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May 29, 2012 New Le Clique, C’est Chic

The In Crowd: ever the nightmare for anyone who while growing up fell even just below ‘average looking’. The soul-anaesthetising curse of any adolescent’s life belonging to either gender (probably even more dramatically so if belonging to both), is that single group of people who excel at everything that is important in the world. Looking beautiful, having clean hair with bodies that seem to fit so perfectly into clothes, and generally being able to walk as though in slow motion and with wind blowing perfect locks away from their foreheads as they manage with their superhuman ability not to blink or become watery-eyed against the elements. Anyone who has been in the In Crowd might be alien to the utterly demonic sensation of resentment that becomes instilled into the very bones of those who belong outside of it.

Now this is quite extremist. People-leagues are not so defiantly cutthroat in whom they choose to promote and discharge. Some people have been in the In Crowd, but decided to leave, some people have never been inducted but have friends who are and insist that honestly “they’re different when you get to know them”.

As I perch my lonesome self on a stone ledge, after quietly rejoicing the fact that I’ve scored a free beer (I don’t even like beer) because it’s the opening night for an exhibition at a super trendy gallery in London, I look around. After all these years, I’m still standing (or sitting, rather) on the periphery of that which is significantly chic. I’m still attending the most glamorous of parties, but I’m standing behind the velvet rope, trying to resist holding my hand up to shield my eyes from the glitter glare.

Now I’ve come, over the years, to bury any form of resentment towards people who are members of the In Crowd. Because it really isn’t their fault that they are so beautiful and pointless; and I actually am one of those people who has known a few ‘inners’, and they are pretty much harmless and often quite nice-ish. But as I sit, looking at the two hundred or so people who are infinitely trendier, edgier and more popular than I am, I uncompromisingly forget how okay I truly am with this social phenomenon, and I become steadily and haughtily enraged.

I’ll bet these people don’t even like ART! They’re just here to pose! And how the hell does everyone know each other? And why do they each throw their heads so savagely backwards when laughing? And why can all of them afford to buy cigarettes? They’ve probably paid for the free beer just because they’re so much richer than everyone and…oh my god I hate myself!

Right. So, really, In Crowds don’t actually exist. Wait…just, wait. Let me unpack that gross and seemingly misguided statement. In Crowds can’t exist unless we allow them to. Of course there is such a thing as inequality. Yes, some people are more good looking, more intelligent, more interesting, more flexible etc. But even if some of us are sitting alone on a stone ledge, we are still there: In the crowd. Maybe not in the In Crowd. But we exist, and somehow, we’ve managed to be in the same place as the plastic people.

As I continue to sit, I remember the various exhibition openings I attended back home in Malta. I remember how I would wake up in a fog of old cigarettes fumes with my neck aching. I remember how I would walk into whatever gallery or event it was and, quite literally, know everyone there. So was I, dare I say it, an ‘inner’? Surely not? Well…I don’t think I will ever know. And maybe the people I so fanatically hated for those fifteen minutes at the gallery opening don’t see themselves that way either. In fact, I’m assured they don’t as I walk up to the bar to procure myself another bottle. “I just love a freebie, don’t you?” says a perfectly coiffured human being to me. Yes, I think, to myself. And apparently, we all do.

May 18, 2012 Pitch, please…

Q: Consider the following scenarios and explain in brief the process by which the individual(s) concerned may elicit a more positive outcome, providing the specific term intended for use as a solution to said scenarios.

Scenario No. 1: Making Friends

You’re about twelve years old and it’s time to make real friends. Ones you actually will talk to for more than three hours at a stretch, and about things that matter (only) slightly more than who’s going to be the ‘counter’ in hide and seek this time around. So you go about the matters of procuring classroom companions. You are under the naïve impression that mere kindness and an outreach of a fruit-pastille filled hand will garner you acceptance into the barbed confines of the tween clique. It won’t. Well, what stickers/ posters/ previously unseen Justin Bieber Youtube links can you bring to the table? None? Sorry you’re out. Go find yourself ten overpriced free hours of your future to put aside for some couch revelations.

Scenario No. 2: Getting a Guy/Girl to Like you

You’re about sixteen (girls) or twenty-seven (boys) years old and you’re tired of over-the-clothes groping, tongue aerobics, dry-humping, and essentially uninspired pretend sexual intimacy. You want conversation. You want to be able to get to know a person in conjunction with all of the rubbing. So you go about searching for something different; thinking, surely someone else is doing the very same thing. Suddenly, and quite quickly, you meet a potential ‘someone else’ and you hope that merely putting forward the notion that you are ready to actually like someone is going to get you someone. It won’t. The sole admission of the fact that you are sound enough to be looking for a solid rapport with a person you would also like to have sex with is the same fact that will repel that potential into the smoggy fumes of ‘I’m so not interested’. Don’t worry there will be countless more failed attempts.

Scenario No. 3: Trying to Learn More

You’re nearing the end of your undergraduate years and you know you are not done with learning things. You feel like you’re smart enough to embark into the postgraduate world and you know that continuing your studies is going to take you places. You rummage quickly through a few prospectuses without a crumb of insight into what you’re actually doing. You have no idea what universities are reputable in your field, nor do you know any names of big shot professors you want to be taught by. You just want to wear black polo-necks and have a leather diary instead of the paper spiral bound one you’ve normally kept. You want to meet new people and have profound conversations with them, push your scholarly boundaries to limits you had no idea existed, you want to grow and stuff. It will be easy, you think, I have the grades or whatever. Sure. Next you have to write a personal statement where you’re basically giving yourself a intellectual hand-job droning on and on about your inconsequential achievements and feeling like an utter douche-nozzle in the process. And if you don’t hype yourself up enough, you’re out. Try again next year. Meantime you can go on a gap year and get a menial job as a youth tour leader or professional suicidist.

Scenario No. 4: Finding a Real Job

You’ve done it all, you’ve managed to get to university, you’ve gotten the grades you needed, you’ve had all the specialist speak you can possibly muster. You’re ready to go out into the new world. You’re ready to put your skills into practice, to earn money to buy food that doesn’t taste like it’s been melted and re-composed three times over (…university canteens), to go to bars where your shoes don’t stick to the ground, to shop for clothes in real shops not the ones with stuff that people have already worn, or that toddlers have made with their bare hands. So you set about applying for things, thinking, I’m surely unique and perfect for a number of jobs that 500,000 people aren’t equally or more qualified at doing. Not entirely. You have first got to reflect that in a cover letter which needs to be as memorable as a nipple slip on the red carpet of countless of other eager cover letter submittors. And after rejection letter upon rejection letter, you have to pick your self-esteem out of the pile of tissues gathering on your night table and instantly become the most perky human being ever to have walked into an interview in history.

Scenario No. 5: Moving into your own Place

Okay, now you have the job, you have real friends, you have/cling onto the reality that one day you might have a partner to share your days and nights with. You need to live somewhere. So you embark on a journey into the real estate world. You’re sure it will be easy. After all, they should want YOU. You’re paying the rent, you’re filling their tenancy gap, you’re the one they need. Of course, you’re wrong again. Your credit history isn’t good enough, you need a reference from a landlord you never had, you aren’t the right gender, you’re a smoker, you have a dog, you have a tattoo, you’re Mediterranean (a.k.a. you break things in fits of passion and/or rage), you’re anything remotely off-putting to someone who has the power to render you homeless.

A: It’s all about packaging, dropping the right bait, being the most attractive book cover you can be. Recently, Creative Review editor Mark Sinclair spoke to me (and other people who were in classroom) about the perfect ‘pitch’. He said quite plainly, that you must always explain why you would be the best person to do something. He was referring to the pitching of article submissions to magazines, but I will be so bold as to point out (the obvious) that the same position needs to be taken for any and all endeavours embarked upon in one’s life. I’m the most interesting friend, I’m the hottest girl you’re ever going to have, I’m the smartest student you’ll ever meet, you won’t find a better more dedicated employee, I’m the only person in the universe that will treat your house the way it deserves to be treated.

Since Mark so kindly spoon fed us with the acquired tasting advice for how to pitch, I have heard nothing but just that. It’s completely and utterly about how you present yourself, people keep stopping me on the street to tell me. And it’s finally sinking in. After all, I’ve gotten at least three out of five scenarios under my belt. The rest will come I guess, so as long as I’m pitch perfect.

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May 10, 2012 My Shiny Discomfort Zone

In a manner of blatant self-promotion, this post is about my first printed piece of writing in London. I very scarcely engage in any kind of creative writing output. Just because every time I write something that is solely reliant on the architecture of my imagination, I discard it as being akin to a pastiche, patched-up version of a building which someone else could have finished with superior results.

Despite this aversion, I did stumble upon a gorgeous literary zine whose editor deemed one of my prose pieces to amount to some measure of worth. You Stumble Into a Room of Poets is a simple and elegant zine filled with a mixture of both poetry and short stories.  It’s very plainly designed with a quirky illustration on its front, and a stylish font used throughout (I suspect something on the lines of Baskerville, or Didot…only my favourite typefaces). The writing included is far more special than my own contribution, and for that alone I would suggest hunting down a copy of this humble collection of bound literature. To do so have a search at the poetry Library in Southbank, and Hatchards, which is the oldest standing bookshop in London, located near Piccadilly.

I received my own copy this morning, and couldn’t keep captive a tiny shriek of excitement at seeing my name printed on the creamy page. Enclosed with the zine was a short message from its editor. “Shine on”, it said. So here I am, obeying. Or trying to.

It’s called Dinner and a Walk.

He walked in looking very much the same as he did when he left that morning. He looked disheveled around the waist and sleeves. He also appeared older than he had earlier. He looked a bit fatter. His route to the kitchen was invariably taken in four steps. The first, a pause at the front hall sideboard, an unload of metal and paper objects into a silver tray that lay un-shining upon that very piece of furniture. The second took him to the hat stand, upon which he stood his fifteen-year-old grey coat. A third stop brought him to a burgundy, leather chair. Its purpose was merely to hold the day’s newspaper for him to collect when he came home from work, on route to the kitchen. Step four brought him to the latter, and to the food prepared and laid out on two plates.

He sat in his designated chair. The one which had a chip in its arm-rest from a knife he had once stabbed into it as a reaction to a heated argument. It was one of the many before yelling turned into bitter remarks and loss of eye contact, and before that turned into complete silence and numbing nods of the head. Now it was just lifeless blinks and sighs.

She sat in her unwounded chair, and picked up her fork. He noticed her for the second time that day. He always waited for her to start eating before he began himself. It was a gesture he provided her, allowing her to feel as though she held some charge in the household. He had denied her the role of mother when he refused to go to bed with her again six years into our marriage of two decades. It was not a sudden and abrupt refusal. He continued to accept her advances for  some years. Yet, he eventually moved his reading lamp into the phantom-child’s bedroom, where he said, in one sentence, his back reacted better to the mattress there.

She took a bite, and he started his meal. She could not recall the last time they made eye contact while eating. Or at any time. She struggled to structure the sound of his voice in her mind. Instead, she heard only the breaths and phloem-filled grunts of a middle-aged ghost. She wandered what his name was, for she hadn’t uttered it in years. She wandered what her name was, for she hadn’t heard it said in years.

“can we go for a walk tonight?” she said.

It was as though the walls bent inwards in anticipation of what would happen next. The kitchen utensils vibrated in expectation, and the temperature of the unfinished food stopped falling, waiting patiently for what was coming.

“yes, we could.” He said.

Her coat felt as heavy on her shoulders as it had three hours earlier when she’d gone out to buy their dinner’s makings. The night was a pleasant one, with a wetness on the ground that invited not just physical reflection.

She saw the phone kiosk first in her mind’s eye, before her legs could bring her round the corner. It had stood there for so many years, lonely yet dignified. She passed it everyday. It came up finally, to her line of sight; she softened her pace and moved towards it knowing he was behind her watching. She stepped inside and felt that he would follow.

With inches between them, she could smell the ingredients she had chosen for their dinner on his mouth. Her eyes fixed on his lips and her limbs lay beside her, dead. Even when his hand gripped her arm firmly, she could not feel it. When his lips crashed against her own, her blood remained a cold and steady stream, moving cautiously through her calm veins. He pulled her closer and she could feel his reaction to their embrace through her clothes. Meanwhile her eyes were fixated on one thing.

The details as to how she pulled the wire over his head and around his neck remain vague to her. She remembers that his hands had scarcely left her breasts and waist while the breath from within him expired. And while his body lay limp and cold, she recognized him more. She stepped out again into the night, and left the kiosk again until tomorrow. 

May 1, 2012 Try not to exist so much

I was told today by someone who is provably wiser than myself, that “no one actually cares about the writer”. The story is the only thing that counts, and your audience is frankly unbothered with your sentiments, opinions, or even your position. Plainly, there is little sense or value in putting yourself into a piece, because there are innumerable ways of saying things, showing things, making a point of things, “without existing”.

I took this to be worthy advice, yet like a fifteen year old-girl rushing out the door as her mother yells for her to please wear a jacket, I am sitting writing from ‘my’ point-of-view. In other words, I’m freezing, and I should have listened to my mother (who is metaphorically the person telling me not to write in the first person. Please, keep up with my chain of thought, even if you are utterly un-kept by its authority).

Exactly a week ago I wrote a piece in response to an article which was blatantly written in the first person narrative. Oh, there were ‘I’s and ‘me’s everywhere! It was laden with individualism. The author had a clear role within the story. He was actually about 30% of the story itself. By chance, I was not completely in agreement with his story, which is why I wrote my own. I also posted a version of it as a comment beneath his story. And I tweeted a link to my story next to a link to his story. Still, that particular tweet remained echoing in a vacuum, my comment got lost in cyber-nobody-cares-about-your-oinion-ness and never appeared, and my original story was read by about two people at best.

Right, so actually, what my advisor really meant to convey to me today was that “no one actually cares about you”.

Now, it sounds a little like I’ve named myself head of decorations committee for my own pity party. This is not the case (even if I would do a spectacular job at that, because I am quite excellent at creating elegant decorative solutions on a budget). I do not wish to come off as a spoilt would-be writer, sulking in a corner moaning that no one listens to me. I am simply wondering when and how a writer might have the ability to exist.

  

Famously, writers like Emily Dickinson, Franz Kafka and quite recently Stieg Larsson, had to wait till after they died to really matter. Yet, I don’t feel like I want to follow that pattern, and instead I am looking for the ways in which I can make myself count enough to be able to write in the first person, well, soonish.

I’ve gotten a few words of advice from other writers I know on how to do such a thing. Firstly, write as much as you can. Secondly, be brave and do things that will make people notice what you write. Thirdly, write about things that people want to read about now, at this very minute.

So, while I live and breathe I will write tirelessly. I will not whine. I will seek out new platforms through which to promote the words I write, and I will read more so that I might know more about things people would like me to write about.

Meanwhile, I’ll trust the advice given to me in earnest, and I will hide myself. I shan’t dissappear completely, however. Because soon I might be called upon to exist, and one day my position will be important. Well…soonish.

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April 24, 2012 It’s just one shop, in a marketplace.

As a design criticism student I am inclined, if not required, to follow comments such as Rick Poynor’s recent piece entitled The Closed Shop of Design Academia, which appeared a little over a week ago in Design Observer. I say Design Observer and not DO because I know that the limited amount of people who read my blog are not necessarily bred within the design industry, and therefore might feel alienated at even that abbreviation. I should warn such dedicated followers, that this post may be of little interest to you. Although, I would applaud your sticking with it, as your doing so would go towards proving the point I will endeavour to make (albeit in a humble fashion).

As a brief synopsis, Poynor’s article takes as its subject the inability of design academia to disperse its discourse to a wider audience, through a more palatable mode of communication. Poynor’s article begins with his personal account of having to peer-review a submission sent to him by an academic journal. He describes the process (in an easy and familiar language, but without giving a clear definition of what ‘peer-reviewing’ actually means for those present within the ‘wider audience’ he eventually speaks of who have no wisdom as to what such academic processes entail…I’ll admit, I had close to no idea myself) as one that is automated every step of the way. Poynor mourns this method of editing, and positions himself as a ‘nostalgist’ who values some element of human interaction in the matters of reading and commenting on texts.

Although I may, on some level, sympathise with Poynor’s disdain towards the robotic sensation of such procedures, I do not consider it to be an entirely substantial point to be made in the attempt to outline academic institutions or academics themselves as being insular. Quite simply, there is a place for different kinds of editing systems and surely this method positions itself as being the most transparent of the lot. Perhaps I am being naïve, for I have little knowledge of the politics of peer-reviewing, but as an ‘outsider’, it seems to me to be the fairest way of doing things, even if it lacks a bit of soul.

In any case, I think Poynor’s next point is more worthy of serious discussion. He describes having received a copy of the Design 2012 Catalogue from the academic publisher Berg. He goes on to write of how Berg is set to publish a tri-volume piece entitled The World History of Design, from Victor Margolin, which Poynor says ‘promises to be a landmark in design studies’. Following this, Poynor declares that he is ‘regretful that so little of this material is likely to make it into the field’s everyday discourse, let alone the public realm’. He poses a quasi-question as to how come the wider dissemination and communication of the academic’s knowledge shouldn’t be part of his or her brief.

My beef with this pretend inquiry/actual criticism, is: why should it be the academic’s brief? Surely there has to be some kind of division of labour, so to speak, within the entire design industry. If it is the vocation of the design academic to put into words their discoveries and ideas, and in turn the role of the design students and eventual practitioners to draw upon such ideas and integrate them into their practices, then ideally the in-between must be the design critic, i.e. people like Poynor himself.

Shouldn’t the design critic be the intermediary who distils the theory put forward by academics, and thus brings it to a wider audience? I believe that it is people like Poynor, (and, through wishful thinking, eventually like myself and others who are forging their design writing path with me) whose responsibility it is to read those seminal texts and break them down into something which can be injected into a broader context? It is our job to bring them to that ‘wider audience’. It is, I dare say, the job of the DO, and other similar design writing platforms. We need to let the academics have their ideas, we need to let the practitioners enforce the influence of such ideas; because their output renders us (design critics) important, or at least, useful.

I struggle to get through the second half of Poynor’s piece, as despite him imploring for the breakdown of walls between academia insiders and those who fall beyond their ‘cloistered’ confines; he seems to be speaking quite specially, to the insiders. But, on reading for a second (and third) time, I understand that Poynor is making known that academics devote little time to pursuing the publication of their theories within anything that is not academically worthy.
He says that ‘[t]ime spent on writing for non-peer-viewed publications, commenting on blogs, or speaking at non-academic conferences and events, is seen as time not devoted to academic duties and self-advancement’. Meaning academics don’t do anything if it doesn’t relate to bettering their career.

Now while I do believe that Poynor’s vision of having a representative from every part of the food chain contribute to the general boiling pot of ideas is a noble one, it seems to go against the general nature of things (even if that nature is not the ideal). Academics are busy with the hard-core, nitty-gritty research, foraging amongst layers and layers of theory that they have been designed as human beings to deal with. When they do come out of their enclave of data, then I am sure it would be wonderful to hear what they have to say, by way of bringing their knowledge to a wider audience. Until then, though, there are other people who can read about what they’re thinking, and become ambassadors for that knowledge.

Perhaps I am posing a reality that is way too idealistic; to have the design academic, the design critic and the designer working in tandem to keep the momentum of ideas within the design world flowing. Yet, I do hope that such a reality exists. Otherwise, there isn’t much hope left for me, or others like me.

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April 9, 2012 Where Love goes to Die

A couple of weeks back, when I came across Rick Poynor’s entry in the Design Observer chronicling his chance encounter with the Museum of Broken Relationships, it didn’t hold my attention for much longer than the time it took to share the article with friends, proclaiming that ‘they could have just charged an admission fee at my bedroom door’.

I did think it a charming idea. A collection of documents which beheld the magic of moments occurring in love, gathered together to embody a physical shrine to the whole passionate-come-tragic affair. Indeed ‘things’ always have a story to tell, and I am quite fascinated with the notion that one person’s, or one pair of persons’, story in connection with an object could resonate with a completely different person. A stranger.

So when yesterday I came across a new article entirely by chance entitled, Sell Your Breakup Memories Instead of Burning Them, I was forced to return to the entire concept of heartache memorabilia. For it seems to be the therapy du jour to be trading in the reminder trinkets which were once heart-flutter inducers for something else, either exhibitionism, or in this case, hard cash.

As I clicked my way from the article to the site it discussed (Never Liked It Anyway), I learnt that these relationship souvenirs were far removed from being trinkets. Unlike the break-up museum’s collection, these were objects of great monetary value. The site’s items are divided into categories. The most densely populated being the ‘bridal’ and ‘jewelry’ ones. Product descriptions under engagement rings read ‘Nearly flawless engagement ring. Flawful fiance’, or ‘Diamond studs- he wasn’t such a stud’, or my personal favourite ‘the cheating bitch didn’t deserve this’.

I found the site quite difficult to stomach. Whilst I am able to appreciate the merits of the concept, and commend its users for their ability to make profit from their losses, I considered it all to be largely a maltreatment towards the sanctity of human intimacy and relationships. A poor reaction towards the dissolution of magic, of love.


Moreover, the idea of a pawnshop of emotions did not charm me as much as that of donating a symbolic trophy of affection to a greater collective of memories. And while I would gladly accept the cash from the tickets sold to my bedroom-museum-of-broken-dreams, I would never part with the objects that I keep there to remind me of what it means to have had the moments those things represent. I cannot fault the actions of anyone with a broken heart; but surely, rings did once shine, their flaws were once beautiful, and when given they were deserved.

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April 1, 2012 For your kind consideration

So, as it transpires, London is pushing me away. Of course, this only makes it all the more attractive to me. My capacity for fitting the stereotype of human beings who want what they can’t have, is as great as the recent spike in self-tanning lotion sales in the city – a consequence of blue spring skies usurping the long-reigning greyness, and the premature nationwide wardrobe switch to summer clothes.

It has come to a point where unless I find a job, I will be politely escorted out of the land which invented politeness. So my body has now become a cover letter churning machine. I have tweaked my curriculum vitae to the point of mild frenzy, and now have so many versions of the document I could probably apply for a position as CV File Naming Administrator. Still, I’d have to tailor-make a new covering letter even for that position, and frankly, I assume it would be as dry and uninspiring as the five hundred I’ve written out this week.

So, amidst my frantic, please-hire-me, writing fumes; I remember being shown the following letter composed by Hunter S. Thompson once by a friend:

TO JACK SCOTT, VANCOUVER SUN

October 1, 1958 57 Perry Street New York City

Sir,

I got a hell of a kick reading the piece Time magazine did this week on The Sun. In addition to wishing you the best of luck, I’d also like to offer my services.

Since I haven’t seen a copy of the “new” Sun yet, I’ll have to make this a tentative offer. I stepped into a dung-hole the last time I took a job with a paper I didn’t know anything about (see enclosed clippings) and I’m not quite ready to go charging up another blind alley.

By the time you get this letter, I’ll have gotten hold of some of the recent issues of The Sun. Unless it looks totally worthless, I’ll let my offer stand. And don’t think that my arrogance is unintentional: it’s just that I’d rather offend you now than after I started working for you.

I didn’t make myself clear to the last man I worked for until after I took the job. It was as if the Marquis de Sade had suddenly found himself working for Billy Graham. The man despised me, of course, and I had nothing but contempt for him and everything he stood for. If you asked him, he’d tell you that I’m “not very likable, (that I) hate people, (that I) just want to be left alone, and (that I) feel too superior to mingle with the average person.” (That’s a direct quote from a memo he sent to the publisher.)

Nothing beats having good references.

Of course if you asked some of the other people I’ve worked for, you’d get a different set of answers.

If you’re interested enough to answer this letter, I’ll be glad to furnish you with a list of references — including the lad I work for now.

The enclosed clippings should give you a rough idea of who I am. It’s a year old, however, and I’ve changed a bit since it was written. I’ve taken some writing courses from Columbia in my spare time, learned a hell of a lot about the newspaper business, and developed a healthy contempt for journalism as a profession.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity. If this is what you’re trying to get The Sun away from, then I think I’d like to work for you.

Most of my experience has been in sports writing, but I can write everything from warmongering propaganda to learned book reviews.

I can work 25 hours a day if necessary, live on any reasonable salary, and don’t give a black damn for job security, office politics, or adverse public relations.

I would rather be on the dole than work for a paper I was ashamed of.

It’s a long way from here to British Columbia, but I think I’d enjoy the trip.

If you think you can use me, drop me a line.

If not, good luck anyway.

Sincerely, Hunter S. Thompson

Of course, we can all recognise the brilliance of this composition. But what is recognisable also, is the sheer tangibility of fearlessness which could only spring from the pure and untainted reality of having absolutely nothing to lose.

So I might keep in mind Hunter’s approach. And though by no stretch of the imagination could I ever produce something so bold and intrepid, perhaps in some manner I may convey a fraction of my raw eagerness to remain in this vibrating city, clutching like to a lover’s neck. A lover who is aloof and so very far out of my league, but one which I’m sure, were it get to know me, would really really like me.

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March 28, 2012 Words my Mark

Last night an event entitled Writing In Situ, held in Lecture Room One at the Royal College of Art, brought to light several points of interest regarding the craft of writing, and the physicality of place.

The speakers (Jane Rendell, Sally O’Reilly, and Brian Dillion) spoke with depth of knowledge about issues concerning critical situatedness, the specificity of descriptive encounters of place, fictitious devices in describing place, the portrayal of the absent as well as the present, misrepresentation and authenticity, creating accurate clichés, interdisciplinarity, the performance of writing, literary sausage churning, writing as production; and many other difficult terms and words (some of which, I have discovered, are invented. But that’s fine, I support invented words).

I remember specifically little of what was said, but generally what I did take from the discussion was that places and writing have a relationship.

I walked away from the lecture room equipped with this newfound knowledge, and made my way to a long and desolate underground tunnel, which promised to lead me to the nearest Tube station. I continued to think about the relationship between writers and places.

Places force their mark onto people. Inarguably, they lend influence to everything we do, and everything we create. Their mark is lasting. All of our memories are tied to a place. Trying to think of a memory without its physical architecture, I believe, is impossible. My question is; how do people force their mark onto places? And once they do, how do they ensure it stays there?

I self-ask this question as I continue to walk, slightly unnervingly, along the tunnel’s way. This tunnel will forget instantly that I ever walked through it. I have no real way of marking it, short of creating a vandalistic impression, littering, or spitting on the floor; all actions which my character does not permit me to enforce.

I think of a number of places I have walked in and upon, and wonder if my doing so in any way changed their inherent character. I try to think of how they did so to mine:

Milner Street imbued me with a sense of good values, being host to my grandmother’s home where I leant about being kind to people and to never waste my food.

The Park (opposite Wembley’s Garage) coloured my adolescence with cheap wine, exaggerated swearing, and puppy love dramatics.

BJs Bar gave me the first inklings of discovering my actual character, and sparked an unrelenting passion for dimly-lit, acoustic gigs.

The Tree Cluster (outside my college) brought self-revelation, being the gathering space for my best friends and I in the years when we first fell in love, when we first realized we might become good-looking, when we first thought about whether we were gay or straight.

Ferro Bay provided hours of female banter, and burnt skin.

Canada Water Underground Station gave me a real feeling of independence, utter fear, and an unchartered terrain of melancholy.

That Hill in Hampstead with its pretty doors and chimneys, brought realization that I will probably never be rich, yet will always posses the facility to be happy.

The Tunnel (leading to the nearest station) made me understand that there are some types of lonelinesses that are palpable, and that tunnels are a dramatic, material metaphor for substantiating that very palpability.

And here I see that prophetic light at the end of the tunnel. It spells out South Kensington Station. I’m about to leave this specific place, and finally, I have found a way to mark it. I have also found the coherence in all of the night’s academic speak.

Writers have a special relationship with places because they can immortalize them in text. So while places will forever furnish memories, writers will immortalize their descriptions, and inject into their metaphysical characters new dimensions of their importance.

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March 16, 2012 Critical Times call for Critical Measures

So, being a woman about town, a few weeks ago I decided I should probably have my own cards. I went through the usual reflections: Do I put my address down? What if I move? Should I or should I not have my twitter feed address on there? And do I have a tagline? Ann Dingli, Art Historian/ Ann Dingli, Critical Writer/ Ann Dingli Non-Descript Profession/ Ann Dingli Full-Time Dweller of Things I Should have done in my Life and Everything that isn’t Happening to me?

Okay, so once I got through all of those mind anesthetising quandaries, I figured, they’ve got to look good. Also, they have to leave some kind of impression. But they mustn’t be too gimicky. And they have to speak somewhat of my character. So I designed the set  you see below, wherein the back side of the cards have literary excerpts I’ve chosen which are close to me and/or allude to the idea of meeting people.

Sadly, I haven’t been able to print my cards according to my wishes. I’m that poor. No, I’m not, I can spare the £12 that moo.com charges to print really good stuff. But, I’d rather go to an exhibition with that money, honestly. So here’s what I did (watch video):

It was a painstakingly lovely chore. Only I wish I liked the way they turned out. Letterpress type cannot do really, really, really small. So I had to abandon my portrait orientation. Which makes me very sad. I feel like there’s a solution somewhere though. As soon as I find it, I’ll share it with you.

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March 15, 2012 Twelve Pounds of Flesh

There are occasions where we work ourselves up to an event so fervently, that once we arrive at the point of experiencing it, the entire activity falls flat. It’s a bit like liking a boy or a girl who doesn’t really like you back. Once you get them to do so, it’s often the case that you’re kind of over it. This is such common ground amongst all human beings I struggle to think why I have wasted an entire paragraph unpacking the concept.

In any case, this was my fear as I walked in solitude up to the National Portrait Gallery on a sunny lunchtime hour. Partially blinded by the glare of all the sunglasses which had finally been freed from captivity by their London owners, I stared up at the large vertical banners reading ‘Lucian Freud Portraits’.

I’ve been waiting to see Freud’s works for a while. Freud is unlike any artist working contemporaneously. Up until his death in 2011, he dedicated his hand exclusively to human flesh; molding, churning, grafting and building paint onto canvases until it properly obeyed the truth of the being he saw before him. His vocation was to paint people, to study them as animals, in an almost biological way.

So I enter the exhibition space, spot the least crowded room, and try to wedge myself in. This is the worst exhibition room scenario you could possibly present me with. I’m a very selfish art viewer. I like to look at works from close, then from far, then from really, really close. On this day I had to check myself for blatantly standing in front of other doting viewers. So after about ten minutes of excuse-me’s and Oh-I’m-so-sorry’s, I resigned myself to standing very close to the paintings, out of everyone’s bloody way.

Because of this I was forced to examine in detail Freud’s application of paint. I normally do this, of course, with any painting I visit. Yet, I’ll admit, it is normally more a habit of ticking a box on my art history training list than anything else. This time, I was entirely consumed with the terrain of material. Freud’s paint got thicker and ruder as he grew in age and in art.

By ruder I mean that as I looked at Evening in the Studio, and gazed for a collection of minutes on the rendition of Sue Tilley’s pubic region, I felt a steady build of the discomfort bubbling within me.It was similar to when someone shows you a picture from a biology book of a gross infectious disease…you (or at least, I) find it hard to stare at it for long. Must he have been so unrelenting with his piling upon piling of paint? You can feel the pimples, the sweat, the dirt, collecting in that region. It is so real, it makes you nausous.

When I went back to the rooms which showed Freud’s earlier works, the paint was so very thin, incredibly delicate and obsessed with detail. I viewed his works according to crowd percentage and not chronologically. But I found the intention from his start to his finish to remain unique.

Paint, for Freud, is just a product; so is decorum, so is scale and so is perspective. What matters to him are the people. His aim is to reveal corporal truth. It is certainly not just about flesh. It is capillaries of blood, grey veins, green bones, films of oily residue, hair, dirt, breath.

There are occasions when we expect to be let down by our own expectations. I can’t say this was one of them. I can say it was probably the best twelve pounds I’ve spent in London.

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