Darkest Before The Dawn

 

Regrets collect like old friends
Here to relive your darkest moments
I can see no way, I can see no way
And all of the ghouls come out to play
And every demon wants his pound of flesh
But I like to keep some things to myself
I like to keep my issues drawn
It’s always darkest before the dawn

-Florence and the Machine

This is a short note to say I won’t be around much in the public rooms of the internet for a while.  I’m not able to speak/write freely or tell of my present situation so, in those circumstances, I am ‘going dark’ for a bit.

Friends can always find me in the usual ways.

See you soon, in the full light of day. It’s always darkest before the dawn.

XXQRG

Foucault Speaks! #FoucaultsDaughter Listens

 

 

I have just joined a Foucault Discussion Group in which we are going to read and discuss, aided by the joys of Google Groups, Foucault’s 1983 Lectures. Entitled The Government of Self And Others, this collection is particularly poignant to me because it represents some of Foucault’s last public work before he died in 1984. The original transcripts are owned by his ‘widow’, Daniel Defert. I still can’t quite get my head round what it must have been like, what it still is like (Defert is now  75) to have been the lover and life partner of such a man as Michel Foucault.

 

Even a casual observer can’t help but convey some of the electrifying moments when seeing Foucault, Live! Journalist Gerard Petitjean wrote in 1975: 

 

‘When Foucault enters the amphitheater, brisk and dynamic like<

someone who plunges into the water, he steps over bodies to

reach his chair, pushes away the cassette recorders so he can put

down his papers, removes his jacket, lights a lamp and sets off at

full speed. His voice is strong and effective, amplified by the

loudspeakers that are the only concession to modernism in a hall

that is barely lit by light spread from stucco bowls. The hall has

three hundred places and there are five hundred people packed

together, filling the smallest free space . . . There is no oratorical

effect. It is clear and terribly effective. There is absolutely no

concession to improvisation. Foucault has twelve hours each year

to explain in a public course the direction taken by his research

in the year just ended. So everything is concentrated and he fills

the margins like correspondents who have too much to say for the

space available to them. At 19.15 Foucault stops. The students

rush towards his desk; not to speak to him, but to stop their cassette

recorders. There are no questions. In the pushing and shoving

Foucault is alone. Foucault remarks: “It should be possible to

discuss what I have put forward. Sometimes, when it has not

been a good lecture, it would need very little, just one question,

to put everything straight. However, this question never comes.

The group effect in France makes any genuine discussion

impossible. And as there is no feedback, the course is theatricalized.

My relationship with the people there is like that of an actor

or an acrobat. And when I have finished speaking, a sensation of

total solitude . . .’

- Gérard Petitjean, “Les Grands Prêtres de l’université française,” Le Nouvel Observateur

1983 and 1975 are a long time ago now.   When Foucault was giving his last lectures before his death, I was too busy trying on ra-ra skirts and buying Howard Jones records to notice. But since I first read Foucault in the early 1990s, I have been quite overwhelmed by the clarity and incisive force of his ‘voice’.  So I strongly disagree with philosopher John Searle, who, like many, describes Foucault’s writing style as ‘obtuse’:

‘Philosopher John Searle once asked Foucault why his writing was so obtuse when he was easily understandable in conversation. Foucault told Searle that 25% of one’s writing needs to be incomprehensible nonsense to be taken seriously by French philosophers.’

I think these lectures show that actually Foucault’s speaking and writing styles were quite similar, and his urgency to illuminate and interact with his audience/readers was as strong in both arenas. Beginning to read the transcripts I am already reminded of Freud, and how it is quite easy to switch between his written work and representations of his speeches/lectures. I am also pleased to see that whilst I’ve struggled to find in Michel’s oeuvre, any direct challenge to or description of the function of ‘power’ in academia, the comments on Foucault’s lectures do show he had some issues with the conventions of the university, and the problems of actually having a dialogue between lecturers and students. If I’d been there I have no doubt I’d have been one of the keen young things arranging to meet Michel for coffee off campus to get down to discussing the nitty gritty of his ideas.

The journalist who wrote the evocative passage above called his article ‘Les Grands Pretres de l’universite francaise’ – The High Priests of The University of France. Now I am a critic of the ‘Great Men Theory’ of history which holds up individuals as demigods. But as my novella Scribbling On Foucault’s Walls reveals, I am guilty of embodying it too.

At the risk of completely going into religious mode, a radio four programme last night called  The Voice Of God also seems relevant here.  Participants in the show talk about how, despite all the texts and rituals people use to ‘find God’, the voice of God is actually pretty difficult to hear. In order to get the full benefit of God’s message, you have to put yourself somewhere very quiet and still, you have to meditate and open yourself up to what He might want to say to you.

And it’s the same with Foucault – for me, at least. I think there’s an interesting dissonance between how his work is all about the ‘modern’ (or postmodern, or post-postmodern) age, with its institutions, discourse, power relations and ‘noise’, but the only way to really ‘get it’ is to sit back and stop, to read, to listen, to think.

That’s what I’m going to be doing over the next few weeks. But as my long suffering readers/friends know, I might find it hard to keep my meditations to myself!

Digital Dualism Gender Divides? Response to @phenatypical #digitaldualism

Over at Cyborgology blog,  Whitney Erin Boesel has written a critical post about gender representation in Digital Dualism Debates. To really engage with what she writes, if you’re not part of the discussion already, you might have to read some of the posts she links to. Here I show the begining para of her piece, followed by my comments BTL and her reply to me. Then I will see if I can ‘widen’ out this topic to be relevant to more than just the digital dualists (and their opponents).

Whitney ( @Phenatypical) wrote:

‘If you’re a regular reader of Cyborgology, chances are good that you caught the most recent “brouLOL” (yes, that’s like a 21^st century brouhaha) over digital dualism and augmented reality. If you’re a careful reader of Cyborgology, chances are good you also caught (at least) one glaring omission in much of the writing featured in this wave of commentary. What was missing?

Ladies, gentlemen, and cyborgs, allow me to (re)introduce you to Jenny Davis (@Jup83) and Sarah Wanenchak (@dynamicsymmetry)—oh yeah, and my name’s Whitney Erin Boesel (I’m @phenatypical). None of us identify as men, and all of us have written about digital dualism. In fact, you may have seen our work referenced recently under our collective noms de plume: “the other digital dualism denialists,” “others on this blog,” “others,” “other Cyborgologists,” “other regular contributors,” etc. If you’re a crotchety sociologist with a penchant for picking apart language (ahem: guilty), it doesn’t get much better than this. Per the conversation earlier this month, there are two groups of people who write about digital dualism on Cyborgology: there are named men, and there are unnamed Others’

I responed:

‘I too notcied the debate being framed as between what I termed – a bit sarcastically – ‘men of ideas’.

But I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say women are being ‘silenced’. Your post is not silence for a start. And in the piece by Machine Starts about Jurgenson v Carr the writer also mentioned Sherry Turkle at least. And at the #ttw13 there were loads of women talking, tweeting, organising, questioning etc.

Here’s my take. I believe that the ‘where are the women?’ statements are PART OF THE PROBLEM. They give too much credit to the ‘white men’ and their ‘pissing contests’ and present women as innocent victims of their lack of ‘voice’.

I believe gender inequalities are a problem in the realms in which you are focussing on – academia, journalism, tech, entrepreneurship etc. But I dont think these inequalities are as simple as a ‘lack’ of women and a ‘dominance’ of men. You mention trans people and people from diverse ethnicities, but as an afterthought, or as subservient to ‘women’.

I am a woman. And, as I have said before, the people who have ‘silenced’ or attempted to silence me the most have been feminist women.’

Whitney replied:

‘hi QRG – thanks for your comment. i agree with you that there were a good number of women engaging in dialogue around #TtW13; in fact, that’s part of why i think there *must* be more women writing about these issues, too!

we both know there’s a lot of gender stuff we’ll never agree on (though i like to think we have our points of agreement as well , but there are two points in your comment i wanted to address:

first, i certainly have not intended to treat transpeople and people of color as afterthoughts. my focus in *this post* is the way women theorists were overlooked in a particular conversation (everyone writing for cyborgology at present is white, as is everyone who’s engaged in the early march 2013 debate so far as i know); what i want to do in my *future post* is highlight work done by a range of non-white-men. there are probably more non-white-men doing this type of work; i just don’t know about them yet. wanting to know is part of why i wrote this piece.

second, there’s a big difference between “speaking” and “being listened to.” women ARE speaking about digital dualism, as i’ve illustrated! but if no one’s listening (or if most of everyone is ignoring), that’s being silenced-in-effect–and i think it’s important to recognize that.’

I replied:
‘I do not think ‘white men’ is an accurate description of those who dominate debates on digital dualism or anything else. I suspect they have other characteristics in common. Because in USA for example, many ‘white men’ are INCREDIBLY disadvantaged in terms of economics, education etc. Are they writing about digital dualism? I doubt it. Once we start looking at ‘the academy’ we are already talking about some very ‘well off’ people in many ways.

also, as for ‘not being listened to’ = ‘silencing’ I see where you’re coming from. But not sure its an exact fit. and again, it is feminist women who have ‘not listened’ to me the most, in groups, on blogs, twitter etc and who have banned and blocked me to high heaven. so ‘silencing’ is not just something those big bad ‘white men’ do.’

——————-

So how does this exchange fit into wider debates on gender, academia, and the ‘digital society’ we live in? Firstly I have noticed before that the rather loaded question, Where Are The Women? is asked frequently and insistently. Where are the women in politics? science? celebrity chef land? music industry? etc. And the answer usually seems to be that they are cowering under the weight and dominance of those beasts – men. I find it is normally white, middle class feminist women, who already have some ‘power’ in life, who ask this question. And that they blame their brothers and husbands and colleagues - white middle class men, for the lack of parity in gender representation in their fields. Boesel says in her piece she is not looking here for reasons for gender inequalities in digital dualism debates. But I think she is. And I think she finds reasons – ‘white men’. But as I said in the comments, many many ‘white men’ are far more disadvantaged and far more ‘silent’ in the media, academia, technology, than the women she is championing. Because inequality doesn’t cut down a binary line. It’s complicated! The calls of ‘where are the women’ just reinforce the binary, and maintain the ‘silence’ of those not ‘represented’ by it in my view.

Secondly, the notion of ‘divides’ in digital cultures is not always helpful. In his #ttw13 talk,  ’Urban Libraries and the Control of Access’ Daniel Greene ( @greene_dm ) critiqued the concept of the ‘digital divide’. He – yes, he is as far as I can tell a ‘white man’ – suggested this binary presentation of the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ in digital culture is simplistic and misleading. The myriad ways in which we access technology or are excluded from technological activities, are not expressed by this phrase. And I think the ‘where are the women?’ phrase similarly simplifies and obfuscates the complex issues of gender, opportunity, ‘silence’ and voice in digital dualism debates. At one point in her piece Whitney asked for us to send her links of work by ‘non white men’ on digital dualism, including people from various ethnic minority backgrounds, and trans people. I dont think this is the answer either. Trans people in particular, I think, may have huge problems in having a voice and being visible in academic cultures, digital or otherwise. For them, ‘visibility’ can be hugely distressing, difficult,  linked to medical and financial issues around transition, and, can even be a matter of life or death. I don’t think it is any coincidence, for example, that Professor Raewyn Connell became ‘visible’ as a trans woman after she had developed her career and name as an academic in her assigned gender identity. As a trans person I dont think she’d have been able to achieve what she did, at least not without all sorts of very hard personal and political battles. Maybe some of the men and women writing on digital dualism are trans? But haven’t ‘come out’? And why should they? Boesel is not advocating ‘outing’ trans academics, but I think she may be assuming more of them are ’out and proud’ than there probably are.

 I have more to say on this. And, I am glad that, the group at cyborgology won’t try to ‘silence’ me. I have found them welcoming and open in their style of engagement. However, one of the issues I do intend to tease out is, illustrated by Boesel’s post, some of the gender politics these exciting young academics espouse, are lagging behind their more forward thinking 21st century ideas on digital societies and digital dualism. Donna Haraway was, in some ways ahead of her time with her cyborg feminism. But in other ways she was very much of her time, and she held up ‘women’ to be special flowers in my opinion, oppressed by those big bad wolves, men. I dont see the world like that. And I don’t think cyborgology has room for gender or any other form of binaries.

Theorizing The Web 2013 A Resounding Success! #ttw13 Ref @nathanjurgenson @pjrey

At the weekend I attended remotely the Theorizing The Web 2013 conference. Before telling you how brilliant it was I’m going to question my own terms.

First, in describing my participation as happening ‘remotely’, by watching the livestream of talks online and by taking part in the #ttw13 twitter hashtag discussion, I misrepresent things. For, unlike probably all other conferences I have taken part in online, there was nothing remote about my experience of Theorizing The Web 2013. The organisers, Nathan Jurgenson and PJ Rey, practise what they preach. They have designed a happening that embeds the IRL talks and discussions in a university, into the digital contexts that form the subject of those discussions. Or is it the other way round? That’s my point. Whilst I was asking questions to panelists (via twitter), talking to delegates and watching and listening to the speakers, I felt the opposite of remote from proceedings. This photo by  Aaron Thompson is a brilliant evocation of the ‘embedded’ nature of #ttw13. All those people sat in the room listening to the speakers and putting their hands up to ask questions, are also online on their laptops and ipads, following the #ttw13 discussion on twitter, looking at the speakers’ presentation slides online and chatting to other participants via the web. Do I wish I’d gone to NYC and been there in person? Yes. Do I think I missed out on anything (apart from what looked like a rocking after party) by doing it online? No. In some ways I may have even seen more and talked to more people through ‘remote’ participation than I had I been at CUNY trying to fit everything in and talk to everyone face to face.

The other term I used that  I am not entirely happy with is ‘conference’. #ttw13 may follow the format of an academic conference, with a keynote speaker and seminar talks and Q and As, but again, it is not like any conference I have been to before. The conference structure tends to be quite static. You have to listen and be quiet during sessions then get to talk to people, often accompanied by far too much alcohol, in the evenings. But the embeddedness of #ttw13 meant that many of us were chatting whilst watching talks, and even watching more than one talk at once, going online, googling names, papers, images, being ‘active’ in a way the traditional conference doesn’t allow. I found ‘networking’ online at #ttw13 richer and more meaningful than those awkward conversations I have had with academics in conference venues, realising I have little in common with them inspite of our shared ‘research interests’.

oh. I think I might have conveyed some of my enthusiasm for #ttw13 in trying to challenge its/my terminology. Perhaps these videos of the live streamed talks will also put across what a lively, deep-thinking and fun occasion it was. I will write some more observations in due course. But mainly I am very happy I stumbled across Jurgenson and PJRey on – yes – twitter, and that I am a part of the theorizing the web project.

Photo: Aaron Thompson

Letter From An Alien: Deconstruction #fridayflash

What would Derrida say about us? If I told him that I shall be spending today immersed in ‘texts’ I wrote a year ago? Some of them ‘letters’ to you. Some of them cries out into the ether. That I will be going over my words with a fine-toothed comb, looking for clues, looking for an escape route. That copies of my throwaway texts, some of them casual tweets, are also sat in a file in a drawer in a filing cabinet in a grey office. Waiting to be deconstructed by the little man in his grey suit whose hopes and dreams have amounted to this bureaucratic role as a servant. To the crown. Would Derrida frown and smile that wry smile of his? Would he shake his head and sadly say that you take a text out of its context at your peril? That if you try to consider words and words alone, separate from the sad desperation of the person who wrote them, separate from the blank incomprehension of the person who read them, separate from the cold officious room where the little man in his grey suit will one day be reading them out in a dead pan monotone, you lose all meaning? That deconstruction, inspite of what thousands of English  Literature Undergraduate students may believe, is not an academic exercise? It’s blood and guts.  It’s the opposite of abstract. It’s finding the life that is hidden in every text. The fear. The love.

What would Barthes say about us? He knows a thing or two about this. In his book, A Lovers Discourse, he ripped out his heart, laid it on a table, and ‘deconstructed’ it with a scalpel right infront of us. He reminded us that all those cliches we have come to associate with a trite, sentimental expression of ‘love’, are much much more. Goodbyes at train stations, scented notepaper, whispered ‘I love yous’ are merely cyphers, outward acceptable codes for a torrent of feeling, of loss, of pain, of the fear of death enacted in the scene where our Lover slams the door in our face.  I think Barthes would have some compassion for us.  If he were to join us in the cold, officious room, he’d probably be solemn as he transcribed the words coming out of the mouth of the little man in his grey suit. He’d probably find beauty in the translations of translations of words once written in great anguish. And he would save his wry smile for the moment when we started to argue about who ‘owned’ which ideas, whose texts were whose, he’d cough and mutter something about The Death of The Author. And the fact that, if we’re going to be picky about it, he has some claim to ownership of our ideas and our texts anyway.

What would Foucault say about us? I don’t know. I am not so sure he would be that concerned, no matter how much we wish he would be, about our individual feelings. Our petty struggle. He is more of a bigger picture guy. I suspect that if he too found himself with us in the cold, officious room, it could get quite crowded in there, he’d notice the lay out. Not from an interior design perspective, the State has no eye for style, but in terms of Power. Who goes where, who stands, who sits, who is left behind a glass screen. He might smile wryly too, and he might pull out an old battered copy of Discipline and Punish as he noted that whilst the days of flogging in the public square are long gone, there is still something theatrical about this scene. That the desire for rituals of public humiliation haven’t left us, we’ve just made them less gory. I hope at least, he might also spare a thought for Foucault’s Daughter, and how I said she’d get into trouble one day. How, in my fumbling attempt at fiction, I ended up doing what he does, and dissected, analysed, prophesised reality.

What would Freud say about us? For the Daddy of Psychoanalysis is also the Daddy of Deconstruction. It was he who, before anyone was ready, began to pull apart our words, and showed how words are rooted in thoughts, and thoughts are rooted in base impulses. I expect Freud would say very little. He might puff on his pipe and knot his brow. But it wouldn’t escape his attention, that it is me, not you, and not the little man in his grey suit, who has accepted that this is a psychological drama. That we have been interacting on a subconscious level, and that if I want to make sense of what has happened, I won’t find the answers in the cold, officious room, I’ll find them on the analyst’s couch, in my own mind, through my writing.

And, as much as I may have made out you to be the centre of this story, as Derrida, Barthes, Foucault and Freud know full well, it’s me I am writing to and talking to, it’s my thoughts and feelings and, yes, ideas, I have been ‘deconstructing’ all this time. The girl who wasn’t there is here. And she hasn’t finished yet.

On Letting Go and Keeping On…

                                                                                      

 

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day and you shall begin it well and serenely.

–Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

This was the view from my hotel room when I spent a night in Perpignan during my French holiday in October. Waking up to the sight of the foothills of the pyrenees, dusted lightly with snow on the higher peaks, made my heart soar. I am not in such a picturesque spot anymore. And I long for some beauty and joy to start my mornings, as the shortest day approaches in England. As darkness prevails.

 

But I have my methods for letting go and keeping on. Tai chi, therapy, friends, mindfulness. So, with what sometimes feels like a gargantuan effort, I am able to take Emerson’s advice and begin tomorrow ‘well and serenely’.

 

You might have thought I had this down pat by now. If you had read one of my ‘juvenalia’ poems from around 20 years ago, entitled, yes, Let It Go. The younger, earnest, anxious me wrote:

 

Let It Go

 

Start again,

Breathe slow.

Ease your pain, let it go.

Find a way through the darkness,

Explore the worst that you know.

But in the end, you must

Let it go.

 

It’s taken me two decades but I think I am learning to do just that.

 

 

Courtroom #fridayflash

I’m always wrong.

I am in the feotal position on my bed, at least I think it is my bed, I am not quite sure the world is spinning somewhat. He is standing over me packing his bag, an army type kit bag he would always cart around when we were an ‘item’. He is telling me that he is a ‘misogynist’ and that he would like to gather an army of ‘misogynists’ against me. I am presuming he means to finish the job. It was less than an hour ago that he stood outside my front door and said ‘I’m going to kill you’ and then he got past the door effortlessly - I know, I am one of those women who doesn’t totally lock herself into her own home, what a slut- and stormed upstairs to drag me around. and grab my throat, and kick me in the back – all those cliches that as far as I’m concerned have nothing to do with gender and everything to do with the animal in us all. I’d have done the same given half a chance, given a different viewpoint from my own pathetic masochism. so anyway he said he had this army of misogynists or he wished he did and then when he’d finished packing his kit bag he told me we could play ‘courtroom’. and I knew what he meant, because before, when it was all intellectual conversations and that Nirvana Live at MTV cd he gave me and when he fucked me on the pavement on new years eve down an alley way that I am still worried might have been for an old people’s home. he’d given me that book. Games people play by eric berne. and one of the games was courtroom. games perverts play. and we played courtoom later. nobody won of course. this is courtroom:

Thesis. Descriptively this belongs to the class of games which find their most florid expressions in law, and which includes “Wooden Leg” (the plea of insanity) and “Debtor” (the civil suit). Clinically it is most often seen in marital counseling and marital psychotherapy groups. Indeed, some marital counseling and marital groups consist of a perpetual game of “Courtroom” in which nothing is resolved, since the game is never broken up. In such cases it becomes evident that the counselor or therapist is heavily involved in the game without being aware of it.

Courtroom” can be played by any number, but is essentially three-handed, with a plaintiff, a defendant and a judge, represented by a husband, a wife and the therapist. If it is played in a therapy group or over the radio or TV, die other members of the audience are cast as the jury. The husband begins plaintively, “Let me tell you what (wife’s name) did yesterday. She took the . . .” etc., etc. The wife then responds defensively, “Here is the way it really was . . . and besides just before that he was . . . and anyway at die time we were both . . .” etc. The husband adds gallantly, “Well, I’m glad you people have a chance to hear both sides of the story, I only want to be fair.” At this point the counselor says judiciously, “It seems to me that if we consider . . .” etc., etc. If there is an audience, the therapist may throw it to them with: “Well, let’s hear what the others have to say.” Or, if the group is already trained, they will play the jury without any instruction from him.

Antithesis. The therapist says to the husband, “You’re absolutely right!” If the husband relaxes complacently or triumphantly, the therapist asks: “How do you feel about my saying that?” The husband replies: “Fine.” Then the therapist says, “Actually, I feel you’re in the wrong.” If the husband is honest, he will say: “I knew that all along.” If be is not honest, he will show ‘some reaction that makes it clear a game is in progress. Then it becomes possible to go into the matter further. The game element lies in the fact that while the plaintiff’ is overtly clamoring for victory, fundamentally he believes that he is wrong.

After sufficient clinical material has been gathered to clarify the situation, the game can be interdicted by a maneuver which is one of the most elegant in the whole art of antithetics. The therapist makes a rule prohibiting the use of the (grammatical) third person in the group. Thenceforward the members can only address each other directly as “you” or talk about themselves as “I,” but they cannot say, “Let me tell you about him” or “Let me tell you about her. “At this point the couple stop playing games in the group altogether, or shift into “Sweetheart,” which is some improvement, or take up “Furthermore,” which is no help at all. “Sweetheart” is described in another section (page 107). In “Furthermore” the plaintiff makes one accusation after the other. The defendant replies to each, “I can explain.” The plaintiff pays no attention to the explanation, but as soon as the defendant pauses, he launches into his next indictment with another “furthermore,” which is followed by another explanation—a typical Parent-Child interchange.

“Furthermore” is played most intensively by paranoid defendants. Because of their literalness, it is particularly easy for them to frustrate accusers who express themselves in humorous or metaphorical terms. In general, metaphors are the most obvious traps to avoid in a game of “Furthermore.”

In its everyday form, “Courtroom” is easily observed in children as a three-handed game between two siblings and a parent. “Mommy, she took my candy away” “Yes, but he took my doll, and before that he was hitting me, and anyway we both promised to share our candy.”

ANALYSIS

Thesis: They’ve got to say I’m right. Aim: Reassurance.

Roles: Plaintiff, Defendant, Judge (and/or Jury). Dynamics: Sibling rivalry.

Examples: (1) Children quarreling, parent intervenes. (2) Married couple, seek “help.” Social Paradigm: Adult-Adult.

Adult: “This is what she did to me.” Adult: “The real facts are these.”

Psychological Paradigm: Child-Parent. Child: “Tell me I’m right.”

Parent: “This one is right.” Or: “You’re both right.”

Moves: (1) Complaint filed—Defense filed. (2) Plaintiff files rebuttal, concession, or good-will gesture. (3) Decision of judge or instructions to jury. (4) Final decision filed.

Advantages; (1) Internal Psychological—projection of guilt. (2) External Psychological—excused from guilt. (3) Internal Social—”Sweetheart,” “Furthermore,” “Uproar” and others. (4) External Social—”Courtroom.” (5) Biological—stroking from judge and jury. (6) Existential-depressive position, I’m always wrong.

——-

extract ‘courtroom’ taken from Games People Play by Eric Berne: http://files.myopera.com/eketab3/blog/The%20Games%20People%20Play.pdf?1355075575

Cousin Coat Revisited #fridayflash

You are my secret coat. You’re never dry.
You wear the weight and stink of black canals.

I don’t feel the cold. Marching through the park my padded jacket keeps out the world. My crimes are not visible, but hidden under layers of quilt. This is how I deal with guilt, wrap it up, keep it covered, just walk.

But you don’t talk, historical bespoke.
You must be worn, be intimate as skin,
And though I never lived what you invoke,
At birth I was already buttoned in.

Cousin coat can hold many secrets. I have mastered the art of picking up pain, putting it inside, zipping it up. It’s just that after a certain number of years, the weight of my sins my unspoken desires the things I wanted to say but didn’t my mother crippled in the residential home that place in the pit of my stomach where the earth opens up and I have to hold my breath to stop myself from falling in has grown unbearable. This coat drags me down into the dark water. It reeks of regret.

And what you are is what I tried to shed
In libraries with Donne and Henry James.
You’re here to bear a message from the dead
Whose history’s dishonoured with their names.

Whenever I enter the university library, to keep warm mainly, and hoping youth’s brazen face might rub against mine, I think of my stepfather. Our house of books that’s become his mausoleum. Raymond Williams, Walt Whitman, Jake Arnott, Paul Scott, Madhur Jaffrey, Elizabeth David, Alice Oswald, Stuart Hall. A year after he died my sister received a letter from his university library, requesting  his overdue books. The letter informed my dead stepfather that he would not be allowed on the premises, until he returned them.  Which made us laugh with hollow gallows humour. But now it’s just the sadness and the feeling of all the shelves of books that I grew up surrounded by, falling on my head, burying me alive.  

Be with me when they cauterise the facts.
Be with me to the bottom of the page,
Insisting on what history exacts.
Be memory, be conscience, will and rage,

I keep walking. The paths criss cross over each other and I sometimes abandon them and stride over the grass sinking into the mud into my past that keeps accosting me in the dark.  One of these days I will take off this coat and everything I collected in every crevice all the bits of tissue I shoved in my pockets with my grief and dust that accumulated the piles of lust and anger and the words that were always forming on the tip of my tongue but fell silently into the folds of the garment before they were uttered will escape.  This coat has not let me forget anything. I flinch at the thought of what will be unleashed when the stories are no longer kept in. I know it will happen soon. I don’t stop.

And keep me cold and honest, cousin coat,
So if I lie, I’ll know you’re at my throat.

Cousin coat by Sean O’brien:http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=1715
Picture from this collection of vintage mug shots of women: http://xaxor.com/bizarre/32978-vintage-mug-shots-of-women.html

Jonathan’s Book, Or The Fine Art Of Not-Writing

I am doing nanowrimo this year. Nanowrimo is a project where writers across the globe (or rather across the internet) commit to writing each day in November with the goal of having 50,000 words of a piece of (usually fiction) writing by the end of the month.

The last nanowrimo I took part in was a resounding success – for me anyway – because I wrote the bulk of what became my novella, Scribbling On Foucault’s Walls. I ‘m very proud of that book, and not least because it marks my first completed piece of full, or at least novella length fiction. I, like many of you I expect, have sat around in various bedrooms and living rooms through my life, imagining myself as a novelist. Of writing THAT book. Of being A WRITER. Like ‘Jonathan’ in Teddy Thompson’s song, I  have spent almost as much time in those same bedrooms and living rooms with nothing to show for my fantasy. For that is what it often is.

It’s not that now, having written my novella I am full of confidence, or of self-worth based on my secure identity as ‘writer’. I still sit around dreaming, chewing my proverbial pencil, and not making my ideas into tangible characters and stories. I still feel like a failure as a writer relatively often. But I have a kind of reference point, a starting block. I know what it feels like and looks like to write a book of fiction. I know I can do it again. But. Well. I am not sure I can do it this November. 50,000 words are stubbornly refusing to flow from my fingers and my mind. Ideas are falling flat on their faces. Metaphors are flying too near to the sun and coming crashing down in front of me. This time, nanowrimo is as hard as it was natural last time, as frustrating as it was enjoyable, as disappointing as it was satsifying.

I am quite an ‘all or nothing’ person with creative writing. This contrasts with my approach to other aspects of life, such as work, and even non-fiction blogging, where I tend to plod along, keep doing it, until something valuable appears. But with fiction (and poetry) I am impatient, wild,  lazy, moody, dramatic, non-commital, insecure.  Maybe a bit like how I am in ‘romantic’ relationships. And you may guess I’m not exactly brilliant at them.

So rather than do what I have done before, and throw a strop, chuck my writing implements at the wall, and storm off into the sunset, I have come up with a couple of ways to keep at it, to plod along, when I am really not feeling it. The things I am doing instead of giving up nanowrimo are:

1) Keeping a journal. I started writing a journal this summer, when something happened to me that just had to be written down. And I realised the writing down helped me deal with what was happening. So I carried on writing things down, events, thoughts, feelings, tweets, conversations, the occasional idea, all in the privacy of my notebook. Now I am onto book three and this journal-writing lark has become a habit.

2) Practising Mindfulness I have been aware with some of the principles of meditation for a long time. I have done a little bit (before throwing one of my strops and giving up) and read round the philosophy it is part of. Mindfulness, a key aspect of meditation, is ’paying attention to present moment experiences with openness, curiosity, and a willingness to be with what is. It is an excellent antidote to the stresses of modern times. It invites us to stop, breathe, observe, and connect with one’s inner experience’. So far I mainly practise it on my walk to and from work. I pass through a park and make a point of slowing down (my sister often complains I walk too fast) and noticing what is around me – the changing colours of the autumn leaves, a shock of cold air, a man placing a poppy wreath on a memorial. And I am already feeling some beneficial effects. I am beginning to notice I am less stressed, and more leaning towards feelings of contentment, sometimes even joy. I have a lot on my plate at the moment, some of which has the potential to bring me down. So mindfulness is one strategy I have found for staying, wherever possible, up.

3) Being social Another tendency I have as a writer, and a person (there is only one of me), is obsessiveness. I personally don’t think that is such a bad thing. Foucault’s Daughter wouldn’t exist without my obsession and my ability to spend long periods of time focused on one thing. But once I get into a project, a thought, a book, a PhD, I find I lose track of other people sometimes. My need for human contact, and my responsibilities to my friends and family. So, whilst I am not gripped with The Best Idea In The World, I am making sure I get out and see people. So if and when inspiration does strike, I hope I will have built in some kind of social life, in the new place I am living and working, and elsewhere.  And who knows? Maybe some of my social interactions will find their way into my stories. Don’t worry I won’t tape our conversations. But well, you know what writers are like. Everything is material to us.

So if you’re doing nanowrimo, but aren’t doing it, maybe these notes will help you get out and stay out of the rut. Or maybe you have some tips for me. I would love to hear how you deal with that lack of spark when it inevitably descends.

Carol Morley and Paul Duane Nominated For Grierson Documentary Awards!

I am delighted that two very special films, both of which I saw on the big screen this year, have been nominated for a Grierson British Documentary Award.

John Grierson was a documentary film-maker who made a name for himself in the first half of the twentieth century, for films such as Drifters and Night Mail (above).  He is remembered with this prize, because he was one of those rare things – someone who changed and developed dramatically the medium he worked in. So it is down to him and other pioneers that documentary film is considered an art form in itself.

The two films I am delighted to see on the short lists of the 2012 Grierson Awards are Carol Morley’s feature documentary Dreams Of A Life and Paul Duane’s Barbaric Genius. I will write at more length about them both. They have overlapping themes of loss, grief, friendship and alienation. But are quite different in style, with Morley’s splicing interviews with dramatised scenes, and Duane’s taking on a more traditional documentary format, that still seems contemporary and fresh.

Good luck to both film-makers, I can’t wait to see their next pieces of work!