28 June 2007

Insomnia


We are praying for something else now; have become something else ourselves. For even at the point at which it all falls apart, when the battle is lost, when our fate is sealed, when the wound is fresh and we already know we will bear the scars forever- even then – we cannot help but hope.

There are no words, she says, and proceeds to fill the room with words, talking endlessly. The words rise up out of her and fill the room. They break away from each other and dissolve into nothingness. They circle me, strangle me. She speaks for me so I don’t have to, and I am grateful for her words.

Now, as then, what I feel cannot be expressed in language. It is a look, a touch, a curiosity, a desire, a warmth, an understanding, a gut feeling. There are no words for me any more; I don’t know how to put them back together, need the comfort still of their barrier.

Speak

I can’t.

26 June 2007

Blair's Legacy

To follow shortly. My evil new laptop is rebelling against me in that blood-pressure elevating manner that can only be the work of modern technology. I am working on it... we can't let our Tone step down from office without passing comment... and judgment.

D x

Coming Soon...


In a somewhat grotesque parody of a popular American TV sitcom, I shall shortly be launching a spin-off blog from The Girls Online. It will focus on my experience as a Jewish singleton living in London. Yes, I KNOW I seem like an unlikely authority on this subject; my relationship history may as well be renamed a non-relationship history, I am the most cynical, unromantic and commitment-phobic girl I know, and following my recent 5-minute foray into internet dating, have called off the search and closed my window.

However, what I do have, aside from nearly 20 years of dating experiences and many tales – some amusing, some tragic – is an insatiable interest in and curiosity about the world and the people around me. Each person and experience in my life has (I hope) taught me something new and forced me to examine my own identity: as a woman, as a Jew, as a friend, a lover, a sexual being and a thinking person.

The new blog will examine some of these issues further, and will also explore other themes. Can women “have it all”? (short answer – no) Why, when I am so good at forming and maintaining relationships in general (it has been my key strength in my career for example) am I so incapable of having a serious relationship with a man? What internal identity struggles are forced to the surface by the whole (non-?)Jewish dating scene? How much of where we end up in our lives – and specifically with whom we end up – is down to social pressure and sheer fear of being “alone”?

And, in a fun twist, I have persuaded (bullied?!) a male friend to share the blog space with me, in an attempt to balance out the viewpoints. For as I said to someone last week, I’m not one for crude categorisations, and I rally against arguments based on biological essentialism, but honestly, sometimes, when it comes to men being a complete mystery to me, the evidence is sometimes overwhelming…

Watch this space.

24 June 2007

Birthday Brunch and Postmodern Identity Crisis



I am running down the rain-soaked streets, destroying the bottoms of my Juicy tracksuit (why is it they never drag on the pavement when it’s not raining heavily?). I am late, although thankfully, for the first Sunday in weeks, not hungover. The doormen swing open the heavy doors, and I stumble into the Wolseley and stand at the entrance, dripping wet and trying to catch my breath. From the middle of the room, Evil Bitch Sister No 1 (EBS 1) is glaring disapprovingly at my umbrella (captioned heavily with the words “Groovy Chick”) and looking as though she wants to kill me. We are here to celebrate my mother’s birthday.

D!” trills my mother. “How lovely of you to finally join us!” The false jollity is a transparent dig at my timekeeping. "Let me look at you – I was beginning to forget what you look like, hahaha." (Note: I recently conducted an experiment to prove that, contrary to her perception, she is the one who never calls me, and if I neglect to call her for a couple of weeks, we will not be in touch at all. It has clearly backfired on me now.)

“You’re looking so much healthier,” she continues. “You were looking very gaunt earlier this year, and I was desperately worried. Now you look more… robust [ie you’re getting fat again] and you’ve got your colour back” [ie sunburned from runs in Regent’s Park]. I knew it! My thighs are ballooning!

EBS 1 smirks triumphantly behind her carrot juice, but says nothing: she is in a rare good mood at the moment, having successfully managed to manipulate and extort money out of my mother to buy a flat in West Hampstead.

I bury my head in the overpriced menu, wondering how – in a macrobiotic-friendly restaurant – I am still unable to find anything suitable to eat. I am already hot with irritation, and I remove my Juicy jacket to reveal a Little Miss Naughty T-Shirt. EBS 1 and EBS 2 squirm with embarrassment. “You look ridiculous,” hisses EBS 1. “You’re far too old to get away with that top,” says EBS 2. My mother looks despairingly at me. “Oh! You have some white hairs!” she exclaims, patting her immaculate blonde bob, as several people on surrounding tables look over to examine the growing visible signs of my aging process.

My mother is one of those irritating people who has never smoked and doesn’t drink, rarely exercises, has a largely stress-free lifestyle, still enjoys biscuits late at night, but has never had cellulite, and with the right make-up, can still pass for 47. She is 62. Unfortunately, I take after my father, who smoked 40 cigarettes a day, was an outrageous workaholic, lived on about 3 hours sleep a night and constantly over-committed himself to different causes. He was once mistaken for a pensioner by a pharmacist when he was still in his 40s.

“Now listen, D,” she continues, and I can tell from her tone that she is on a mission. The object of her last mission broke my heart, and she has been warned repeatedly to abandon her matchmaking attempts.

“I spoke to Auntie D last week, and she couldn’t believe that you live round the corner from her and still haven’t been round to them for dinner! She’d like you to come next Friday night. There’ll be lots of nice young people there!” EBS 2 makes funny faces at me in between bites of pain au chocolat. We all know what “nice young people” means, and she is grateful to have escaped from my mother’s latest matchmaking mission.

The mere mention of Auntie D is enough to induce a panic attack in me. Pushing 80, the woman is a walking warning against surgical intervention. The skin on her face is so tightly stretched, it is a wonder she can still talk; in fact she has such a prohibitive lisp, it is hard to understand a word she says, although her voice is certainly loud enough. Her yellow bouffant hair is more visible than the sun on a clear, bright day, her inch-thick make-up is so exaggerated that I would not be surprised if she were outed as a transvestite, and her intoxicating perfume poses more threat to the environment than any inland carbon footprinted aeroplane journey. My memories of family get-togethers are tainted not only with her presence, but with her insistence on informing me and everyone else present that I was very fat and needed to lose weight. Apparently now I am thin enough to merit a place at her dinner table, where I will inevitably be presented to a panel of (in)eligible Jewish bachelors.

This time, I don’t have the energy to fight my mum on this one. My dating website experiences as well as my mum’s attempts to marry me off make me think of what Jacqueline Rose wrote in the introduction to her brilliant book, States of Fantasy. I often think of this: she referred to the postmodern identity crisis; belonging “everywhere and nowhere at the same time”. This is how I feel. I know on paper I’m a “nice Jewish girl” (as long as I have edited certain details on that paper, hahaha!), but the suburban sell-out dream that will be waiting for me at Auntie D’s Friday night dinner table will just not do it for me.

It’s a funny place to be. I have just fought my way through the most difficult 6 months of my life, and have come through intact: a little bruised and still cynical, but stronger, self-confidence intact, still optimistic and still curious and excited about life, grateful for the many relationships in my life and all the opportunities I am fortunate to have. I have learned an enormous amount about myself over the last 6 months. I am looking forward to starting my new job on Tuesday. Everything is falling into place. I belong everywhere…

…and yet I also belong nowhere.

23 June 2007

Fragments and Perspectives


I am very nervous about posting this item. It is taken from the novel I am writing. I would be interested to hear readers' feedback (thegirlsonline@gmail.com).

__________________


Where there is language there is often silence, and where no words are spoken, a thousand meanings resonate. Mixed meanings, sometimes. Misunderstandings.

There were no expectations, no over-hyped anticipation, just a feeling, a knowing, like the time I was summoned to The House, and I knew the announcement before it was made. I had sat down in the annex and written it, written my response, purged it from my system. So I was calm. And when we came face to face, we continued from where we had left off, which was nowhere – and yet everywhere. Like the announcement, like The Pond, like standing on the balcony in Israel: it was meant to be, and it was part of me. It was an oceanic feeling, and it was like the ocean; vast, clear, natural, sparkling, and just there. But hidden beneath, there is a destructive anger that can consume and kill and leave you helpless and drowning.

The words in The Rooms are all the same. We share the same Story, the same history, but the contexts differ. Although I am silent, my story is spoken for me in The Rooms.

My context is The Pond.

I experience my hunger now as something beyond a physical presence. I carry it inside me. It is there in my heart, scratching the wound that has not yet healed. It is there when I wake, there when I sleep, when I walk, talk, think, breathe… it is an ache, a yearning, a desire, and it engulfs me completely. It comes from the place in which I store my memories, my language, the feelings associated with that time. It is my temps perdu, and it has returned to haunt me.

She is emphatic: The soul does not leave the body until after the death. I don’t believe her, though. I know that we received an unspoken message beside The Pond.

It was beside The Pond that she took my hands, looked deep into my eyes and promised me that it wouldn’t happen. It did. 3 weeks later. It was driving alongside The Pond that I threw a lit cigarette out the window and it missed and lay on the back seat of the car, burning a hole in the upholstery, and I panicked and turned around and forgot to steer and almost crashed the car. Another time, I was driving past The Pond, circling restlessly because I hadn’t heard any news, and she called me and told me that it might happen, it might just happen, and she couldn’t bear to speak the words; her voice was barely a whisper and when I made her repeat them, she shouted them out. The words bounced off the surface off The Pond, like a painful bellyflop, and slapped me in the face. I nearly crashed the car that time too.

I want to be you, I think. I want to inhabit your body and your soul. I want to be in your life and to be your life.

Always a drama, by The Pond. When we were undercover, trying to be inconspicuous, and they found us and took us away, the sirens blaring. In the storm, navigating our way around in bare feet with no umbrella.

When he pulls me close to him, the outside world melts away. There is no sense of time, of past, present or future, no loss, no pain, no lack, no hunger, nothing to purge. There is only the here and now of the embrace. I am light, unburdened, unencumbered. As in the hospital room, nothing else exists; nothing else matters. This is all there is. Just… this.

The Pond is my link to the past, I think. Water is another transcendental element. Natural, powerful, flowing. It washes away. It extinguishes my fire. It can drown…

I have left my body. My soul is somewhere else. The hunger is now nausea, like an abjection waiting to happen, that I cannot control, that does not happen somehow. I cannot feel my body; neither sexually, nor physically; neither as too much, nor too little. It is melting away, but without my knowledge or consciousness. It is changing; I am changing.

22 June 2007

Cynicism and Hope


Big shout goes out to my (male, platonic) friend J, who I am sure will still be on a break from his billable hours reading this blog by the time I publish this note. I emphasise the platonic quality (much to his amusement, I'm sure) as this seems to be the only type of male relationship I can manage (although ironically, we were mistaken for a couple last night - I am still giggling about that!).


I do cherish the ever-dwindling pool of platonic male friends in my life who have not sold out to the NW London suburban dream (or who at least feel guilty and ambivalent about it if they have!) and who struggle to reconcile their successful careers with their desire for intellectual and moral integrity. Few men I know would "get" some of the items we publish on this blog, and if I were to meet a man I thought would be able to understand, chances are I would be very, very interested in him, and would be too petrified to open myself up to the extent that I would share the blog with him.


These platonic male friends are great. As I said to J just now, being friends with him definitely helps me to understand men, because I can see how men can have all these great qualities (above), yet be just a little less sorted when it comes to women - and that doesn't make them bastards. And the rest of them - as Saab Man proves - are probably gay. Or involved with someone else.


Our lives didn't become more complicated, F. Years of experience and knocks have eroded our innocence and turned us into cynics.


I'm kind of still secretly harbouring a certain fantasy, though...

21 June 2007

Revelations


Saab man is gay. But he also indulges in "recreational straight snogging." As D had cause to sigh only a few weeks ago, since when did our lives get so complicated? His jacket is still on the floor of my office, awaiting our next meeting...

20 June 2007

I'm So Sad...


... I really am. I have just spent the last two and a half hours writing notes and a whole bloody essay on an art exhibition, which not only will no one read, but for which I won't even be rewarded a grade! And this was meant to be a day of relaxation for me!


I need a stiff drink. Now. Which I can't have, as I'm on another detox.

A Bit of Kulcha


Today, I engaged in a cultural activity that did not involve my usual (academic, you understand) analysis of how the High Street has interpreted the latest catwalk fashions. I took myself off to the Tate Britain, to see the How We Are: Photographing Britain exhibition.

The exhibition itself was very patchy; some of it was very carelessly put together, parts of it bordered on social offensiveness (in terms both of what it omitted and what it chose to include out of political correctness), and some of it was outstandingly wonderful. My cultural outing was marred only by a sweaty man with terrible body odour and halitosis, who kept getting too close and breathing heavily on me, and having to be ushered outside for half an hour when the fire alarm went off. (I find fire alarms really bloody irritating. I always refuse to leave my desk at work during fire drills, and once, the office services manager had to forcibly remove me from the building, because I was trying to close a deal with a client who was about to go on his honeymoon and I thought the contract was more important than standing in the street, while self-important jobsworths paced up and down in fluorescent yellow waistcoats (in broad daylight!) barking orders. But anyway, I digress.)

I adore photography, which has rightfully earned respect as a form of art in itself, as well as serving as integral historical documentary and an important journalistic form. I did feel that the exhibition could have made more of this. Focusing chronologically from 1840 until the present day, I thought that the era divisions were a little random. The first part of the exhibition seemed to look more at early photographic technologies and themes, and it only became more socially, politically and culturally exploratory later on.

Its opening claims that “[t]he unique story of British photography exposes a strong social conscience, a love of the ordinary, an intense curiosity and the constant need to record” were overblown and over-generalised: doesn’t all photography necessarily do this?? I also found the idea that the photography represented “a constantly shifting notion of British identity” bordering on offensive. First of all, the only Britishness in the exhibition seemed to be Englishness(!) and secondly, I didn’t feel that the exhibition explored this theme enough. In many ways, much of the exhibition had been thrown together randomly.

In 2 of the sections, the explanatory blurb boasted of the proliferation of women photographers very early on, which was pointless and patronising. If they were trying to make a statement about how inclusive of minorities they are (after the “Britishness” gaffe), they failed miserably: to include a mere 3 photographs of the Suffragettes, one of the most politically and socially significant political movements in Britain (none of which included iconic images of women chaining themselves to railings!) in the 20th century, was an absolute travesty.

I have taken pages of notes, which are very boring to read, so here are a few of my thematic highlights (I am glossing over photographic postcards, and themes of gardening, cookery, the countryside and natural history, all of which I find crashingly boring):

1. Images of celebrities and royalty. I love portraits. One of my favourite spaces is the National Portrait Gallery, where I am known to indulge my obsession with Tudor history and can spend hours staring at portraits of King Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I. I am fascinated by the 3-way interaction between the viewer, the artist and the subject, as well as the propaganda aspect and constant shift of religious values. Portraits in this exhibition included a collection of portraits of Queen Victoria, portraying her variously as wife, mother and monarch.


2. The portrayals of the “little people”, banding together to fight, in their own small ways, for social change. There was a great collection of photographs published in New Left Review from Humphrey Spender (1936), of the Jarrow Marchers, a group of 207 men, who marched to Parliament from North-East England to demonstrate against poverty and unemployment.


3. How photography, perhaps more than any other art, can simultaneously convey the dichotomous relationship between poverty and affluence and show war and glamour almost comfortably co-existing in one single still.


4. Playing around with different notions of nationhood. This was more implied than explicitly shown (but what would you expect from an exhibition of Britain that only looks at England?). I really enjoyed the snapshots of early-mid 1950s life in Bethnal Green (Nigel Henderson), of mid-late 1960s Notting Hill (Charlie Phillips) and Roger Mayne’s Southam Street collection (1957-ish), showing the shifting cultural diversity on Britain (specifically London!)’s streets.


5. Fashion and style! Yes, I have a particular interest in this, but actually, it reveals a lot about progressive culture, particularly post-WW2. I loved Norman Parkinson’s collection of beautifully dressed models, theatrically posing against a backdrop of the city (Fashion and the City – 2 of my greatest loves!) and Derek Ridger’s portrayal of the new wave of London clubbers, looking at Punks and New Romantics. (But where were Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm MacLaren in all of this??! – another weakness of the exhibition). There was also some work by Jason Evans; a shoot entitled “Strictly”, which appeared in i-D Magazine in 1991. Styled by Simon Foxton, it showcased a collection of macho streetwear, which was also very effeminate, and was modelled by black men, in an attempt to break stereotypes.


6. The political consciousness, anger and social rage of the 1970s (which I could happily and wistfully talk about for hours – oh what has happened to us?) There was also a shift in form and representation (which I won’t go into here), and a lot of the photography turned from documentary to satire, where “Britishness” was cariacatured. I found the most powerful and moving images in the little detail (and this I particularly enjoyed because of my strong interest in other people):


· Nancy Hellebrand’s images of random Londoners in their (mostly squalid) homes (ps, the “Britishness” was very London-centric);


· Chris Killip’s portrayal of the effects of economic decline on the people of North-East England


· Homer Sykes had produced some excellent images which played around with themes of representation; his images included accidental participants and spectators to the central image – brilliant


· Martin Parr’s colourful satire on the attitudes and aspirations of the English middle classes – I loved the self-awareness and problematising of the fact that he had benefited from the very political order he opposed (don’t we all struggle with that but do nothing about it?)


7. Significant social changes and Thatcher-hating in the 1980s


· A couple of excellent Anna Fox images were used, looking at office workers around 1987. Apart from the ghastly hairstyles, fashions and brick-sized mobile phones, one image showed the reception area of one office with a picture of Maggie hanging on the wall behind them. It was creepily Stalinesque, and also kind of reminded me of the excessive Sadaam imagery in Iraq. Also, another image of yuppies stuffing themselves with rich, fatty food


· Aspirational “Britain” – in this case Romford, Essex, around the time of the “Right to Buy” council-owned homes policy


· Greenham Common…


8. The final part of the exhibition, focusing on the 1990s until the present day (when, interestingly, the commercial aspect of photography as a genre has largely given way to the acceptance of photography as a valid and respected art form – again, sloppily compiled – included some powerful images:


· Chris Harrison’s postmodern images of WW1 memorials in contemporary surroundings, eg outside a large Tesco store. Yes, it’s vulgar, but it’s also modern, and represents change, movement, modernity, the cycle of life, the future, rebuilding, a shared history and future, etc, as well as being representative of (at least) London architecture


· Penny Klepuszewska’s “Living Arrangements”. God, I found this so moving. 4 images, showing simple, everyday objects belonging to elderly people, against a dark background, eg one of those old-fashioned handbags old women always carry, or an old-fashioned radio or a blanket. Intended to address loneliness and bereavement in old age, it also reminded me of those heart-breaking Holocaust images of piles of people’s abandoned and very personal possessions, like shoes or glasses, or carefully labelled suitcases.


· Albrecht Tuebke’s collection of images of random citizens of London. Not images of stereotypes or people who blend into the background, but some of the more eccentrically dressed and interesting-looking people one finds in London (usually harassing you on the Underground).

Finally (if anyone can still be bothered to read on), the Tate Britain invites members of the public to contribute their own images to the exhibition (how fabulously postmodern, darling!), under the theme of portraiture, landscape, still life or documentary.

I am going to think about what image I could contribute…

18 June 2007

I'm Getting a Grip...


Overheard: a conversation between a man and woman (friends or siblings, I decided), while sitting outside Fresh and Wild in Camden this weekend, enjoying the fleeting sunshine. The woman has been moaning at some length about her boyfriend’s inability to commit.

Man: Well, I think that the majority of people in relationships just… kind of… drift. They don’t want to think about where it’s going; they just want to live in the moment, because it’s easier to carry on without engaging in scary questions about the future:

Woman, clearly still harbouring utopian fantasies about living happily ever after with her boyfriend, mumbles something in protest.


Man: I think that the population is divided 70-30. There are those 30% of people who know what they want, and are absolutely sure that they want to be with their partners for life [PS, I interject here, to add that my friend I thinks it’s more like 5%. Personally, I think it would be a miracle if that figure was even 1%.] The other 70% simply don’t know what they want and are just in the relationship because carrying on is easier than questioning it and opting out.

Woman looks like she is about to faint. Ever the cynic, I suppress a smug smile as I carry on eating my sunflower seeds, and squint at them behind my oversized sunglasses.

Woman: But you’re in a serious, committed relationship. You’re in the 30% surely…

Man: I change my mind all the time. I can be in the car and I’ll turn one corner and think “yes, I definitely want to marry her and have children with her”, and then I’ll turn another corner and think “no, it’ll never last”. But it’s too much headf*ck to think about it too deeply, so I just carry on in the relationship, not sure where it’s going or whether I actually want to be with her.

________________________________________________

And you know what, Girls? I don’t find this jaded or depressing. I think this is normal. People don’t know what they want, and that’s fine. We all have issues, and a bit of headf*ck and confusion is fine by me. One certainly doesn’t reach one’s 30s without having “issues” (just ask my analyst, hahaha). I don’t believe the perfect person or the perfect relationship exists, but I believe that occasionally, someone a bit special may come along, for whom – for some inexplicable reason - you’re willing to suspend your cynicism and commitmentphobia and make a go of it. I’m not prepared to do it for just anyone (hence removing myself from the dating website and the dating scene in general), but I know when someone special has walked into my life. And until (or, indeed, if ever) he decides to get a grip, I am going to invest in the people who may be exasperated by me sometimes, but who love and adore me unequivocally and are prepared to invest in me: my Girls!

Let's Pretend

I keep on changing my mind about older man. This weekend was a pretty full-on older man experience, beginning at five on Friday when we met in the pub. We spent all of Saturday together, and it was really quite pleasant. He wasn't too annoying, and even if I did have to pay for lunch because once again he is skint, he bought a Rioja on the way home, and we sat around, listened to my new Charlotte Gainsbourg CD, played Scrabble, and watched Eric Rohmer movies. A perfectly pleasant way to spend a Saturday evening, and I fell into a state of sleepy relaxtion and felt quite content. I had definitely melted by the time I made us a quiche and allowed myself to have the "what would we name our babies?" conversation (they are keeping my surname, unless they are boys. With boys, I really don't care at all). Basically, I was playacting "being in a relationship" and at certain moments, it suits me - and is nothing really to do with the person who is on the receiving end of my playacting. It is more like I'm still at playgroup and doing let's pretend, with a little boy who is suitable simply because he is there outside my Wendy house (without the sexual dynamics at that age, obviously!) On Sunday, however, I woke up and my mind had shifted. I rushed out for an early brunch with the girls, before meeting older man at three to be picked up by his brother-in-law and go to his sister's house for Sunday tea. I met his Mum, his sister, his brother-in-law, his cousin, his niece (16) and his nephews (7 and 5). It was fine, unremarkable even: I chatted to his Mum about bowls, his sister about Australia (she lived in Sydney), his niece about GCSE coursework and his nephew (who was deadly cute, and asked me straight out if I was going to marry older man, much to our general amusement) about Dr. Who and birthday presents. On the way home, older man lent over to me and said "You should be proud of yourself. You can mix with an ordinary working class Belfast family". What did he think I was going to do?! Anyway, for all that they may be 'working class' in origin, I would question that assessment now - a nice house with a big garden, three kids, two cars... there is a certain 'upward mobility' perhaps? His sister dropped older man and I at Stranmillis roundabout, so I suggested a quick pint at Cutters before home. As I walked along, Bristol J called me to say she had split up from her boyfriend. I handed over my purse to older man, told him to get us a couple of pints, and plonked myself down on a bench in the pub garden to carry on talking to J. I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked up, and there, smiling at me, was Saab man. "Don't let me interrupt, but come over for a chat when you're done, " he smiled.
Older man came back out with two pints. I was still on the phone. "Let me talk to her" he said. "I can give her the benefit of male wisdom." "No, "said J on the other end of the phone. Although he was trying to be nice, the arrogance behind this statement got to me. He has met J once, and she found him peculiar (he talked to her non stop about William Golding novels). Why on earth would she rather talk to him than me, her friend that she has rung up??? He then nagged me to let members of the girls become his friends on facebook! Why does he need to infiltrate my life in this way which is quite frankly creepy? After I hung up, he pulled a face. "You've not got any money in your wallet, and you said you did." I was puzzled. "I have some cash." I opened my purse, and there gleeming away were six pound coins. "Oh" he said, "I thought you had a note. I thought we (!!!!!) had more cash than this. It really is just a pint then. Oh, and can you pay me back for the one I just bought you?" Saab man caught my eye again, and I excused myself and went over to chat to him. I felt my spirits lift as he introduced me to his friends as "the girl I met on the plane" and they all smiled knowingly. The girls he was with looked pretty and trendy and slim, but I didn't feel too intimidated. "Let me buy you a drink," said Saab man, "to make up for being such a lazy eejit and not getting in touch." We chatted some more, until Saab man pointed out that older man was waving at me, and I made my excuses. Through the evening, older man kept on hugging me and kissing me. He began to get soppy and needy. "But I'm a good nice person. I will protect you. Nothing bad will happen to you while you are with me." I was upset I hadn't been invited to a party where some of my friends were, and he kept on saying "but I'm your friend, I love you, I'm a good person, my judgement is more important." I couldn't help comparing Saab man, sat at a bench a few feet away, twinkle in his eye, chatting away, waving at me occasionally, with older man, who while he was saying sweet things, was quite frankly beginning to bore me. I'm sure if the right person was saying these things it would be adorable, but it began now to get faintly irritating. We went home. The dirty dishes from the quiche were still in the sink. As I cooked it, older man had promised to wash up. "I'll do it tomorrow," he said. "When tomorrow" I thought. I filled the sink with hot water and began to wash up, and he sat eating a bowl of cereal and reading. I thought of my friends at the cool party to which I hadn't been invited. I thought of Saab man sitting in the pub garden with his mates. And I knew in my heart of hearts that I would rather be with any of them than there in my flat. I didn't want to play Let's Pretend anymore. I know I must seem fickle and changeable to older man, but it is just that at times, it's my favourite game to play - it makes me feel content and secure. And then other times, I just want to tear down the Wendy house out of sheer bloody boredom, and get outside.

14 June 2007

Spotted!


Best one yet! Noel Gallagher and Sara MacDonald, on the corner of Wigmore Street and Welbeck Street, Central London, crossing the road.

13 June 2007

6 Years On


On this day, at this time, 6 years ago, I was driving through Hampstead. To the outside world, it was an unexceptional day; a slightly cloudy June morning, the air still damp from the morning dew. Local residents were beginning to stir, and women gathered at the foot of their front gardens still in their night attire, collecting the mail and stopping to gossip.

The few cars travelling northbound on the A41 at this hour moved as steadily as the heartbeat of my father, lying in a hospital bed in a high dependency unit down the road. As the morning progressed, the traffic would slow, and so would his heart. But while the traffic on the A41 would keep flowing, my father’s organ function would never resume. By the end of that day, the residents of Hampstead would have returned home from work, the sun would set on another day in June 2001, and my father would be dead, his lifeless body still warm, as it lay several metres below the ground in rural Hertfordshire.

Losing a parent – and I believe this to transcend any age and stage of life – is literally unrooting. The pain of loss is so tangible that it manifests itself in physical pain. I felt as though someone had reached into my body and ripped out my heart. But there is also an unknown security to many people with 2 parents in the grounding offered by being someone’s child. It places you within a context; the structure nurtures and protects you, and you understand yourself as the product of particular ancestries. Losing that, or part of that, literally threw me.

I learned, in the days and weeks following his passing, about my father as a person. I watched his parents, wife and other daughters mourning him; observed the loss felt by his close circle of friends; listened to the anecdotes of business partners, old acquaintances and childhood friends. This, while comforting, was at the same time a very alienating experience: the man who had taught me to swim, ride a bike, read before I had even started school, (pushy Jewish parents!), who taught me how to change a tyre on a car, who spent hours explaining to me the structures of European politics, was not just my father: he was an independent person, known to many people in lots of different ways. Again, this was quite disconcerting; I didn’t know what – or who - I was mourning.

With hindsight now, I recognise that my behaviour and life in the last 6 years has been part of an attempt to build a structure and foundation for myself that was knocked down when I lost one parent (and the relationship with the other naturally shifted as a result). I threw myself into my career and my further studies with vigour, drive and determination, I changed my lifestyle and diet, became an exercise enthusiast, ran 3 marathons and took up kickboxing and weight training, and lost nearly half my body weight. I set myself harder and more demanding goals than my father ever would have required of me.

In the process, I have become incredibly strong. With no one to rebel against, I have instead adopted a conciliatory attitude towards my dad. In a strange way, our relationship has continued and matured beyond his death. In his absence as a sounding board and someone to argue politics with, I have had to learn how to form an intelligent opinion by myself (still working on it!), and become more confident in delivering an argument. And somehow, I have taken on many of his characteristics. A growing cynic, I hold no spiritual beliefs about my dad looking down on me, but I do feel that I carry him inside me, and this continues to form the person I mature into.

I still feel that a part of me is missing, but in its place, a new part has grown. This morning, as the traffic moves steadily through the streets of London, just as it did on that morning 6 years ago, the cycle of life continues.

Let’s make the most of it.

10 June 2007

Blind Light

So I managed to squeeze in a couple of days in London in between all my marking, and had the opportunity to spend a sunny Friday afternoon at the Southbank. I went to see the Antony Gormley exhibition at the Hayward, and it was absolutely fascinating, to the point where his work pushes one to reconceptualising the relationships between space, place and the body. I will pick out two key installations that I loved

1) Event Horizon: this is a project which sees life-size figures - casts of the artist's body- placed on rooftops and streets around the Hayward. All the figures face towards the gallery's main outdoor, roof-top sculpture terraces. A whole series of paradoxes and oppositions thus occurs. The streets and the roofs surrounding the gallery become the site of the work, but the place for viewing it (the gallery) has been emptied of content. Therefore, in order to see the sculpture, we also interact with the city scape itself, which becomes part of the sculpture. As the eye seeks out a far off figure on a roof top a mile away, so it also takes in the scope of different shapes - the soft curve of the London eye, the blocks of the Shell building, the triangles of the Hayward roof. The built city turns into sinuous sculpture, a play of shapes. Or the sculpture becomes architectural, part of the city, fixed into its buildings. Furthermore, people on the viewing galleries looking at the sculptures point to horizon, huddle in groups, forming the shapes of classical sculptures themsleves as they hunt for sculptures elsewhere. So the people on the sculpture terraces themselves become sculptures, part of a living, flexible sculpture. Our bodies are like the casts of Gormley's figures, husks that contain us, but are not us.

2) Blind Light: Blind Light also offers this kind of paradoxical play between the act of looking at art, and the act of being part of a work of art. From the outside, you can observe people vanish as they enter a brightly-lit, cloud filled box. Inside, the visibility is extremely limited (less than two foot) and in the middle of a gallery, you feel yourself lost on top of a mountain, unable to see anything (but your hands, following the wall to guide you round, can be seen by people on the outside). People giggle, loom out of the mist. Sound carries. It is spooky, disorienting, and there in the middle of the city, you feel the strangeness of other places.

This is a wonderful exhibition. It makes you think hard about what it means to look at Art; what it means to live in a city; what the difference is between sculpture and architecture; what the difference is between inside and outside. Where does the body stop and the world begin? As I walked back across the river, feeling the delightful warmth of the day on my back, I felt a contentment spreading through me, as I experienced the city itself as a work of art, a kaleidoscope of ever changing colours and shapes. It made me think that one of the functions of art is one that asks us to relook again at our surroundings, that suggests something new about our most basic experiences, and that reminds us of our common humanity. Go and see this exhibition!!

Celeb Sighting Alert


This morning, sitting NEXT TO ME in Cafe Nero in Hampstead...

George Michael

And I have been given free £100 tickets to see him in concert tonight.

Lalalalala

07 June 2007

A Candle for Daddy



Flame

There is a flame
Inside my heart
It burns
It rages
It flickers
It lights my being
I carry it
always

It enlarges my heart
It melts my heart
It bleeds my heart
Powerful,
It rips out my heart
It severs the bond between sisters
It will not go away
Will not be extinguished

At the end of the battle,
The fight to exterminate me,
It burns still,
The miracle flame

Symbol of
Survival
Of hope
Of luck
Of love
Of memory
Of destiny

The inferno

I am burning alive
I am a human fireball
Writhing in agony
And then it softens
As a scented candle
But it is there, always
Constant as a Sabbath candle

It transcends
My history
My future
Our shared pasts
Simultaneous, universal time

It grows
It shrinks
I feel the cold
But my fire still burns
Angry and threatening
Familiar and comforting

I light a candle
The match is forgotten
But the flame still burns
I carry it
It possesses me
We carry each other

I light a candle

Daddy
D, 22 Sivan, 5767

02 June 2007

Being Older


Found this poem today. Says it all really. By one of my favourite poets, Roger McGough.

Scintillate

I have outlived
my youthfulness
so a quiet life for me

where once
I used to
scintillate

now I sin
till ten
past three.

01 June 2007

Spotted! - and Beauty Tip


Such is the depth of my recent activity that I have these 2 items to report:



  1. Spotted at Gilgamesh (again) last night: a thin-looking and very black-haired David Gest, dining with - opinion is divided here, due to alcohol-induced blurred vision and general darkness inside Gilgamesh - a woman who we think may have been Glenn Close, an actor whose name I can't remember and a beefy bodyguard type person.

  2. Beauty tip (this is incredible): If you want to tie your hair up (eg at gym or to sleep), but don't want to end up with an unsightly dent in your hair, use a (clean; unworn!) pair of lacy French knickers! It's amazing. Everyone will think it's a scrunchie. And it bouffs up your hair as well, leaving you looking uber-glam and dent-free!