tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901337462708919802024-03-05T20:43:34.036+00:00ParallelogramaParallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.comBlogger31125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-31337046150855721062014-05-08T22:07:00.000+01:002014-05-08T22:07:44.331+01:00This hairdo's truly evil (flash fiction)I found this while looking through my disk drive today. I honestly don't remember writing it. But I thought I would share (especially seeing as I haven't posted on this blog in a very long time).<br />
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<u>This hairdo's truly evil</u><br />
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My hair did not sit right. Looking at it, at the age of twelve, it looked like an ugly foreign object, a strange creature caught in an uncomfortable and unflattering pose. It looked like the worse thing in the world. Outside my door, I knew that there were girls who could do all kinds of tricks with their hair, who could smooth and style and tame without effort. Their hair did as it was told. These girls made me feel like I’d missed out on something essential, like I was the last one to have a go at a game of Chinese whispers. By the time it got round to me, the secret had melted into incomprehensible vowel sounds; opaque, guttural, primordial. And I could only sit there, stuck dumb, with no idea of how to translate their expired, messy leftovers.<br />
I wanted to cause injury to my hair. I wanted to make my hair scream. I felt something like murder run through my veins. And scissors made it all so easy. Blades together, silky smooth and my hair fell like wisps of smoke. I was exacting revenge. Through sheer will, through merciless vengeance, I was going to reclaim the control which had eluded me for too long. I was going to set things right. I was flush and heady with self-determination, I could teach myself to do all the things they could do. And those girls would never see me coming.<br />
The next day, arriving to school, they recognised the difference right away. One of them moved towards me, the others behind, and I held my breath.<br />
‘Nice hair, Susan’ she said to a background hum of sniggers.<br />
The double-speak of young girls. Words with hidden knifes.Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-52558305295200679152012-08-24T00:30:00.001+01:002012-08-24T03:06:13.204+01:00In Defence of Fiona Apple<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It’s faintly embarrassing to admit that I am a Fiona Apple fan (and I'm not <a href="http://www.hiphopisread.com/2010/05/fiona-apple-native-tongues-birds-of.html">the only one</a>). Listening to her new album<i> The Idler Wheel…</i>, my housemate came into my room and very quickly dismissed it as whiny and annoying. In<a href="http://www.satctranscripts.com/2008/08/sex-and-city-season-2-episode-8.html"> an episode</a> of Sex and The City, back when the writing was halfway decent, Steve asks Miranda to keep him company at the bar, otherwise he’ll have to ‘listen to those NYU kids with the Amstel Lights discuss Fiona Apple’. Her name became short-hand for pretension. Of course, that was back in 1996 when the world was still recovering from the Fiona of ‘Criminal’, anorexic and fragile, her caramel tones screaming out her conflicted Lolita affectations. Soon after, she wins an MTV award and then throws a tantrum on stage full of teenage incoherence and self-rightousness. Oh Fiona. So biting and yet so afraid of being bit.<br />
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But that was the nineties and we all did stupid things in the nineties. In the nineties, I wore baggy jeans that trailed after me when I walked, read Nietzsche like he was a lifestyle guru and wrote quotes from her lyrics onto my wallls.Let’s just say everything has been forgiven. The Fiona of now still has a beautiful deep Alto voice, the kind of female voice that you hadn't heard in the Top 30 for quite a while until Adele and her like became popular. Fiona did it first and her voice is firmly rooted in jazz and blues rather than white girl soul, as well as influenced by the grunge sounds of the decade that made her. She’s not afraid to go ugly with her voice and her piano, banging out discordant notes, singing to the very edge of her register, to the point where it becomes uncomfortable to listen. When it becomes more like a scream or a cry. When it almost becomes too intimate.<br />
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The new album has a lot of these vintage moments although it is also a more mature Fiona, comfortable with experimenting and seemingly unconcerned with producing any kind of obvious hit. She’s always been good with a pop melody but that, to me, has always been her biggest weakness, the thing that has aligned her too closely with annoying menstrual cup <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128588089">Lilith Fair</a> girlies. When she starts sounding like she could be too comfortable on a romantic comedy soundtrack, I start to get bored. Not on this album through. The first single, ‘Every Single Night’, is a weird strangely addictive song with its ghostly toy piano, gutteral yoddeling and merciless depiction of inner torment. ‘I just want to feel everything’. I am perhaps over-identifying here, what with my own mental state being summed up in one neat little line, in a way that had me playing this song over and over again for about a week. 'My heart's made of parts of all that surround me and thats why the devil just can't get around me'.Speak for me, Fiona. I have also spent sleepless nights with one eye on spiralling thoughts and the other on the devil. I too have only dodged him through the presence of people in my life, the same people responsible for all of my good parts. I too have been made self-aware that I am no victim except maybe a victim of myself, which makes all victimhood moot. I have nothing to complain about, nothing that is really wrong except my misfiring brain, my ‘little wings of white-flamed butterfiies’. Yeah, like I said, over-identifying.<br />
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But Fiona’s lyrics can so often fall victim to thesauraus speak, to a showy kind of overwriting you might find in a first year creative writing seminar. Here through, they are perfect. It’s the restraint that does it. Her metaphors don’t get too overwrought, she doesn’t get all caught up in fancy adjectives, and the words stay simple and startling. Whilst the over-writerly Fiona occasionally rears her verbose head, overall, this is her no bullshit album and it sounds all the more extraordinary for it. Stripped back and yet musically engrossingly with odd melodies and erratic jazz-based percussion everywhere. And while the push, pull and inevitable failure of interpersonal relationships remain, as ever, her lyrical focus, she is no longer just the victim; she acknowledge her own penchant for destruction on song after song. Even while brutally describing the knife twist of rejection on songs like ‘Werewolf’ and ‘Periphery’, she knows that there is blood on her hands too. She may apparently still have plenty of relationship mess stories but she knows that she is the common variable. And yes, it’s still so much navel gazing but at least, on this new album, there is a strength, an acceptance. <br />
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The exception would be ‘Regret’ where she decides that perspective can go to hell in favour of some good old character assassination. And who hasn’t felt like that at some point? Since a married Tori Amos let her songs get a little too MOR, I for one, have needed the sound of an unapologetically angry woman who pours it all out into a song. Okay, so it is self-indulgent first-world problem stuff and many <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2012/06/hiding-out-with-fiona-apple-musical-hermit.html">interviews</a> with her seem to reinforce this point. But what would the alternative sound like? Politics in songs are often so cloying, so preachy. The truth is that songs do not start revolutions. At best, they provide the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_Is_Gonna_Come">background for revolutions</a>. But let’s not shit ourselves, a song only has so much power. And does it really take away from the importance of our current material conditions to use music as personal expression? While I agree that <a href="http://www.carolhanisch.org/CHwritings/PIP.html">the personal is often political</a>, I don't believe that the terms should become completely conflated. Maybe sometimes the personal is just personal. But it still has its place and when done right, these kinds of intensely confessional songs provide the perfect soundtrack for times of retreat, when you just need to be alone and feel like shit for a while. Before you pick yourself up and get on with your life.<br />
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All I ask from my music is sincerity and innovation and Fiona Apple has that in spades. Perhaps the most challenging song on the album, ‘Left Alone’ mimics the painfully felt contradictions of mental illness in both structure and content. The sudden changes of speed. Pointless rhetorical questions. The self as a blank page. Your own hand, the knife. But not always darkness either. ‘Anything we want’ is surprisingly optimistic about the early blooms of love, when it makes you feel like rebellious teenagers. ‘Hot Knife’ is just sexy and fun and catchy. Basically, Fiona sounds as horny as hell and it’s really quite refreshing to hear her sing about sex as a good time rather than as a trap or a distraction.<br />
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Despite the underlying feelings of embarrassment, her latest album reminds me of why I still like Fiona Apple even though at times, it feels like I should have grown out of her. What seems to have happened instead is that I have grown with her. From ‘Sullen Girl’ to ‘Paper Bag to ‘A Better Version of Me’ to ‘Anything We Want’, I can trace the lines of my life from weird outsider to boy crazy teenager to suicidal self-hatred in my early twenties to now, or at least, the best parts of now. The best parts of now: living in the moment, finally enjoying the simple things in life, fierce loyalty to the ones on my side, gaining a sense of acceptance over the past and myself, feeling young and full of possibilities. Fiona Apple used to be one of only a few artists I listened to when I was in my early teens. She said everything I needed to hear. Now it says something about my life that I have a large music collection with many different genres and that I only play Fiona Apple CD’s at particular points in my life. My life has many different colours in it now and so many different songs. But still, it is nice to meet up with an old friend again and see how far you’ve both come. And that yes, the music has grown with you.<br />
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"It used to be that everyone else was wrong and I was right. Maybe that's growing up or something, because I absolutely don't think
everyone was so bad to me as I used to think." <a href="http://www.elle.com/pop-culture/celebrities/a-new-albumand-lifefor-fiona-apple-656787">Fiona Apple</a><br />
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Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-83371301286336964712012-07-30T00:52:00.001+01:002012-07-30T00:54:22.604+01:00Contribution to Bear Pit #4<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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Below is my contribution to the latest Bearpit with <a href="http://itsallaboutthecomics.blogspot.com/">Andrew Godfrey</a> providing the accompanying image. Get a copy of Bear Pit #4 <a href="http://bearpitzines.tumblr.com/zine">here</a>.</div>
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<br />Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-74540210665061224622012-07-13T00:45:00.001+01:002012-07-13T00:57:26.749+01:00Bristol, I love you<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In the 1964 constructed documentary <i>The Newcomers</i>, we witness a young artisan couple, Anthony and
Alison Smith living and working in Bristol. They are not natives but they’ve
been in Bristol for a while and are fixtures of the Clifton artsy crowd. They
count the young Tom Stoppard as a close friend. He has moved to London but
comes back to visit often, staying with the Smiths. As the three of them head to
visit the camera obscura up in the Downs, the narrator says ‘For Tom, Bristol
is an obsession, a kind of cult which is caught and expressed by the camera
obscura’. A panoramic view of Bristol from way up at its highest point. A majestic
reminder of the shared identity of those who don’t merely live in Bristol but
who also have Bristol live in them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At one point, Antony speaks of his relationship with
Bristol while the camera pans over the landscape of the city. He says that when
he first arrived here, he imagined the city as a blank piece of paper which his
pens were going to scrawl all over. But after living here for enough time, he
realised that it was in fact Bristol that was writing all over him. It is very
easy to believe that we merely inhabit cities. Especially now with all our
technology and highways and gated communities and security alarms. It feels
very much like we are adept at bending and shaping our cities to our will. But
the truth is that cities still get inside us. They become buried into the deepest
fissure of our memories, they can reveal desires we didn’t know that we had and
they can remind of old desires that we have been forced to discard like
favourite bits of clothing that have been worn to death. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">More than that, they are their own characters. There are
days when Bristol feels like my sworn enemy; spiteful, hard, delaying me from
where I’m trying to go, overwhelming me with too much noise, too many harsh
words. But there are many other times when it is beautiful and kind,
undemanding, accepting, brimming with comadarie. At those times, I don’t need
anything or anyone but Bristol by my side, these streets, these lights, this
music. I feel choked by the suburbs and although I’m appreciating the countryside
more and more, it too often remains too quiet for me. The city breathes, it
vibrates and even though we fall out sometimes, it remains a true blue friend,
forcing me to grow like all good friends do. I have been deeply bitten by
Bristol; it has changed me and still, it is changing me, writing all over me,
stealing my heart.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYDv4HOhslHCoaIG3evH6GMiBO3O7vvZv_qzPnr_j9P5wvI5KbpKKx-RC6bvbW28Z028csdh9RO2MBHuBviKGh_vwBVdaBb6y2IRpeR2687tPotDhICgEiV07z4vml8BPQBuwGA3yIfok/s1600/obscrua.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYDv4HOhslHCoaIG3evH6GMiBO3O7vvZv_qzPnr_j9P5wvI5KbpKKx-RC6bvbW28Z028csdh9RO2MBHuBviKGh_vwBVdaBb6y2IRpeR2687tPotDhICgEiV07z4vml8BPQBuwGA3yIfok/s320/obscrua.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-50806473489315007132012-06-25T01:37:00.000+01:002012-06-25T01:37:21.500+01:00Bookmunch review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxBXTL4aKKALAaSb3xFHh-AwIe-KQEbPb9BmckApcr9TqKuO5lIBM8QE1KO30bzUS7uFeWnuZZkACwF-mJJL5nzJsCxda3IyRSBUyuD5LFRpnCyiaavTUUBUFR24xs4tIKZbQR4oPVS_I/s1600/oldha.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxBXTL4aKKALAaSb3xFHh-AwIe-KQEbPb9BmckApcr9TqKuO5lIBM8QE1KO30bzUS7uFeWnuZZkACwF-mJJL5nzJsCxda3IyRSBUyuD5LFRpnCyiaavTUUBUFR24xs4tIKZbQR4oPVS_I/s320/oldha.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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My review of 'Will Oldham on Bonnie Prince Billy' is up on Bookmunch <a href="http://bookmunch.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/sometimes-you-just-feel-like-god-put-another-anvil-on-your-back-and-that-the-best-thing-to-do-would-be-to-fall-forward-and-let-it-crush-your-ribs-will-oldham-on-bonnie-prince-billy/">here</a>.Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-3348791719383281452012-04-12T23:44:00.010+01:002012-05-09T00:14:15.142+01:00What isn't being said: Reading the non-dialogue of Steve McQueen's films<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjagwrzHOV3mEtFg84fJ5KPU5BV7L2PlpSH3W8ApWWvX1GenY_7sjimuGdRBD9I3z5jPfqDIBlXLHUiQxiv7ZRsB16bA8xzLP_kQ84aLVFExMwWZcyzAcsDET93FiJslhMM7DEuwE2DLf0/s1600/shame1.jpg" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5730652269408353074" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjagwrzHOV3mEtFg84fJ5KPU5BV7L2PlpSH3W8ApWWvX1GenY_7sjimuGdRBD9I3z5jPfqDIBlXLHUiQxiv7ZRsB16bA8xzLP_kQ84aLVFExMwWZcyzAcsDET93FiJslhMM7DEuwE2DLf0/s400/shame1.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 225px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"> Steve McQueen's films aren't exactly what you would call wordy. His previous film <i>Hunger</i> reduced most of its dialogue to one frenetic scene between Bobby Sands and Father Dominic Moran. Instead, Bobby's infamous hunger strike is conveyed through painfully long and intimate takes, the camera fixed on Michael Fassbender as he disappears before our eyes. The unimaginable pain of starving to death is represented by the unblinking witnessing of an absence, growing ever greater and more and more awful. So, the dimming light in Fassbender's eyes, the paper-like quality of translucent skin stretched tighter over a ribcage, the stillness, the silence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Steve McQueen is one of those directors who remind us of the enduring appeal of film as a form. The moving image, stripped of speech, can still hit you in the gut. McQueen knows this and he allows his camera and the viewers the time to appreciate its impact. It helps that he works with excellent actors, the kind of actors that could have bewitched silent movies audiences in the 1920’s. Fassbender, for example, is the kind of actor who can carry an entire scene with one look.</span></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxek-Yx0Om26qoPy34pAB3QV788Kt4l1cIYhy5ofGuBULFBeZBjbtpF2tq1uLur0y7pMAMLuqObQIE8qm3cq7nDWcPnUU_f3P_mmORjW3EV7tDcrXaMguyIiFBatvh7Ku6VuZPr4BOb5Q/s1600/shame3.jpg" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5730652280844766482" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxek-Yx0Om26qoPy34pAB3QV788Kt4l1cIYhy5ofGuBULFBeZBjbtpF2tq1uLur0y7pMAMLuqObQIE8qm3cq7nDWcPnUU_f3P_mmORjW3EV7tDcrXaMguyIiFBatvh7Ku6VuZPr4BOb5Q/s400/shame3.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 321px;" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">So from <i>Hunger </i>to <i>Shame</i>. From starvation to sex addiction. Both, in their own way, are a denial of need although the roots of their behaviour are distinctly different. Bobby Sands was motivated by the kind of political commitment that goes far beyond his concern for his own body. Whether you agree with his politics or not, his destruction of his body is single minded and coherent. It doesn’t flinch. Brendan, on the other hand, has no such connection with his body. His sexual addiction is paradoxical in that it really has nothing to do with desire. He does not have sex because he truly wants another person. He has sex to forget, to become invisible, to erase the past and the future. There is nothing spontaneous or sensual about Brandon’s addiction. It is all ritualised behaviour, as boring and functional as the daily loops he makes around his apartment from bathroom to bedroom.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New';">McQueen goes to great length to emphasis Brendan’s dysfunctional need to maintain order in his life. His apartment is spotless, his clothes impeccable. The camera does not move around him, he moves around the camera. But not in any way that could be considered free. Brendan’s insistence on order and control is there, simply because his life is impossible without it. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New';">There are some pretty big and scary ghosts inside Brendan, looming just beneath his immaculately groomed surface, and he could not even begin to put them to rest so the best he can hope for is sex as a vital daily distraction, the centre-piece of his airtight routine. The wordless scene Fassbender shares with a married woman on the subway is an acting master class on subtlety but also, demonstrates the tenuous grip he has on his sexual compulsions, loaded as they are with his demons. Yes, we see that so far, he is still a respectable member of society, still able to command a woman's attention without descending to the cringe-worthy leechery of his boss. But this veneer of respectability is wearing thin. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New';">We can see this in the way her gaze goes from flirtatious to uncomfortable, in the way a sexy two-way exchange becomes more like a one-sided assault. As he urgently follows her off the subway carriage, as she, just as urgently, tries to get away from him, we glimpse the kind of predator Brendan could become.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New';"> This is the kind of slippage which repeats itself in the central relationship of the film. The woman from the answer phone messages is not an ex-lover; it is his sister. Except that their filial relationship becomes murky and uncomfortable when he barges in on her in the shower and neither seem concerned about her remaining naked throughout their entire exchange.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New';"> When she sleeps with his slime ball boss, their foreplay coming across loud and clear through Brendan's apartment walls, he gets more disturbed than this admittedly uncomfortable situation calls for. As he sits in a fetal position on the floor, desperately trying to keep the sounds out, he loses all sense of being self-controlled and self-assured. He looks like a child. And like a child, his only solution is to run away from the problem, literally and figuratively. And then we have McQueen's most beautiful scene from the film, one long continuous shot following Brendan jogging through the streets of New York to classical music. It is a scene which manages to depict movement and stillness simultaneously, the sounds of the city drowned out to produce a paradoxical sense of calm through physical exertion. Which, of course, makes sense when we consider what we already know about Brendan. The music and the distance of the camera also acts out the defense mechanisms deeply embedded within Brendan. He becomes obscured to our view. <a href="http://thisrecording.com/today/2012/1/16/in-which-we-cannot-offer-him-sympathy.html">This Recording</a> suggests that the way in which McQueen forcibly distances us from Brendan betrays a lack of depth, a commitment to style over substance and a lazy evasiveness.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWCKU6bMugVid1BR2CGT1s-axdsqs0PIw7Y8GhYFomJrYsWLKLRxWKavo6S6UFASav8eWDD9sFHLXi_mKeQ6kQ3LjfkE1_CD-klNEbvd-pSUJHH_SHTEpe01-YqHcu1U4pdSMAakL0Tz0/s1600/shame7.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5730657338443287666" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWCKU6bMugVid1BR2CGT1s-axdsqs0PIw7Y8GhYFomJrYsWLKLRxWKavo6S6UFASav8eWDD9sFHLXi_mKeQ6kQ3LjfkE1_CD-klNEbvd-pSUJHH_SHTEpe01-YqHcu1U4pdSMAakL0Tz0/s400/shame7.png" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 166px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New';">But it could also be argued that the extra barrier McQueen erects between an already elusive protagonist and the viewers is necessary to further illustrate Brendan’s deep emotional detachment. As Brendan runs, he rebuilds the walls inside himself. He regains a tentative sense of control, which for him is detachment. In this way, rather than being lazy or ill thought out, McQueen’s stylistic choice accurately mirrors Brendan’s dysfunctional psyche. Which, looking at <i>Hunger, </i>is something that McQueen is quite partial to. Also, McQueen has never really been interested in mimetically giving the viewer all his character’s secrets. He prefers the art of inference. Which, when you think about it, is closer to reality than the disembowelment of a life in under two hours. Very rarely do people go into the gritty details of the worst things that have happened to them, even with people they are close to. Sharing is one thing; a blow-by-blow account is quite another.<a href="" name="_GoBack"></a> Trauma makes its mark on people in subtle ways, in ways that can become painfully obvious, even without words. As you spend more and more time with someone, you might learn snippets of their past but you might also be rendered dumb by the way a look, a gesture, an action, reveals what they simply cannot say.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New';"> And this is what we get in <i>Shame</i>. A look, a gesture, an action; all very powerful illusions. Even the words, as little as they are, speak volumes. Kitty’s answer-phone message to Brendan: ‘We’re not bad people. We’ve just come from a bad place’. Vague, it may be but it is just enough to confirm what the film has been very quietly exploring. Anything more would have been, in my opinion, too heavy-handed for such a subtle film. Like well-written poetry, <i>Shame</i> understands the importance of blank spaces, of <i>what isn’t being said</i>. In its biggest moments of melodrama, McQueen insists on moving away, on obscuring, on silence. And this is a brave decision when it might be easier to fully explain Brendan and Kitty’s dysfunction with some good old-fashioned exposition. But then he would be a far less fascinating film-maker. If the pathos of film comes from it reflecting life, the importance of McQueen’s films comes from his understanding that so much of our lives exist between and beyond language. Even when not damaged or addicted or dying, words often fail us and then, as McQueen knows, the space left can become truly cinematic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXBhWuhz2x3oOKpaCGhWfHdBl8bG0mPw22NLsaI19EvzhE52fbPWy0kc1UPtauXWGNCQvy-wC0mDA0QK9xwewK_0cWvHOHLwGR3v6UBnbsLzcstOJjn8Md75wr_u3FnTPSTD9hMViMANc/s1600/shame9.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5730659087261600434" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXBhWuhz2x3oOKpaCGhWfHdBl8bG0mPw22NLsaI19EvzhE52fbPWy0kc1UPtauXWGNCQvy-wC0mDA0QK9xwewK_0cWvHOHLwGR3v6UBnbsLzcstOJjn8Md75wr_u3FnTPSTD9hMViMANc/s400/shame9.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 266px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a>Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-41817166068019365202012-02-16T23:42:00.006+00:002012-02-16T23:50:52.860+00:00Extract from new comic 'Special Language'<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHjeSgkWMg0tKf-47eOiWLRzkFFcxuKyOf7X7xaOs-udH9ftFcqQu9_Eu8U1kZPXgsYq7mhU7j5xEL8HHwRUT-steLI4k9SDyQniPcCuyozzrg7oDSj_xRHWz1q_Bffs28YXgP_ddHFYc/s1600/extract-0.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 283px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHjeSgkWMg0tKf-47eOiWLRzkFFcxuKyOf7X7xaOs-udH9ftFcqQu9_Eu8U1kZPXgsYq7mhU7j5xEL8HHwRUT-steLI4k9SDyQniPcCuyozzrg7oDSj_xRHWz1q_Bffs28YXgP_ddHFYc/s400/extract-0.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5709884614327451618" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgttciUMQE4FERmYyKPW9G7skvR6pLl_5UEgDW8SMVykHL7KAcFP4jnh58hkFKUgFpW9qznRv8OA04uTlHS9yxAkGHGRNcZH0rjpkPIMPOqRioniS96HMmdKxbraWmQ282Xmb-_WK_uTgs/s1600/extract-1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 283px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgttciUMQE4FERmYyKPW9G7skvR6pLl_5UEgDW8SMVykHL7KAcFP4jnh58hkFKUgFpW9qznRv8OA04uTlHS9yxAkGHGRNcZH0rjpkPIMPOqRioniS96HMmdKxbraWmQ282Xmb-_WK_uTgs/s400/extract-1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5709884367436358450" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGcdNS4PNv-EvemxuOlJNN5oOMmRY3uZ0n3bZTHdBsmCdXOtB0hEGUU9dDpUUKi0IlU92CuOyBnSa5tYIX0g0HCxwnZZnZL4ko1XS_ot99cNDJO7nhtsdmRMVWsdOht0d1a4QNluA4s-8/s1600/extract-2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 283px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGcdNS4PNv-EvemxuOlJNN5oOMmRY3uZ0n3bZTHdBsmCdXOtB0hEGUU9dDpUUKi0IlU92CuOyBnSa5tYIX0g0HCxwnZZnZL4ko1XS_ot99cNDJO7nhtsdmRMVWsdOht0d1a4QNluA4s-8/s400/extract-2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5709884131820732754" /></a><div>If anyone's at <a href="http://www.laydeezdocomics.com">Laydeez </a>this Monday, the whole thing will be available to buy for £2 there. After that, it will be available to buy online in some way or another before me and Godfrey head to Comiket.</div>Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-43120583586260424382012-02-11T23:10:00.004+00:002012-02-11T23:38:06.752+00:00Excerpt from new autobiographical mini-comic<div><br /></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgXu7YauXBruVssTgKRLIr5AbDPYK7UQZrKGpDyNA6uOm-Bn5CY_mDuBNS0ybMvS7F04_GLVoMS-RBB-2gBrd8579Oy2iWB0RJhORdbAgS-qcwzFJVT_S__EXGUi1p9zoLQ6KP8XDt9Zw/s1600/backtothehospital.jpg"><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 204px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgXu7YauXBruVssTgKRLIr5AbDPYK7UQZrKGpDyNA6uOm-Bn5CY_mDuBNS0ybMvS7F04_GLVoMS-RBB-2gBrd8579Oy2iWB0RJhORdbAgS-qcwzFJVT_S__EXGUi1p9zoLQ6KP8XDt9Zw/s400/backtothehospital.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5708019775903372386" /></a><br /><div><a href="http://itsallaboutthecomics.blogspot.com">Andrew Godfrey</a> and I are completing a new mini-comic in time for my talk at <a href="http://www.laydeezdocomics.com">Laydeez do Comics</a> (so nervous!). As usual, it's on a cheery subject: my time in a mental institution. When I started writing, I realised I had a lot to say on this subject so it looks like this one will just be one of three issues, loosely centered around a particular focus. The focus on this one is on the strange and intense connections I made with my fellow patients and both the positive and negative ramifications of this.<div><br /></div><div>And here is a little excerpt from the text:</div><div><br /></div><div><p class="Body1"></p><blockquote></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p class="Body1"><b>"I have never, in my life, made friends as quickly and easily as I did when I was in hospital. This says something about me, I'm sure, but it also says something about the place I was in. A mental institution is no ordinary hospital ward. Here, the distance between patient and staff spans miles and miles. Whether they meant to or not, most of the staff treated us like we were contagious. And the more alienated from them we felt, the more we gravitated towards each other. We were kin, connected by disease. </b></p> <p class="Body1"><b><o:p> </o:p>We were all here, in this place, and no signifier was more obvious: there was something very wrong with us. No wonder then that we looked to each other for companionship, for some simple humanity. Our recognition of each other proved that we were still human."</b></p><blockquote></blockquote><p></p><p class="Body1"><i>Image by Andrew Godfrey</i></p><p class="Body1"><i></i></p><blockquote></blockquote><p></p><p class="Body1"><b></b></p><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote><b><br /></b><p></p></blockquote><p class="Body1"></p></div></div>Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-76580180721706082472012-01-14T14:24:00.016+00:002012-01-14T18:33:08.718+00:00Notes on 'Dreams of a Life'<a style="font-family: courier new;" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifUx-85LWex2tIlMCUmSqgI1rKJRggwfsUEOlksmRbNkba6kQtCZdRaF4hpWvbFJ37WM-PNUrWleS_fbO2-AZTonSUknXJEqC3Y59NWwo7BzYa-aUSZL2BtTOYH9kso0xn774Z_stAbv4/s1600/dreams-of-a-life-image_10%252C11.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 376px; height: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifUx-85LWex2tIlMCUmSqgI1rKJRggwfsUEOlksmRbNkba6kQtCZdRaF4hpWvbFJ37WM-PNUrWleS_fbO2-AZTonSUknXJEqC3Y59NWwo7BzYa-aUSZL2BtTOYH9kso0xn774Z_stAbv4/s400/dreams-of-a-life-image_10%252C11.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5697493703009351186" border="0" /></a><br style="font-family:courier new;"><div><p class="Body1" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-indent: -18pt; font-family:georgia;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family:courier new;">- The title is perfect for the subject matter. Somebody's life story told by everyone but the person whose life it is. Of course, that is what everyone's life becomes eventually. Someone else's memories; faded imprints worn thin by the ever mutating construct of recollection. The impression those who knew her give of Joyce Vincent tells us more about them than it does about her. We see more clearly the changing light the subject was cast in rather than the subject herself: outgoing, secretive, independent, needy, fun, tortured. The many shades of Joyce Vincent do more than suggest someone who was highly complex. They also illustrate the needs of those around her, their need to fit her into a particular type of role. The deeply human need to distil another person into a single adjective and then see any behaviour that deviates from that as an anachronism. We all do it, this film reminds us. Our minds long to connect the dots, we tend towards abstraction.</span><br /></p><p class="Body1" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-indent: -18pt; text-align: center; font-family: courier new;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/-_5PGDbhFPw" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe><br /></span><span style="Arial","sans-serif"font-size:100%;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> <div style="font-family: courier new;font-family:georgia;"><p class="Body1" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p><p class="Body1" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-indent: -18pt; font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-size:100%;">-</span><span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"font-size:100%;" > </span><!--[endif]--><span style="Arial","sans-serif"font-size:100%;" >They do all agree that she was beautiful. They reiterate it again and again; her beauty. This goes beyond desire and sexuality although that was a part of it. She was certainly sexy and men wanted to fuck her but more than that, her beauty turned her into an object of awe and adoration. You don’t defile idols with something as dirty or as base as sex. Notice who has the agency here and who doesn’t. This is where Joyce’s beauty seemed to exist as a two sided creature. It gave her power, a spellbinding power over men and she knew it. But it is also about the most passive power you could possess; it is utterly out of your control and liable to turn toxic at any time. It becomes too much about just being the object of someone else’s gaze. There is a reason we put great works of art behind glass. Beauty must be protected and preserved; it must remain pristine and kept in a static position where it can be seen. After all, beauty has no intrinsic value by itself, it only means something if it is viewed by others. It only exists for other people. No wonder then that the constant reminder of Joyce’s beauty makes it even easier to turn her into that which has no meaning in and of herself. She becomes a symbol of our <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/dec/15/dreams-of-a-life-film-review">disenfranchised society</a> or a reminder to call your friends and family more often. Who she actually was gets lost.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="Body1" style="margin-left:36.0pt;text-indent:-18.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="Arial","sans-serif"font-size:100%;" ><br /></span></p></div><span style="font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilP4tP2WPuGbaDfQOiDEoCU0fZ1QPy32Yhtt0XTu8IZ0hrYezaPN_UhNjhdTciiXkIVu3p2vYN87cpEmrt7ZkkIc5Y83ALfZMwvBwN5jpOxTz9GcHBHcnbmnjPeRRRvcC_pDRUPcDrIbY/s1600/Dreams-of-a-Life-007.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilP4tP2WPuGbaDfQOiDEoCU0fZ1QPy32Yhtt0XTu8IZ0hrYezaPN_UhNjhdTciiXkIVu3p2vYN87cpEmrt7ZkkIc5Y83ALfZMwvBwN5jpOxTz9GcHBHcnbmnjPeRRRvcC_pDRUPcDrIbY/s400/Dreams-of-a-Life-007.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5697495379518432706" border="0" /></a></span><div face="georgia" style="font-family: courier new;"><p class="Body1" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><br /></p><p class="Body1" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-indent: -18pt; font-family:courier new;">-<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman""> </span><!--[endif]--><span style=";"><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00md2ng">Zawe Aston</a> plays another imagined incarnation of Joyce Vincent with a subtlety you’d never know she was capable of if you’d only seen her in <i>Fr</i>esh <i>Meat</i>. She has almost no dialogue at all in stark contrast to the verbosity of the talking heads. She captures a sense of deceptive stillness, as if storms are raging just beneath the surface. Like the viewers, she watches her friends and lovers discuss her on screen. Again, the film emphasises an absence, a removal from one’s self, a dependency on the gaze of others.</span></p><p class="Body1" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style=";"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;" iframe="" width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/rVLOoox3pP0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/rVLOoox3pP0" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe><br /></p><p class="MsoListParagraph"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-Arial","sans-serif";mso-ansi-language:#0400;mso-fareast-language: #0400;mso-bidi-language:X-NONEfont-size:12.0pt;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="Body1" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p><p class="Body1" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-indent: -18pt; font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;">-</span><span style="font: 7pt courier new;font-size:100%;" > </span><!--[endif]--><span style=";font-size:100%;color:windowtext;" ><span style="font-family:courier new;">A friend who was clearly a bit in love with Joyce: ‘It’s like she never really existed, she was just a figment of our imagination, </span><i style="font-family: courier new;">she was a story</i><span style="font-family:courier new;">. It was like someone that we almost made up, almost. Partly because of the fact that we just let someone disappear off and die that we all knew and that we all thought we cared about’. A former lover: ‘Joyce died alone because she wanted to be alone’. The tension between feeling some sense of responsibility and wanting to believe that people make conscious choices.</span><br /></span></p><p class="Body1" style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="Arial","sans-serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><span style="font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;"><br face="georgia"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-N5FKdsPbS4u5klIbbatQVLlMFq4Ic6xjr1Ebnkidqp5FY8mIr6XXaun153GGKmVyctfYGL-qw8G2nCIIrh1624IFRblii0hNsde03otoWEUJXREgaoxLwirknx8YK9sciZ8Ai50_AXg/s1600/dreams-of-a-life-feat-03.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 170px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-N5FKdsPbS4u5klIbbatQVLlMFq4Ic6xjr1Ebnkidqp5FY8mIr6XXaun153GGKmVyctfYGL-qw8G2nCIIrh1624IFRblii0hNsde03otoWEUJXREgaoxLwirknx8YK9sciZ8Ai50_AXg/s400/dreams-of-a-life-feat-03.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5697494836660770674" border="0" /></a></span><span style="font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;"><br style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:arial;" ><span style="font-family: courier new;">- The last image of the film</span>: </span><a style="font-family: courier new;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela_70th_Birthday_Tribute">Nelson Mandela in Wembley Stadium</a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:courier new;">. The camera cuts to the people in the crowd. And then she turns around, a small smile on her face. The real Joyce Vincent captured on camera for a couple of seconds. It's an arresting and haunting image, not least because she really is as beautiful as they said. It's disconcerting to see a real person after all the conjecture and reconstruction. It's like seeing a painting come to life. An important reminder of the reality behind the dreams. Joyce Vincent, a flesh and blood Mona Lisa; beautiful, mysterious, with secrets we'll never know.</span><br style="font-family: courier new;"><br /></span><br /></span><div style="text-align: center; font-family: courier new;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/jSfXh8IJEg4" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe><br /></span></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-N5FKdsPbS4u5klIbbatQVLlMFq4Ic6xjr1Ebnkidqp5FY8mIr6XXaun153GGKmVyctfYGL-qw8G2nCIIrh1624IFRblii0hNsde03otoWEUJXREgaoxLwirknx8YK9sciZ8Ai50_AXg/s1600/dreams-of-a-life-feat-03.jpg"><p class="Body1" style="margin-left:36.0pt;text-indent:-18.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;">http://www.dreamsofalife.com</span><br /><span style="mso-bidi- font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";mso-fareast-Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language:#0400;mso-bidi-language:X-NONEfont-family:";font-size:12.0pt;color:windowtext;" ><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><o:p></o:p></span></p></a></div>Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-25616847272208185612011-12-23T00:00:00.007+00:002011-12-23T00:30:23.891+00:00Jeffrey Lewis is a cult boyfriend<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXFDJy31qbNzwFRuJoJrzgFTygJHjJrP34MnTLtZLqEyxsKZ1N-qDTd4wh8Ru1YfC6bYEgGee05lpMwQXwAdZRlAJx2SDG7Hth3rf9FnyX_s5j-DM2EhXZVxAZnH6bWzOMuhucr3_uRMw/s1600/JeffreyLewis1b.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 350px; height: 374px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXFDJy31qbNzwFRuJoJrzgFTygJHjJrP34MnTLtZLqEyxsKZ1N-qDTd4wh8Ru1YfC6bYEgGee05lpMwQXwAdZRlAJx2SDG7Hth3rf9FnyX_s5j-DM2EhXZVxAZnH6bWzOMuhucr3_uRMw/s400/JeffreyLewis1b.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5689108400123928530" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><span><u><br /></u></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New'; ">Overheard at his recent gig in Bristol: "Everyone here thinks that they know Jeffrey Lewis". And it's true; Jeffrey Lewis invites a sort of over-familiarity, both on and off record. It may be to do with the fact that he doesn't so much sing as he does speak with little affectation and a blatant disinterest in technique. <i>Raw vocals</i> are an obvious summation of his voice, perhaps but it’s a perfectly apt description. He has a distinct conversational tone which suggests that there is no distance, no skin between him and the listener. It is easy to feel like you are on intimate terms with him, especially when his American drawl breaks into a squeak (<a href="http://http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlRanftUqO4">'Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song'</a>) or when he can't help laughing at his own sexual inadequacies (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZChK3LX5ukU">'Life'</a>). As he pours his stream-of-consciousness lyrics into your ear, you believe every word that he is saying. It's like being involved in an intensely personal and private conversation with a good friend in a public place. Other people might end up hearing their words but still, their words were only ever intended for you. <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGhSc_aEKDC6kF-AkJ88n281lsAiwMLplvHgDjw4s3EnePfSGlvoi5yqibcnWAuus2qJa-zqwZVPHJPRkQ4oBThXB6ux2jPA_HTsCuhOyvNQkHxtUXQNNkVM5dRZQ2DYRoBlPqH18ojk4/s1600/jeff2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGhSc_aEKDC6kF-AkJ88n281lsAiwMLplvHgDjw4s3EnePfSGlvoi5yqibcnWAuus2qJa-zqwZVPHJPRkQ4oBThXB6ux2jPA_HTsCuhOyvNQkHxtUXQNNkVM5dRZQ2DYRoBlPqH18ojk4/s400/jeff2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5689110607678001874" /></a><div><br /></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New'; ">Jeffrey Lewis is losing his hair. In Bristol, he tried to hide it by having it longer in the front and sweeping it into a cool guy haircut. But when he bends down over his guitar, the bald spot is there for everyone to see. But that is the appeal of Lewis. He feels so achingly human, so very accessible, so easy to relate to. He does not look down upon the masses as this blasé, cooler-than-thou rock star; his popularity and relative success has not turned him into one of life’s winners. After all, his songs have always concerned his failings in life: both the big ones which slap you in the face and the small ones which persistently itch. He is hopeless with women; he is no good with drugs. And when they’re at the best, his songs manage to walk the line between emotional honesty and a suitable level of self-awareness. ‘ Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror’ is still his best ever example of line walking. It’s a dark tale, a jet black comedy for our times, instantly recognisable to anyone who has had artistic pretensions. With lyrics that are as tight as telephone wires, Lewis both laments and lambasts the hipster indie rock lifestyle, where studied aloofness masks a desperate need to be validated: <i>‘noble starving artists fighting hard to feed our egos</i>’. Lewis is making fun of Williamsburg scenesters but he also knows that he is part of that crowd and he shares their concerns and their fragility. He knows too well their insecurities. The lingering fear that behind dark glasses and great art, there is nothing but unoriginal and unpoetic brutality, is quite horrifying but also, quite funny.</span></p></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWmTUkFs8QCwG9sqSQbvjZkQFJpnMP3zcHiKhrBQnmNoz-6qDZLvhyphenhyphenwNIBAkhk8ufP83vQgZ69_GcB2V88OgffpJbDcpHF8lZ7M0tC35I9TVy1gSH9ledlmitHsE8n2czw5oco3PIPOfU/s1600/Peter-Stampfel-and-Jeffrey-Lewis.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWmTUkFs8QCwG9sqSQbvjZkQFJpnMP3zcHiKhrBQnmNoz-6qDZLvhyphenhyphenwNIBAkhk8ufP83vQgZ69_GcB2V88OgffpJbDcpHF8lZ7M0tC35I9TVy1gSH9ledlmitHsE8n2czw5oco3PIPOfU/s400/Peter-Stampfel-and-Jeffrey-Lewis.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5689111862134405842" /></a><div> <span>Jeffrey Lewis with the amazing Peter Stampfel</span></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New'; ">Jeffrey Lewis is, in many ways, the culmination of his influences. He knows this, naming himself as a <a href="http://measureformeasure.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/rip-off-artist/">‘cover artist in disguise’</a>. The only way to get over the anxiety of influence is to accept that it exists. Lewis’s strength lies in a respectful and deferential deconstruction of his influences in order to produce a reading of folk/ punk/ rock music that is his own. Sure, he often gets it wrong, usually by tipping the balance between irony and sincerity, therefore, becoming either disingenuous or melodramatic. He always risks the possibility of becoming a parody of himself, not a cult boyfriend but a <i>self-proclaimed</i> cult boyfriend, too affected, too self-absorbed, too navel gazing and stoic to be any good in bed. But the majority of the time, he comes across as someone with no interest in trying to be cooler than he is, happy to expose the jugular, to write down the bones, to lay bare. And he’s probably a good lay as well.</span></p></div><div><br /></div><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ZwGhPnsCjDg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-81219422089897626972011-11-02T00:34:00.013+00:002011-11-02T01:19:01.842+00:00The Devil Knows My Name: The ambivalence of motherhood in 'We Need to Talk about Kevin'<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjcuZmfupOXvUNu2bsTVz9N5lbw2kQUfclJZFWMN_AVy6aLnvL0fzS9VKB7-8197MpnmMmBmPBsRBHz2FqPpj8N7EmWs3rop-wncFZvJyTOTrKe9UPUkbeErHArR2-6AY51DS_faRDRQ0/s1600/We-Need-to-Talk-about-Kev-007.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjcuZmfupOXvUNu2bsTVz9N5lbw2kQUfclJZFWMN_AVy6aLnvL0fzS9VKB7-8197MpnmMmBmPBsRBHz2FqPpj8N7EmWs3rop-wncFZvJyTOTrKe9UPUkbeErHArR2-6AY51DS_faRDRQ0/s400/We-Need-to-Talk-about-Kev-007.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5670191382043500354" /></a><br /><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt">There are very few mainstream anti-mothering films. Those that do exist tend to be horror-films which essentially take the pregnancy-as-infection/invasion discourse to its logical conclusions. Considering the massive physiological and hormonal changes the female body is forced to undergo through pregnancy, along with an ever growing baby bump which looks exactly like a massive tumour, it seems that pregnancy is uncomfortably close to being a disease. Films like <i>Rosemary’s Baby </i>and <i>The Brood</i> express this instinctual fear that pregnancy is not necessarily experienced as a powerful maternal bond which connects mother and baby as kin but rather, as an outside colonisation of the female body where a woman is forcibly disconnected from her own body, unable to recognise that which grows within her as a part of herself. This feeling can only be made worse by the societal expectation that she will be suddenly transformed into a paradigm of maternal instinct from the moment of conception. In this way, those films that do explore pregnancy as disease function as one of the only ways to offer up an alternative narrative of motherhood, one replete with the anxieties and fears that are so thoroughly jettisioned from normative ideals. Of course, they can only do this under the protective guise of horror or science-fiction which ensures that any controversy can be made palatable through an insistence on its fictive nature. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"> <i>We Need to Talk about Kevin</i> refuses to hide behind such notions although its director, Lynne Ramsey, has described it as a psychological horror. A few genre conventions aside, the film concerns itself with the reality of mother-hood, with the unsettling fact that it is possible to mother a child and from the moment of birth, feel nothing but absence. After giving birth to Kevin, Eva (Tilda Swinton) sits in a hospital bed, staring into the distance as her husband Franklin (John C. Reilly) dissolves into his own deluded world, in love with the new baby. In one image, we see how isolating it must be to feel so separate from what is undeniably your own flesh and blood. And of course there are reminders of this everywhere, from the accusing looks from other women as she pushes a crying Kevin in his pram, to the similarity of their faces as Kevin grows into a coldly beautiful young boy. Precocious and dangerously intelligent, Kevin very quickly begins to actively participate in Eva’s ambivalent experiences of motherhood because he refuses to recognise her as kin either. Actually, he more than refuses to go along with her attempts to fulfil the traditional duties of mother as play-mate, teacher and confidante; he reveals these enactments as pure performance, reminding her that she is merely going through the motions. ‘Just because you're used to something doesn't mean you like it’ he says to her. ‘You're used to me’. She knows there is no point in contesting his implication.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqqFRTHsRIjQasPcdbYkXAwojCGR3MnsXNL7FhMi7BF5NM3AxtmISlmlZ5tLkIHH9D_X7TfEp91Pfc2PJMzqIMhgU0BebSm4StY0qgKnKftmsd2F5q3eHvPiaYkWcU5HfFN5WZqkgEvzA/s1600/kevin_415.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 227px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqqFRTHsRIjQasPcdbYkXAwojCGR3MnsXNL7FhMi7BF5NM3AxtmISlmlZ5tLkIHH9D_X7TfEp91Pfc2PJMzqIMhgU0BebSm4StY0qgKnKftmsd2F5q3eHvPiaYkWcU5HfFN5WZqkgEvzA/s400/kevin_415.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5670195038132914338" /></a><br /></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i>We Need to Talk about Kevin </i>has been called an anti-Oedipal film but I think that it is precisely the spectre of Oedipus which haunts its main concern- the relationship between Eva and Kevin. Really, Kevin is absolutely devoted to his mother in that his only desire is to destroy her. It is a commitment which becomes obsessive. Poor naïve Franklin barely comes into it except as a pawn in a terse battle of wills between mother and son. Kevin only pretends to be close to his father in order to more thoroughly torment his mother. Any identification is pure simulacrum; the mere fact that he can so easily manipulate Franklin means that there is no fear of castration here- Kevin does not see Franklin as being anywhere near his equal. Updating Freud’s original theory, Jacque Lacan envisioned the Oedipus complex as that which ‘superimposes the kingdom of culture upon the person, marking his or her introduction to Symbolic Order’ (<i>Escrits</i>). If we were going to read this film purely through a psychoanalytical lens, it could be argued that it is no surprise that Kevin becomes the amoral creature that he is. No resolution of the Oedipus complex means that he never has to recognise a symbolic system that is independent of him i.e. a societal moral code. Instead, Kevin is a grossly exaggerated Ubermensch, pure cartoon nihilism as read by a smart but stubborn teenager. ‘There is no point’ he says, dead eyes staring at the computer screen whilst his mother looks at him with hopeless despair.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN4QR1YyPDjyB1e-l1HTyqGOPZMD3HZuohf5jrF5a3xC2DawNzmyXnr8OcVH_FMxn6p5V7-qveTmzGkAJj-tIjtYMmnnV5youLkajJWTdxFIhPgRrgLAxcxZXLtEONQBYmhSjyLCoDD0E/s1600/superb-uk-trailer-and-poster-for-we-need-to-talk-about-kevin.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN4QR1YyPDjyB1e-l1HTyqGOPZMD3HZuohf5jrF5a3xC2DawNzmyXnr8OcVH_FMxn6p5V7-qveTmzGkAJj-tIjtYMmnnV5youLkajJWTdxFIhPgRrgLAxcxZXLtEONQBYmhSjyLCoDD0E/s400/superb-uk-trailer-and-poster-for-we-need-to-talk-about-kevin.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5670193629959081106" /></a></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt">And of course there is a vague sense of sexual tension between the two, although it’s hard to say if this was intentional or not. A lot of this comes down to the actor himself, Erza Miller, who is all pouty-lipped and snake hips, already sort of screaming sex anyway. The camera emphasises this physicality as it focuses in on specific parts of his body, the male gaze in reverse. He is nearly always shirtless or in tiny t-shirts which ride up to expose his stomach. It all adds up to an overt and somewhat disturbing sexiness, considering that Kevin is supposed to only be fifteen. But it adds a layer of Freudian complexity to what was already a deeply ambivalent relationship between him and Eva. He is not embarrassed about his sexuality; if anything, he parades it in front of her. In a scene where she catches him masturbating, he barely flinches. Instead, he continues, his eyes fixed resolutely on her until she closes the door, disturbed and offended. There is definitely a fuck you attitude there but there is also a sense of him displaying his sexuality as a dark threat. When he speaks in aggressive sexual terms about the girls in school, he is almost pushing her, daring her to admit that she has no traditional maternal feelings for him. With every languid movement, with every smirk, he forces a sexual element into their relationship which reminds her and us that this is no traditional mother and son paradigm. Indeed, what we understand to be natural and essentialised regarding being a mother or a son is suggested to be a societal fiction which has merely been <i>naturalised</i> into our present discourse.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><br /></p></div><div><br /></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYzh6XBY1JNoyP01cwykeLBYE4cBJW9qtpkI1huN4O5PnV6mr3NwVPTNPUzzlS7u9TIG9u4HAlFiwMiDItlh01ZgazLXWVtX0hUbm0Cy6HwJ2z-VnFeTXbO4V93a5KjpaxDfmNScTbV_g/s1600/ezramiller-we-need-to-talk-about-kevin-screenshot.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 265px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYzh6XBY1JNoyP01cwykeLBYE4cBJW9qtpkI1huN4O5PnV6mr3NwVPTNPUzzlS7u9TIG9u4HAlFiwMiDItlh01ZgazLXWVtX0hUbm0Cy6HwJ2z-VnFeTXbO4V93a5KjpaxDfmNScTbV_g/s400/ezramiller-we-need-to-talk-about-kevin-screenshot.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5670195375687474642" /></a><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><u><br /></u></span></div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"> Of course, despite everything, Eva and Kevin cannot do without each other. Ultimately, Kevin goes the way of Oedipus Rex, disposing of the father, finally alone with the mother. Towards the end of the film, we witness Eva fixing a room for Kevin which is identical to the one in their old house. It is understood that even though he has committed awful crimes against her, he will come back home after he is released from prison. She continues to visit him. She takes the punishment for her son’s sins with mute acceptance. And she accepts that he cannot really tell her why he did what he did. Perhaps because she knows deep down, that everything he does is about her. She is his entire life. Really, until the day that he enacted his will against a bunch of unsuspecting school children, the only person who knew what he was capable of was his mother. She was the only person he allowed to see it; in a twisted way, she is the only person he trusts. ‘It was the most honest thing you ever did’, he says, referring to a moment of domestic violence which he used as a gun held up to her head until the day of his crime. Her disavowal of motherhood means that she sees Kevin for whom and what he is, unlike Franklin who buries his head in blind paternal devotion. Despite his sociopathic lack of empathy, he seems to respect her for this. It is hard to tell whether his emotional reaction in their final scene is genuine or just another manipulation but therein lays the importance of the film. Everything is resolutely ambiguous when it comes to these mother-son interactions. There are no easy and ready answers. </p></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnqAgRqeTnAAUwcrffsQOXvOBWhtESWUmJfDRE8ePrtmOWK7PHtKbTDZEQ5Wj7X80IdksgqTNs1zmo5aUZPwCIbJc1dImx2VqPG2jt57nwNBNIvKDMcCuwqSfSB7ulscczGto71KH7toY/s1600/kevin_newsite8-480x309.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 258px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnqAgRqeTnAAUwcrffsQOXvOBWhtESWUmJfDRE8ePrtmOWK7PHtKbTDZEQ5Wj7X80IdksgqTNs1zmo5aUZPwCIbJc1dImx2VqPG2jt57nwNBNIvKDMcCuwqSfSB7ulscczGto71KH7toY/s400/kevin_newsite8-480x309.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5670196672966130722" /></a><br /><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt">And so too is this film’s honest and unflinching presentation of motherhood as it exposes the myths surrounding that strange ontological status, those very myths which continue to isolate and imprison women. Motherhood hangs over Eva like a dead weight, like an ill-fitting jumper. She never quite embodies it. But who can ever really embody that word, that notion- mother- when it is so heavy, so stuffed full with connotation and expectations and demands? <i>We Need to Talk about Kevin </i>is unique amongst modern mainstream cinema for daring to ask and encourage debate around central questions regarding motherhood. What does it mean to be a mother? Are you made a mother by virtue of giving birth or do you become one? What if you never really become one despite giving birth? What if you give birth to something that you despise? What to do if the devil doesn’t only know your name but shares your name and your blood?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><br /></p></div><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ZLRgAe2jLaw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div>Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-80266292687289088472011-09-15T21:37:00.006+01:002011-09-15T21:47:21.376+01:00Excerpt from short story collection<blockquote></blockquote>Excerpt from a short story written by me. It will be part of a four story collection (illustrated by <a href="http://http//www.facebook.com/pages/Sicker-than-thou-Comics-by-Andrew-Godfrey/232861870080413">Andrew Godfrey</a>) which you will be able to buy from me for £1.50 if you come to the <a href="http://bearpitzines.tumblr.com/">Bristol Comic and Zine Fair </a>on the 25th. <div><br /></div><div><blockquote></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span"><b>"<span> </span>After paying for their room, they seem to forget about sleep and invite me in to share their alcohol. They have a lot of stories and they want someone to tell them to. There was doing coke in a <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Memphis</st1:place></st1:city> jazz club, where they were later thrown out for trying to sing along to the trumpets. There was passing through New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina and trying to communicate with the dead that they truly believed still haunted there. There was running out of gas halfway through <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Tennessee</st1:place></st1:state> and having to sell Jenny’s vintage clothing at the side of the road for gas money. They picked up a stray kitten there, which they later gave away to some kids. They regretted the decision now. ‘Those kids were evil’, Steve says. ‘Tough little shits. They probably burned the kitten alive for kicks. But we were too stoned at the time to realise’.</b></span></div> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span class="Apple-style-span"><span> </span>The road stories keep on coming but I hear nothing about who they were before they started driving, whether they are married or having an affair, what they do for a living, not even their ages. It’s as if the past doesn’t exist for them, as if starting up that car erased all that had happened before. And in fact, the absence of past does not seem like an absence at all because it’s all about now, right now. What others might call absence is only irrelevant. It doesn’t matter. I wonder if that is what freedom is; having no past and not even noticing that you have no past</span>.<span class="Apple-style-span">"</span></b></p>Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-39984477933722329582011-08-26T18:03:00.003+01:002011-08-26T18:09:47.617+01:00'Berlin, My Heart' in The Pygmy Giant<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheYAw1INawNU70VqX-LfelvcaNUIKAUog2C-io9sQFTZS1KppqcTNqBNryR423ltUp116p3uq1vMDjafJT5zUR08ThkXePP49Ofvt9ojuaKUvcf3uXjtX4KiXVwbpXoTLMwMRBkG_UjBo/s1600/259825_10150233991105636_633785635_7789722_6740941_n+%25281%2529.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheYAw1INawNU70VqX-LfelvcaNUIKAUog2C-io9sQFTZS1KppqcTNqBNryR423ltUp116p3uq1vMDjafJT5zUR08ThkXePP49Ofvt9ojuaKUvcf3uXjtX4KiXVwbpXoTLMwMRBkG_UjBo/s400/259825_10150233991105636_633785635_7789722_6740941_n+%25281%2529.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5645212513738677714" /></a>
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<br /></div>'Berlin, My Heart' has been published in <a href="http://thepygmygiant.com/">T</a><span class="Apple-style-span" ><a href="http://thepygmygiant.com/">he Pygmy Giant</a>.</span>Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-88679760062725805142011-08-01T22:01:00.007+01:002011-08-05T00:44:21.370+01:00Mini-comic on Borderline Personality Disorder<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAwppk6lx2CXJaDZ9GYD346lRHjSUpSzVYYNfGjJV0If9G3lnhipaw3iQSj9mAGIzN1vBSuoSqMsdA-YWhQ_SVZt1SbQMMGgV3dcmF702RAV4A2ioWEGsqVnIp52OZZca58e0RHPrM4kY/s1600/bpd2.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 369px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAwppk6lx2CXJaDZ9GYD346lRHjSUpSzVYYNfGjJV0If9G3lnhipaw3iQSj9mAGIzN1vBSuoSqMsdA-YWhQ_SVZt1SbQMMGgV3dcmF702RAV4A2ioWEGsqVnIp52OZZca58e0RHPrM4kY/s400/bpd2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5636012221003375202" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span">The beginnings of this collaboration between myself and a close friend can be found on the blog 'Better, Drawn' <a href="http://www.betterdrawn.com/post/8338838325/will-become-part-of-a-longer-mini-comic-on-living">here.</a> It is a bit unsettling to start the process of being open about something that has previously only ever been revealed on a need-to-know basis but also, strangely exciting.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">It needs to be said that this panel is not going to be completely indicative of the work as a whole. It would be easy to just write about BPD negatively but I don't want to further perpetuate the stereotypes</span><span class="Apple-style-span"> and associated stigma of the illness. It is certainly possible, with time and the right treatment, to live life well around and alongside BPD, if not recover completely. I don't think that this is said enough. Having BPD- or any mental illness- doesn't turn you into some cartoon version of a lunatic or a bunny boiler or someone incapable of rational thought. That said, whilst it is important to remove the stigma of mental illness and demonstrate that mental health/ illness always exists on a spectrum, it is also important to legitimise the very real presence of mental illness when it does strike. Otherwise, we risk suggesting that it doesn't really exist, thereby negating the validity of diagnosis and subsequent treatment. And then, what was meant to be liberating could only end up repeating prior injuries.<br /></span></div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">I was diagnosed when I was nineteen but it wasn't until last summer that I, my family and my doctors started taking my treatment seriously (being sectioned tends to do that). It shouldn't have taken so long and so much for all of us to get to that point. Recovery is hard enough without the incredible delay of treatment. A year later, I am nowhere near done. I may never be truly done. But in the meantime, the culmination of medication, treatment, good friends and vigilance has meant that I am coping. I laugh a lot in an obnoxiously loud way which I'm no longer embarassed about because I am truly grateful for that moment of joy. I try to enjoy myself and try to make sure other people enjoy my presence. I immerse myself in as many good things and good people as I can. I believe that one day I really will believe that I'm resilient enough to withstand the battle wounds of BPD.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"> And actually, I'm okay with the half-light between well and unwell, considering where I have been. With the actual possibility that one day, the lingering shadows will recede and I'll find myself bathed in a light that somehow makes my skin shimmer.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><b>Image by <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sicker-than-thou-Comics-by-Andrew-Godfrey/232861870080413">Andrew Godfrey</a></b></span></div><div><br /></div></div>Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-27052311169116897022011-07-30T19:06:00.005+01:002011-07-30T19:14:38.301+01:00Judith Butler and Materiality (from dissertation)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfLZ88y6W0VgptclaYlzVZMabbmdRZd9maosIzRpbUsScJTyUKH4xU4TDNS_nSAcOOnownvto3kd1Whru4pSOcx2-Y7o42UceJ5r5mMmiUY7PShC53xZWxMIPSUMx_rIWqcDleZ07WyYo/s1600/600full-judith-butler.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 312px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfLZ88y6W0VgptclaYlzVZMabbmdRZd9maosIzRpbUsScJTyUKH4xU4TDNS_nSAcOOnownvto3kd1Whru4pSOcx2-Y7o42UceJ5r5mMmiUY7PShC53xZWxMIPSUMx_rIWqcDleZ07WyYo/s400/600full-judith-butler.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5635209052916428930" /></a><b><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></b><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span">"Butler’s definition of materiality may differ from those who consider the body as that which is before signification but still, there is a kind of materiality to be found in her work; that which can be best be described as materialisation. These emerging bodies, implicated as they are in discourse, are important because their very presence, which can never truly be made abject, has the power to threaten and subvert the hetero-normative matrix. However, she is also insistent on the contingent and non-foundational nature of identity referents as this is the only way to ensure that it can become ‘a discursive site whose uses are not fully constrained in advance’ (<i>Bodies That Matter</i>, 231).This is a hugely important statement and one which I believe must be taken seriously. We cannot presume that it is possible to discuss materiality as a pure and sanctified ontology. As we continue to navigate the complicated terrain of materiality in terms of female bodies, Butler’s work becomes more important than ever in its commitment to the opening up and democratising of the terms in which we speak of the body."</span></b><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></b></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px; "><b>© 2011 Emma Mould</b></span></div></div>Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-3473872802606099462011-07-18T23:54:00.002+01:002011-07-19T00:00:30.719+01:00Mutual Predators<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2jdRIaiAjQIWw7TXwBKoUwczy2Ulw6vQKsgoiY1qj60iRmJ_fpDnaoXP3oZrSK6D9ATHIUvhuxtVce0bZ0FiCOy_yvZ1D_tM4GJkkO8M-6u7Ybb4l0RbQnt_ZJW51L_EOBwgSOLVgFrM/s1600/clark.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 184px; height: 286px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2jdRIaiAjQIWw7TXwBKoUwczy2Ulw6vQKsgoiY1qj60iRmJ_fpDnaoXP3oZrSK6D9ATHIUvhuxtVce0bZ0FiCOy_yvZ1D_tM4GJkkO8M-6u7Ybb4l0RbQnt_ZJW51L_EOBwgSOLVgFrM/s400/clark.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5630829855305146034" /></a><br /><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" >My dad was at the pub in his usual seat. He didn’t look up when I came in, didn’t look up until I was standing awkwardly right in front of him. He looked tired. He didn’t have a drink in front of him and his fingers kept rearranging themselves in restless lattice patterns. His yellowed nicotine fingertips looked strangely beatific, like stigmata. The pub air felt heavy like the start of a migraine.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>‘You gonna get me a drink or what?’<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I automatically put my hands in my pockets, traced the outlines of a few coins. What I had to live on for the rest of the week.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" >‘Buy one yourself’.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He sneered at me. He had a devastating sneer. It felt like someone pulling your trousers down in front of a girl you really liked. And of course, she catches a glimpse of your sad flaccid cock and laughs, all mean-mouthed and gorgeous. ‘Look, it’s the least you can fucking do. I’m the one that’s been dead a week, after all’.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>‘That’s why I’m quite surprised to see you here’.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>‘I’m not going anywhere without a drink’. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I glanced at the bartender. I knew her, sort of, and was pretty sure that she’d sub me one if I put in a few words about my current circumstances and looked suitably distraught. I had been hoping for a bit of privacy, a bit of space to drink myself into somewhere new. I was in no mood for a reunion. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>‘What are you doing here? What do you want?’<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>‘Are you thick or something? I want a drink’.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>‘That’s what killed you’.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>‘So? Better to be killed by that than something less enjoyable’.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We eyed each other, on guard, mutual predators. He broke the silence. ‘Alright, forget it. Just sit down here for a minute. Come on, sit down next to your old Dad’.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>‘Why?’<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>His eyes flashed and I knew then that the tug-of-war was over. I was to do as I was told. ‘Just fucking sit down’.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" >I sat down.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" >‘Do you remember when I first caught you with one of my beers?’<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" >I tensed up with the cold steel of bad memories. I waited for a second until I was certain my voice was steady. ‘Yeah. You took me down to the off-licence and we spent the whole of your dole money on alcohol. All kinds. Then we went home and you poured it all together in several of mum’s mixing bowls. I remember that it smelt horrible. Then you made me fill up every cup in the house with the stuff. Then you made me drink it. After a while, when I felt really sick and started to refuse, you held me down and pinched my nose until I opened my mouth’.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He nodded. ‘Well, you had to learn. You threw up a lot, do you remember? I got you to throw up into that piece of shit fruit bowl your mother found at a jumble sale’.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>‘And then you made me drink the vomit as well’.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>‘Well, I wasn’t about to clean up after you’.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>‘No. Of course not’. It was the texture of it all that was actually worse than the taste. The remains of my school dinner swimming in bile and acid. To this day, I can only drink vodka, neat, over ice. Anything else tastes like a contamination.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>‘Anyway. That’s why you owe me a drink. I got you drunk once; you can return the favour’.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’ve had enough. Even dead, he can be an unimaginable bastard. I get up to leave but then suddenly, he grabs my hands from across the table. His eyes bore into mine and they look like dead space.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>‘You should hate me’, he says. ‘Why did you never hate me?’<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I have no real answer for this. ‘You were my father’.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He shakes his head slowly, deliberately. ‘You should try to start hating me. It might help. Promise you’ll try’.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" > I pull my hands away, wipe them on my jeans. ‘I’ll give it a go’, I say as I turn my back on him and leave the pub. Outside, it’s beginning to get dark and it’ll keep getting dark. Nothing can stop the night from falling.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" ><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; "><b>© 2011 Emma Mould</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; "><b>Image: Larry Clark, 'Untitled 1963' from <i>Tulsa</i></b></span></p></div>Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-58549150895151375932011-06-29T00:31:00.008+01:002011-07-03T23:59:36.529+01:00Adventures<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSU8a8E16EiT6G2GGwO65d4T2qhQK9vaWoY0uMMc206PPtIrzR5I-2gpwrWdSmy-rRnRFiTZXm_u-hDcLAkN22YNmbbhyphenhyphen-Z6dMVrlIIDCev6DRkmRY314pgo-b4fV8WCmqrKbMd-OoBb4/s1600/dollhouse.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 264px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSU8a8E16EiT6G2GGwO65d4T2qhQK9vaWoY0uMMc206PPtIrzR5I-2gpwrWdSmy-rRnRFiTZXm_u-hDcLAkN22YNmbbhyphenhyphen-Z6dMVrlIIDCev6DRkmRY314pgo-b4fV8WCmqrKbMd-OoBb4/s400/dollhouse.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5623417452901916642" /></a><br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-top: 0.75em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: small; ">This was how it started:</p><p style="margin-top: 0.75em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span">He cut a kind of Dickensian figure, curly red hair, skin and bones, sad eyes. You liked how he said your name, how he emphasised the </span><em style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; ">MA</em><span class="Apple-style-span">. Your friends, all girls, watching Monty Python and laughing, then you in your new world, your different world, on the sofa with him. You were shy because you were shy with everyone. It took touch to open you up. You kissed and your teeth clashed, he tucked his hands under your shirt and up your boyish body, you planted a hand on his crotch because it seemed like the right thing to do. You'd describe it to your best friend later as like </span><em style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; ">trying to tame a snake</em><span class="Apple-style-span">. You were eleven.</span></p><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-top: 0.75em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: small; ">Is there any way to make it sound less sordid? How about that he was only a few years older and your friend's brother, that it all happened in his room surrounded by Star War's posters and school certificates, that it was your direction, your idea, your need to know what made these creatures work? Boys. It was a fascination because it felt good without you knowing why it felt good. And from that moment onwards: boys on the brain and sex like an adventure before it began to feel like a battle.</p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; "><b>© 2011 Emma Mould</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-top: 0.75em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: small; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0.75em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/WzVLD6J_O8E" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></span></p></span></div>Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-369729141821424092011-06-28T01:05:00.004+01:002011-06-28T01:17:29.480+01:00Bukowski on cats<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbIZvv8Vb5B98GFBYwFZUnFASoGFCDhF0_mwTxiGitRmohmXeEgU7c-CrWh9zQsKV1a7PZnEOxUGrjrulPn0qKGwiLGXLOtlRo-QLCWi2ylGIK1_ddd7la2aaKQPhdKM2ohcsQo1IPfCI/s1600/buk.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 335px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbIZvv8Vb5B98GFBYwFZUnFASoGFCDhF0_mwTxiGitRmohmXeEgU7c-CrWh9zQsKV1a7PZnEOxUGrjrulPn0qKGwiLGXLOtlRo-QLCWi2ylGIK1_ddd7la2aaKQPhdKM2ohcsQo1IPfCI/s400/buk.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5623055300528151730" /></a><br /><div>'Having a bunch of cats around is good. If you're feeling bad, you just look at the cats, you'll feel better, because they know everything is, just as it is. There's nothing to get excited about. They just know. They're saviors. The more cats you have, the longer you live. If you have a hundred cats, you'll live ten times longer than if you have ten. Someday this will be discovered, and people will have a thousand cats and live forever. It's truly ridiculous.'</div>Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-82932408768563072212011-06-22T03:32:00.009+01:002011-06-29T00:53:35.109+01:00Excerpt from short story-in-progress<blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span"><b><span class="Apple-style-span">"</span>She could count on one hand the number of men she had loved. She knew now that, like viruses or the weather, love could change unexpectedly, that it could mutate into surprising shapes. Sometimes a feather, sometimes a blade. Too often, a blade. She was tired of this inconsistency; she could no longer stomach it. Love was making her nauseous. Her body was rejecting it like bad medicine. She would pass couples on the street; slobbering all over each other, their needy bodies desperately intertwined and bile would rise in her throat. It wasn't hatred or even jealousy, not anymore. It just made her feel kind of gross. It made her want to take a bath. She wanted no more of its strange sickness, its strange weather. She wanted to feel clean and healthy. She wanted nothing but a stable, reliable climate.<span class="Apple-style-span">"</span></b></span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><b>© 2011 Emma Mould</b></span></span></blockquote>Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-1349525094460452522011-06-16T23:49:00.005+01:002011-06-17T00:23:59.898+01:00Bookmunch review now live<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic_RmbLbjFoDOPaRoj_sN7_yr9Ite4_6idh4427brjPtjekDdMNhz8Kv6nfc1Opp_YqKKNkXiWM7e0a0h5p3g2XzxbNtxbGz9_7tnpEPqiwZ6rmSbfOQ-theWtOLOVMcDukt5cCHOQY00/s1600/fox.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 264px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic_RmbLbjFoDOPaRoj_sN7_yr9Ite4_6idh4427brjPtjekDdMNhz8Kv6nfc1Opp_YqKKNkXiWM7e0a0h5p3g2XzxbNtxbGz9_7tnpEPqiwZ6rmSbfOQ-theWtOLOVMcDukt5cCHOQY00/s400/fox.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5618955084828813794" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Read my review of 'Mr. Fox' for bookmunch <a href="http://bookmunch.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/%E2%80%98rather-than-being-concerned-so-much-with-those-who-write-mr-fox-is-concerned-with-those-who-are-written%E2%80%99-mr-fox-by-helen-oyeyemi/">here</a>.<div><br /></div><div>Folks of Bristol can see Oyeyemi be interviewed as part of <a href="http://http//www.bristolprize.co.uk/news/83-shortstoryville-lineup-announced.html">ShortStoryVille</a> on July 16th.</div>Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-12035297834553297822011-05-30T00:39:00.005+01:002011-06-17T00:17:22.663+01:00Sweat Collects: Chuck Palahniuk's 'Snuff'<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnc83ZTaIZnJ3BKicoKIQnfk_mMwAnBwTXLR4Fd5ZssMzSGaNIe7egFV75rAbZVPRk99M-eXKsjCyhOtblPrPydtgrrTa1dPPh4MX_17In4OQzaQoFiUo5Z-EqKDJajVq_fQVRoWM0L08/s1600/snuff-book-jacket-198x300.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 198px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnc83ZTaIZnJ3BKicoKIQnfk_mMwAnBwTXLR4Fd5ZssMzSGaNIe7egFV75rAbZVPRk99M-eXKsjCyhOtblPrPydtgrrTa1dPPh4MX_17In4OQzaQoFiUo5Z-EqKDJajVq_fQVRoWM0L08/s400/snuff-book-jacket-198x300.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5612289685131124642" /></a><br /><div>(Written to convince the editor of <a href="http://bookmunch.wordpress.com/">bookmunch</a> to make me a contributor)</div><div><br /></div><div>With ‘Snuff’, Chuck Palahniuk continues to explore a kind of post-modern macabre where all human relations descend into ridiculous and gross depravity. Porn legend, Cassie Wright, is intending to end her porn career by putting Annabel Chong to shame- having sex with six hundred men and breaking the world record. The event unfolds through the perspective of four interlocking narratives; three nameless men waiting for their turn plus Sheila, the talent wrangler who initially pitched the film to Cassie and is in charge of organising all six-hundred ‘pud-pullers’ as she calls them. The male characters range from the naïve to the disgusting- Palahniuk is fantastic at creating everyday monsters, characters whose inhumanity are never as showy or glamorous as say, Bret Easton’s Ellis’s. Instead, they are empty and cold in a dull and pathetic way and Palahniuk manages to convey this superbly in sparse and unforgiving prose. Sheila too, seems as cold and detached as anyone who has spent too long turning sex into a commodity but her cynical denouncements of the men around her<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>and the sex industry are both humorous and astute: ‘Going to Spring break at Fort Lauderdale, getting drunk and flashing your breasts isn’t an act of personal empowerment. It’s you, so fashioned and programmed by the construct of patriarchal society that you no longer know what’s best for yourself’.</div><div> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p> </o:p>Of course, none of these characters are quite what they seem and as much as they think that they’re in control of the preceding actions, they’re not. As Mr. 600 says, ‘didn’t one of us on purpose set out to make a snuff movie’. Even the wannabe Macaveillian of the novel cannot anticipate how things end. ‘Snuff’ essentially portrays individuals who desire power but are in fact trapped- literally and figuratively- in a squalid environment. Palahniuk’s ability to invoke just how gross this environment is, is effective to the point of nausea: ‘Dudes swallowing and farting at the same time. Belching up gas bubbles of black coffee from their guts. Breathing out through wads of Juicy Fruit gum’. Human beings are nothing more than animals bathing in their own filth and Palahniuk makes sure that the reader can feel this in their own gut.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p> </o:p>Most of the novel involves waiting. The woman all these characters are circling around does not appear until towards the end of the novel. Until then, Cassie Wright looms as a spectre over the character’s memories, her image as porn star queen continually re-circulated through the TV monitors erected in the green room. As might be expected from a porn star, she exists as a dream or a fantasy, a springboard to restart a faded career or a maternal sanctuary. But Cassie does, in fact, have her own plans for how her porn career and her final film will end and Palahniuk builds up the tension with a deft hand as the reader is drawn compellingly forth towards a culmination that has car-crash appeal. You just can’t look away. And actually, the ending is still unlike anything that was expected. It is brilliantly deranged and dark to the point of gothic. It manages to be both surprising and disturbing, an absurd and gruesome finale to a novel that begins quietly as a study on the mundane barrenness of a culture where sex is product.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p> </o:p>Any good? The source material, detached prose and underlying nihilism will be nothing new to fans but with ‘Snuff’, Palahniuk proves that there is still plenty to found when mining this particular type of dark vein. And he still has the ability to shock.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><b>© 2011 Emma Mould</b></p></div>Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-66372028633331647292011-05-08T00:15:00.007+01:002011-06-17T00:17:58.456+01:00Squirrel Thing<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3Kx6Dlt3hmU2UEBWk4IPzrF5r0rzfWU_nkfqpfrcW-MMfdAM4Xi7266Tor5Dh-ZAf9dgBV6b2DlJPzeWmghrhqDWXzVWM0zvsSSWh7oeT188v19YBW8z6yS7MbR3-LBWd9gSR8KKrFH0/s1600/connie.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 250px; height: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3Kx6Dlt3hmU2UEBWk4IPzrF5r0rzfWU_nkfqpfrcW-MMfdAM4Xi7266Tor5Dh-ZAf9dgBV6b2DlJPzeWmghrhqDWXzVWM0zvsSSWh7oeT188v19YBW8z6yS7MbR3-LBWd9gSR8KKrFH0/s400/connie.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5604118119039206050" /></a><br /><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; page-break-before: always">Connie Converse is the sound of aloneness (<i>not </i>loneliness) grown so familiar it has become part of the furniture. The characters she sings of, the roving women and the playboy’s of the Western world wear their separateness like a badge of honour. They can entwine themselves briefly into other people, sample them like a light snack but they know that this can only be temporary, delicious but temporary. <i>As we wander through the grass, we can hear each other pass but we’re far apart, far apart in the dark</i>. Love is only a masquerade and you can hear in her imperfect, detached voice that she knows this. Her voice is not beautiful, her guitar playing not particularly accomplished, but there is by turns a resigned weariness or a knowing sneer to her music which is allowed to glow malevolently from the simplicity, the nakedness of her songs. What foolish girls who look up to the sky in search of love, wishing and waiting until they die. Even their dreams will betray them. <i>The man in the sky isn’t married yet</i>.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; page-break-before: always"><br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"><iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/W3IfRX3NwbA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">She is not immune through. In ‘Talking Like You (Two Tall Mountains)', she hears some lost love everywhere. Echoes of him everywhere (I can relate). That is when you know for sure that a break-up has bruised you, infected you to the very core. It doesn't matter what you do or where you go; reminders of him follow you around like your shadow. The whole world becomes a minefield of memories. <i>Up that tree, there's sort of a squirrel thing. Sounds just like we did when we were quarrelling. </i><span style="font-style: normal">Brilliant rhyming aside, this image is cute but so very sinister in the way you can be so tied down, so trapped by someone who is no longer there. But there is a edge of defiance as well. </span><i>You might think you've left me all alone but I can hear you talk without a telephone</i><span style="font-style: normal">. Connie know that she has been able to capture something as well. The memories are hers. He does not get to take away what he once gave so willingly. The bravado is ironic, of course but also, sincere. Its almost like she's saying 'Fuck you, I will always own a piece of you, it's mine'. She is endlessly pragmatic even through loss. And so stoic. She sounds like an emotionally repressed person forced to talk about their feelings in family therapy.</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"><span style="font-style: normal">Connie Converse recorded these songs in the 50's. In 1974, she wrote letters of farewell to her loved ones and then left, never to be seen again. </span><i>Too few are the days that will hold your face</i><span style="font-style: normal">. She is still missing to this day. It is hard to separate this biographical information from the songs themselves. The whole album sounds like the thoughts of someone too used to everything disappearing, who herself is not immune to disappearing. All of this is only temporary. But so delicious anyway. </span><i>How sad, how lovely. How short, how sweet.</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"><b>© 2011 Emma Mould</b></p>Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-67565147968051775152011-03-08T02:20:00.009+00:002011-06-17T00:18:22.037+01:00Some stuff regarding Kurt Cobain in a Dress<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYjc_3B_WQXqw1LD6eNxlcOiCLlohHpwZFscsU4Xt5T8-p_UVsn88vk6zuEpFz9BxiQTSq5HPKht00gUUPRmQpoug-kzNCMpGPkjKcOB4m__BmFUDzu4RfwwK5W88nDm-v4edsMqAPZ8A/s1600/kurt_cobain21.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYjc_3B_WQXqw1LD6eNxlcOiCLlohHpwZFscsU4Xt5T8-p_UVsn88vk6zuEpFz9BxiQTSq5HPKht00gUUPRmQpoug-kzNCMpGPkjKcOB4m__BmFUDzu4RfwwK5W88nDm-v4edsMqAPZ8A/s400/kurt_cobain21.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5581529049537905442" /></a><br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%; ">In 1991, Kurt Cobain appeared on ‘The Headbanger’s Ball’ wearing a ridiculous and ostentatious prom dress. </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%; ">This act could be seen as an example of gender performativity because of the way it complicates hetero-normative ideas of masculinity and parodies femininity. By wearing the dress, he was not destroying gender roles but rather, queering them or challenging their boundaries. His image is not somehow above or beyond gender but is a playful and insidious mixing of masculinity and femininity which is all the more effective because of his delicate physique and particularly feminine beauty. His image refers to the hetero-normative model’s concept of gender but not without subverting and destabilising its rigidity. I'm not saying he choose to wear the dress with these particular intentions in mind- probably, it was little more than a fuck-you attitude thing- but the great thing about any kind of performance is its potential to become more than it was ever expected to be. <span style="color:red"></span></span></span></span><div style="mso-element:footnote-list"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span><div style="mso-element:footnote" id="ftn1"><p class="MsoFootnoteText"><b>© 2011 Emma Mould</b></p> </div></div></div>Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-78140115176810734142011-02-10T01:07:00.008+00:002011-06-17T00:18:41.027+01:00To Be a Catfish<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5dz0eqFT-Df81pSiL0lrX4Ed6YXE9RGddRlAxm8rbce73xL8_7rMjoWO7V5CMzkGnkW-237il4uK0rEXyaG42tNltUEGMAwQzeadAZI0slHamxJvPozUQSXw5VNhhX4qdZO9dnLUAxV0/s1600/catfish.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 244px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5dz0eqFT-Df81pSiL0lrX4Ed6YXE9RGddRlAxm8rbce73xL8_7rMjoWO7V5CMzkGnkW-237il4uK0rEXyaG42tNltUEGMAwQzeadAZI0slHamxJvPozUQSXw5VNhhX4qdZO9dnLUAxV0/s400/catfish.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5571862351168039650" /></a><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><u><br /></u></span></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5dz0eqFT-Df81pSiL0lrX4Ed6YXE9RGddRlAxm8rbce73xL8_7rMjoWO7V5CMzkGnkW-237il4uK0rEXyaG42tNltUEGMAwQzeadAZI0slHamxJvPozUQSXw5VNhhX4qdZO9dnLUAxV0/s1600/catfish.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"></a> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB">Does anyone still believe that the internet is a direct reflection of someone's personality? The internet is fantastic for casting us all in a generous and brilliant light, showing only our best parts, our most flattering angles. We get to put forth a perfectly controlled idealisation of ourselves. It's highly unlikely that anyone will admit on their OKCupid or Facebook profile that they can be petty or selfish or rather ugly first thing in the morning. On the internet, we never stumble over our words. We can edit them or delete them all together. We do not stutter. We conceal as much as we reveal. We get to slip into our very best selves like clothes. But that's exactly it; clothes do not make the man and the internet cannot possibly convey the real self. Where words do not always trip so easily off the tongue and when, once they are out there, you don't get to call them back. We are too far gone into the internet age to any longer believe in its transparency. And with all this known, 'Catfish' fits into our present discourse in a curious and fascinating way. It is worth seeing for that fact alone.</span><u><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></u></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span">The question of whether this film is ‘real’ or not is beside the point. The reason the film works so well is precisely because of its ambiguity in this area. Its presenting of itself as warning of the danger of taking a readily available and oversaturation of social media as constitutive of actual reality, is deeply <i>deeply</i> ironic. How could it not be? With its heavy use of augmented reality, Google Earth and reality TV conventions, it becomes impossible for the audience to not wonder whether they are also being duped into believing that this all actually happened. And isn’t that the point? The brilliance of ‘Catfish’ lies in its ability to have become more than itself, to ceaselessly produce what it claims to negate. If anything, it does not demystify the strange smoke and mirrors of our internet age as it makes that smoke thicker, those mirrors even more opaque. Of course, this is nothing that fiction hasn’t been doing since the eighteenth century. But still, that doesn’t detract from the fact that ‘Catfish’ is an insidiously clever and compelling film about those bloodless internet ciphers we encounter on the internet everyday and our causal assumptions that such ghosts in the machine are absolutely duplicated in flesh and blood reality. This is why I can’t quite understand why the film-makers are so desperate to hark on about the whole thing being real. It’s annoying and patronising and it just doesn’t matter because fiction or not, the film’s importance still stands. It’s not like the fact that something is made up has ever detracted from its worth as a piece or art or a cultural product or whatever. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span">The discussion surrounding the film is almost as interesting as the film itself. The film produces its own discourse which has worked to its advantage. Even those reviewing the film have had to continue its mystique by being unable to really discuss the film in any way without spoilers. This can only ever add to increased curiosity and interest in the film itself. It has produced meditations on exploitation; often condemning Angela for her manipulations but also acknowledging that the film makers have also exploited her for their own means. What these discussions tend to leave out are the clear gender politics in the film which beg the question: what got Angela to the point where she was telling so many lies she could barely keep up with them? Can her acts simply be labelled as exploitative or is there a way of contextualising them to make them less so? This is what I'm going to attempt to do.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span">In 'Catfish', there are two primary ‘real people’: one (Nev), a good-looking New York hipster; the other (Angela), a bored housewife living in Nowhere, Michigan. What connects them both is a need to be seen, as if the only way their life can have meaning is if it is reflected back at them through social media. Except this though: one uses social media to have his life seen by others whilst the other uses social media as a way to escape and evade her reality. Why? Perhaps simply because one is a pathological liar whilst the other is a naive ingénue with a penance for falling in love with people he hasn’t even met yet. But I doubt it is as simple as this. Firstly, without wanting to sound cynical, said ingénue is a little bit too good-looking to have not done his fair share of double dealings to get what he wanted from a girl. And I’m not saying this makes him a bad person; I just don’t buy the wide-eyed innocence thing. And I don’t think it’s unfair to say that Nev would have never given Angela a second glance if she had passed him in the street. She knows this. And she is, for whatever reason, desperately in love with him. This is obvious from their interactions with each other, from the way she pays him compliments, from the way she looks at him with a yearning which has made peace with the knowledge that it will remain unrequited. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span">But I think that her desire goes beyond him as a person; it is also a desire for his life, for the things he has, for his freedom. After all, he is an affluent urban male who doesn’t only get to express his creativity but gets to make a living from it. She is an intelligent and talented woman who has had to stifle her creative ambitions to become a house-wife and carer to her severely mentally-disabled stepsons. It is as if 'The Feminine Mystique' never happened for this woman. Her husband unknowingly articulates her situation when he tells the camera that whenever she is in despair regarding her life, he reminds her that she 'cannot have it all'. She can have her big art career or she can have the sometimes stifling security of a husband and kids but to have both is an impossible dream. No wonder then that she fills her time- she literally spends hours each day updating a complicated and self-contained network of Facebook profiles- breathing life into these young, cool and prodigiously talented characters who encapsulate everything that does not exist in her real life. No wonder that she immerses herself so much into her creations that she disappears. Isn't that the point? Most writers of fiction identify themselves as such but then Angela doesn't simply want to show how good she is at tall tales. She wants the fiction to devour her up, swallow the banalities of her life whole, forever change everything inside and outside of her. This need is so great that she desperately produces lies and stalls for time just so she can enjoy one more minute of the fantasy-as-reality. It would be difficult to condone what she did- especially when she lies about having cancer. But I think it can be understood. What woman hasn't felt the trappings of gender? Who hasn't- male or female- wanted even for one moment to be somewhere or someone else? Angela is really just the absurd and painful result of that feeling taken much too far, allowed to sink in much too deep through the confinements of her class and gender. Because of this, I can forgive her deceiving of Nev (after all, he and his buddies got a fairly successful film out of it). I can certainly forgive her using the film's notoriety to garner an audience for her paintings. It is a sad but inescapable fact that this film is her best chance to achieve the success and artistic expression that has so long been denied her. It's an uncomfortable but necessarily pragmatic move on her part to go for a life that doesn't compel her to exist within a ghost house of fiction and lies where she can, in fact, have it all.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span">The seemingly inscrutable title of this documentary is explained late in the film in perhaps too shrewd and poetic a way to not be scripted: when transporting live cod from China, a couple of catfish’s were used in each barrel to fluster and annoy the cod into constant action, ensuring that they arrived at their destination fresh and alive. It is clear by now who the catfish is in this film. And it's hard and thankless work, existing only to keep others agile and lively. How sad, how lonely to be a catfish with no one snapping at your heels, no one caring enough to keep you moving.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><b>© 2011 Emma Mould</b></p></div>Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-390133746270891980.post-19230452867053321112011-01-13T00:28:00.004+00:002011-01-13T01:00:05.630+00:00Illyas Ahmed 'Between Two Skies'<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHGtiY1W8Hv1J6cOJUuJZRHdw5xuvQ9TsuCChFgkkfXtCOSkBHU8-ovujl6Pett-7naTDzb7_IQL6tbJWWSe3rlqqusaBP4wm792VmdhuRKTigcXXHtlRFBdifKNLCXbTZJr0RvKfNWXg/s1600/illyas.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 280px; height: 280px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHGtiY1W8Hv1J6cOJUuJZRHdw5xuvQ9TsuCChFgkkfXtCOSkBHU8-ovujl6Pett-7naTDzb7_IQL6tbJWWSe3rlqqusaBP4wm792VmdhuRKTigcXXHtlRFBdifKNLCXbTZJr0RvKfNWXg/s400/illyas.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561462102921278818" /></a><br /><div>Like the sound of the desert. At night. Whilst the echo of Sufism closes in on you. Why can't all new(ish) music be as utterly compelling as this?<br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://therealnittygritty.blogspot.com/2009/08/ilyas-ahmed-between-two-skies.html">More here</a></div></div>Parallelogramahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106835461757862627noreply@blogger.com0