April 7, 2012

The Ultimate Book Review Part I: The Old Testament

By Jeannie

About three years ago I decided that I wanted to read the Bible, from start to finish, Genesis right through to Revelations. My mother bought me a beautiful, leather-bound bible for my birthday and my plan was to read it in one year. In general I like to challenge myself with the books I read and I figured that this would really be the biggest challenge I could give myself. Also I thought that whenever I was arguing with anyone about religion I would be able to say with some relish that I had actually read the Bible all the way through and this would give weight to whatever argument I might be having.

Two and a half years later, I’ve not yet finished it. I have finished the Old Testament however, and feel pretty proud of myself for getting this far. But my original reasons for starting it in the first place seem downright silly, if not completely absurd. I’ll get to how I felt about finishing it in a bit, but first here’s how I feel about what I read.

Genesis I’ve read a number of times, and we all know the story of Adam, Eve, the snake and the apple. All of that was fairly familiar, and so were a number of the early books and verses. Noah’s Ark, Cain and Able. Moses in the basket… all stories that I know through I suppose Sunday school when I was little and through popular culture. I was reading the King James version, because this to me is the quintessential version, the ‘real’ version, and thought reading any of the later Standard English versions was a bit of a cop-out. I don’t think that anymore, but the language in the King James version really is wonderful. Compare these two:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

When God began to create the heavens and the earth – the earth was without shape or form, it was dark over the deep sea, and God’s wind swept over the waters.

The King James version is the first passage., and infinitely more poetic in my opinion.

As I progressed, there were problems I had with the book. There is a lot of ‘begetting’ – i.e. Adam begat a son and called his name Seth, And Seth lived a hundred years and begat Enos, and Enos lived ninety years and begat Cainin….. I’m paraphrasing but you get the idea. In a book as long as this, having so many chapters consisting of these verses got somewhat tedious. However, that is the worst part of reading the bible. Well, that and God endlessly talking about smiting the ones that worship false idols.  Oh, and it was a bit hard to keep track of everything seeing as the stories kept going back on themselves. I thought I’d read all about David, or Moses, and then three books later the Bible would be from their perspective again – when I thought they’d died and been buried two hundred pages ago.

As a result, I had to let a lot of it wash over me. I also had to read other books, novels which seemed like easy reading in comparison, and could only come to it when I could pay good attention and make the effort. The Bible is an effort to read. I found it almost impenetrable in fact.

But it was worth it. I love thinking about what names mean, and I love stories, all kinds of stories, and here was the richest treasure trove of names and stories I have ever come across. I learned that David didn’t only strike down Goliath, he was a king that ruled for a very long time, a war-king, who could never be defeated essentially because of how true he was to God. He also commits adultery with Bathsheba – I never realised the two stories were connected. Joshua – the name of my nephew – was a bloodthirsty war-king too who was always going off and having battles. I loved the book of Ester, which contains the story of the Queen of Persia, Vashti, who is ordered to show herself to the King’s guests at a party and she refuses. She’s exiled of course, but it’s nice to see a bit of defiance especially from a queen. The story of the orphan Ester that follows is also full of intrigue, deceit, death and royals.

Daniel is probably my favourite – I only ever knew that he was cast into a den of lions and that was about it.  It turns out he was captured as a boy by the evil king Nebuchanezzer (who features in Willam Blake’s works, for those of you that are interested) with a number of other Jewish children. The king also seems a bit mad as well as evil, seeing as he wakes up one morning having dreamt about something that he can’t remember, so he orders all the soothsayers, astrologers and other mystical types in the land to not only interpret his dream, but tell him what the dream was in the first place. And then because they of course can’t tell him, he decides to kill the Jewish children he has captured. Luckily, Daniel has the divine knowledge of God and tells the King what his dream is as well as the interpretation. Daniel saves his friends and ends up as a prince among men.

And the book of Job…..wow. The story of him losing everything he had was familiar to me, but reading his protestations of despair and regret was really very moving. And what’s more, this is the real crux of the matter when it comes to religion – how can God create us and let us suffer, if God loves us? Reading about a man struggling with this question thousands of years ago puts into perspective the struggles that modern Christians or anyone other than atheists face.

And as a Christian myself, I didn’t just learn about stories in an intellectual basis. I get that God really, really, really doesn’t want people to worship false idols. Before now, I’ve always thought that Jews, Christians and Muslims were all praying to the same God……in fact I’ve always thought that anyone praying to any kind of higher power or performing any kind of worship is getting in touch with the same God that I pray to – just through different means. I think I would have felt ok praying in a mosque or at a pagan festival, should the occasion have arisen. But now I don’t think I will ever do that, because God really makes it clear in the bible that he really disapproves of people worshipping anyone but him. The first Commandment is that there is only one God, the second is to not worship any false idols, and the third is to not take the lords name in vain. God damns people for generations and generations and takes up whole books just talking about all the smiting that will be done to people who have worshipped false gods.

However, the Old Testament has done more than just instil a fearful sense that I can only pray in my own church. When I completed the whole of the Old Testament, I felt genuinely closer to God. I felt like I’d put in the time and effort to try and get an understanding of what is important in life. I can’t even really express truly how I feel about what I’ve read.

It had also defied my pre-conceptions about what is actually in there. I thought the Old Testament would be full of orders about sexual morality that would offend me as a feminist woman living in the 21st century. I thought Satan would appear a lot. I thought there would be more in general that I would disagree with me, that might even turn me against Christianity. But that’s not what happened.

Satan makes very few, small appearances and doesn’t really do that much. Perhaps he will in the New Testament. And there are parts that I don’t really agree with, but it’s not as in your face as I thought it would be. There is hardly anything in there about women particularly when you look at the book as a whole.

It seems to me that you will get out of the bible what you want. If you want to find passages advocating war, you will find them. If you want to find passages condemning homosexuality, you will find them. But when I read the bible, if I hadn’t known that Sodom and Gomorrah is meant to be a story about homosexual men. I wouldn’t have picked up on it at all. Perhaps that’s just naivety, or perhaps people that hate others will find means to justify it, by hook or by crook. The majority of the Old Testament is not about hating women, gay people, or anyone or anything else. God just wants you to worship him, not anyone else. There are a few ridiculous sections about women and maidservants and suchlike, but that just seemed to me to be relics of an ancient world that are intertwined in a book that is of course of its time, but also speaks to all ages with the wider messages. Read the Psalms – incredibly beautiful verses just about loving God. Read Ecclesiastics, – the most profound passages about life and dying I have ever known.

I completed the Old Testament and immediately wanted to read it again. I know that I haven’t taken all of it in – there was so much to read I don’t think I’ve fully understood all the stories and books. I was just trying to get through it really – it seemed so much at the time. But once I’ve read the New Testament, I think that I will be re-reading the Bible for the rest of my life.

 

 

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February 26, 2012

10 tips on how to complete a novel

By Jeannie

They say that everyone has a book in them. I don’t entirely believe that, but for those of us that do want to try putting 100,000 words or so together to create a novel, it can be something of an arduous task. I have somehow managed to get through the trials and tribulations of writing a whole book, and thought I’d share a few nuggets of wisdom I learned along the way…..

  1. Only pursue it if you have to. If you think it would be cool to write a novel, or you like to set yourself challenges, or if you are just an intelligent person who loves books and wants to give it a go, my genuine advice is not to bother. You will struggle, and the results will only disappoint you. There are plenty of other things that are cool, challenging and that you can employ your intelligence doing. However, if you have an idea for a story and you feel like you must get it out by hook or by crook then the good news is that even if you don’t make millions, writing a story you simply must tell is extremely rewarding.
  2. You do need a story. It’s not necessary to have each paragraph plotted out, nor need you focus too much on adhering to any genre formulas, but you do need to have a story. Once you have that, everything will fall into place. What’s more, one of the really fun things about writing a novel is that the story will surprise you. You might plan out all sorts, but characters and events will change as you go along. That is the exciting bit. With my novel Flesh, I originally planned for my main character to have a sister who loves her dearly and tries to protect her from the werewolf man she has fallen in love with. When I realised that the sister was in fact the villain of the piece and trying to sabotage the heroine’s happiness – that was when the story really got started and I had something interesting and original to say.
  3. Character is everything. Story is crucial as I say, but if you don’t have complex, three dimensional  characters you will not maintain the reader’s interest. What I found worthwhile was to brainstorm each character (even the minor ones, time-consuming I know) and write a profile on them, even though much of the personality traits and history didn’t actually get used in the novel. Make it even quite banal; what did they study at uni? What starsign are they? How old are they? What do they look like? The more I made up about each character the more I felt I was getting to know them, and the easier it was to write about them within the action of the novel.
  4. Sometimes, you will get stuck. You’ll need to write about a character’s internal monologue who has an opposite gender to you, and it feels inauthentic. Or, there is a sex scene. Or something entirely normal which you just randomly get stumped by. My advice to you is to think about it for a while, brainstorm, organise what you want the piece to cover. Then, when you feel you have done everything you can do – stop thinking about and just go for it. Don’t worry if it seems rubbish as you are writing. The point is just to start – you have all the time in the world to make revisions and new drafts later, and even to chuck that part out if it just doesn’t work. However, if you can manage to jump in, often you will find that you will have produced sentences that you are actually quite happy with. Perhaps you will need to re-write ten times but that doesn’t matter, because if you jump in and go for it, I promise you will work out what you want to write.
  5. Writing your first novel is like falling in love for the first time. It’s exciting, thrilling, new, strange. wonderful, and like nothing else you have ever done before. Nothing else will seem quite the same afterwards. Sometimes you will weep from the exhaustion, frustration, and sometimes just because you have just felt so moved by what you’ve put together. However, you still need to pay attention. Even with inspiration, talent and a good plot, you will need to put a lot of work into this to make it any good. Don’t run away with your words. When you are in the flow obviously don’t necessarily slow down but you do need to think intellectually about what you are writing. Review and reflect as you go along. Don’t be lazy. Laziness is the death knell to good writing.
  6. You will complete the book. It might not feel like it when you’ve been working on it for a year and are only half way through, or perhaps even a quarter, but if you care about what you are doing, if you have put together a good story, if you know your characters and you keep going, you will get there. You will.
  7. Your first draft is something to be proud of. Despite all the happenings of daily life, the distractions, demands and despair, you have sustained your creative energy to produce a work of art. If you never get published, if no-one ever likes a single word you have written – you have the ability to create a work of art. Well done. The bad news is; this is where the real work begins.
  8. No matter how happy you think you are with your first draft, you will need to write a second. Once you have gotten to the end, take a week’s break from it. Get drunk and celebrate inwardly that you are in at least one way a real artist. See your friends. Go for a walk. Make a bit more effort at in the office. Then, print out your first chapter and get a red pen out. There will be errors that you need to rectify. Events and characters and themes may have changed almost beyond recognition and you will suddenly remember that the woman who is wearing a blue dress in the first chapter is actually in mourning and will be wearing black. What’s more, you will need to look at every sentence, word and piece of punctuation and check that you have put this in the best way possible. This is what writing is. Not just a story and characters, but putting language together in the best way possible to express truth. All that is on the page matters. You need to be hard on yourself at this point and sincerely critique everything. Every section that you doubt will have to be destroyed and rebuilt. If you aren’t sure if the sentence or word is particularly elegant, trust that your readers will dismiss it as utter dross. I cannot stress to you enough how important the re-drafting is. If you can’t be bothered to think about every word in your book, why should anyone read it? There are plenty of good writers to go round. We have Shakespeare, for example. And in a way, Shakespeare and all the other great writers in the world are what you are up against for holding the attention of your reader.
  9. You will need to re-read the whole novel again. This part is actually quite fun. You will remember sentences you have forgotten about, sentences you like. Characters that you are now as fond of as old friends have come to life before your eyes. This is a nice feeling. There may still be amendments to be made, but overall this will be enjoyable and you will be able to see visible rewards for your efforts. Plotting a novel is like drawing up foundations for a house, writing it is like doing the building work, and re-reading at this stage is like going shopping for the interior décor.
  10. Let someone else read it whose opinion you value and trust. This shouldn’t necessarily be your best friend, your boy/girlfriend or your Dad, but someone who likes novels and likes talking about them. There are two things you should bear in mind when doing this: the first is that the other person may not like it, but that is ok. The second is that they may love it, but that doesn’t mean much either. The point is that you need an outside perspective. There may be plot errors you haven’t seen, and also they may say something that surprises you and ignites your imagination to add or change bits. However, the most important reviewer should really be yourself. You need to be extremely critical, extremely ruthless, and extremely cruel about anything being less than top notch. Then once you are really finished, and when you honestly think that you have done the best you can do; you will have produced something you can be genuinely proud of. No-one will be able to take this away from you, ever.

Other than that, don’t be safe, don’t stress, and don’t worry about what you think you ‘should’ be writing. Think about what you have to write, what is in your soul, and make it the best you can. Do push yourself. And good luck!

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January 23, 2012

Reasons Why My Mum Is Amazing (And Yours Probably Is Too)

By Jeannie

When I was young, my parents used to embarrass me. I won’t even get started on my father (honestly, I wouldn’t know where to begin) but my kind hearted mother used to make me feel pretty silly in front of my friends more times than I care to recall.

For a start, she used to recycle all the time. The was twenty years ago, when recycling was something that sandal-wearing lunatic hippies did, not your council, your workplace and your household. There was a bin for garden waste, a bag for tins, another bag for papers, and if we (my brother and me)  didn’t  help her, she would diligently carry each and every bag by herself every week to the recycling unit which was a good twenty minute walk away. I worried the people in my school would mistake her for a bag lady and laugh at me for it, either behind my back, or to my face.

What’s more, Mum didn’t pick me up from school in a car, because she only rode a bicycle. No-one, but no-one I knew had parents who rode bikes anywhere. When she would collect me, we’d walk home and Mum would walk the bike alongside me, and everyone would see that we didn’t have a car.

Then there was the fact that Mum was just a lot older than all the other mothers. Looking back, half the parents had to have been teenagers when they’d had their kids. My mum was forty years old when she had me, and the other children – even the nice ones – would wonder aloud if actually she was my grandmother rather than my mother. For some reason, I found this humiliating.

As an adult, I look back and find myself feeling the exact opposite of humiliation – I feel an extremely strong sense of pride. It has slowly dawned on me throughout my twenties that my batty old mum was actually very obviously ahead of her time. Recycling now has become an everyday occurrence, something that you are much more likely to be told off for Not Doing, rather than a weird thing to do with your rubbish. EVERYONE cycles in London – certainly everyone I know that has the sense and the willpower to do it. Cycling has so many inherantly obvious benefits (health, money, ease of use) that the Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson has installed the famous Boris Bikes throughout our capital. As for the age thing, we are all leaving it longer and longer to have children – because once again the world is catching up with what my mother did, twenty years ago.

And there’s more. My mum was actually sacked from her job working for the council because she was pregnant with my (older) brother, out of wedlock. ‘Wedlock’ –  Doesn’t that sound like something from the 1900′s?! Actually, this happened in 1975. Yes, 1975. And my mother took it to the unions, fought them, and won. The right to have a baby out of wedlock without losing your job – a right which all of us women now take for granted – as well as the stigmas attached to doing so – was fought by my mother, and many other women just like her. Incidentally, my mother was in a steady relationship with my father, and my father proposed numerous times – she just thinks that marriage is an antiquated institution which reeks of slavery, and just didn’t want to. And now, all of us, if we don’t want to get married, we don’t have to.

I’m making a fuss over my mother because as you can imagine she is very dear to me, but what strikes me is that our current generation seem to have no idea of the freedoms and rights we have as a result of left wing, ordinary but independent thinking women such as her. My mum has never wanted any glory for anything she does – but she deserves it. And so do all the women that were sneered at then, and still are. The women that burned their bras, that grew their armpit hair, that marched and went on strike and suffered discrimination – they are the ones who earnt us the freedoms we so easily take for granted now. It’s people like my mum who raised the rallying cry of the dangers of global warming, who rejected the fuddy-duddy notions of getting married, who rejected the former restrictions and requirements of a stifling past and said: We demand something different. And because of that generation, no-one would even dare to, or dream of, firing an unmarried pregnant woman. It’s because of them that the world is finally accepting that global warming might kind of be a big deal, and maybe we should do something about it. Becuase of them, women in this country have children when it suits them and when they feel ready to be the best mothers they can be.

So Mum, and all the other women out that have been in your own ways creating a revolution and creating a better future for your daughters and sons: I salute you. I salute you.

 

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October 10, 2011

Literary Anxiety

By Jeannie

OK so get ready for some serious intellectual bragging: I am probably one of the most well-read people I know. (*Please read beyond the next paragraph*)

I was reading GCSE texts when I was in primary school. During my English Lit degree I read everything – and I mean everything – on my course. Regards classic literature, if I haven’t read it, I normally can give you a good basic outline of what the book is about. I once set myself a challenge to read War and Peace in a month – I read it in February, and just to prove a point, I completed it in 27 days. At the moment, I am half way through reading the Bible, King James Version, cover to cover.

But am I proud of my literary endeavours? Am I fuck. While the above sounds good (ish), in my eyes I fall dismally short of what I think I should have read by now. I may have a first class degree, but have I read Joyce’s Ulysses, or Finnegan’s Wake? Mate, I can’t even get through The Dubliners. The very thought of Proust gives me a headache. I can’t get a grip on Homer, even though I adore Greek mythology. What’s more, I love love love love love Shakespeare, think he’s the only writer you need – but have I completed the complete works? Hardly. I’ve not read Titus Andronicus (which is particularly strange seeing as my own writing is obsessed with the grotesque) I’ve only read a handful of the sonnets, and have no idea what Pericles, Cymbeline and Coriolanus are even ABOUT.

French writers I’ve not read include (outrageous considering I was born in France, love Paris and French culture): Balzac, Colette, Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Les Miserables are quintessientally novels I would enjoy, as they are all about suffering and the goth emo in me will never really die) Zola…..Argh…..

I am also genuinely disappointed in myself that I haven’t read literature from a wider range of cultures. I pride myself on engaging with other nationalities to the extent that I don’t believe we should run ‘English Literature’ degrees – I think we should run ‘Literature’ degrees. But I didn’t finish Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (and that’s practically a novella). Every summer I swear this will be the year I read One Hundred years of Solitude / Love in the Time of Cholera and every year summer passes me by and I don’t even buy a copy from my local Oxfam.  Not read any Mark Twain – and that’s American which shouldn’t be too beyond my reach. Speaking of Americans, I’ve not finished Toni Morrison’s oeuvre, not touched On The Road, have a gorgeous copy of The Beautiful and Damned which I’ve not even started and I’ve only read A Farewell to Arms out of the Hemingways. Disgraceful.

When I was young, I was very, very excited to come across the book The Never-Ending Story. Even though I knew that it was impossible that the book would never end, I still childishly hoped that I had indeed found a book that would go on forever. I couldn’t get enough of books then. The idea of having read all the good books in the world does fill me with horror, but at the same time – I just can’t seem to get a handle on the sheer volume of novels that I want to read, and more importantly I can’t get a grip on the novels I think I should have read by now.

My reading has considerably slowed now I am full time working in an office. Between working, the gym, seeing friends & family, the Boyfriend, the novel I’m writing, this blog and Downton Abbey I don’t read nearly as much as I would like. And this worries me further. At this rate, how am I ever going to get through Remembrance of Things Past?

Am I the only reader that feels this way? It’s sort of a blessing and curse at the same time. On the one hand, there are more books in the world that are worth reading than you can ever get through in a lifetime. On the other, there is a voice in my head which is constantly saying things like ‘What do you mean you’ve not read The Odyssey?’

Wish me luck, as I tuck into the KJV Bible in my mission to complete it before I’m 30, as well as actually finish the complete works of Shakespeare, get round my World literature and so on, and so on…….

 

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August 29, 2011

Jeannie Hearts Tracey

By Jeannie

I’m not versed in art theory. I couldn’t pretend that I have any real knowledge or understanding of modern art, and my abilities as a critic are extremely limited. I flatter myself that I have seen enough to distinguish beyond what I like and what I don’t like, to what is ‘good’ art and what is not. For example, I would never have a print of Van Gogh’s in my house because his work is not to my taste, but I saw his retrospective at the RA last year (two years ago?) and thought he was incredible and can see that his work is that of a genius.

Generally, people don’t seem to like Emin’s work. She was ridiculed for the bed that didn’t win the Turner prize, and while the art world appears to understand her and laurel her with plaudits etc, I think it’s fair to say that your average man on the street (or woman) thinks that her work is repulsive and self indulgent. For a long time now I have known that I love everything that Emin does, but haven’t been able articulate why I think her work is ‘good art’, or why it’s much better than merely ‘good’. After seeing her exhibition at the Hayward ‘Love is what you want’ – I think I will have a go at answering her critics.

A general rule of thumb to ascertain whether a work of art is interesting (and by work of art I mean one in any medium – films, novels, etc) is to judge whether the work is doing something new and or interesting with form and content, and how the two are relating to each other. Emin experiments with a huge number of mediums, appliqué, sketches, film, sculpture, neon, and so forth. Emin’s work revolves around her physical self, and that she involves us in a range of textures gives a tactile sense to the show.  Emin is talking about the physical world and her physical self and responding to it in a physical way through the art. The range of mediums and the range of emotions she expresses combine to create a more powerful impact on the viewer. For example, the faint sketch of an explicit sexual act surprises us, and makes us think again about how we understand the sexual act itself. People that are comfortable with pornography – and even those of us who aren’t, but who live in the consumer world we occupy – are accustomed to seeing images of women bending over. One of Emin’s tapestries is all white, immediately evoking connotations of purity, virginity, and includes a depiction of a woman who is bent over without showing her face, and sown in beside the image are the words ‘It hurts’ amongst other personal phrases. The clash between the sexual and pornographic images and the soft mediums she uses redefines, re-imagines and redraws the sexual culture and imagery we are surrounded by.

Personally the film Why I Never Became A Dancer I found the most moving in the entire show. I’ve never been brought to tears by anything in an art exhibition, but this one had me weeping in the darkness and silence of the auditorium. I’d read Emin’s autobiographical work Strangeland so it wasn’t news to me to hear how she had been targeted by paedophiles in her local area and how horrible they had been to her when she entered a dance competition ‘A gang of blokes, most of whom I’d had sex with at some time or another started to chant ‘SLAG, SLAG, SLAG’ until I couldn’t hear the music anymore’ but what got me was the ending.  In the voiceover she says ‘Wayne, Freddy, Tony, Doug, Richard….This one’s for you’ – and from the images of funfairs and beaches and piers that we have been watching while Emin had described what happened, the footage cuts to a grown up Emin, in a studio overlooking the Thames, dancing to a disco anthem with a massive grin on her face, victorious. Those vile little scumbags who had once abused the 13 year old Tracey will probably never see the film, but that doesn’t matter; Emin has won. She’s made millions. She has doctorates and awards and is undeniably a great success, while these little fuckwits are probably dead, or on drugs, or alcoholics, living in council flats never having been anywhere other than England and Spain and it’s doubtful they have even been to an art exhibition. This short film was more overwhelmingly triumphant than any Hollywood rages to riches tale.

And to me, this film is epitomises the crux of what Emin does that is so valuable. Emin give a voice to the voiceless; she takes being raped and being poor and being uneducated and transforms the feelings of worthlessness that result into artwork placed in the galleries of middle class patrons and both seems to scream and whisper: look at what happened, this is how it made me feel, and this image, this story is just as important as the painting of Henry VIII in the National Gallery.  I also found her descriptions of the sex she has as a child as crucial because she is so honest and talks about how sometimes, the sex was nice. We’re not used to seeing rape / child abuse victims ever having sexual feelings and the authenticity of her narration again is important to reassessing how we judge, and respond to, instances of paedophilia and abuse.  Too often we find in the courts and in public opinion that because a victim of such horrific crimes has ever enjoyed sex, that the victim is to blame.

Her film about her abortion was frankly harrowing and at one point I did think I might faint or throw up. But it’s not sensationalist, or graphic; just a woman talking about the botched abortion she had. Considering approximately one in three women have abortions, its nigh on time we listened to anyone who has endured such a thing and who is willing to express it in their own terms. Emin’s feelings towards motherhood are a running theme throughout, from the heartbreaking little lost shoe left outside which most people didn’t notice, to the appliquéd baby outfits for the children that Emin will never now bear, which play off the paraphernalia of Emin’s family life (Emin’s grandmother had crocheted outfits for the children she thought Emin would have, before it was too late and she died.) While Emin’s detractors might accuse her of callously capitalising on her own sufferings and heartaches, I would say that most artists draw on their own lives in some way in their art. Emin just cuts to the chase.

If there was any criticism I would make of the exhibition, I would say that the curator neglected to understand the ‘oomph’ of the neon scrawls. These pieces have the most impact when they are shown alone, not dumped together in a narrow corridor. I was once at dinner with the Boyfriend (I think it may even have been a Valentine’s night) in Hoxton when I saw her ‘Life without you Never’, and as it was alone in a dimly lit restaurant the loveliness of the image was apparent. Not quite so in the exhibition, sadly. However, Emin’s work with neon is immense. Once again she transforms the medium, as neon immediately conjures up connotations of ‘Girls! Girls! Girls!’ signs blaring outside brothels, massage parlours and strip joints, while Emin proficiently creates spindly handwritten messages in pastel colours, sometimes in a sexual context, sometimes not. These bright lights are announcing weakness and vulnerability…not something we are used to in neon. And that brings me on to Emin’s subtle use of colour. The neons even when clumped together are surprisingly pleasing to the eye, and throughout the exhibition despite the intense and lurid subjects she raises the colours throughout the show are aesthetically palatable.

Emin’s work is delicate and noticeably feminine and constantly refers to a feminist agenda. However, while Emin may well be (arguably or not) a feminist artist, she transcends any political movements as any great artist should do. She portrays to us the messiness of the human condition; the blood and guts, the broken hearts, the disillusionments and discarded dreams, the rage we hide, the sex we have, the love we feel for one another.

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August 15, 2011

#tryingtounderstandtheriots

By Jeannie

I have got nothing intelligent to say about the rioting that has been taking place across England. I wish I did.

Normally, if you haven’t already gathered, I have an opinion about things. I argue with people. I am adamant that this is right, or that is wrong. But the rioting has effectively left me speechless.  None of the stances and viewpoints that are expressed I can agree with, either on television or the people I know around me. In terms of the rioters: I can’t support anyone that petrol bombs a residential string of flats putting human life at risk, or the crowd that has swelled enough to enable that petrol bombing. I can’t support a person who smashes and grabs what doesn’t belong to them, and who takes what they haven’t earned. Super liberals say that bankers have been stealing from us for generations, but (forgive the cliche)  two wrongs don’t make a right. At age eleven (and probably much younger) I was perfectly aware that its wrong to steal, and if these children haven’t been taught that by neglectful parents, sad as it may be, perhaps the state will have to provide that lesson. Also I think its an insult to the vast majority of young people who come from real, grim poverty and who would never dream of behaving in such a way.

However, I am certainly not on the side of the rightwingers and the politicians and the police that condemn them. I was grateful that the police were able to shut down the riots (eventually). But can we really brush aside the police shooting a man in the face and then lying about it? Can we ignore the 333 deaths that have taken place in police custody since 1998 – without a single conviction? As a woman with a job and a degree, can I really be cognizant of what it is like to be a young man without a hope of employment, living on an estate and constantly getting gip from the police? And as for the politicians, their behaviour alongside the riots themselves has been an embarrassment to our country. While our wonderful capital city burned, and we all watched agog at the news reports that just kept coming in, our Mayor and our Prime Minister did absolutely nothing. They didn’t issue a statement. They didn’t call. They didn’t skype. They didn’t tweet. They stayed right where they were on their holidays until they were forced to return. And even then, bythe time Londoners had arranged an impromptu #riotcleanup and had gotten their brooms out, Dave had hardly finished his coffee or ambled down to have a chat with his buddies at Cobra about the best approach. He’s still not really done anything except talk. I’m surprised he didn’t just drop a text to Murdoch to put a nice spin on it in the Sun. And Boris – I’m enraged when I remember the footage of the young black man genuinely trying to talk to him in Croydon and Boris so evidently not listening and trying to get out of there. The contempt – thats what I recognised on Boris’ face – contempt. The cheek of this Etonian, this Bullingdon fop who along with Dave went on the ramage themselves a few decades ago, smashing Oxford up in their wake.

I’m not the first person to make the allusion of Dave’s Bullingdon set and the riots. In honesty I don’t think I have anything original to say on this issue. The most I can vaguely muster is that in the short term, I think anyone who took part in the riots and looting and who commited any offences should be charged accordingly. In the long term, I think these riots are symptomatic of the social breakdown endemic in our society and a strong signal that we need to change, and fast, if we are to survive the economic turmoil that surrounds us. But these are just words. Ideals. I have nothing concrete to suggest to fix what happened. I know that I don’t side with the rioters, the police, the politicians, or the BBC when they give a numbskull like David Starkey free reign to spout antiquated racist speeches after giving Enoch Powell a good read. I don’t know what the answers are, or what they should be, or how to prevent us enduring the nights that we have done.

On the Monday night of the London riots, I was glued to BBC News 24. I was initially outraged when I saw Peckham going up in smoke as the BBC filmed, seemingly endlessly, while no-one attended to the blaze, at around 7pm. As the evening progressed and events continued to worsen, my outrage was subsumed by fear and and a horrible, wretched kind of bleakness. Eventually the firefighters got to Peckham and put it out, and the news went over to Croydon. And there, a fire raged fiercely for what seemed like the entire night as the news crews filmed, and Simon Hughes asked the peers of the rioters to plead with their boyfriends, girlfriends and siblings to stay home. The futility of this statement was underlined by the fire that went on burning, the fire that was too hot for the firefighters to put out. I watched the blaze for hours as if hypnotized, and – not to beleaguer the symbolism- but I still have that same feeling now. That I am watching a big angry fire that’s been started, one that we can’t put out.

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July 20, 2011

Murdoch, Murdoch and Brooks; How they made me ashamed to be British

By Jeannie

Here’s my verdict: Murdoch, Murdoch and Brooks are vile, morally vacuous, lying, arrogant scum. Their appearance in the so-called dock was nothing more than a PR stunt – so James could prove he can succeed Rupert and so they can get away with running an entire company that is built on deception and abuse of power. James’ smarmy double-speak verged on farcical ‘I didn’t say, that I didn’t say that. What I said was that I did not say……. ’ And so on. Their arrogance genuinely stunned me when they had spent two hours dying all knowledge of the systematic wrong-doing and extensive payments (in the millions) to dodgy private dicks, and then when an the MP Alan Keen (a democratically elected MP, I might add, rather than these scoundrels) dared to refer to them as being ‘kept in the dark’ about such matters, both Murdoch’s took umbrage to the audacity of the Keen’s statement. Rupert tellingly disputed the statement emphatically (“Nobody kept me in the dark!”) – despite having spent two hours swearing blind that he knew nothing about anything and only spoke to the editor of biggest-selling Sunday newspaper in Britain once every week or two shortly before publication.

When Rupert says “This is the most humble day of my life”, where is the humility???

If we assume their innocence, what genuinely innocent person that had presided over wrong-doings such as the hacking of dead soldiers families phones, would have the gumption to behave as these two over-privileged twats did when faced with such an inquiry??

As for Brooks, she is just as bad. She was extremely defensive and bossy and just like the others, seemed to think we were lucky to have her there.

However, this whole situation has sadly shone a light on much more than the hubris of these three people.  The police are implicated. The government is implicated. The idea of this ‘an inquiry’ with these three people being held accountable is laughable in itself – how can it be ran by the police and the government, when they are ones who have gotten us into this mess in the first place? And the MPs were embarrassing. Their pomposity and gleefulness at playing prosecution lawyer to the people they had to cower before only a few weeks prior was pathetic at best and stank of hypocrisy. How was this process purposeful? The questions were easy for them to evade, and what on earth were they going to say in response? ‘Mr Murdoch, were you aware of Milly Dowler’s phone being hacked into, and did you approve of payments to the private detective hired to get into them, and the police that covered for you? No? Oh, well, that’s ok then…..’ !!!?!?!?!?

There were only two people in there that I had any vague respect for after watching this circus act. One was Louise Mensch, who firmly cut to the chase by asking Murdoch if he was going to resign, and if not why not. Now, that’s balls. Not only that, but she also exposed how feeble their promises were about making amends. In the News International advertisement in all national papers last Sunday, Rupert wrote that the company was taking ‘concrete steps to resolve these issues and make amends for the damage they have caused’. But when Ms Mensch asked if they were going to conduct a review amongst all their staff to ensure these practices are weren’t taking place everywhere, they just looked blank, and stumbling agreed to do so, although they hadn’t had any such plans to before her question.

The other was Wendi Murdoch, going for the idiot that threw shaving foam at Rupert. Why was it left to his wife to defend an 80 year old man? All James did was stand up in shock, what good is that?? What kind of son doesn’t get stuck in to protect his elderly father from attack?? I digress. I guess my point is that when a woman who has married a man twice her age with a lot of money, and a Conservative such as Louise Mench appear to be the most reasonable people in a serious inquiry, that doesn’t reflect on the rest of the room very well, does it.

So I’d like to come to my real point here. This story isn’t about a red-haired bossy boots, or a media mogul who took over the world. Sadly, the story is about us, the British. It is our salacious appetite for tales of sexual debauchery and horrific murders that have created these monsters. It’s a popular assumption that the media dictate the news. It’s not true. It’s us. If we were (as a nation) gripped by stories that were noble and intellectual, then perhaps the NOTW might actually have been the News of The World. While Rupert might genuinely love journalism, and I don’t doubt he does, he didn’t force these stories down people’s throats. People bought them. British people bought them week on week, more than any other newspaper, and the more sordid the story the more papers were sold. So it appears to me that we are all complicit. I’ve never read or bought a tabloid, but I’ve read celebrity gossip stories in magazines and while the Murdochs and Brooks are afraid to concede any form of guilt, I can admit that even I am part of the problem. I’ve watched documentaries about poor murdered girls. It is our culture that led to the hacking of the phones of the families of those who died in 7/7, and everything else.

If we weren’t interested in Max Mosley’s sexual fantasies or Kate Moss’s coke habit then News International wouldn’t be printing them, because they wouldn’t make money. And that’s what this is all about; money. Greed.

And it is greed that has shown its ugly face most notably from this horrific Pandora’s Box that has been torn wide open. Call me naïve, but I’m genuinely shocked by the involvement of the police force. Should any more children go missing or any other horrific misfortune to happen to anyone in Britain, who can trust the police not to send your details over to the scummy tabloid press, who want to make a quick buck on the back of tragedy?? Perhaps I am – or have been – naïve, but I have believed that while the police are very far from perfect, should I ever have the misfortune to become embroiled in a horrific tragedy, the police would be trying to solve the crime, not profit from it. Of course it doesn’t surprise me to know that there are bent coppers and dodgy journos, but our democracy has been sold down the river wholesale. I’m embarrassed to have discovered that our police, government and the media have all been in bed together in some seedy and incestuous ménage a trois. I thought they all hated each other?? What’s more, the audaciousness of our government to bomb Libya and Afghanistan in the name of democracy when we don’t even have our own house in order is astonishing. Astonishing.

It’s a sad time for Britain, democracy and our beloved freedom of speech when it’s come to this. Custard pie throwing, and a dead girl’s phone being messed with.

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July 17, 2011

In Defence Of….High Heels

By Jeannie

The ‘feminist’ Caitlin Moran has written a book entitled ‘How to Be A Woman’ which purports to be a book about how she deals with her feminist principles in the misogynistic world we live in. I have a lot to say about this ridiculously titled book and the author’s self absorption, but for now, I’d just like to respond to a section quoted in the Guardian in which she tackles the wearing of high heeled shoes:

Women wear heels because they think they make their legs look thinner, ENDOV. They think that by effectively walking on tip-toes, they’re slimming their legs down from a size 14 to a size 10. But they aren’t, of course. There is a precedent for a big, fat leg dwindling away into a point – and it’s on a pig.
And most men distrust, and even dislike, a heel. They often view them with Feud Eyes. This is because:
a) A chick in heels makes a man feel shorter. In man terms, this is like making a lady feel fatter. They don’t like it.
b) A woman in heels stands a statistical likelihood of ending up her evening with her shoes in her handbag, barefoot, and demanding a piggyback to the taxi rank in order to “keep her tights clean”. Men are invariably the pig whose back is called for.

There are SO MANY THINGS wrong with this statement, I hardly know where to begin. But begin I shall.

If you are going to write a feminist book entitled ‘How to be a woman’ –surely you should more important things to write about than footwear. Off the top of my head, I’m thinking the 6.5 % rape conviction rate, the fact that women get paid 75% of what men do, the fact that two women a week die of domestic violence. That is the harsh reality of being a woman in this country, and that’s before you think about situation globally, for example the femicides in Mexico and the sex trafficking in Europe, and the genital mutilation in Africa….and so on. If she wants to write about what shoes she prefers, perhaps the book should have been called ‘How to Be Caitlin Moran.’

So back to what she has actually written about shoes.  Many women do wear heels to make their legs look thinner. I wear heels to be TALLER. Being 5”4 and a woman in glasses, when I am in the office, operating in a predominantly white male environment, high heels help me assert my presence. Whenever you wear high heels, you make a noise with every step – unlike the ballet flats that most women wear these days. You can STOMP in heels. My posture is better in heels. And literally, when me and the rest of the boys in Sales are trying to get attention from bartenders after work wearing heels puts me on a more even keel. It’s easier to look them in the eye and easier to be taken seriously.

This idea she has that a size 14 woman is too fat to wear heels is frankly offensive and harks back to the old adage that women hate each other even more than men hate us. For a start, size 14 isn’t fat, it’s the national average. Second of all a woman who is size 14 or above can wear whatever the fuck she likes, it’s not only skinny girls that have the right to wear heels – and bigger women don’t look like ‘pigs’ in heels.

‘A chick in heels makes a man feel shorter’ !!!! I honestly don’t understand how this can have been written with a straight face???  This is one of the most anti-feminist statements I’ve seen issued from a woman’s hand.  Ok – since when do women call each other ‘chicks???’ – does Caitlin Moran live in a 90’s American film with a cast of high school jocks talking about cheerleaders in a locker room??? And if men feel shorter next to women in heels – surely that is a good thing?? And what kind of man is so much of a pansy he can’t handle that??? Any man upset by something like that is not worth impressing, sista. But Moran is living in a fantasy land is she thinks that the majority of men are intimidated by a stiletto. The majority of them are turned on by women in heels – and that’s ok too.

 

I think its great to write about feminism in the modern age – so many women seem to think that feminism means bra-burning and armpit hair growing, even as they demand their husbands help out more with the housework and demand that they have degrees and careers and everything else. However, to win the average woman round to the idea of feminism, the feminist cause itself needs to accept that IT IS OK for women to want to be found attractive by men. Men want us to find them attractive too. Men shave and put on cologne and worry about what they are going to wear when they have a date, too. As long as the feminist movement excludes heterosexual, mainstream, conventional women, the surer the movement is doomed to fail. When is everyone going to wake up to the notion that what feminism really means, at its core, is simply that women should have exactly the same rights as men. That’s all. That is all it means. Feminism doesn’t mean that women shouldn’t paint their nails. It means men should stop oppressing women, across the world and in our boardrooms.

Moran doesn’t want to wear heels, and that’s fine. Why should she, if she doesn’t want to? But the logic of her tirade is tragically faulty.  Thinking that she has re-written one of the greatest feminist polemics ‘The Female Eunuch’ as she says ‘from a bar stool’ is laughable and an insult to Greer, and to feminism. The only thing that’s correct about that statement is that she must indeed have written the book while drunk – that’s the only thing that can explain the idiocy of her writing.

 

 

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May 19, 2011

Coffee: A Love Affair

By Jeannie

Dear Coffee,

My love, my desire, whom I do love and loathe in equal measure, how I do still long for you….

Do you remember when we first met? I was 21, some might say rather late for my first encounter with one such as you. Sao Paulo, Brazil. Summer days. Late, warm nights. While staying with distant relatives the mother of the house (the lovely Teresa) persisted in getting me to try you out – to match-make us, if you will. But I was reluctant – although I had always secretly been intoxicated by your aroma. Teresa made you milky and sugary, not too different from a luxury hot chocolate, and therefore much more pleasing to my young and innocent palate than I ever imagined you could be. You were rich, and so sweet – everything I could ever want from a hot drink.

As the time passed during the holiday, I quickly became enamored of you. Initially I had just tried a taste to be polite to Teresa, but soon I was happily obliging to have you. Delicious and invigorating you. Teresa was pleased to see how well we were getting on and so was I – had I finally grown up? Could this be a relationship that might actually last? I had only supped on cocoa before, a drink for a child. You were glamorous, adult; celebrities and commuters all clutched you feverishly every morning. And soon, so did I.

Once back home in England, I still hadn’t quite graduated and I craved you daily. I would scrape together enough to afford the ‘better’ instant coffee; but it wasn’t enough. I saved my pennies and once a week I would treat myself to a ‘proper’ coffee. Nothing too posh, just a Starbucks or a Café Nero. How could something so simple provide so much succour?

And once I was formally employed, things got serious between us. I didn’t just want you anymore, I needed you. I needed you every day, at least three times a day, and sometimes more. Work only seemed bearable because when I got there I had you on tap. First thing in the morning, before my computer was even switched on, I had you. And for a while, it worked. After a hangover, you would be all I needed. When life in the office got tough, you were there. On weekends we got spend some proper time together and I would savour you for hours. You would never fail to make my heart beat faster, with every single cup.

But after the highs came the lows. I noticed I really couldn’t sleep if I had been with you post noon. I would overcompensate by drinking four cups in the morning, trying to make it last, but then would be frantic and jittery as a result. Frankly, I was weird and manic to be around. Couldn’t stay sat down. Always thirsty. Always excusing myself to go to the bathroom. Now, it was ‘singleshot-grande-skinny-latte and please please please hurry up about it’ in Café Nero. And the migraines….my god the migraines.

I realised that it was getting too much and I needed a break from you. Every year I give up something for Lent and in 2010 I knew it had to be you. I have given up chocolate, booze, sweets, and all sorts – but nothing hurt as much as living without you. I felt like a zombie, like the walking dead. It was impossible! I swore. But then as I survived the first week I felt that being without you was……okay. I made it through the fasting period fine. Then, on Easter day, you were there on the table and I thought – why not? You smell amazing, I deserve you after all this time……what harm could one cup possibly do? Back in the office on the Tuesday I couldn’t help thinking about how good you were for me. After suffering an inner battle I made a decision to have you back…..decaffeinated. Surely, the best of both worlds? Friends joked that soon I would be back on the real stuff……….and they were right.

I embraced you once again. The happy mornings together. The bad nights. And so it went on, my dependency and love for you, day after day after day. You weren’t that bad a vice! I told myself. Of all the drugs to be addicted to, you were by far the least bad. Part of me wanted to be rid of you, but I thought I couldn’t do it. I thought I needed you and had to accept the good with the bad.

Then something changed. This spring, I mysteriously acquired a stomach ulcer. The agony was excruciating. I wept in pain as my boyfriend fed me milk, dry crackers and painkillers. And caffeinated drinks were top of the list of products to exclude. So I endured the withdrawal period along with the ulcer, and as I couldn’t get up anyway I didn’t need your energy. I didn’t need you, anymore. After a month or so of suffering with the ulcer, I was only slowly reintroducing myself to normal foods and just…..didn’t reintroduce you. Now I sleep better. I don’t have to worry about my breath smelling of you, or my teeth yellowing, or being embarrassingly manic. I don’t have the daily afternoon crashes….I just feel normal.

So now it’s over. This time, I really believe it’s for good. It’s just not the same between us anymore. You’ve lost the allure you once had, the hold you had over me. That’s not to say I don’t think of you. Mornings in the office are the hardest, and if I’m honest with myself I miss you every day. On weekends I don’t have the treat I once had to look forward too, no matter what else was happening. Really, my life will never be the same without you. I just have to remember that the bad times, unfortunately, outweigh the good.

Thanks for everything. Remember, there are plenty of others out there for you. I just don’t want to be one of them anymore.

From a fond

Jeannie

 

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