Different Types of Love

Well I’ve had a fairly long break from Uni and I’m back home living in London now. It’s been pretty quiet to say the least and its had its own fair share of up and downs already. Christmas was obviously a plus and so was seeing my friends, but for the last few months now I’ve had a family member who has spent a lot of time in hospital. My Grandad had come out of hospital earlier this month and on the 27th when they were staying round woke up in the night needing to go back in.. which isn’t the greatest as I’ve got my
Nan around a lot who.. normally is more sprightly then most her age but has been very withdrawn these last few days. I’m not sure if it works differently in most families today but I guess I was always brought up with the view that you put family before yourself and stick together no matter what. I got to admit I never used to.. especially since spending more time away from home but with my Grandad in the way he is it seems important to be there for my Nan and my Mum. My Mum and Dad always worked and even if I didn’t see them so much I’m appreciating that fact now in university. The least I can do is give something back, if not more. Is that love?.. love is just a word, a word with a meaning ascribed. Yet the meaning doesn’t have to be spoken because we know it by the actions under which it’s expressed speak for themselves.

I’ve got a friend called Steph back home. I know for awhile as my other friends kept reminding me though that we were on two very different wavelengths over where we stood with each other. That aside apart from my friend Will she is the most genuine character I’d ever come across. As a friend she’d constantly bring me back down to earth. She’s very arty and loves her punk rock.. a vegetarian who thinks people are generally a pain in the ass and unfortunately that sincere love between people today is dead. Like me and Will though, she’s ‘got the straight edge’ which means more often than not we get on like pea’s in a pod. Where as she studied art I studied humanities.. she’s wanting to go into graphics after to do something similar to me really.. I guess (I don’t know what I’ll do in the future). We like to ‘compare notes’ when we meet up on our experiences in the world, and when I got back I went out for a meal with her to just catch up on old times. Both of us trying to find meaning, and a purpose in a world which today seems to lack both. For those who read, you know where I found mine. With Steph it’s totally punk rock and her art. She’s quite unassuming and rarely stereotypes which is why, even though I changed over time we’re still great friends. I’m bad in that sense, I don’t really form opinions of people.. but when I do its hard to change them.. and then I do stereotype.

I guess all of us have some sort of perception of that as we’re all social beings.. the relations with family, the relation with ‘others’ which allows a intimacy and affection and another. Whatever the word we know that this ‘is’. But in the same breath does this mean we simply please the other person? Or do we actually take a vested concern and interest in people. Its perhaps an attitude which is broader than simple emotional attachment. Love delights in the truth not the easy way out, and yet in today’s word the favourite question on everyone’s lips is ‘What is truth?’ and we speculate and debate the issue.

We claim to be capable of love yet people.. for a long time now have acted with misuse of the term. Love isn’t restricted to people as an attitude, we act.. especially in this day and age with veiled self-interest. We abide to laws and morality so we might not get frowned upon for this expression of self-interest. As morality in decline becomes a socially accepted fact we see people act upon this. I’m not point fingers as this is simply what we were brought up to feel is.. well good. But the easy option isn’t ever really the most productive.

The way we live, globalization and a neglect of our environment are also traits displayed by self interest over love. Theirs no fit all answer and theirs going to be some who disagree with whatever the conclusion. But I read somewhere that love always perseveres and will never fail. People though? Well.. we’re only human. We’ll always have a choice though.

Giving Thanks

Well this is primarily down after something I decided to do off the bat yesterday while under the influence of a days proceeds and a lot of chilling out in my room till the early hours o’ the morn..I chose to come to Bournemouth purely out of the fact it was ‘on the beach’ (me never living anywhere near the coast obviously didn’t associate the Uni was actually so far from Bournemouth beach is was in Poole the next town over) and the fact we had family friends in the area. I like interacting with a variety of age groups purely because it reminds me to touch base, keep sane and lot get too caught up in student lifestyle.. whatever form that could take from what I’ve gotten involved with so far.

My mum’s friend’s husband though I get on pretty well with because.. well we’re both guitar freaks basically and whenever I used to crash down in Bournemouth me and him always used to hang out and talk about.. stuff for a long time usually after jamming. Sit out in his conservatory and.. well I had a lot of issues over what I want to do in the future and to be honest.. some of the more appealing ideas have nothing to do with my degree at all, I just wanted the skills so at the right place and the right time spread a message which I think sorely needs to be heard by todays generation.So yeah, he buzzed me last week and asked if I wanted to go to a guitar concert by this Australian folk artist called Tommy Emmanuel playing in the Tivoli in Wimborne. I didn’t know where Wimborne was but I agreed and so last night we went out to Wimborne pretty much as soon as I got home from Uni. We arrived pretty early and so went for a walk around the town which seems to resemble one of those really nice, quiet little villages you thought didn’t really exist anymore, apparently I had been here before when I was little and as we walked, he talked about the stuff I did back then which still makes him laugh.

It was then I realised.. and I had thought his before he was just like how I’d imagine an Uncle would be like.. or God Parent. I don’t see much of my real Uncles and never had any God Parents so I wouldn’t really know anyway heh. I wasn’t sure what to expect of this concert as we walked back, as most the people there were a fair bit older than me but when I walked out of the concert I couldn’t really believe what I had just witnessed. This guy was literally beating his guitar while playing like a mad man.. it was just him up there but he made it sound like we were in the middle of storm or some sort of LSD induced trip. He didn’t need any percussion because he hit his guitar in such a way it did it for him.. and he somehow managed to be playing with one hand. Anyway.. I could say more but what I most realised was.. I’d have never found people interested in that sort of thing via the Uni.. and how thankful I am to know a guy like Steve who will take me out to a all expenses paid concert to see a tripped-up love child of Xavier Rudd and John Butler purely because he appreciates and enjoys my company and the sort of things we get upto together.

When I grew up my Dad always used to work shifts and I think I grew up simply dumbing down our relationship by finding things to do by myself as.. if you know my brother we never really got on and it really just makes me appreciate family and makes me wish I could do that sort of thing with my Dad more who still listens to Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Black Sabbath, Led Zep and all but.. he’s working to put me through university and I love him for the time he spends for my sake. So yeah.. families are a awesome thing to have around if its right because I figure without it I’d never have learnt to really love anything about who I am and.. well probably just gone with the first crowd I found at University.And yeah.. so when I posted this last night I was back drinking Ginger Beer in my still ‘new’ house. My house mates keep mostly to themselves in their rooms which to me seems rather sad and I’ve done my bit to try and change it.. after Uni on Monday I had my mate Will around and I cooked him tea while we played guitar and watched animal rights videos of all things.. and as soon as he left Jay, a International Student I met through the Christian union popped round to say goodbye before she went home to the Caribbean for Christmas (lucky for some). So we sat and talked for a fair bit which was awesome.

I don’t have a TV out of principle and even though my housemates put one in the living room I’ve never watched it.. when I came to Uni I insisted on relying purely on ‘my social skills’, that and playing guitar.. the love of food, faith, live music and reading.
Readings my alternative to watching TV, this seemed more evident after one our lectures in the narratives unit on writerly and readerly text. I can interpret my books and my music in a much more personally applicable way then I could TV.. which in a way makes it interactive (its lost perhaps if you see it ‘live’ mind as you see the authors take on it as I noticed when I went to see Strike Anywhere last month) the problem with my project is this is more like TV with the filming even if we do make it interactive.. its only so in a hard-copy sense really but in essence its fixed. Even with a book at least I can specifically make sure the content I’m getting is content I want.. though I have the bad habit of buying books and taking ages to read them. Still.. guess I got the hols to get through some!I’m not sure what this was on but I’m thankfully for what I’ve mentioned in this entry.

Alive or Just Breathing?

I don’t know what I’m doing really I’ve spent alot of time doing alot of things tonight, most of which I’d rather not be.

I’m having issues with the loan company still and trying to get through to talk with anyone is a royal pain in the arse. Theirs a lesson to be learnt in this and that is..

I’ve also been thinking about the group project while phoning home and everyone else. Its all a little nuts but theirs only one more day till the weekend! which means a break from the most hectic of all weeks. That said I just had some rethinking of my time spent in Peru and how things have affected my thinking. I spent the everning also talking to a guy called Ardel.. a first year in the student village and I don’t really know what he studies but we talked from 7 till 10. What about? Well.. life.. the universe and everything really, he’s a pretty hardcore christian and to be honest sorta puts me to shame. I know the talk but after studying any number of humanties which have told me I’m a tool for believing it kinda put a muffler on things. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I am indeed a tool.. its just a question of to what end.. and how far I push it.. I could just satisfy Marx, Durkheim and end up being rather stereotypical but ideally I’d like to justify the works of people like Gramsci and Tolstoy in the long run and mess things up a bit. Theirs the problem of psychologically releasing myself from the world I’ve grown up in.. which never really did me any favours but simply becuase everyone else is in it I’ve had difficulties in breaking out. I believed in Marx with a passion long before I ever believed in God really, then Weber an interactionist.. finally somewhere in Neo-Marxism or atleast New Left Realism. I can’t really explain it how I ended up like this but.. it is genuinely liberating.

Thinking back to Peru.. I just figured it’d be good to get this written down. For 3 Months I used to live in a Potato shed and we had running water on and off since we were in the mountains. In that time I got pretty bad burns due to not covering up.. especially on my lips and my neck when my hair was shorter. Though for all that time I used to get up at 5 o’clock in the morn and sit and watch the sun come up or write how I felt my time was going while I watched the rain if it did rain that day. I never really got ill out there but I knew each day all that I had before me was a day’s worth of digging ditches interrupted by a lunch break followed by a few hours of teaching 11-16 year olds.

That said it was moving to think thats what life could be broken down to, in the space of those days I formed relationships and learnt incredible amounts about.. well what life could be boiled down to. Sure we can argue about social conditioning and feral children about human nature but.. well it just seemed natural to be part of a community which knew nothing but hard work and companionship. It was all touching and I was sad to leave my class behind when I left. It really didn’t sink in though till one of the girls in my class came down into the nearby town I was staying in a hostel at to give me a little doll with my name stuck on the front.. after that I did the Inca Trail for four days to Machu Picchu and every day of it I could only really think back to the time I spent in that village.

I first saw the Motorcycle Diarys when I was in Peru too.. Che’s portrayed in a way as such an idealist via the media but all I know from history was the conflicts he was involved in. It’s funny I had been to alot of the places he had been and I could to a extent.. and in my own way understand how he came to feel how he did.

N’ I guess after all the rest of my travelling I came back to England.. and it rained.. but not only that it was this grey concrete jungle I’d never really noticed before.. it was mostly brown in Peru.. but at sunset it became a bright orange that just made something inside you want to reach out, lie down and take it all in. It was cold at night in the UK, it was colder in Peru mind.. but all I remember of it was when the kids in my class used to knock on the Potato Shed door and ask if I wanted to come out and sit by them next to the bonfire. In the storms we used to watch sheet lightning light up the sky and wonder if things would ever really go back to normal.

They always do.. but I like to think its things like that which change us, I’d love to travel some more.. I just love throwing everything away and being a part of something or somebodys life. The year before I went to India and one girl I was with cried over missing her boyfriend and her hair-straighteners. Thats all she could take from the experiance.. I’m not saying I don’t miss things back home but.. to just give to someone and go to a place so far removed from what you know. Its the poor which can teach us the most about how we should live our own lives in the western world. They might be shorter than you, they might not be as smart it could seem.. but they know how to live and they’ll always be stronger than you.

I think the worlds lucky to have such people, what gets at me is the state of people in the west. We’re so far detached from reality in our ivory towers that we’ll never really get to the point where were not simply breathing but actually living the lives we were meant to live. Instead we focus artificial goals and studies which allow us to invent some purpose or land marks in our lifetime which could suggest progression. If the Humanist believes purely in guiding light of human being, would the human race still continue without the west? without me, John Smith or you? Is technology (hm..) our tower of Babel? the ultimate point in human standing? Would we still be then human? The most human ‘beings’ I’ve seen are those while backpacking.

I personally feel we’ll never reach the distant stars.. if their was a means we’re not educated or wise enough to attain it. What if this little clod of dirt is all the existence humans will ever know? I’m not sure who said it but I know he was old and he said ‘If I knew I’d end up this old I’d have taken better care of myself’ ..well we’re not getting any younger and history has only served to tell us that the stupid and the strongest will prevail. (Thats what irks me about Darwin.) Ultimately though will this serve to blight any future us or future generations might have? People completely unrelated to global warming are paying the price now.. how will others do so in the future?

There is a means, but if anythings to happen its got to found in a sincere and loving change of heart.. and to be honest today that isn’t fashionable. Its sad that its cool to shrink our ecological footprint whilst we wouldn’t be seen dead spending time with the homeless. I dunno why I write but I realise I’ve had over 400 views on this page and I hope anyone who’s read this.. atleast in some small way begins to change an attitude or atleast encourage a further change in the world they know. If it was easy.. we would never have any problems.. thing is it’s easier to invest in self interest and even if you don’t pay the price of such actions by others one day you will and people will continue to do so unless they begin to truely love (its about giving not taking) their life. Otherwise.. well a pretty convincing case that we really are just biological autonoma. But you know love to any measure, all I’m asking is to think about living a life which makes that love open to everyone and everything.. but stuff like thats never easy, or never popular if its ever seen to be genuine. You can choose.

Moving House.

Well this is the first night in my new house, I moved from Wallisdown to Winton which has solved a whole number of issues I had going on. It’s taking some getting used to but I like the warmer feel my room has, also the plus that my Highschool mate Will now lives just two streets away now is pretty awesome too.

Haven’t really done much apart from that but I’m now apparently the Project Manager of our group work project which to be honest leaves me with mixed feelings. I don’t want to let people down but.. at the same time I feel I can do this and pull the group together to put this all up in time for the deadline. The Fairytale we’ve chosen to modernise being Rumplestiltskin. We’re all from different backgrounds and all have different skills means if we play our cards right we should be able to do this without too much trouble.. but alot of hard work.

I’ve also been thinking about the way I’ve been approaching these entriess, yesterday I found myself being pretty critical of all this. The problem with blogs is in the initial post, it’s a monologue and sometimes thats all blogs are. I always used to rattle this in the face of those who wrote with such biased in their work but I realise I’m a victim of this. With a monologue theres no resistance, its a sandbox which unfortunately people take as a token stance on reality. Its a perception but one out of space, out of time.. the author 5 minutes after writing that could even change their mind. We’re social beings but ultimately to anyone else the only thing we are to them is a Voice (Buber called this the I – It relationship). I even began to see myself questioning my view of Post Modernism, I’m still against it as an ideology but I realise it does in some sense acurately address the paradigm shift we had witnessed since the modernist era. While this thinking to some degree brought liberation it has also done its bit.. I feel in terms of the state of the world today and Western cultures general perception to all of this.

I could say more, I want to say more but I’m wary of how my personal beliefs are held and to be honest would rather hear others speak on questions they have about stuff than me start prattlin’ on about something for the reader to simply disregard as another rant. I guess I’m experiancing difficulty in connecting as after all this time away which has fostered my own monologue that now I return to ‘real life’ (I enjoy it all.. but I’m not sure I’d refer to myself as alive right at this moment in time) I’ve had difficulty connecting to the Student Lifestyle and also the token worldview which people seem to have. Perhaps its just my focus is on this, I just feel it’d be good for me to talk about some of the things I feel.. in a way which wouldn’t offend other people.. and I don’t mean in the response ‘thats good.. but it just doesn’t work for me’ I mean.. whats the point in pluralism or relativism? ‘Thats nice.. but it doesn’t work for me’ is to a degree to say all views are equal.. yet subconciously people have already decided that the view in question is wrong and that theirs is right.. relativism nullifys itself in this sense making it a mute point. But a process carried out none the less.. it also fosters a sense of apathy over time in wider bodies which really gets my goat.

I just remember thinking about how universitys were meant to be sites of controversial ideas, resistance and empowerment to younger generations but.. well maybe that only happens in books.. or history. Some people say at the moment whats in fashion is post modernism for all this.. either way maybe it only reinforces how out of touch i feel to everything else around me. I don’t even know if people read this in any number, its a monologue.. but feel free to critique it.. or think on it.. again, you probably realise this has been bugging me for awhile now..

Cloning

Well this is something I just felt like talking about.. Cloning and the issues of identity it might pose.

If I was to be cloned and I was to be have an exact copy who would I be? Would I be I? Or would I really be a It which never really realised this until now? Some people today feel that the I would cease to exist.. now this might be some ground breaking new debate but its already beginning to sound alot like that not so new idea of ‘nature vs nurture’ or the whole issue with twins.

Even if my clone somehow had my memories what would this constitute? That nothings really real? All that exists in this world is broken down into electrical impulses? Well again we seem to be crossing into another issue and thats subjectivity or rather the pseudo-religion people seem to find in science.

Everyone knew Dolly, yet I doubt many people know much about the original. The fact the clone was way more famous than this ordinary sheep seems to suggest there was something very different about this sheep.. when infact.. they were actually the same sheep. However.. thats biologically, socially this sheep had alot more going for it in its origins and experiances than its parent so really the sheep wasn’t all too similiar to its parent after all? The fact they share the same DNA is really perhaps as groundbreaking as suggesting that play-dough negates any notion of authenticity and self or that people knicked the bricks of old castles for houses. Thing is if I was to point to a house which had bricks used in a castle once.. it’d still be that same house.. the banana some kid makes out of play-dough is still a banana to the kid even if it had been a blob the minute before. I’m still Keith even if I got cloned.. giving my clone the same name does nothing to magically make it me, even if it had my memories, even if it replaced me it would not be me.. becuase the original would of.. well I guess died if the clone replaced me. To believe the clone would be me do is a different topic.. one of perception, one which goes back.. ages.

Infact I think a better topic when using the world cloning is better suited to rape of the self we see apparent in a culture of consuming. We’re all individuals!.. just like everyone else and this is expressed by buying into our culture of consumerism and each of our independant interests which makes us so unique but.. not only is this ultimately selfish and as a result of society self destructive via consumerism and a focus on our self but.. before we know it we seem to express exactly the same ritualistic and habitual patterns. Its the other side of cloning.. biologically we look different but our life dynamics, impact and view on particular issues happen to be ultimately the same in this meltdown we call modern society. Is that what postmodernism in the media grants us? The inclusion of all things, now lets get together and burn this mother ****er to the ground while we dance around the fire celebrating every moment of it? Some people might actually ‘well actually.. yes that is it and its great!’, I just feel.. you play with fire.. even if its your own you’ll get burnt.. and when the fire happens to be society your gonna incinerate yourself and everything it touches. Ever heard of the Midas Touch? Our inwards looking lifestyle is only going to last so long, and when it collapses we’re going to turn and look at the outside world and realised that due to our actions (or inaction) it withered long before our little fantasy land went tits up.

Utopia.. for me the notion that some people hold it and believe that people can bring it about is a waking nightmare.

Joseph Stalin quoted something that at the same seemed totally irrelevant but to me it makes a lot of sense now “No Man, No problem”

Albert Einstien builds on my view of this “Aslong as their are men their shall be wars”

Are these wars purely physical? or social and personal? If your inclined even spiritual?

Utopia, the perfect paradise on earth.. a place with no problems. Utopia is a wasteland where we will be dead either literally or figuratively.. breathing but really not alive.. some people think Utopia is found in Transhumanity.. another rant for another time. If PostModernism seeks to unite us to find a way of living with such a ‘place’ in mind then it is truely bankrupt and criminally dangerous to peoples health. They’ll be a crunch point.. maybe even not that with the way our perceptions are shaped in todays society via the media, I just hope we don’t submit quietly to this all. Simply thinking its a trendy, politically correct and a most importantly easy and a relatively problem/thinking free way of living our lives..

Out of Class Assignment

This is ‘Arthur Rackham, Bros. Grimm’s The Old Woman In The Wood (1920)

‘ Given an assignment; we were to select a number of approaches to the story of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’. Directly this image is perhaps the most obscure but the story in essence is the same it seems. Our assignment however is to ‘According to your interpretations, break the narrative of the image apart into ‘nodes’ of action/events and come up with alternative ‘interactive’ variations to this narrative of the group’s own choosing. How would you be able to play with or tell an alternative story interactively? ‘

…?

Well in our group we discussed how we were meant to interpret this brief and figured that we should examine the image. In turn suggesting how various parts of the image could be interpreted. Thinking on this in turn we should also perhaps of suggested how this could of affected the story. (Being honest though I don’t really know what I’m doing!)

*They’re holding hands suggesting some sort of attachement. I guess what connects in my mind is the case where people are buried under tree’s. The Shawshank Redemption suggests another connection as a place of importance where the hero recalls making love under the tree to his wife/girlfriend. Does the image suggest the lover returning to the tree and remembering someone away or departed. The memory of such a person returning to them or keeping them company? You could build a story out of it, would this be the end? or the beginning? It could really fit anywhere into a story. Also.. citing my quickly becoming fave among artists Edvard Munch.. ‘From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity. ‘

*Is ‘Treebeard’ (I’ll call him that) trapped in this state by fate. Does the girl realising the princes plight turn her back on him? More trouble than he’s worth etc.? This is literally expressed in the image, theres intimacy perhaps showing the relationship but while he’s turning towards her she’s faced away.. she liked him but perhaps not that much.

*The pair stand alone in a field, given the story title this shows some sort of detachment from the origin which might come in at some point. The image shows the prince’s situation but he’s not in the wind and in a way seems.. removed from the scale of time as.. although we associate what we see with the story content. The environment is different from one might expect.. in a way though highlighting the dynamic and content of the plot in a way summarising up the story as although theres an old woman in the story.. the story isn’t about the old woman its about the couple and how they’re brought together. In terms of interactive content though perhaps this is a mute point if the storyline is decided by the individual although I could argue that this displays the story free from the constraints of its narrative as in this image the entire dynamics of the story could be contained. Isn’t that what classical art was more or less based on, a scene telling a story?

*The Girl looks intimidated is this through something which is happening, or something which she’s expecting to happen? (could this be a point of interactivity, the option over the origin of her response and her actions as a result?)

*The Tree surprised the girl, its obvious its not what it appears. What sort of thing is he? Thinking about the idea of Rumplestiltskin, he promised to take the girl in the storys child. This goes with the belief in changelings such creatures might replace children with. He appears human but isn’t.. if this was interactive would the tree be a cursed prince in the story.. or really just a changeling demon type figure? *Treebeard here is awefully spindly and alot taller than the girl, does this somehow makes him superior to the girl? Is he malicious in that or is it something else more innocent?

*If its interactive the various points of change could be a point of.. is he changing into a tree? or changing from a tree? I’m really not sure how to address this..!