It's funny.
I had a friend once. Pretty girl, very sure of herself, but not so sure at the same time. I thought if I were a bit more like her and a lot less like me then perhaps I would get along in life- do a little better, be more interesting, have a bit more money. Our lives have moved in coincidental circles, for years we were like a Venn diagram, with my feelings towards her moving from adoration to hatred at the swing of the pendulum. I hated the way she made me feel- like I couldn't compete with her but at the same time I ridiculed her. I laughed at her gaudy way and how she could seem intelligent when it was sheer ignorance. It was all a game, a trick, a test to see if her companions matched her, if they could see through her. I tried to break down an invisible wall. We spent days together (her evenings, of course, spent with whomever the love of her life was at this time) smoking and drinking, talking about our lives and trying to put the world to rights as if we owned it, as if the world was ours for the taking and we were the ones intuitive enough to figure out its mystery. I only wanted to take it from her.
Any now we don't speak, drifted apart like shattered glasses. We were never that subtle.
And I miss her now more than I ever did.
29 December 2007
If I have been given the choice, if I hadn't hated my contemporaries so much, if the tutors were younger; this is what I would have liked to study next term at University-
Moab is my Washpot by Stephen Fry is the most fantastical, well written, engaging, spectacular success of an autobiography, dare I say it- book, I have ever read in my life (albeit a short one so far). I learnt more from Fry about understanding myself and my young life than I ever could from my peers and that is something that many would find hard to believe. Stephen Fry is nothing short of an absolute genius. I know, it is a terribly trite thing to say but sometimes one has to go along with the masses because the masses are right. The sadness I feel at the moment is that I don’t have time to sit down again with the book, pouring over page after page of woven quotes which made me scream at the pages, like I have done before when listening to The Smiths, “HE WROTE THAT FOR ME!!”. I related to it, not the situation as such but the way re reacted because of them, hiding behind books. It made me question humanity in the sense that are we pleased that someone feels like us or would we rather suffer the pain alone? I know where I have been within that spectrum but I haven’t stayed there very long. In essence this is something that Fry considers himself:
“It can come a bit hard sometimes to see one's own unique, heroic life pinned so pitilessly to a wall. At other times it can endorse, affirm and save, but as I go clowning my sentimental way into eternity, wrestling with all my problems of estrangement and communion, sincerity and simulation, ambition and acquiescence, I shuttle between worrying whether I matter at all and whether anything matters at all but me."
And it’s true. We question our own worth hoping that it is surmountable to everything else. What is it that we really want? Who’s right it is to say they are worth any more than anyone else? Who’s right is it to say they are worth any less? I think the following passage is the one that made my heart jump most of out of its cage. There is something about how he can say the words you might want to, but can never find the means.
Moab is my Washpot by Stephen Fry is the most fantastical, well written, engaging, spectacular success of an autobiography, dare I say it- book, I have ever read in my life (albeit a short one so far). I learnt more from Fry about understanding myself and my young life than I ever could from my peers and that is something that many would find hard to believe. Stephen Fry is nothing short of an absolute genius. I know, it is a terribly trite thing to say but sometimes one has to go along with the masses because the masses are right. The sadness I feel at the moment is that I don’t have time to sit down again with the book, pouring over page after page of woven quotes which made me scream at the pages, like I have done before when listening to The Smiths, “HE WROTE THAT FOR ME!!”. I related to it, not the situation as such but the way re reacted because of them, hiding behind books. It made me question humanity in the sense that are we pleased that someone feels like us or would we rather suffer the pain alone? I know where I have been within that spectrum but I haven’t stayed there very long. In essence this is something that Fry considers himself:
“It can come a bit hard sometimes to see one's own unique, heroic life pinned so pitilessly to a wall. At other times it can endorse, affirm and save, but as I go clowning my sentimental way into eternity, wrestling with all my problems of estrangement and communion, sincerity and simulation, ambition and acquiescence, I shuttle between worrying whether I matter at all and whether anything matters at all but me."
And it’s true. We question our own worth hoping that it is surmountable to everything else. What is it that we really want? Who’s right it is to say they are worth any more than anyone else? Who’s right is it to say they are worth any less? I think the following passage is the one that made my heart jump most of out of its cage. There is something about how he can say the words you might want to, but can never find the means.
“I have always wanted to be able to express music and love and the things that I have felt in their own proper language — not like this, not like this with the procession of particular English verbs, adjectives, adverbs, nouns and prepositions that rolls before you now towards this full-stop and the coming paragraph of yet more words.”
How I too wished I could so some of the things my friends can do because what good is the art of proof reading? That will never satisfy me. Or, indeed, anybody else.
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The music of Morrissey has taught me more about myself, other people and the world at large than any in depth discussion about the "politics" in literature. with people, myself considered, that could not know the damn slightest about anything more political than what they have read on Wikipedia on a mobile phone at 2am the day before a lesson (seriously).
This is very cliche but it's true. The sad truth none the less. I often wonder why I pay nigh on something like £8,000 a year to end up punching someones face in when I could stay at home and mope about my room "putting the world to rights" as it were. And oh how I think I do
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If I had it my way I would force everyone to read Jeremy Clarkson books. Why? Because he is funny, that is why. He, with May and Hammond, make people who know SOD ALL about cars, don't drive or whatever want to watch Top Gear. Because it is funny.
HOW?!?!!
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