule like that?

A. Because he has your best interests at heart.               

 

 So I’ve been thinking a lot about this and realising how much the Bible is a product of patriarchy written by men under a system which, among other things, attempts to subjugate women and keep them under control. Why?

 

Because woman is man’s one weakness and her sexuality her one form of power over man. This is revealed in countless bible stories and other myths. In Jewish and Greek mythology the fall of man comes through a woman; in the Bible this is Eve, in Greek myth it is Pandora. Pandora was irresistible to men because of her beauty and yet she was deceptive, for she carried with her the box (or jar) that contained all the evils in the world if opened. Thus, the beautiful and sexually desirous woman became the downfall of man. Similarly, Eve in the Garden of Eden tempts Adam to eat the fruit which brings evil into the world. Damn. So from the start woman is to blame, but even more she is mans Achilles heel. Don’t worry though, God fixed this problem from the word go through creating marriage; the institution in which gender inequality is first established. Shortly after the apple incident God tells Eve that having kids is going to hurt and that ‘your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you’ (Genesis 3.16). In other words, you’re not going to get away with this again. The rest of the Bible follows in this same vein, depicting women who use their sexuality as a form of power over men as evil. Delilah is a fine example; the prostitute who seduced Samson and became his downfall,  ultimately causing his death and the death of many others. This woman did not conform to having sex within the institution God set up for it; the patriarchal system. Sexually aware women, first Biblically and then throughout history, are demonised as devious, tainted, unclean and sinful, while the virgin Mary is the ultimate example of virtue and is upheld as the ideal model of woman; her purity was the very reason she was chosen to give birth to the saviour. In this way, the nature of woman as good or evil is related solely to her sexuality. Sexually transgressive women are made outcasts in order to scare other women into staying pure. That is into coming under the submission of a husband and having sex only within marriage so that the patriarchal framework – family, of which the father is the head, remains intact. Sex outside of marriage is forbidden, particularly to women, as a means of control. If the family structure functions as a miniature version of society with the husband / father in charge and in possession of his wife and children, then society as a whole remains patriarchal; men stay in charge. If marriage and family fall apart, father’s are no longer the head of the household and of their wives. On a larger scale this means that patriarchy loses control of the reigns. The solution? To confine sex as an act to be done solely within marriage, the institution that prescribes men as the boss. Sex outside of this patriarchal institution is depicted as dangerous and the women who instigate it are evil adulteresses and seductresses who lure men into sin. This myth generates the belief that women should feel ashamed of their sexuality, viewing the unchaste body as ‘a source of embarrassment….an object of disgust.’ Deuteronomy even describes a woman who has sex outside of as being punishable by death: “if no proof of the girl’s virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death.”(Deuteronomy 22:20). So men are aware of women’s source of power over them and to combat this women are made to feel ashamed of their sexuality, to have sex only when men are sure they’re in control (in marriage), or otherwise risk social rejection and punishment. Or at least they were a few thousand years ago. But I’m pretty sure this is still going on today. And if the rate that I’m seeing nineteen year olds purchasing wedding dresses is any indication, the purity myth is still in force. And patriarchy still holds the reigns. Because God said so.