Duet on Religion

Wow, I visited the School of Oriental and African Studies in London for an Open Day yesterday, and maybe I shouldn't have. Now I'm going to be gutted if I don't get in. The morning started with a view out of Paul's elaborate artiste's den onto the most traffic I'd ever seen before brushing my teeth, progressed past a minor skirmish with a sullen and rude bus driver who looked at me like I had a rat in my mouth, up a record-breaking 177 steps from London's deepest underground station, onto Russell Square.

A duet on an African xylophone in the university theatre opened the day, then after, things that stood out included a market with hand-made goods in the Green Room; the posters strewn carelessly round the walls of the student bar, announcing everything from environmental talks to indie gigs; the library that takes up the top two tears, making a playground of the East; the art gallery with a selection of Eastern religious bits and bobs; and the fact revealed by the girl who took us around - Rehana, that there's a Hare Krishna temple nearby, the disciples of which provide the students here with vegetarian food once a week, should they be strapped for cash. Keep my place in that queue! There's not many places where this would seem right, but SOAS earns its chips (or veg) by being a genuinely alternative, intellectually and spiritually worthy university, or so it seems.

The subject I've applied for as my lone choice (Study of Religions) seems like everything I'd hoped it to be. The lecturer, a very nice and sensitive German lady, pointed out the importance of the plurality of "religions", explaining how the coarse at SOAS is unique because it doesn't just start and end with Christianity or any mainstream religion or conventional viewpoint, it doesn't start or end with anything, it's structured to let the individual take their own journey through cultures old and new, which I feel would be a joy to participate in for the next three years.

I spoke to Paul after about a lot of stuff. He mentioned something about the private sector vs. the public sector, how the private sector functions on hierarchy, and how the public centre is more democracy driven, and I thought too how people from certain backgrounds, not geared to intellectual participation, are not meant really to be haunting such hallowed halls as SOAS, and this is why I can get lost in dreams and be a bit hesitant sometimes, as I was after listening to the lecturer explain things to the class. I left right after the presentaton without following other potential students up to ask questions, and fought an inner conflict with myself as to why I didn't ask anything later. I reasoned that I was completely won over, and that's why I didn't have any questions, but maybe I should have been sharper, and need to start actively participating more. My parents were as loving as any parents could possibly be, but being from the industrial (though beautiful) South Wales valleys, I was probably destined for hierarchies and insularity like everyone else, and now that this new, more open world is in reach, as Paul said, I have to reach out and grab it, become more participative, only without becoming an arsehole, hopefully.

My dreaming during the lecturer's presentation by the way consisted of this: I was thinking that religion has always been something that develops from the individual spark. It throws up pretty ceremonies, traditions, superstitions and rituals, but never mind how pretty and ceremonious they are, they're always deductive, in coming from that individual spark but not "being it"; and I suppose "prettiness" and ceremony can be misinterpreted by the idealistic human beast, and can lead him on a merry dance, which might be why the world is so full of sorrows. I was thinking too that in its most negative sense religion is the poet's original words taken as building blocks to create and maintain empires; while in its most positive sense it's the poet's words warming the heart of individuals, and bringing them closer to their real, effortless selves and to others around them. Does every ceremony or "movement" of religion contain these two opposites? It'd be fascinating to get the chance to study it in all its complexity, at a university like SOAS. But in saying this I'm destined to be told to fuck off back to the mountains when the decision is made, where I'll likely collect string for the rest of my life.

Meet me on Half Moon Street (with somebody else’s money that we can spend)

I think another urge to this blog is I've been so obsessed by the "spiritual/poetical" in the last year, which all started (maybe) after being taken by the novels of Hermann Hesse when I was far too young for it to be sensible. Not that it's been bad. But something sad (but beautiful) (and secret) that happened recently has led to me wanting to calm down. Even in my writing: to write about real everyday stuff, and my life, is a need. I feel over the last two years of living in the city the thread that made everything so simple and wonderful had just run a little thin, and I'd like to make it thicker again.

Tonight I'm in Cardiff, my housemates/friends are going out for a dinner but I can't afford it. I'd like to go but plan on staying in, watching the snooker, which has kept me busy for the last few weeks of being ill with a cold, then ear infection. I'm thinking about giving notice on my room at the house on Albany rd, Cardiff. I love it here, the house is beautiful with lots of the original features, woodwork and glass, with high ceilings that I love, and I now have two grainy, warm paintings of Old London to put up on my wall in my room, which go perfectly with the long Chinese rice-paper scroll a friend sent me a couple of years ago, which is spread across two walls in order for it to fit in.

If I gave the house up I'd miss it, and miss having the space it gives me away from home. But it is a bit of an indulgence at the moment considering that I don't even work in Cardiff, only spend weekends and the odd weekday here, and am paying 260 pound (no pound sign on my laptop :( ) per month for rent, and need to save as I'm hoping to go to university in the summer.

The best advice I've had so far is to leave it a month or two so that I know more about university (I've applied to the School of Oriental and African Studies in London), but that would mean a couple of months of guilt at not saving. I'll see what happens, but have to decide in the next few days whether to stay another month, as this month's rent is due and I have to give notice now if I don't want to hang on here any longer, and pay next month's. Another reason I'm delaying it I think is incase the London university doesn't accept me and I end up going through clearing and, maybe, studying in Cardiff, which is an outside chance. With this being my first house away from home, I've been spoilt, and it'd be hard to find a place as good, and as cheap, in such a nice a street, with such a well-positioned moon! (see post below)

Had a nice night out with friends here last night, catching up on everything as I hadn't seen everyone since the Christmas break. Spoke to Doctor Will for ages on film, a girl who used to live at the house, who likes her indie music more than my other current housemates, has just moved back in, and she was out with a friend of hers, Jess, who I spoke to of pagan culture (she had a the pagan emblem tatood [subtly] on her shoulder and had an interesting pagan upbringing in the historic Welsh town Machynlleth!), so that all made me further hesitate on giving up the house. Back home I'd miss that sense of newness I get here.

Today I listened to a radio program I downloaded ages ago off Connie's blog, lots of wonderful female lyricists and a magic old-style Pop song by a band called The Orchids (not the more modern indiepop band), but a 60s girl group. Connie mentioned how good it is that back in those days 14 year old girls in bands could actually look like fourteen year old girls, and this song has that pure expression and joy that has been sadly lost in "pop" as the mainstream now has it.

Listening to Connie do her program filled me with excitement at what's ahead too, if I did get to London. It'll be great to just live permanently in the city, as a student, not having to go home to work all the time, and there'd just be an endless amount of things to pursue in the spare time. I'd live the DiY dream. I feel I came to Cardiff very naive, needing to learn some harsh truths. I needed some dreams to break so my real ones could come through stronger (I spent a shocking few months at the end of last year as a promotions manager of a club here, which broke most of what was breakable). I could just give myself up to studies and let everything else happen outside of that, knowing that my future is being taken care while I'm doing it. If that isn't an embarrassing thought.