So one of my friends was in hospital last week, for a while. I went to see her and brought her flowers and some books to read and things, and so did a lot of other people, and from what she's said to me about it she was hardly ever alone.
It wasn't anything death threatening but I found it really reassuring how much they all seemed to take care over this, especially seeing as as a group I don't really feel like we do see each other out of school but not very much (something which has its negative and positive points). It was nice, and none of us have ever been in situations like this, it was nice how devoted everybody seemed to be. But I can't help but wonder if it would be like that for everyone in the group, if they were ill, if it was someone else.
Today, for a few reasons, one which was a song, I started thinking about the visiting area in prisons.
It's something that's suddenly become really interesting, the environment in this situation. I think that people don't seem to know how to interact, because although you're talking with someone you know and you're used to, addressing the mundane little things that go on in your life, bringing in awkward smiles and forced jokes but it's still very there: the fact that only one of you is really able to participate in real life, at that time. That's sort of devastating and I can't get my head around it.
Obviously it's a situation I've never been either end of, and luckily. But it reminds me slightly of last summer, going to Manchester regularly to visit my grandfather as he was dying. And it wasn't definite and nobody ever addressed it but I think we all knew. Though his favourite thing to do during those times was just make a little conversation about my school and things, then watch sports on TV, normally golf or tennis. Maybe the best way to do things like this is to act as we always would.
Coming back to the first thing; my very well looked after friend who was in hospital, it made me think. Not that I'm planning on it, of course, but:
If I was in prison, would any of my friends come and visit me?
Because it's easy to associate yourself with somebody that's incidentally ill, bring them carnations and confectionery and hugs, write all over their Facebook page how much you miss them and want them home. But prison is, obviously, completely different, because unlike illness committing a crime requires shame that some people have to share. Thinking about my friends, they fall into two categories: those that would want detachment from the situation, and those that just wouldn't find the time. And I don't particularly think that that makes them awful human beings.
The song I was talking about before, that made me think about all this, I've found out just now it's about somebody in rehab. But that fits in too: it's much easier to love and support somebody in a hospital ward to admit to yourself that they're a criminal, or a cocaine addict, or somebody to be ashamed of as well as them being your friend. The "Love 'ya babe, come home soon"'s probably don't extend that far. I feel the need to constantly reassure you that I'm not planning any of this, it's just something that really interested me: but if I was arrested, if I overdosed and went into rehabilitation, I can't help but thinking at least seventy percent of the people that I know would cut themselves off as soon as possible. And a little part of me doesn't really blame them, because it's hard to admit to yourself that the version of somebody that you love isn't the one that they always are. It's much harder to be on somebody's side if they're not what you can agree with, or be proud of.
Showing posts with label thoughts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thoughts. Show all posts
Tuesday, 29 May 2012
Saturday, 26 May 2012
Late Spring, Walking Home
This is a fairly mundane story:
Today, I went to visit one of my friends who is very sick. I brought her some flowers, and my copies of "I Capture the Castle" and "Stardust" to read.
As I left and embarked on the mile walk back to my house, it was early evening but the sun was still out. I watched people walking by the river in their t-shirts and sunglasses, and thought about how entertaining it is how we react to a little bit of summer here in England.
I made a point to smile at everybody I came across. This is a game I play with myself sometimes, or I guess you could call it more of a research project, because people's responses often depend hugely on the weather or the place, but sometimes age groups. A girl, aged about five, waved at me. An old man reading a newspaper on a bench grinned back. But a woman in her thirties made a point of looking at the ground. I don't know if she was being stereotypical because I'm a teenager, although I don't look very threatening, or if people just don't like eye contact with strangers.
I passed Arthur's Grave: a monument dedicated to Arthur Brown, an American pilot in WWII who crashed his plane to save our town. It is always covered in flowers. When I used to go running by the river with my dad, in the winter months in thick hoodies and hats, he set the rule that without fail we always had to shout, "Hi Arthur!" as we passed the grave. Even when I'm walking past it on my own, I still whisper it under my breath.
Outside somebody's house on the main road there was a table with tall, blooming raspberry plants on it, in buckets of water, an honesty box and a sign. I put some money in the box and took one for my mum, not thinking about how heavy it would be or how long I had to walk. I must have looked kind of hilarious struggling to carry a giant raspberry plant for half a mile.
As I walked home I saw a girl stood on the patio in front of her house across the street from where I walked. She was maybe six or seven, though I'm bad at guessing ages, wearing a long and bright pink coloured dress and dancing in the carefree way that you do when you're a child. It wasn't until the few seconds break on the Bon Iver record I was listening to, between "Flume" and"Lump Sun" that I realised she was loudly singing S Club 7's "Reach For The Stars" as she danced, whilst gazing up to the sky and wearing a very concentrated expression. I wondered when it becomes normal to stop doing that, and when it's better to look down out of awkwardness when a stranger smiles at you.
No conclusion, no revelation or shocking twists. I just think people's habits are really interesting sometimes, especially on an English summer's day.
Today, I went to visit one of my friends who is very sick. I brought her some flowers, and my copies of "I Capture the Castle" and "Stardust" to read.
As I left and embarked on the mile walk back to my house, it was early evening but the sun was still out. I watched people walking by the river in their t-shirts and sunglasses, and thought about how entertaining it is how we react to a little bit of summer here in England.
I made a point to smile at everybody I came across. This is a game I play with myself sometimes, or I guess you could call it more of a research project, because people's responses often depend hugely on the weather or the place, but sometimes age groups. A girl, aged about five, waved at me. An old man reading a newspaper on a bench grinned back. But a woman in her thirties made a point of looking at the ground. I don't know if she was being stereotypical because I'm a teenager, although I don't look very threatening, or if people just don't like eye contact with strangers.
I passed Arthur's Grave: a monument dedicated to Arthur Brown, an American pilot in WWII who crashed his plane to save our town. It is always covered in flowers. When I used to go running by the river with my dad, in the winter months in thick hoodies and hats, he set the rule that without fail we always had to shout, "Hi Arthur!" as we passed the grave. Even when I'm walking past it on my own, I still whisper it under my breath.
Outside somebody's house on the main road there was a table with tall, blooming raspberry plants on it, in buckets of water, an honesty box and a sign. I put some money in the box and took one for my mum, not thinking about how heavy it would be or how long I had to walk. I must have looked kind of hilarious struggling to carry a giant raspberry plant for half a mile.
As I walked home I saw a girl stood on the patio in front of her house across the street from where I walked. She was maybe six or seven, though I'm bad at guessing ages, wearing a long and bright pink coloured dress and dancing in the carefree way that you do when you're a child. It wasn't until the few seconds break on the Bon Iver record I was listening to, between "Flume" and"Lump Sun" that I realised she was loudly singing S Club 7's "Reach For The Stars" as she danced, whilst gazing up to the sky and wearing a very concentrated expression. I wondered when it becomes normal to stop doing that, and when it's better to look down out of awkwardness when a stranger smiles at you.
No conclusion, no revelation or shocking twists. I just think people's habits are really interesting sometimes, especially on an English summer's day.
Thursday, 15 December 2011
Held Hands, Stabbed Backs
When I was eight years old, I believed in ghosts.
I believed in ghosts because we all believed in ghosts; how couldn't we, when they were a regular occurance in our daily lives? We all knew about the Moaning Myrtle-like ghost girl who stalked about in the school toilets, because we maybe hadn't seen her ourselves but people in the class who told us about it certainly had. Some of the braver children had tried the "Candy Man" trick, calling out an incantation three times into a bathroom mirror to see if faces appeared. It was Year 4 and my whole class were obsessed.
Then, one night my friend called me and she told me that there was a ghost in her house she'd met. Her name was Stephanie, a little girl who had died when she was pushed down the stairs. Her and another of her ghost friends protected the two of us; they had to because for some reason or other, a man called Bob who was also dead wanted us to die, he had been the one that killed Stephanie. I remember Molly telling me that Jane, who correalating with my weird eight year old obsession with the Tudors at that time I imagined looked like Jane Seymour, would hold my hand and protect me when I stuck out my own arm. They obviously never appeared but once in the classroom my friend told me that man was there, that he was touching my back and I could feel it, I could feel this pressure and this pain, it was so real that I didn't want to look behind me because I really felt his nails digging into my shoulders and I felt that I would see them. Similarly, Jane held my hand when I was scared. I feared her at first but not after a while. Her hand was cold and soft, her fingers very thin.
We were so young that it's hard to work out how long this odd little playground game went on for. Maybe a month. Maybe six. Maybe a year. But one day Molly told me she'd made it all up, made up Stephanie and Jane and the killer because she'd just wanted something to go on in our lives. At first I wanted to smile at her and shake my head because didn't she understand, it was real. I knew these imaginary friends so well. Then she told me she felt the same, that they'd become real, that we'd felt and heard and maybe even seen them and it was so strange because it was the strength of both our imaginations, childish faith and belief, things we'd told each other and most of all a need for comfort from monsters that had really made them real, our Ghosts.
A few years back I went to a Mind, Body, Spirit fair as a kind of experiment with my mother. I was too young to see a medium but she did. He'd known so many things. He'd known the name of her baby sister who died, he knew about a cupboard in our house that things had been moved in. He said that she had a daughter who got a funny feeling in her left leg, and that it was "the big orange cat" - our family cat Ginger died about a year previous to this - rubbing himself against her leg like he always used to. And that was true, I did used to get a tingling feeling in my leg. At the time we all cried and hugged. I felt so happy.
But since then I've started to doubt it, and a lot of this is down to me discovering Derren Brown. In a documentary he gave readings like this, claiming to be contacting the dead and using names, dates and things from people's personal history, that he always declared was using trickery. He did this to make people aware of false "mediums" but I have no idea how, if it was a trick it is still somewhat incredible.
I think I still believe in the big orange cat against my leg. I know that sometimes when I think about it I feel it, but am I conjouring it up myself? Because I've tried to work it out and there's really no way to know.
One last thing; I was in an exam recently I just knew I'd done awfully in. I did what I could and finished forty minutes early and that's always horrible because all there is to do is sit, stare at the clock, think about how much you fucked up. It sends you into crazy ways of finding entertainment, because of how lonely it is being in a room full of people where everyone else is silent and concentrating.
I wanted comfort and I was imagining holding a hand. Nobody's hand in particular, just a hand. I shut my eyes. And after a while, it was there. I moved my fingers around, feeling mine tangle in their's, feeling the softness of their skin. We played with each other's fingers. I squeezed and they squeezed back.
I have different amounts of belief in all of the above, different kinds of seemingly physical contact with an imaginary force. The hand today was not real, I know that, and neither were the ghosts in the school bathroom and the girl that died on the stairs. I'm still not sure about Ginger the cat. I know it's something I'd really like to believe in.
***
There were some stories in that I wanted to go back and change to third person because I'm so distanced from them it was weird to say "I".
In other news, this song has my heart at the moment;
I'll be back soon.
- Lizzie x
I believed in ghosts because we all believed in ghosts; how couldn't we, when they were a regular occurance in our daily lives? We all knew about the Moaning Myrtle-like ghost girl who stalked about in the school toilets, because we maybe hadn't seen her ourselves but people in the class who told us about it certainly had. Some of the braver children had tried the "Candy Man" trick, calling out an incantation three times into a bathroom mirror to see if faces appeared. It was Year 4 and my whole class were obsessed.
Then, one night my friend called me and she told me that there was a ghost in her house she'd met. Her name was Stephanie, a little girl who had died when she was pushed down the stairs. Her and another of her ghost friends protected the two of us; they had to because for some reason or other, a man called Bob who was also dead wanted us to die, he had been the one that killed Stephanie. I remember Molly telling me that Jane, who correalating with my weird eight year old obsession with the Tudors at that time I imagined looked like Jane Seymour, would hold my hand and protect me when I stuck out my own arm. They obviously never appeared but once in the classroom my friend told me that man was there, that he was touching my back and I could feel it, I could feel this pressure and this pain, it was so real that I didn't want to look behind me because I really felt his nails digging into my shoulders and I felt that I would see them. Similarly, Jane held my hand when I was scared. I feared her at first but not after a while. Her hand was cold and soft, her fingers very thin.
We were so young that it's hard to work out how long this odd little playground game went on for. Maybe a month. Maybe six. Maybe a year. But one day Molly told me she'd made it all up, made up Stephanie and Jane and the killer because she'd just wanted something to go on in our lives. At first I wanted to smile at her and shake my head because didn't she understand, it was real. I knew these imaginary friends so well. Then she told me she felt the same, that they'd become real, that we'd felt and heard and maybe even seen them and it was so strange because it was the strength of both our imaginations, childish faith and belief, things we'd told each other and most of all a need for comfort from monsters that had really made them real, our Ghosts.
A few years back I went to a Mind, Body, Spirit fair as a kind of experiment with my mother. I was too young to see a medium but she did. He'd known so many things. He'd known the name of her baby sister who died, he knew about a cupboard in our house that things had been moved in. He said that she had a daughter who got a funny feeling in her left leg, and that it was "the big orange cat" - our family cat Ginger died about a year previous to this - rubbing himself against her leg like he always used to. And that was true, I did used to get a tingling feeling in my leg. At the time we all cried and hugged. I felt so happy.
But since then I've started to doubt it, and a lot of this is down to me discovering Derren Brown. In a documentary he gave readings like this, claiming to be contacting the dead and using names, dates and things from people's personal history, that he always declared was using trickery. He did this to make people aware of false "mediums" but I have no idea how, if it was a trick it is still somewhat incredible.
I think I still believe in the big orange cat against my leg. I know that sometimes when I think about it I feel it, but am I conjouring it up myself? Because I've tried to work it out and there's really no way to know.
One last thing; I was in an exam recently I just knew I'd done awfully in. I did what I could and finished forty minutes early and that's always horrible because all there is to do is sit, stare at the clock, think about how much you fucked up. It sends you into crazy ways of finding entertainment, because of how lonely it is being in a room full of people where everyone else is silent and concentrating.
I wanted comfort and I was imagining holding a hand. Nobody's hand in particular, just a hand. I shut my eyes. And after a while, it was there. I moved my fingers around, feeling mine tangle in their's, feeling the softness of their skin. We played with each other's fingers. I squeezed and they squeezed back.
I have different amounts of belief in all of the above, different kinds of seemingly physical contact with an imaginary force. The hand today was not real, I know that, and neither were the ghosts in the school bathroom and the girl that died on the stairs. I'm still not sure about Ginger the cat. I know it's something I'd really like to believe in.
***
There were some stories in that I wanted to go back and change to third person because I'm so distanced from them it was weird to say "I".
In other news, this song has my heart at the moment;
I'll be back soon.
- Lizzie x
Wednesday, 19 October 2011
An Oppositional Reading
"An Oppositional Reading." A term everyone uses quite a lot in my Media Studies class, meaning the consumer of a text has a completely different interpretation of the meaning behind the text that its producer intended (as opposed to the more obvious interpretation, the Preferred Reading). It's often because of religion, sexuality, lifestyle choices, or perhaps most importantly, personal experience.
The example of this I remember from class is two people having an argument about James Blunt's song "Goodbye My Lover". The first argues the Preferred Reading - "This song is about someone going through a breakup."
But the second says, "I know why you think that, but it's actually about somebody who stepped on an insect and they're really guilty about it."
Obviously "Goodbye My Lover" isn't about an insect at all, but this person has a really traumatic experience and they're so desperate to find something to relate it to that they grab at the nearest thing to find similarity and comfort in.
The insect thing is a really bad example, but this whole theory is really interesting to me, especially as a music fan and somebody who often tries to find things within the lyrics of a song. The problem with the example above is that it makes it seem as if any Oppositional Reading is obvious, obscure and insane, which isn't the case. Thinking about it, I realised people have them all the time.
A few months ago, my dad was starting to like Noah and the Whale, one of my favourite bands, and we would listen to them a lot when it was just him and me in the car, and his favourite song of theirs was "Tonight's the Kind of Night". I remember one of the first things he said about it was, "It's about a boy leaving home to go to university."
It made me smile. I can see where he's coming from, "Tonight's the Kind of Night" talks of a young boy getting on a bus to leave. "Tonight's the kind of night where everything could change." "He waves goodbye to the town he grew up him, he knows that he'll never go back." "Tonight he's not gonna come back home." "His heart is full of perfect joy, his eyes begin to flood." He's going away from where he's always lived, moving away from his parents and his family, and it's an adventure.
My dad grew up in Bolton, an area that was quite a tight-knit community, and left there at eighteen to go to university and from what I know I think he loved it there: he met some of his current best friends there, did really well in his degree, was in a band etc.
Him leaving to go and live in Coventry is easily relatable to "Tonight's the Kind of Night", because it's about a boy of age eighteen-ish leaving home, but if you think about it there's no reason he should think it's about going to university. It's either an easy assumption to make about somebody student-aged, or my dad just subconsciously applied this to himself and his memories.
I've done it myself, too. There's a song on Laura Marling's new record* called "The Beast". After I'd listened to it a few times I started to really focus on the lyrics, and I thought I'd found it and someone was finally talking about this thing that causes all of my guilt and rage. It's probably more complicated than that, it's difficult to explain because I don't understand it either - Poppy referred to this unexplainable negativity as my "monsters" before, and "The Beast" also seemed a good way to put at it. I really recognised the illustration of the guilt and dread as something that comes at night and lies beside you in bed, and that sometimes you submit to.
I've thought about it and she probably isn't referring to that, at least not specifically, and it's childish that the identification of what I thought was a common ground increased my love for Laura Marling's music. I think it's likely that "The Beast" is about similar feelings, but probably not that "snap!" exactness that I thought I'd found the first time around.
Does it mean we should stop listening to songs and applying them to our lives? Is an "Oppositional" reading any less of an interpretation? Of course not. That is one of the things music is for, a comfort blanket and a friend, a lifeline in the dark because somebody else has probably felt like this before.
I don't know who Imogen Heap wrote "Swoon" about, but I know who it will always have been about to me, the feelings it stirred in me, and for that I can give the song a name and a face. "The Beast" will still always be a description of someone having similar feelings to mine, "Tonight's the Kind of Night" makes my dad think of things that were happening to him when he was eighteen.
A song's story starts with the thing that happened or the person that it was written about, but once it's out in the world and provides a listener with emotion suddenly it's about them to and thousands of stories are unknowingly interlinked. I think that's an incredible representation of the music community. And that's why of course "Goodbye My Lover" by James Blunt is about a squashed insect.
*I hope nobody's counting how many times I've said "Laura Marling" in the past month...
The example of this I remember from class is two people having an argument about James Blunt's song "Goodbye My Lover". The first argues the Preferred Reading - "This song is about someone going through a breakup."
But the second says, "I know why you think that, but it's actually about somebody who stepped on an insect and they're really guilty about it."
Obviously "Goodbye My Lover" isn't about an insect at all, but this person has a really traumatic experience and they're so desperate to find something to relate it to that they grab at the nearest thing to find similarity and comfort in.
The insect thing is a really bad example, but this whole theory is really interesting to me, especially as a music fan and somebody who often tries to find things within the lyrics of a song. The problem with the example above is that it makes it seem as if any Oppositional Reading is obvious, obscure and insane, which isn't the case. Thinking about it, I realised people have them all the time.
A few months ago, my dad was starting to like Noah and the Whale, one of my favourite bands, and we would listen to them a lot when it was just him and me in the car, and his favourite song of theirs was "Tonight's the Kind of Night". I remember one of the first things he said about it was, "It's about a boy leaving home to go to university."
It made me smile. I can see where he's coming from, "Tonight's the Kind of Night" talks of a young boy getting on a bus to leave. "Tonight's the kind of night where everything could change." "He waves goodbye to the town he grew up him, he knows that he'll never go back." "Tonight he's not gonna come back home." "His heart is full of perfect joy, his eyes begin to flood." He's going away from where he's always lived, moving away from his parents and his family, and it's an adventure.
My dad grew up in Bolton, an area that was quite a tight-knit community, and left there at eighteen to go to university and from what I know I think he loved it there: he met some of his current best friends there, did really well in his degree, was in a band etc.
Him leaving to go and live in Coventry is easily relatable to "Tonight's the Kind of Night", because it's about a boy of age eighteen-ish leaving home, but if you think about it there's no reason he should think it's about going to university. It's either an easy assumption to make about somebody student-aged, or my dad just subconsciously applied this to himself and his memories.
I've done it myself, too. There's a song on Laura Marling's new record* called "The Beast". After I'd listened to it a few times I started to really focus on the lyrics, and I thought I'd found it and someone was finally talking about this thing that causes all of my guilt and rage. It's probably more complicated than that, it's difficult to explain because I don't understand it either - Poppy referred to this unexplainable negativity as my "monsters" before, and "The Beast" also seemed a good way to put at it. I really recognised the illustration of the guilt and dread as something that comes at night and lies beside you in bed, and that sometimes you submit to.
I've thought about it and she probably isn't referring to that, at least not specifically, and it's childish that the identification of what I thought was a common ground increased my love for Laura Marling's music. I think it's likely that "The Beast" is about similar feelings, but probably not that "snap!" exactness that I thought I'd found the first time around.
Does it mean we should stop listening to songs and applying them to our lives? Is an "Oppositional" reading any less of an interpretation? Of course not. That is one of the things music is for, a comfort blanket and a friend, a lifeline in the dark because somebody else has probably felt like this before.
I don't know who Imogen Heap wrote "Swoon" about, but I know who it will always have been about to me, the feelings it stirred in me, and for that I can give the song a name and a face. "The Beast" will still always be a description of someone having similar feelings to mine, "Tonight's the Kind of Night" makes my dad think of things that were happening to him when he was eighteen.
A song's story starts with the thing that happened or the person that it was written about, but once it's out in the world and provides a listener with emotion suddenly it's about them to and thousands of stories are unknowingly interlinked. I think that's an incredible representation of the music community. And that's why of course "Goodbye My Lover" by James Blunt is about a squashed insect.
*I hope nobody's counting how many times I've said "Laura Marling" in the past month...
Wednesday, 5 October 2011
Room
I read a book this week called "Room", by Emma Donaghue. It's about a boy, named Jack, who is just turning five years old, and lives in an 11 by 11 ft room with his mother, where they are being held captive. They are looked after by "Old Nick", who takes out the trash after Jack has gone to bed, and brings them food and the things they ask for for Sundaytreat. Jack knows of nothing else, and has trouble understanding when his mother explains to him that there's an Outside World to Room.
I was talking about this book with my mum, and the way it was written - how Jack calls the different things in room as if by title, Table and Wardrobe and Rug are the centres of Jack's world.
I thought about it and we all live in a Room, I suppose. Maybe mine's broader - the places I constanly go between are Home and School and the Pool and Poppy's House. There's greater distance between them than in Jack's Room, of course, but it's the same - I've been in the same place for a long time and feel slightly like I'm growing out of it. A combination of an age thing and a dash of wanderlust.
I'm definitely not comparing life in a small town to being held captive as such but it seems to be like living any way for too long – whether in a village populated three hundred or in a huge city, we develop a routine and habits and it becomes our Room. It’s probably healthy, and natural instinct for us to surround ourselves with things that we know to feel safe. But I’m starting to feel too safe. I want to go Outside: maybe not forever, maybe just for a ten minute walk, but the trouble is I don’t know how and although reading “Room” it frustrated me, I’m definitely starting to understand how five-year-old Jack feels, of course in a very different way. But still; not sure whether it's better to be on the Inside, isolated and suffering, or on the Outside, lost and scared, overwhelmed and exposed.
I was talking about this book with my mum, and the way it was written - how Jack calls the different things in room as if by title, Table and Wardrobe and Rug are the centres of Jack's world.
I thought about it and we all live in a Room, I suppose. Maybe mine's broader - the places I constanly go between are Home and School and the Pool and Poppy's House. There's greater distance between them than in Jack's Room, of course, but it's the same - I've been in the same place for a long time and feel slightly like I'm growing out of it. A combination of an age thing and a dash of wanderlust.
I'm definitely not comparing life in a small town to being held captive as such but it seems to be like living any way for too long – whether in a village populated three hundred or in a huge city, we develop a routine and habits and it becomes our Room. It’s probably healthy, and natural instinct for us to surround ourselves with things that we know to feel safe. But I’m starting to feel too safe. I want to go Outside: maybe not forever, maybe just for a ten minute walk, but the trouble is I don’t know how and although reading “Room” it frustrated me, I’m definitely starting to understand how five-year-old Jack feels, of course in a very different way. But still; not sure whether it's better to be on the Inside, isolated and suffering, or on the Outside, lost and scared, overwhelmed and exposed.
Friday, 5 August 2011
Best Day/Worst Day
These last few days I read a book called "Looking For Alaska" by John Green (AMAZING.) I'm probably going to write about it a lot in the next week or so, so do your homework if you want to... or I'll just be relatable. Sorry if I'm being too niche recently, but in short having read "Looking For Alaska" isn't really relevent to today's post. But you still should, because I really recommend it. It isn't hardgoing at all, but still provoked me to think about so many things.
They play a game Alaska spontaneously invents, called "Best Day/Worst Day" - everyone tells the story of first their best day every, and then their worst. It's also a drinking game, but I don't have anybody to drink with and getting drunk alone for the entertainment of an empty space on the internet seems stupid.
But I'm still going to play it. Though instead of choosing one I picked multiple for each, because I'm painfully indecisive.
BEST DAYS
(in no chronological order)
1. Going to Camelot Theme Park with my dad, I think I was about aged ten. I think my mum was writing her dissertation or something, so we had to do something to get out of the house so went her. It was grey and it rained, and my dad went on at me to go on a rollercoaster called The Whirlwind. I was in about a two year phase (eight-then, I love them now) when I was scared of rollercoasters, and I planned to pretend I was going to do it then get to the queue and chicken out. But I just didn't, and we got in the cart and I shut my eyes tight the whole time and that was the point I realised I quite like being thrown around over and over again.
2. Royal Albert Hall Day, 2010. I did write a post about this. Seeing my favourite musician, with my best friend, in my favourite city, and spending the weekend there.
3. Geneva, 2011. I go skiing with my parents and my cousin every year, and we drive there, a long journey through Europe, and usually cross about three different countries. This year, we stopped at a roadside bridge my dad spotted and all of us raced along it.
We spent the rest of that day in Geneva, in Swizerland, and it's one of the most beautiful places I think I've been to. We were only there for about an hour but walked through a park, saw the Lake, payed a busker and took pictures of some swans.
4. Spooning in the park, July 2011. A few weeks ago, the day we broke up from school, I went to a slumber party with just my two best friends and nobody else. It was at someone's big farm house, and I think that period - from about 5pm to 3 the next day, I was completley honest the whole time, we all were. We ate a lot of cookie dough and watched High School Musical 3 because I was deprived of it my whole childhood, then ended up getting drunk but not crazy-drunk, just the kind of drunk that opens you up and makes you laugh too much. So we walked to the park and all just lay down in a heap and talked about all the things you're not supposed to the rest of the time. I felt warm and I felt loved.
WORST DAYS
1. Harriet, the girl at the out-of-school club, 2002. The summer I started school, I went to an out-of-school club in the summer whilst my mum was working. Usually my best friend Charlotte was there, or another girl called Maia, but this one time my mum dropped me off and the only person to "play with" - that's what we did then - was a girl called Harriet. I mean, there were a lot of boys, but boys were icky. I recall playing a jigsaw computer game with Harriet, which she made me watch whilst she repeated, and shouted at me that she got three goes in a row, then I could have ONE turn. Aside from that, I can't quite remember what she did to me but I know she was some kind of four year old psycho bitch. I really clearly remember that in my mum's car on the way home, I thought to myself "THIS was the worst day ever. Nothing that has happened to me before or will happen can possibly compare."
2.Sitting on the shower floor after drinking Tia Maria, 2010.
The first time I drank a lot was at someone's house towards the end of last year. I remember a gap between when we were doing shots and it seemed fun, and then some other stuff happened and after that there's a gap between lying on a mattress being hit and then drunkenly sobbing whilst somebody stroked my hair. Then I hugged the person who'd hit me and I told them I was sorry and I don't know why, I wasn't, I was mad at them but I desparatley wanted them not to be mad at me. The next day I got home and I felt like crap and I was still angry so I sat on the shower floor and wept. That was probably quite a low moment.
There are some more worst days I can think of, but they're all similar and hard to explain.
And isn't it better to have twice as many best days than worst days?
They play a game Alaska spontaneously invents, called "Best Day/Worst Day" - everyone tells the story of first their best day every, and then their worst. It's also a drinking game, but I don't have anybody to drink with and getting drunk alone for the entertainment of an empty space on the internet seems stupid.
But I'm still going to play it. Though instead of choosing one I picked multiple for each, because I'm painfully indecisive.
BEST DAYS
(in no chronological order)
1. Going to Camelot Theme Park with my dad, I think I was about aged ten. I think my mum was writing her dissertation or something, so we had to do something to get out of the house so went her. It was grey and it rained, and my dad went on at me to go on a rollercoaster called The Whirlwind. I was in about a two year phase (eight-then, I love them now) when I was scared of rollercoasters, and I planned to pretend I was going to do it then get to the queue and chicken out. But I just didn't, and we got in the cart and I shut my eyes tight the whole time and that was the point I realised I quite like being thrown around over and over again.
2. Royal Albert Hall Day, 2010. I did write a post about this. Seeing my favourite musician, with my best friend, in my favourite city, and spending the weekend there.
3. Geneva, 2011. I go skiing with my parents and my cousin every year, and we drive there, a long journey through Europe, and usually cross about three different countries. This year, we stopped at a roadside bridge my dad spotted and all of us raced along it.
We spent the rest of that day in Geneva, in Swizerland, and it's one of the most beautiful places I think I've been to. We were only there for about an hour but walked through a park, saw the Lake, payed a busker and took pictures of some swans.
4. Spooning in the park, July 2011. A few weeks ago, the day we broke up from school, I went to a slumber party with just my two best friends and nobody else. It was at someone's big farm house, and I think that period - from about 5pm to 3 the next day, I was completley honest the whole time, we all were. We ate a lot of cookie dough and watched High School Musical 3 because I was deprived of it my whole childhood, then ended up getting drunk but not crazy-drunk, just the kind of drunk that opens you up and makes you laugh too much. So we walked to the park and all just lay down in a heap and talked about all the things you're not supposed to the rest of the time. I felt warm and I felt loved.
WORST DAYS
1. Harriet, the girl at the out-of-school club, 2002. The summer I started school, I went to an out-of-school club in the summer whilst my mum was working. Usually my best friend Charlotte was there, or another girl called Maia, but this one time my mum dropped me off and the only person to "play with" - that's what we did then - was a girl called Harriet. I mean, there were a lot of boys, but boys were icky. I recall playing a jigsaw computer game with Harriet, which she made me watch whilst she repeated, and shouted at me that she got three goes in a row, then I could have ONE turn. Aside from that, I can't quite remember what she did to me but I know she was some kind of four year old psycho bitch. I really clearly remember that in my mum's car on the way home, I thought to myself "THIS was the worst day ever. Nothing that has happened to me before or will happen can possibly compare."
2.Sitting on the shower floor after drinking Tia Maria, 2010.
The first time I drank a lot was at someone's house towards the end of last year. I remember a gap between when we were doing shots and it seemed fun, and then some other stuff happened and after that there's a gap between lying on a mattress being hit and then drunkenly sobbing whilst somebody stroked my hair. Then I hugged the person who'd hit me and I told them I was sorry and I don't know why, I wasn't, I was mad at them but I desparatley wanted them not to be mad at me. The next day I got home and I felt like crap and I was still angry so I sat on the shower floor and wept. That was probably quite a low moment.
There are some more worst days I can think of, but they're all similar and hard to explain.
And isn't it better to have twice as many best days than worst days?
Sunday, 31 July 2011
Today we turn one!
(yes, this was sort of just an excuse to colour instead of doing homework...)
(EDIT - 31st/07th: Sometimes, you post something to the internet but then you missed a t out. And it's sad...
Also did I mention I realised we share a birthday with HARRY POTTER?!)
I'll warn you this is probably going to be really sentimental.
A year ago today I packed for our family holiday to Turkey, listened to some Imogen Heap, opened a bank account and that night sat up at my desk and started writing a blog - something I hadn't tried since I was well, twelve.
And since then I've been to see Imogen Heap twice more, visited a continent I hadn't been to, made new friends, done well in exams, done awfully in some other exams, discovered folk music, been kissed, been slapped, read new books, watched new films, been drunk and learnt that being honest is usually a better idea than not.
I know that this isn't really something people read, but I'm pretty proud that I've stayed comitted to posting here regularly, considering how much I procrastinate and the shortness of my attention span.
The title of this was going to be "We are one!".
Then I remembered that song by Same Difference...
Happy birthday, whether you're people or just a blank space. Here's to another year of more of the same.
I'll see you on Wednesday.
- Lizzie xx
Wednesday, 27 July 2011
Amy
I was at a party on Saturday night when someone announced to us all, almost half laughing, that Amy Winehouse had died.
And what I kind of picked up on that made me sad was that not only were some of my friends that were there not at all sad about it, but people were chiming in with "Well, she deserved it eventually taking all those drugs" and "She did have it coming". They were almost acting the same as with Osama Bin Laden's death - as if it was completley socially acceptable to be happy about what had happened to Amy Winehouse. So it was almost comforting when I got home to the internet and saw that not everyone - not even close - was acting like this.
At the start of the year in my Media Studies class, we were shown two photos of Amy Winehouse. One was of her climbing out of a cab, barely dressed and clearly wasted, which was from a red-top newspaper. The other was from her official website, and it was this:
Words like "fresh faced" and "young" and "graceful" were written on the board. The point was that different parts of a person can be used to represent them differently. And then the teacher asked us which one we thought was the "real" Amy Winehouse, and I think that the answer is that it is both and it is neither.
The people I've come across seem to be in one of two groups about Amy Winehouse's death. There are the ones who class her as a low-life and an addict and an equivalent to a mass murdering terrorist, then there are those that, maybe regardless of whether or not they appreciate her music, understand that this is a huge loss, and a very sad way to die. (I know that we're unsure at this point the exact causes of Winehouse's death, but I'm refering to the drugs).
I wasn't really a huge fan but when I heard about Amy Winehouse, I was eleven years old and my dad played her cover of "Valerie" to me in the car, and I thought that her voice was brilliant. Then I watched some Youtube videos of her singing. And there are a few things that make Amy Winehouse iconic - there is the beehive hairstyle, the red lipstick, and the drunkenness there seemed to be behind all of her live performances. But I think at the time I thought that the slight slur when she was talking and the way Winehouse staggered around the stage was sort of romantic - quite sad, but glamorous too.
Since then I have grown up some, I've had my own experiences with drinking (though let's highlight, never constantly or to the extent that I can empathise with an alcoholic, just more than when I was eleven) and also found out that most of my childhood I was shielded from the fact that a member of my family is an alcoholic and has been in and out of rehab, restbite care and various hospitals my entire life.
Amy Winehouse was twenty-seven and that's the same age as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain all were when they passed away. Artists take drugs because they're a part of the glamour, because they spur creativity, because they're desparate and because they're sad and lonely. But I also want to think about how many people go through this all the time, who instead of a terrifying throng of people are scared to face their job, their bills, their empty bed. This is something that can affect a businesswoman or a rockstar or someone sleeping in a shop doorway with an aching back.
I don't know if us telling ourselves people with an addiction to alcohol or drugs "have it coming" is a way to tell ourselves that the whatever it is the way we cope with things is right, because it probably is, but it's unimaginable to understand a drug addiction, and I don't think I can try to. And maybe I'm wrong and it's just a part of living so completley on the brink, that although Winehouse and Hendrix, the rest who are known as something called the "27 Club", and also Vincent Van Gogh and addicts who can't put up with themselves, and all of the other rockstars and the like who've died young, aren't ready to have to grow old or face up to whatever's coming next.
But whether or not Amy Winehouse's death was an eventuality, someone has lost their daughter, many, it seems, have lost a close friend, and the world has lost a beautiful singer. Amy Winehouse has achieved a lot - she had an excellent voice, she collaborated with and was admired by so many artists, I'm sure she has a very loyal fanbase that loved her and the world is lucky we still have her music left behind.
RIP <3
And what I kind of picked up on that made me sad was that not only were some of my friends that were there not at all sad about it, but people were chiming in with "Well, she deserved it eventually taking all those drugs" and "She did have it coming". They were almost acting the same as with Osama Bin Laden's death - as if it was completley socially acceptable to be happy about what had happened to Amy Winehouse. So it was almost comforting when I got home to the internet and saw that not everyone - not even close - was acting like this.
At the start of the year in my Media Studies class, we were shown two photos of Amy Winehouse. One was of her climbing out of a cab, barely dressed and clearly wasted, which was from a red-top newspaper. The other was from her official website, and it was this:
Words like "fresh faced" and "young" and "graceful" were written on the board. The point was that different parts of a person can be used to represent them differently. And then the teacher asked us which one we thought was the "real" Amy Winehouse, and I think that the answer is that it is both and it is neither.
The people I've come across seem to be in one of two groups about Amy Winehouse's death. There are the ones who class her as a low-life and an addict and an equivalent to a mass murdering terrorist, then there are those that, maybe regardless of whether or not they appreciate her music, understand that this is a huge loss, and a very sad way to die. (I know that we're unsure at this point the exact causes of Winehouse's death, but I'm refering to the drugs).
I wasn't really a huge fan but when I heard about Amy Winehouse, I was eleven years old and my dad played her cover of "Valerie" to me in the car, and I thought that her voice was brilliant. Then I watched some Youtube videos of her singing. And there are a few things that make Amy Winehouse iconic - there is the beehive hairstyle, the red lipstick, and the drunkenness there seemed to be behind all of her live performances. But I think at the time I thought that the slight slur when she was talking and the way Winehouse staggered around the stage was sort of romantic - quite sad, but glamorous too.
Since then I have grown up some, I've had my own experiences with drinking (though let's highlight, never constantly or to the extent that I can empathise with an alcoholic, just more than when I was eleven) and also found out that most of my childhood I was shielded from the fact that a member of my family is an alcoholic and has been in and out of rehab, restbite care and various hospitals my entire life.
Amy Winehouse was twenty-seven and that's the same age as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain all were when they passed away. Artists take drugs because they're a part of the glamour, because they spur creativity, because they're desparate and because they're sad and lonely. But I also want to think about how many people go through this all the time, who instead of a terrifying throng of people are scared to face their job, their bills, their empty bed. This is something that can affect a businesswoman or a rockstar or someone sleeping in a shop doorway with an aching back.
I don't know if us telling ourselves people with an addiction to alcohol or drugs "have it coming" is a way to tell ourselves that the whatever it is the way we cope with things is right, because it probably is, but it's unimaginable to understand a drug addiction, and I don't think I can try to. And maybe I'm wrong and it's just a part of living so completley on the brink, that although Winehouse and Hendrix, the rest who are known as something called the "27 Club", and also Vincent Van Gogh and addicts who can't put up with themselves, and all of the other rockstars and the like who've died young, aren't ready to have to grow old or face up to whatever's coming next.
But whether or not Amy Winehouse's death was an eventuality, someone has lost their daughter, many, it seems, have lost a close friend, and the world has lost a beautiful singer. Amy Winehouse has achieved a lot - she had an excellent voice, she collaborated with and was admired by so many artists, I'm sure she has a very loyal fanbase that loved her and the world is lucky we still have her music left behind.
RIP <3
Wednesday, 15 June 2011
On "Choosing To Die"
I watched a documentary yesterday called Terry Pratchett: Choosing To Die. If you haven't heard of him, Terry Pratchett is a British fantasy writer: he wrote something called the Discworlds series, but the first of his work I read was a collaboration novel he wrote with Neil Gaiman called "Good Omens".
In 2007, Pratchett was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. And he's still in the early stages of Alzheimer's, but there were little things - he said that he almost always immedietly forgets people's names. He can no longer type, and instead dictates to his assistant when he writes, because Terry Pratchett feels he has to finish the book he's in the middle of writing. As a writer, I can't get my head around how frustrating this must be. Following this, he presented a documentary which aired a few nights ago, on BBC1, about euthanasia and assisted suicide.
The documentary focused on Dignitas, a clinic in Swizerland which helps those with terminal illnesses to die. The film followed a man named Peter Smedley, with motor neurone disease, who travelled to Swizerland with his wife to die in this odd little blue house. It was right in the middle of an industrial estate, because it was the only place it was allowed to be. Amongst all the tall buildings and cars, at the back of the house, was a small zen garden. It was a place of comfort - there were comfortable chairs, a bed, large bowls of chocolate and over fifty different kinds of tea.
The documentary followed both Peter Smedley's choice to die at Dignitas and his death itself, and after first watching him and his wife talking about it in the most impossibly straightforward and businesslike way, I was shocked by how quickly the transfer seemed to be between then and the man's death. Peter drank the mixture that would kill him quickly, then ate some of the chocolates his wife had picked out of the bowl from him after requesting that he didn't want the praline ones. His wife kept very sincere and unemotive, holding his hand as he first struggled to breathe then slipped into sleep, and I think she may just have been one of the bravest women I've ever seen.
Peter Smedley's death was calm and peaceful and just seemed so right - at least for him, then, in that situation. I agree with the idea of Dignitas and what it does for people. The process was thorough in ensuring the person asking to die was in right mind, knew exactly how the process would work and was completley sure.
But what struck me was the fact that the program said something like 21% of the people who die at Dignitas don't have any terminal illness at all. I can't decide how I feel about that, because I don't know if someone vunerable and depressed and scared should have the option to slip away so easily, depite how thorough the doctors at the Dignitas clinic are with ensuring the patient is of sound mind. There is a difference between someone who is scared and wanting an easier suicide, and a terminally ill cancer patient relieving themselves of pain.
Maybe, however, it's up to us. I have a lot of arguments in my head about what I think about suicide - whether it's selfish towards the people who love them, or whether ending our life is a basic human right. I have no idea why but at the back of a notebook I used to use when I was about eleven, I've written "You don't know another person until you've walked a mile in their shoes" and I'm fairly sure it's one of those things my mother used to tell me but it's true.
It would cause far too much controversy to compare mental and physical pain and struggle, whether either one is worse, but they are completley different things. And whilst it's kinder to consider the people around us and who suicide will affect, when being in the world is so much of a struggle, whether that means a strain on the body or the soul, the choice to end it or to stay can only be down to one person. I think that Dignitas dealt with this in a way that was almost beautiful, and although I'm sad about Peter Smedley and I will be sad about Terry Pratchett, and I even spent a few minutes after the documentary quietly weeping in the kitchen, it comforts me knowing that if I ever become terminally ill and am in a lot of pain, depending on the situation ethics, there is a little blue house in the middle of Europe, in the snow, that managed to deal with this is the kindest and most moral and graceful way I think possible.
In 2007, Pratchett was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. And he's still in the early stages of Alzheimer's, but there were little things - he said that he almost always immedietly forgets people's names. He can no longer type, and instead dictates to his assistant when he writes, because Terry Pratchett feels he has to finish the book he's in the middle of writing. As a writer, I can't get my head around how frustrating this must be. Following this, he presented a documentary which aired a few nights ago, on BBC1, about euthanasia and assisted suicide.
The documentary focused on Dignitas, a clinic in Swizerland which helps those with terminal illnesses to die. The film followed a man named Peter Smedley, with motor neurone disease, who travelled to Swizerland with his wife to die in this odd little blue house. It was right in the middle of an industrial estate, because it was the only place it was allowed to be. Amongst all the tall buildings and cars, at the back of the house, was a small zen garden. It was a place of comfort - there were comfortable chairs, a bed, large bowls of chocolate and over fifty different kinds of tea.
The documentary followed both Peter Smedley's choice to die at Dignitas and his death itself, and after first watching him and his wife talking about it in the most impossibly straightforward and businesslike way, I was shocked by how quickly the transfer seemed to be between then and the man's death. Peter drank the mixture that would kill him quickly, then ate some of the chocolates his wife had picked out of the bowl from him after requesting that he didn't want the praline ones. His wife kept very sincere and unemotive, holding his hand as he first struggled to breathe then slipped into sleep, and I think she may just have been one of the bravest women I've ever seen.
Peter Smedley's death was calm and peaceful and just seemed so right - at least for him, then, in that situation. I agree with the idea of Dignitas and what it does for people. The process was thorough in ensuring the person asking to die was in right mind, knew exactly how the process would work and was completley sure.
But what struck me was the fact that the program said something like 21% of the people who die at Dignitas don't have any terminal illness at all. I can't decide how I feel about that, because I don't know if someone vunerable and depressed and scared should have the option to slip away so easily, depite how thorough the doctors at the Dignitas clinic are with ensuring the patient is of sound mind. There is a difference between someone who is scared and wanting an easier suicide, and a terminally ill cancer patient relieving themselves of pain.
Maybe, however, it's up to us. I have a lot of arguments in my head about what I think about suicide - whether it's selfish towards the people who love them, or whether ending our life is a basic human right. I have no idea why but at the back of a notebook I used to use when I was about eleven, I've written "You don't know another person until you've walked a mile in their shoes" and I'm fairly sure it's one of those things my mother used to tell me but it's true.
It would cause far too much controversy to compare mental and physical pain and struggle, whether either one is worse, but they are completley different things. And whilst it's kinder to consider the people around us and who suicide will affect, when being in the world is so much of a struggle, whether that means a strain on the body or the soul, the choice to end it or to stay can only be down to one person. I think that Dignitas dealt with this in a way that was almost beautiful, and although I'm sad about Peter Smedley and I will be sad about Terry Pratchett, and I even spent a few minutes after the documentary quietly weeping in the kitchen, it comforts me knowing that if I ever become terminally ill and am in a lot of pain, depending on the situation ethics, there is a little blue house in the middle of Europe, in the snow, that managed to deal with this is the kindest and most moral and graceful way I think possible.
Monday, 21 February 2011
Why I'd Rather Be Blind Than Deaf
A while ago, I was having a debate with one of my friends about whether I'd rather be deaf or blind.
See, given the choice I would rather be blind.
Maybe it'd be different if it was from birth, but if I woke up tomorrow deaf, although either would be awful, I wouldn't have a clue what to do. I'd have to learn to communicate all over again, I'd miss the sound of voices talking to me. I couldn't dip into conversations in groups of a lot of people. It'd take me a long time to learn how to lipread, or learn sign language.
But most of all, though it sounds a little stupid and sentimental, I would miss music.
Maybe a year and a half ago I'd have chosen deafness over blindness, but I can't bear the thought of never hearing "Tidal" again, or "Goodnight and Go" or "Bohemian Rhapsody" or "Think of England" or "Spit It Out" or "The Mirror", or anything else that'll be this important to me, someday. I haven't seen a fifth of the people perform who I want to. I can imagine going to a concert live, because although sight there's important I wouldn't care. I'd know the artist or band were there, I could smell the seat cushions or feel the bodies and smell the stickiness of beer.
There'd be bad things along with being blind though - it'd be like learning how to walk again. Katie's argument was that I couldn't ever drive, which would also be terrible. I walk to school every day, and although reading could be substituted with buying audiobooks, how would I write? Use a computer?
I don't know. That's just my priorities. And in conclusion, I think I'm lucky that I haven't been plagued with either.
See, given the choice I would rather be blind.
Maybe it'd be different if it was from birth, but if I woke up tomorrow deaf, although either would be awful, I wouldn't have a clue what to do. I'd have to learn to communicate all over again, I'd miss the sound of voices talking to me. I couldn't dip into conversations in groups of a lot of people. It'd take me a long time to learn how to lipread, or learn sign language.
But most of all, though it sounds a little stupid and sentimental, I would miss music.
Maybe a year and a half ago I'd have chosen deafness over blindness, but I can't bear the thought of never hearing "Tidal" again, or "Goodnight and Go" or "Bohemian Rhapsody" or "Think of England" or "Spit It Out" or "The Mirror", or anything else that'll be this important to me, someday. I haven't seen a fifth of the people perform who I want to. I can imagine going to a concert live, because although sight there's important I wouldn't care. I'd know the artist or band were there, I could smell the seat cushions or feel the bodies and smell the stickiness of beer.
There'd be bad things along with being blind though - it'd be like learning how to walk again. Katie's argument was that I couldn't ever drive, which would also be terrible. I walk to school every day, and although reading could be substituted with buying audiobooks, how would I write? Use a computer?
I don't know. That's just my priorities. And in conclusion, I think I'm lucky that I haven't been plagued with either.
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