The day, however, wasn't wasted

As I found this

Waste of a Night

Tonight’s history-making election debate: what a load of shit. The country is in a rancid state, from journalism through parliament to education, fundamentally fucked, and our politicians are just play-acting, hoodwinking for a living. No doubt they have their genuine emotions (well Clegg and Brown do, Cameron is almost a total automaton) but listening to them play their games is just wearying. The digital economy bill brought a lot of things to light. The highly immoral and backward-looking bill (in favour of major labels and old-fashioned industry over the music lover and modern internet/technology-embracing ingenuity) was forced through parliament in the “wash up” process (the time before election which allows the easy passing through of apparently “un-contentious” bills), after lobbyists/industry leaders and party leaders basically instructed MPs to vote in favour of it. The few MPs who were independently-minded enough to turn up at meetings to debate it anyway were lonely figures, and then on the day final day of voting their uncaring colleagues (these are the people responsible for the well-being of our societies) wandered in from lunch after the MPs who were against it had already spoken to cast their votes as if nothing mattered. Then David Cameron announced his plans to let “society emerge over government” (which likely translates into privatising everything), but how can government expect society to take responsibility when its MPs can’t even (and are not even encouraged to) think for themselves on such matters? The country is a vacuum of industry-led drones with only hints of happiness and consumer dreams to brighten their days, and the government has let it happen with their hypocritical approach to democracy. It’s not going to change by caring too much, and writing self-defeating shit like this. The end. Waste of a night.

A Monkey on a Rock

I attempted to cheer up a friend on a blog post today, promised her she'd be happy sooner than she thinks. But is that really true? And what is happiness anyway? Who's to say I'm not happy here, churning out poem after poem on a lost love and intimacy while the outside world drones along? It's just the intimation of something that hovers over the lovers, sucking up our juices. The loved one gets fat, the lover withers, but sooner rather than later the veil comes off, and at least in being lost in love you've been on a journey.

Maybe it's an illusion of the ego to think a love (singular) is ever lost anyway. There is a feeling that the word is never the thing, and if you trace a line back to innocence and sharing, it always ends when the word and thought becomes the thing.

And maybe love is never the property of one person, maybe the thing we're mourning is our own objectivity, in which love and friendship could flourish. I know in the height of the greatest feelings I've felt I've always felt a foreboding, an awareness that the ego is ready to make it a subjective thing, and as soon as this happens, you're as alone as a monkey on a rock.

The sun is shining and thoughts are playing in happy contradiction.

Your Soul's Been Bought, and You're Inwardly Crying

I sat down with my housemate to watch tv today, and she didn't even bat an eyelid at this quote: "George Clooney has been such a part of showbiz life for the past 30 years, it's hard to conceive of a time when he didn't exist."

I turned around expecting a glance in empathy at the ridiculousness, but nothing came. Have to get out. I've also had bad dreams about arguing with her, which presumably come from the distant thought of what could happen if I really told her what I thought of certain things sometimes, not that she's not nice, and I'd ever want to offend her. I'd love to help her. She's a loveless 34 year-old, a casualty of this culture, and through her I feel I'm constant witness to its ways and false dreams.

Then after this, back at the Clooney-fest, at the show-stopping quote of "a lot of people don't remember that George was married for a few years", I actually felt her associating herself with him through this hideous piece of hack television and comparing her life with his. Meanwhile her gay friend was arranging a date on the internet and cringing in a cliched camp fashion at the same time at the dreadfulness of it all. Where did it all go wrong? My housemate said she fancies Simon Cowell tonight too, whilst messing about talking to dickheads on match.com. Cowell is a spiritual paedophile. He commits dirty acts in the dreams of youth. My housemate is the essence of the respectable professional who funds his actions. If she had kids they'd be the next generation of male hairdressers. I can see the monster sprouting new branches all the time.

I love this house, but sometimes it dawns on me that I'm in the wrong place. Is anyone in the right place?

It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people doesn't add up to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand

Something happened to me today on the walk back to half moon house, and I vowed I'd meet someone beautiful who could help me get a friend back. I don't know yet if that's a healthy thing to have vowed. I've not known what part of my morality was in question over the last few weeks, just that there was something that went wrong in something I did with all good intentions (I'm not a person who has any bad intentions or any conceit), that brought everything we'd ever shared into question. Everything has been in question for me personally too since it happened, my background, my tendencies, my whole personality and my creative tendencies, and for the fist time ever I've thought of class issues. The difference in status and duty in a friendship between someone who's rebelled for their liberation, "higher thoughts" and maturity, and someone for whom it's come more easily, almost by birth (my friend / ex-friend was at least brought up in a more open and sympathetic emotional/intellectual environment). Did I feel this implicit duty to quieten myself in relation to my friend in order to protect her due to inferiority, and did this cause the problem? Did our relationship always have the seed of this problem, and should I have realised it beforehand? Ironically, something born out of beauty and innocence could have also been in danger through too much of it on my part, after all, I was the elder of us, by far, and should have been aware of it. Nothing truly comes together at the moment though, it's just a severe bout of self-consciousness, an emotional nightmare, in which my whole creative self moves towards a positive conclusion, fuelled by the loss of somebody I love, and the questioning by her of the very nature of that love, and I think I have to let all these thoughts pass before any positive insights come. At the moment my most positive gesture is in silence.*

In other news I've not heard from the university yet. The Indelicates gig I went to on Friday was something I identified with completely, like I haven't done in many gigs over the last year. It was individual poetry, uncompromised intellect and fantastic music. They should be boring, but are totally enthralling, an uncompromising musical and poetical vision drifting lonely in an alternative culture of half-felt, ego-fuelled notions. Not that I have a chip on my shoulder. I'm still spending money on the rent in Cardiff, when of course I should be saving. And the moon for the first time since I've been in Cardiff (or maybe it's just the first time that I've noticed) is not sitting perfectly on the horizon at the end of our street, it's just moved slightly to the right.

*This is not a romantic relationship issue, it's a friend issue.

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.

Spilling thoughts to bring in the new

I was speaking to a friend on the benefits of a blog when he came to Cardiff on the weekend. I recommended he keep one because of his situation at the moment. He's new to London, and in living with a nice but delusional artist with aspirations of making it to pop stardom from the burlesque scene, is quite isolated. It's a good way to air your innermost thoughts, rather than let them curl up and die in that environment, and can be the adult equivalent of an imaginary friend that a child would conjure in times of need, only with a blog there's always the chance of some recognition for what you say, which also makes for the chance of making new links from your own thoughts and passions, which can only be good.

Which brings me to why I started mine, as an ode to upcoming changes, and also as somewhere to air simple words, sadness and joys that would maybe have gone to a friend who may not be there any more, thanks to many twists of fate, and some existential anguish on my part.

I had my first case of blogger's block last week, when I'd written some things from current pre-occupations of mine and didn't post them. My creative impulse has been seeking to heal certain things, and in not airing them, and with so many new thoughts waiting to come through, yesterday I felt like I had mentally stagnated. So today I'll spend an hour letting them go, before heading to London to a Night of Indiepop Legends, starring Darren Hayman and Amelia Fletcher, and then checking out the open day at the School Of Oriental Studies tomorrow.