Et In Arcadia Ego

If you've known me for a while, you'll have heard the Pretentious Film Studies Class anecdote in which a lecturer asks:

"In this film, do you locate the 'fuck' as a phenomenon or an act?"

This morning it occurs to me that, with the passage of time, I've started taking the notion quite seriously.

We were studying experimental cinema - short movies made as Art. It's the greatest class I attended at Kings, and the only film class that got me trying to make movies. We saw *everything* in that class. Week 2, the lecturer noted that not many people had shown up, perhaps because they'd already read the essays. I hadn't read the essays. She also noted that people tended to vomit or walk out, but we weren't allowed to do either. Well now I'm terrified. So we watched an 8-minute silent video of real world autopsies. Followed by an amazingly tender video of a childbirth-in-close-up. If ever I tell you I don't want kids, you can hold Stan Brakhage to blame. Another notably wanky week was spent debating whether Sadie Benning - a young white dyke who didn't leave her bedroom for four years and made movies on this horribly cheap camera which couldn't be edited - was oppressing black people by recording music by black artists off the radio. My hunch is, she was a teenager just mucking around with music she liked...

We also had the Is It Art Or Is It Porn week, which was less awkward-boner-ific than you might expect, though I still kept a lot of my thoughts to myself. One of the films we watched was strange, made of disconnected body parts - though in a cuddly, not objectifying way. Which is when the famous comment was made. I guess because you didn't really get characters doing things, sex just kinda occurred between the frames.


Two months later, tuition fees were raised despite protests and violence, and our very depressed class tramped to the pub together. This afternoon was what uni was meant to be like. And they were talking about the violence, and though the same phrase wasn't used, the concept was the same.

They noted that in the papers, violence was a "phenomenon" - something that just spontaneously occured - instead of an "act", which implies an "actor" with motivation. No one was asking why people were doing violence, but violence "happened". A phenomenon, not an act.

The distinction is really powerful, and I now see it all the time. Been thinking about my brain recently, and what things in there are phenomena which are meaningless and random, and what things have motives, and reasons, and causes to blame.

Last night's New Year party was attended by a large, unusual clump of family - so large and unusual that Number Two created party games. I'm not good at late nights, and I think in the future I will eschew the wait until midnight, go to bed at a sensible time, and if not waking to see the sunrise, then waking fresh for the new year. And I don't even drink, so I'm not plagued by the New Year's hangover. I'd rather celebrate something new than something that is gone - and in the case of 2011, the celebrations universally seemed a wake where all the money-grabbing relatives are hanging around to make sure the old year is properly dead, fingering garden-shears and dainty perfume bottles of arsenic just in case.

But the games were fun. One of which was the Who Am I? game - a name is put on the forehead, and the player asks questions to work out who

I mainly like this game because, for a moment, I pretend that everyone is in some way transformed. I was Tigger; my glam sister Oceanic was Lady Gaga, my glam cousin was the Queen, and my science-expert grandfather was Sherlock Holmes, proving his qualification for the character through deduction guessing who he was first. Number Two was The Man in the Moon, a perennially difficult favourite of mine, the imagery appeals. In fact, I have an ATC dedicated to it.

It's also fun, sociologically speaking, seeing what questions do and do not get asked. Most people start with "Am I male?", with "I must therefore be female" assumed as the inverse. This is a safe bet for most mainstream games, if also problematic. Does it offer a window into the brain, I wonder, whereby people would box Gaga* and Garbo together as women more instinctively then they would group them with Sting or Gregory Peck into careers, or Rhianna and Frank Sinatra in eras of time. After all, you are flailing in the dark with your first question and knowing the gender doesn't narrow things down far; and yet I tend to ask it first too. It'd be fun to try and play the game without that question - if you've described "a fictional detective from the Victorian era" then asking the gender is immaterial, because there's one reasonable answer.

*When my sister asked, I was tempted to argue the toss here, but I'm not sure that Gaga has been explicit about how she feels about this.

When I asked for my gender - am I male - as Tigger, I got a murmer of discontented "yes-ish", because "am I male" isn't terribly specific. Does it mean "am I male gendered?" - yes - or "am I a human male?" - no.

Another interesting one was raised by my aunt: "Am I white?". Retrospectively, this should be a really good question, but it isn't because I can't remember ever playing a game of Who Am I featuring a non-white person. Because, y'know, mainstream dominant culture + white family. In fact, when my ten-year-old cousin, Santa, asked if he was white - and we all chorused an unthinking assent - I was also kinda impressed with my uncle for remembering to say "he might not be white". Sociological Images did a post on this recently establishing that without exception, Santa is percieved as a white chap on no evidence - rather similar to that other bearded deity of the Yultide, Jesus, who's typically white even with strong evidence to the contrary. So while that's a kinda unhelpful comment in the context of the game - the character of Santa is a white - there's no reason why he should be. They both go on my Christmas card list for this. My aunt and uncle live in New Zealand - that they both, to me at least, seemed a notch more race-aware than the rest of us is interesting. Are things different down there?

It wasn't all analysis, I promise. It's just that game gets through a lot of assumptions about humanity. The most memorable moment was my cousin, aged ten, as Santa, asking

"Am I real?"

Number Two reacted on reflex with "NO!", and the rest of us smattered "no" or "yes" as appropriate - I think my uncle said yes, I can't remember what I said. Followed by a hearty, guilty giggle from everyone, and a glare from my aunt.

"You'll have to ask your mum the answer to that question," Dad corrected.
"Not real," my aunt clarified.

Kept us in giggles for some time.


In other news. Today, Number Two and I looked through the magazines at the airport. The only magazine I read is the Fortean Times - a fun and smart tour through parapsychological phenomena, aliens, sasquatches, talking dogs, and Jesus on a pizza roll, all with a tone of scholarly enthusiasm but healthy skeptecism.

I mentioned that I found women's magazines very depressing. Cosmo has been on my mind recently. I've sort-of enjoyed reading Cosmopolitics - a sociological analysis of exactly what is so damn wrong with the magazine - and Cosmocking - the same thing, but with trolling (link NSFW. Or parents.). I say sort-of because even in the context of safe feminist anger/satire, Cosmo still makes me feel completely inadequate.

I dragged him over to the shelf and had a pint-sized rant, the way you do at 9 o'clock in the morning after a party that went on till 1. I pointed out the differences between Cosmo-style magazines, and the ones that my mum reads - Woman and Home, Essentials. Even though they make an awful lot of assumptions, and the clue is in the title with "Woman and Home", they are essentially good-natured and packed with articles about middle aged women beating cancer, feeling happy about their bodies, and starting their own businesses while caring for wonderful children. Mainstream, sure, but empowering and positive for those women who aspire to domestic ideals - and certainly not as mean-spirited. Cosmo October 2011 offers you "Times he wants you to be jealous", "50 things you should never stop doing in a relationship" and "shrink your inner thighs in six minutes a day" and "four words that seduce any man, any time". The scandal sheets are fun - "murdered to death in front of my childen by my lesbian ex-cousin on my wedding night: one honeymoon horror of bloody death and mayhem" - but neither reassuring, nor scary in a useful way.

For the young girl, I pointed out a magazine called "Pink". What's it about? I don't know. Girl things. It's pink. And Mizz magazine's new tagline is "style, gossip, boys". Because.

"At the same time," I noted, "there isn't really "men's magazines" in the same sense"

"Well I guess men read magazines dedicated to their interests. Men just have lots of different interests. Women when they get together can gossip about anything but men like to talk about things they're interested in.

It was sincerely meant, but also cut straight to the heart of the problem.

"Yes, because all women everywhere are exactly the same and are interested in whatever it is women talk about, but men are all individuals with an individual set of interesting hobbies and thoughts."

Then we both had a good giggle; Number 2 suggested magazines for teenage girls offering something smarter. I've thought this so many times, and in my heart I trust it would genuinely sell and sell well. Still - I think his comment is a really valuable one because it cuts right to the heart of the problem.

I helped an adorable French family on the Gatwick Express. Mum had one little girl in her arms, and another one on the way, and a harassed "I've been travelling on a plane with a four-year-old" expression. I beckoned her and dad over and mumbled an ugly "voulez vous assier ici?", because I'd monopolised the seats with the table - a perfect space for a planerestless four year old, or a Latin scholar mesmerised by the view - and most reasonable parents wouldn't, I think, have sat without an invitation. I listened to them chatter, the little girl dropping the odd bit of English into her babyFrench.

When I got off the train - metal cathedral, well known squeaks - I went straight to the bus shelter, my oyster card was out. I saw my bus driver wait as long as he could for me to get a ticket from the machine, but finally drove off. The machine was broken. I put in my £2.20 with a grimace - it's a difficult walk downstairs with a suitcase to the oyster-card readers - and the machine neither gave me a ticket nor refunded my money. I warned a lady standing nearby that it was not working.

Turns out there is now at least a ticket office above-ground. The door was blocked entirely by chattering smokers, their cigarettes pointed unfriendly and outward, brushing my legs as they ignored requests to move. The chap at the ticket office chattered kindly as he sold me a travelcard -

"Smart idea, they go up in price tomorrow. Where do you study?"
"Kings"
"Ah, smart. What do you study?"
"Classics and film."
"Classic films? Very good! What are you going to be after university?"
"Unemployed."
"Unemployed?"
"I want to be a director"
"A director of photography?"
"No, like of films."
"Like Steven Spielburg?"
"Exactly!"
"What kind of films are you going to make?"
"I like westerns, but I don't think they get made any more"
"I like westerns. When you're a director, you can make whatever you like. I'll tell you this - if you want something enough and dream big enough, nothing can stand in your way."

This from the man selling travel-cards at Victoria. He looked at my name on the oyster card, and I told him that once I was famous, if he got in contact, he'd have a ticket to the premiere. I have made a thousand such promises. But this one is blogged, so I'll remember.

On the way back to the bus stop, I heard a mumbled "cannahavesomechange" from a street-con in a knitted hat. You get to know your genuine homeless pretty quick - too proud or embarrassed to walk up and ask. I said "no" crossly, and on passing heard a quiet "bloodyhellmanIjustwant" following me. He seemed to do rather well later on in a different crowd, finding someone chatty if not charitable.

I made an "out of order" sign and propped it up, badly, on the ticket machine - and took down the reference number because dammit, if I could put up a machine taking £2.20 from people for nothing all day, it'd be a pretty packet indeed. I was hunting through my pockets for my phone when the lady who I'd warned earlier came up and asked if I had enough money left to buy myself a ticket. I thanked her for the kindness. There was another old lady floating around it. "Is this where I get a ticket?" she asked me. I was beginning to explain, when a real homeless person came up to us. "Is it not working? They've been putting ringpulls in it - look." And he pulled a ring-pull, like from a coke can, out of the change slot. He gave the machine a hearty bash, and another few fell out. He tried fixing it for us, got nowhere, but we thanked him anyway. Tip for the future: check the change-slot for ringpulls before using a street ticket machine. I directed the old lady to the ticket office I'd just been to, and then my bus arrived.



People say the city is cold. It can be, and that's wonderful - you can sink into anonymity if you choose and be no-one, slip invisible through pavement cracks and sidestreets. It's an exhilirating feeling. But I'd been on the ground for all of 10 minutes, and already interacted with 7 groups or people, most of them kind and quick to help, and I helped in turn. The streets are what you make them.

I am trying to crank this creature back into life. To get back into the swing of being inappropriately personal on media owned by a corporation who will one day use this information against me, I present this year's playlist. A hobby I've kept up for a few years, as an invaluable aid to memory. These are the songs I was listening to, in chronological order; nothing else should be assumed.

1. Giddy Stratospheres (the Long Blondes)
2. And That's Why (Kenickie)
3. Affirmation (Savage Garden)
4. Wildflower (Cee Lo Green; or Brighter Lights; or Fuck You, it's all a great album)
5. Cold War (Janelle Monae)
6. The Only Hope for Me is You (My Chemical Romance; shutupshutupshutup...)
7. In The Rain (Sol Invictus)
8. Wire to Wire (Razorlight)
9. Never Gonna Dance (Fred Astaire)
10. Heavyweight Champion of the World (Reverend and the Makers)
11. My Body is a Cage (Peter Gabriel cover; turn the volume up)
12. The Glorious Land (PJ Harvey)
13. Glass (Bat for Lashes)
14. I'm Deranged (David Bowie)
15. The Revolution will Not be Televised (Gill Scott-Heron)

Listen

Previous years:
listen to 2009

listen to 2008

I don't know what happened to 2010. And in general, the fact I can't bear listening further back than four or five tracks, says everything to me.

I have taken a bizzarely Randian turn for the past few days, which is odd considering:

1. Rand is a nut
2. See one.

Nevertheless. It started on being at the docs today, and taking in quite how much resources and effort will have to go towards getting me healthy. In any other country or any other time - or with any other fortune - this wouldn't be possible. Do I deserve to be better; if I can't get better, do I deserve to live? This is more philosophical than pragmatic, but still - what am I contributing to society which justifies such input?

The thought continued while watching "Baby Animal Planet" for solace. Awwww, Lucy the baby lion being raised as if she was a kitty. The show ended with the narrator claiming that Nature wanted "the survival of all species". That's bunk - survival of the fittest, surely. And I got to thinking about endangered species, and how nice of us it is to save them, and how ultimately pointless. If you're an African Wader with a silly breeding strategy, of course you don't stand a chance. We forget: we wiped out our wildlife centuries ago, so as endearing as orangutans are should they not be cleared in the way of progress, as we did our black bears and native wolves? Let's invite the wolverines and wooly mammoths back while we're at it!

And finally, to language. Why do we save language? I'm divided, even as I collect zombie languages to learn. In the next 10 years, 90% of the world's languages shall die out - they will remained like stuffed animals, museum pieces. Of course, their contents must be preserved but...saving languages like Guernsey French is a happy-Tory, Green And Pleasant Land, home-jam-making sort of idea. Because it's so nice, and we can wheel it out once a year with the bonnets, and the weaving, and the beanjar and can-making; and forget that plastic is superior to copper milk cans, and that the bonnets are made from synthetic materials, and that nobody actually likes bean jar - it's just, y'know, traditional.

Part of me says that. Loudly. I can now say "hello, how are you doing?", in a language no one can reply to. Brilliant!

At the same time, words are the expression of a people. A book in translation is necessarily different from it's original. And Guernsey French has a word for a cat's fur, ruffled the wrong way; and a verb for "touching food with hands which might not necessarily be clean"; and one for a certain note in the song of a songthrush. Pointless. Priceless.

I'm excited by a future when everyone speaks the same language (especially if it's English, and i don't have to do any more work). We'll be able to exchange those ideas and concepts encoded in our national languages and achieve world peace. At the same time, how can we preserve those ideas at all if we do not have the words?

A la perchoine!

Music is different to the other arts.

You might feel a passion for Picasso, but at the end of the day the Guernica is on the wall of the Reina Sophia, and the best you're going to do is a postcard. Theatre is worse, only existing within 90 minutes of time before vanishing again into the darkness. And film, well - you can see the faces and the bodies of an iceberg's tip of those involved: you can see that film isn't yours.

And sure, there are films that have moved me, and my emotions on seeing Apollo and Daphne are going nowhere - but broadly, I know those experiences are also on loan. My love for Bernini is conditional on the Villa Borghesi continuing to exhibit his work. But music! What about "our song"? What about the "song of the summer"? What about that mix tape, or that radio request? We so often substitute music for our own words, or ideas, that it becomes part of us. Should I be paying off Virgin when I wake up humming Wannabie? Should I write a cheque to the Jackson estate if I want to sing Yellow Submarine in the shower? Do I owe Cliff Martinez a drink when, apropos of nothing, the soundtrack to Solaris compliments my day?

As Spotify puts it, everybody loves music.

Business have been struggling with this model for some time. It's familiar trivia that the Disney company owns "Happy Birthday" - not true either. It's owned by Time Warner, they make $5000 off it a day and will do until 2030. I'm sure, however, that you feel you too "own" Happy Birthday. You sing it at parties. If you sing it in any sort of public place, however - like a restaurant, say - you need a license.

At this point, we get into the tricky territory of what companies can and cannot own. As far as I'm concerned, Happy Birthday is part of world heritage. A bit like Facebook succeeding to copyright the word "face":

In August, the company sued Teachbook , arguing that "book" is a term associated with Facebook. Selecting "book" was a completely arbitrary choice and "pilfers a distinctive part of the Facebook," Facebook said. Travel site PlaceBook also changed its name to TripTrace after Facebook contacted the site and said its name was confusingly similar to its own.

Not to be vulgar, but FUCK OFF, I think you'll find the word BOOK is associated with BOOKS. Books, and libraries, and learning, and (say) teaching.

So copyright is often very counter-intuitive - you may think you have a right to use the word face, or sing Happy Birthday but actually think very, very carefully about how you do so, because you probably don't. There is something about those two cases which is fundamentally morally incorrect.

Music is different, of course - it is morally correct to repay the creators and performers, else they will die in a garret. But that's still counter intuitive - when I wake up humming "Wouldn't It Be Nice?", it's reminding me of the summer when I bought the CD; the New Zealand road trip; my school Speech Day; Tom Stoppard's "Rock and Roll", and how I fell in love while watching it; and Torchwood: Children of Earth: Day Five; and the fact that nowadays, I've listened to the Beach Boys so much to cheer me up that it actually triggers negative feelings. It does not remind me that in 1966, a group of guys got together in a recording studio to try and put a "vibration" on tape and that I should probably recompense them for all those memories.

Bullshit! Those memories are mine! They're just locked up inside the song, like giving a librarian rights to all the books in his library.

Spotify was the greatest, the best act ever performed against piracy. It combatted it by giving the pirates what they want - all the music, all the time - but used the model of a radio station to recoup profits. But it recently became clear that all was not well - Spotify seemed only to advertise itself. And now, the long-expected axe has fallen. From the start, I was suspicious it's perfection was merely that kindly free heroin sample given by your friendly neighbourhood dealer:

• you may each track for free up to a total of 5 times (that's forever, by the way)
• Additionally, total listening time for free users will be limited to 10 hours per month after the first 6 months. That’s equivalent to around 200 tracks or 20 albums.

Hrm. This vastly reduces Spotify's unique selling point - it's skill in actually replacing your music collection. Can't carry your cds around? They're on Spotty! Need to send an album to a friend? Just send them the link. Can't afford £120 a year? We can endure adverts. Spotify seemed to know what the market wanted, understand the pirate mindset and compensate for all its flaws.

What music execs seem to underestimate is the level of entitlement associated with music. It becomes part of our natures, our histories, our very souls. This doesn't excuse piracy, but an easy excuse. Copying technology has also threatened the very nature of posession. If I buy a book, I can give it to my friend, or to a charity shop. If I buy a song off the internet, they are suddenly wary because the same ability to give it to my friend (my posession, which I bought) also means I have the ability to share it with all my friends, and so forth.

And alas, I'm not going to pay £120. I don't buy CDs except very rarely, and then after having listened to them to the extent they become a necessity (and where would I do that?). It's the same way I buy everything, buying only necessities. My music budget is already blown on concert tickets.

Do I, therefore, renounce my right to listen to music? Am I to be separated from my memories?

Why are my dreams no longer on my side?

So I'm walking along with this "leutnant" and his Nazi band. I'm not a solider - for some reason I'm just along for the ride. I'm not with them, I don't approve, but bizzarely enough I am "with" this friend, who is protecting me and keeping me safe. Friend seems a strange word to use, but you'll see what I mean.

Anyway, we were travelling through this big, old Georgian area near a cliff-face. My friend peppering the building with some sort of mortar. He asked me what I thought. I told him that, if I didn't know what it signified, the formalism of the straight lines of windows shattering could even be beautiful. In the dream, that was a bit of a porky, and he looked dubious; but it sounds perfectly like something I would think. His band picking up any survivors and stragglers and loading them onto a train. You can see where this is going. Train wasn't the cattle-car of legend, it was actually more like the Bakerloo line, with all the shabby comfort that implies. In the carriage we were in, there was a spare seat - my friend was pointedly standing, in his awkward, squeakily-parodic SS leather trenchcoat, so I was standing too - totally on my best behavior. After all, I wasn't on the train so to speak; I was with the soldiers. One of the women asked why he didn't sit down - an older, crotchety woman. He sneered something about standards. Then she asked me. I looked around awkwardly, didn't want to seem to be copying, and then perched on the edge of the seat, hoping that hadn't blotted my copybook too far.

The train journey was magical. It lead us through the underbelly of a city, all neon and saturation - but high up, so we could see the dark streets both above and below. Beautiful. Then we came out at another cliff face, with another huge, forbidding castle, or more properly, concentration camp on it. If Auswitz had really been that glam, it might have been worth a four-star stay. My friend left me right next to the gates, with instructions to stay there. Then the regular grunts started loading people through, about eight at a time, and lining them up in a dark building. One of them was the love of my life. By this point I'd morphed into a simple village lad, with sleeves and a tattered waistcoat. So she was wearing a plain shift, and a black crochet shawl et al, and was beautiful in a natural, wholesome, "I want to sell you milk chocolates" sort of a way. A line of soldiers calmly shot them, and then brought the next group through.

At this point, I decided I didn't really trust my friend's agenda. Which was fair enough, as I still don't know why I was there, or why I was safe. I said something kickass, and before anyone could stop me, took a running jump over the cliff edge. Fell a very long way, close to the rocks, into the sea.

I'm not sure at that moment I really had a plan - swimming to safety and death both retrospectively seemed like good ideas. Bobbed around unconscious for a bit. And then there were people, ragged people helping me to shore. I'd been rescued by the resistance! I'm not sure how they knew I was there, or why they thought I was worth rescuing. Like the other dream, I was some sort of special which excused me from guilt. Perhaps I was undercover; or some sort of angelic agent monitoring both sides. They took me back to the city, and hid me with a false identity. I thought "yay! I get to explore the streets!", although like all things in dreams, it didn't make sense when seen close up. Instead, my mind filled it with contemporary Acton pawn shops. "well typical", I said in the dream. Which does create a bizzare set of kicks for you. I had enough autonomy in the dream to despair of a Jewish quarter made up of pawn shops as cliche, but not enough to build a better quarter.

After that, things just got increasingly pleasant. I was one of the people they were sneaking out before the soldiers targeted the city. We got out in a little boat, periodically going under the water. And then it turned out we were extras in a movie, albeit very traumatised ones - a young Natalie Portman was in tears, because it had all been so intense. We were heading to the set exit - which we found, eventually, although we had to travel a lot of dark streets to get there.

Well gee! Thanks brain! Boy, do I want to dream about Pol Pot tomorrow! Then I'll have the whole set! As I write it out, some elements make sense. All the same. I feel like the NAZI COLLABORATOR DREAM is a special, memorable event.