Broadcasts from beneath a beret

Pink Floyd's song, Time. Wow. What an amazing lyric. Don't think it'd be going too far to compare it to the poetry of Philip Larkin in particular "hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way". Just wonderful.

That's all, anything else will just descend into hyperbole, but wanted to say something in praise of it anyway.

I've never attended a proper full-on seance but I have used a DIY ouija board; I was 15 and my friend Michelle and I thought it'd be a good idea. Spooked the hell out of me because we appeared to summon a guy who might have killed his wife; having said that it could just as easily have been Michelle playing a prank and pushing the coin around on the board to make me think that was the case (I was a pretty gullible kid).

However, another friend Rach did the ouija board thing with a group of school buddies and things started flying off shelves so I'm prepared to keep an open mind about the possibility of communicating with the dead. At any rate I like to believe in an afterlife.

So Frankie Boyle's revealed his true reasons for leaving Mock the Week as being due to both being censured by the BBC Trust and to feeling restricted with the material provided to riff on by the programme's producers, which sheds a fair amount of light on the initial smokescreen of 'new commitments' and brings into play again the argument of freedom of speech within the realms of satire and comedy as a whole.

The thing is... I can understand his annoyance at feeling hampered by what he was latterly given during his tenure on the show; the main thrust of satire is that you're supposed to be able to cut to the bone, to say the things that people are too afraid to say. But comedy appears to one of the greatest aspects of the modern age (the other being politics) where the notion of freedom of speech comes close to being abused and devalued. For while there are genuinely shocking and funny exponents of comic or satirical rage (Chris Morris, Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks, Chris Rock), that have something new and valuable to say and/or expose, there are also those who would seek to air their own bigoted and misanthropic take on the world (Bernard Manning, Jim Davidson) and claim freedom of speech as their right to do so. And it's intriguing to note that those who shout it more loudly and inarticulately tend to fall into the latter camp. Rowan Atkinson's letters to the press defending the rights of comedy to provoke were engagingly worded, carefully thought out and well-structured, as was Bill Hicks' understandably irate missive towards the producers of the David Letterman show when his 'pro-life' gag was cut. Simply saying 'freedom of speech' doesn't actually hold water on its own.

Coming back to Frankie Boyle, however, I'm not entirely sure that I'd defend him in the same way as Hicks, Rock, Morris etc., because while I think 'offensive' is both too strong and too cliched a word to describe his act, and he's not in the same hateful league as Manning, he just seems to be trying too hard to shock at the expense of actually being funny: suggesting that the Queen's "pussy has become haunted" was pretty crass (I'm not that big a supporter of the monarchy as such, but I reckon even John "God Save The Queen" Lydon, smarter than he's generally credited for, would have just gone 'funny why?' - and eaten another bread-and-butter sandwich). Same as the Sachsgate incident; not in the scheme of things all that offensive, just unwarranted and humourless. In both cases though I think the uproar and punishments were somewhat over the top. And Frankie's prescence on Mock the Week in the last few series has to my mind hampered the subtler and more genuinely satirical observations of Hugh Dennis and Andy Parsons, never mind the guests, because he shouted them down too often.

So really I don't think anyone's come out of this particularly brilliantly; the BBC Trust comes across like an ineffectual nanny, intervening where it doesn't really need to, but while Frankie's complaint at this is fair, he should take a look at himself and wonder if he's actually as witty as he thinks he is.

If we're talking on more than a tangible level here, I'd give my friend Charlotte a greater sense of self-esteem and worth so she'd finally realise that she's a thousand times more of a good person than her rude, violent and belittling scumbag of a boyfriend and leave him for somebody far better, with her middle fingers raised high up in the air.

On a material level I'd give my boyfriend an adoption form for a hippo because he loves them.

I do try to put as much of myself into artwork etc. but I'd by lying if I said I wasn't thinking about how other people would view it. The danger in that case though is that, on a bad day, if I think too much about it (and I mean too much) then I worry that I'll produce something derivative.

Then I don't make anything.

This is what I miss about University: periodical crits. It helped that I wasn't friends with everyone in the crit group (a couple of them didn't like me that much at all, and the feeling was pretty damned mutual), because then the feedback was honest, judging my work for what it was rather than holding back because I was a mate or whatever. Having said that I have no hesitation in asking my boyfriend or friends for their advice because they tend to be pretty candid anyway, so in many ways I don't imagine how people would react, I know, because I ask.

I can write a dissertation. I can pass an illustration degree. I have an IQ somewhere in the region of 140-150. If pushed I can put up a shelf that doesn't fall down. I'm a fairly good all-rounder in my abilities and when faced with learning a new skill I'll usually find a way to do it.

So why can't I get a damn earwig out of the shower?

*facepalm*

I wish I'd said this to all of the teachers I'm naming when I had the chance.

My year 9 maths teacher, Mr Stephenson, easily, was the first teacher to really make a difference in showing just how much you can make a subject engaging, fun - and most of all understandable: I'd struggled with secondary school maths until he taught me and I went from bottom 3 to top 5 of the class, having finally found both love and aptitude for the subject.

The entire teaching staff at the Northampton University Art Foundation course were also amazing in that they taught me to forget what I thought I knew about my artistic abilities and as a result of risk-taking and experiments with my work, I gained a huge level of confidence and motivation, both as a student and probably as a person in general.

Finally, my dissertation tutor during my Illustration degree, Jim Walker. No doubt he put the fear of God into me with his initial negative comments on my work - brutal honesty was one of his main traits and ultimately in my case his greatest asset, as without that I wouldn't have pushed myself to find my skills as an analytical writer and come out with the end result I got. I achieved a First on that dissertation, and was informed as a result that I was potentially Masters material... something that, five years ago as a drop-out from a different degree, I would never have even considered let alone believed.

Having written this I come to realise that I'm exceptionally lucky in having been inspired to do well in sciences, arts and academic writing; something I'd not actually noted before I'd written it in plain black and white. Funny how these things come to your attention... But it would explain my appreciation of education (and, in the latter case especially, why I think education at a higher level should be seen less as a privilege and more as a right to those that want it) and my love of learning new things in general.

One of my favourite tracks at the moment is Aenema by Tool. Yeah, it's brutally misanthropic (Green Day's American Idiot, while always fairly tame, sounds by comparison like David Gray) but it's musically deft and sums up fantastically all that was wrong with pop culture - in 1996; it makes me wonder just how much more bilious the lyrics would have been if it had been written in the last 3-4 years, when things became both shrouded in fear and hate post-9/11 and Iraq, and spectacularly vacuous (take a bow, Paris Hilton and your ilk), with insult to injury provided by Dubya and his only relatively recent relinquishing of his reign of muppetry and ignorance.

Although having said that it's probably more intriguing (and a mite worrying) to note, as with Tom Lehrer, just how much of it still stands up now as then...

I can now claim that I have been looked at disapprovingly by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

This comes second in my life's odd(ish) encounters to the time when I met Alan Moore while working the Christmas Eve shift at Waterstone's, and dressed as a Christmas tree.

I don't appear to have straightforward encounters with famous people (as straightforward as these encounters can be).



Nonetheless I've yet to meet any famous people who were off their faces on drugs. I have a friend however who has managed this, but it may be be courting litigation (yeah, right) to say here who the intoxicated person was. It may not be surprising though to mention that her encounter took place in Amsterdam; if anything like that happens, it's almost certain to be there...

I'm intrigued to watch Lily Allen's campaign against the FAC's take on illegal file-sharing. In some ways I can see her point that this way of file-sharing is counter-productive to the music industry in that, for some artists, it stops them from earning as much as they could do.

However, as other people have noted, the FAC is more a body that serves to act against bringing lawsuits against people that do download using these sharing networks: the problem is that it's very difficult to tell who's using them for what purpose. Clearly, it is wrong for, say, a Joe Schmoe to download songs to make numerous bootleg albums for him to subsequently sell; but to sue a little girl for making her own copy of a version of a nursery rhyme from a file on Limewire (something that I believe has happened, or something along those lines, somewhere in the US) is unfair and heavy-handed. But if you were to ask people prior to their use of file-sharing sites what they'd use them for, they're blatantly not going to admit to a piracy racket.

There's also nothing to say that somebody who does pay for legal downloads won't then make a bootleg that they sell for more than the sum of what they downloaded the tunes for. Pirates are pirates; people who are determined to make money in this way can and will find loopholes in order to do what they do - and, by the way, that last government ad campaign about "knock-off Nigels"? About as scary as a squirrel's toe and as effective as a bullet-proof vest made out of muslin cloth; I could almost smell the condescension coming out of the TV.

Something that Lily forgets is that the issue of illegal file-sharing isn't as black-and-white as, "I'm not paying for this because I'm a pirate and I want to deprive recording artists of revenue". It's not impossible that, to give one example, somebody might use this method to download a bootlegged live track of a band they haven't yet seen perform but would like to. On the strength of this track that person may be moved to pay to see a subsequent gig by that band. The fan gets what they want - a new listening experience and something they can chat about to friends afterwards - and the band gets what they want - a new fan, money for a sold ticket, and possibly more fans depending on the word-of-mouth generated by the original fan. So while this method does have its downsides, there are positives.

As for the 'traditional' ways of paying to hear music, I don't know what the proportion is of people who download to people who buy music or go to gigs; odds are it's not easy to quantify, but having spoken to people I know who go out and buy CDs, I don't see that they'll be swayed from stopping doing so. Also I don't see the popularity of music festivals such as Glastonbury drastically decreasing any time soon. So the notion that file-sharing will kill the industry seems exaggerated.

It's also intriguing to see somebody such as Lily, who became famous via MySpace, criticise the internet as a forum for finding and listening to music. Last time I checked, you don't pay to use MySpace or listen to music put up there. So for her to slam illegal file-sharing on behalf of struggling bands is a tad hypocritical, not especially self-aware, and also condescending; she got a huge career almost overnight on the back of people viewing and hearing her output for free then buying her albums. If she'd slogged playing toilets for years, fair enough. If I were in a struggling band and I didn't have the means to self-promote via MySpace or some such site, I'd find her comments rather trite, in the same way as I would had it come from one of the X Factor winners. If Lily is as concerned about some of these new artists as she says she is, she could of course do something really benificial rather than hide behind a reactionary blog, such as give them a leg up by letting some of them support her on her tours and not make them have to pay the by-on fee for the priviledge...

Something that got to me a little while ago was the news (if you could call it that) that the BBC could have to stop broadcasting imported shows such as Heroes, The Wire and so forth because it's supposedly proving too difficult for the other channels to successfully compete.

Er, excuse me?

Crippling (and I don't think that's too much of an excessive word) the BBC in this way is ridiculous. If this were, say, an Olympic sport, this would be the equivalent of weighing down Usain Bolt so that the other runners have a chance of keeping up with him.* Blatantly, that would be completely unfair - as is this.

What I don't get is why the other channels haven't taken this as a wake-up call to maybe up their game a bit; if this wasn't a cue to cull ANY programme from the ITV schedules featuring Simon Cowell plus the insult to humanity that is Jeremy Kyle, what was? Imported shows are crucial in giving television variety; terrestrial channels in particular. Okay, Heroes may be a bad example as that became utterly preposterous as it went on, but I've yet to hear negative feedback for The Wire, and some of the best drama/comedy I've seen recently has been from shows such as The West Wing, Six Feet Under, Curb Your Enthusiasm (the obituary with the world's most inappropriately profane typo was inspired)... Yeah, there are British shows that can compete but there are just as many that, frankly, don't. And it's a hackneyed point but repeating ad nauseam the shows that were/are any good isn't the way to solve this issue (if channels are going to repeat stuff, could they not find something that hasn't been aired for some time? The Peter Cook/Dudley Moore shows might be nice).

The heads in charge of the BBC should, frankly, be ashamed of themselves for not standing up to ITV/Channel 4 etc. and acquiescing to the demand for them to effectively strangle their own output like this. Especially if, instead of commissioning genuinely decent homegrown programming, they then fill the gaps with more coverage of Strictly Come Dancing. And the other channels should be ashamed of themselves for commissioning so much dross (I'm looking at you, Kevin Bishop) that it came to this measure in the first place.



*Incidentally I'd like to add that the recent footage of Usain Bolt slowing down mid-race to chat to another athlete was utterly hilarious. Both a fantastic bit of pure showing off and funnier than a fair few of the programmes that call themselves sitcoms. If the 2012 Olympics promises more stuff like this I may break the habit of a lifetime and watch them for once.

Next week shall see my last ever Christmas holiday.

In an odd way this is actually quite liberating. Not because I'm the sort of freak who actually likes to work in the Christmas period but because it'll mean that from here on in, my Christmases will be, in relative terms, my own, not dictated by term dates and without the notion of having a break being signified by the move from term house to family house and a total change of routine.

I guess this is a fairly wanky way of saying that I quite like fixed routines.

On a less pretentious level, Christmas is something I'm looking forward to - and always have - because it's a day where Andrew has a great day and everyone I know can take time out from worrying about whatever gets them down. It's easy to be cynical about the commercialisation of the season but to be honest, the day itself and the very real happiness that I've seen it give to so many people is so much greater than that. And given the state of things at the moment, that's something to be grateful for if nothing else.

Soupy Twist
Liz

So things this year didn't get off to the flying start I'd hoped for, but I think on the whole, third year work-wise is proving to be more fun than second year. (That's somewhat like saying a broken leg is more fun than the Ebola virus.) The dissertation draft is handed in, which I'm semi-okay with if not ultra confident, but the work I put into it over the summer has paid off big time. The minor self-initiated project is also going okay after an incredibly sluggish start; I'd not anticipated how fun it would be to base a project around Japanese architecture shaped like sea creatures but there you go...

I'm still trying to get my head around how quickly it's all moving though. After this week there's about four weeks left til Christmas and then five months left of the course.

It's bloody terrifying.

Even though the onset of winter (never good for health of mind or productivity) had sent me into a phase of counting down the days til the degree was over, I'm not doing it so much now - partly because work's pulled round into something I like again and partly because the idea that I'm not going to see a lot of my Maidstone friends on a regular basis once this ends is just a little bit... you know.

Plus it feels like a countdown to something more ominous, ie. the notion that I have to find my way into things like freelance jobs and the property ladder, which in this current climate makes me want to emigrate to the outer rings of Saturn. I know escapism isn't the answer but when faced with the crushing reality that my chosen profession is probably going to stop me from ever getting a mortgage then... argh. That pipe dream of going into a painting/decorating apprenticeship seems more sensible with the passing weeks.

One thing I'm certain of is that I refuse to ever return to Waterstones (and that's not so much out of foolish pride as concern for the deterioration of my mental health that it led to the last time).

This isn't the most upbeat of posts but then we're not living in the most upbeat of social climates. If I could earn a living from, say, laughing at Charlie Brooker columns, then I'd be minted. But I can't, and I'm not sure - unless I get really lucky - that I can from illustration either.

Soupy Twist
Liz

Hmm. Seriously wondering if I should give this LJ lark up as a lost cause. But Facebook doesn't let me ruminate upon things quite so readily.

Right. Well after what'll probably be my last proper summer holiday ever (bloody hell fire), I'm trying to get into better studying habits for third year. So far off to an interesting start...

The plan was to get up and out of the house so that I could be in the library at half 8 so as to get on with work, research for dissertation etc., something that I intend to do for the entire semester so as to stand a chance of getting a good grade for this half of the year and then have a good working method to carry on with for the rest of the year.

Except because we're technically still on holiday time, library didn't open til 9. By this time my motivation had decreased somewhat. This is not a good omen, and one to rectify pretty damn sharpish. But it's vaguely reassuring that I'm capable of leaving the house at 8.15 considering I've had a summer of relative indolence.

So. Tomorrow. Up at the same time. Into college. Do something constructive for an hour and a half BEFORE piddling about on Facebook. Repeat til December 12th.

I see me drinking a lot of tea in the next 4 months.

Soupy Twist
Liz

Condensing sixteen week's worth of life into one entry goes like this:

Neglected LJ thanks to growing Facebook addiction (WTF?)
Getting close to the end of year 2 of uni (thank God as it's the worst one work wise)
Looking forward to Radiohead in just over a month (whee!)
Split from John (crap)
Gas leak in house (more crap)
Growing steadily more used to tequila and absinthe (hmm)
Stole a shopping trolley recently (yay?)
23 in just over a week (...)
Dissertation subject sorted (whoo)
Humphrey Lyttelton R.I.P. (half a lifetime's worth of laughs, never forgotten, will miss you terribly)
Learned how to cook ramen well (huzzah)
Room still a tip (why change now?)
Official Guitar Hero lover (tragic?)
Taking up viola again come summer (more music, oh yes)
Still trying to hang out with people as and when (not social butterfly but avoiding recluse-dom)

This is resembling the lyrics to Fitter Happier so I'll give it a rest now.

Soupy Twist
Liz

58% on the essay. About what I expected really. Still, at least I wasn't castigated for the use of the quote 'donkey raping shit eater', probably the first and last time I ever get to swear in an essay unless in the near future I write one about Reservoir Dogs, Lenny Bruce or gangsta rap.

The animation project is more encouraging though. If I blitz sketchbook work over the next couple of nights it'll be done easily... the final piece is done and actually looks okay for a first animation. If I figure out how to I may stream it on YouTube if anybody's interested...

Soupy Twist
Liz

Quite a bit's happened since I last posted... where to start?

( Pre-holiday )

( Christmas/Holiday/Winterval - delete as appropriate )

Soupy Twist
Liz

Never drink two double shots of tequila.

(If this at any point dissolves into a rant, poke me. I shall apologise with virtual cake.)

The essay I'm working on at the moment is a discussion of how animation can be used as a tool for response to political and social issues. In doing this topic I was reminded of an old conversation with a friend of mine from secondary school; I was trying to say that either South Park or The Simpsons (I forget which) had elements of depth and satire, to which I received the reply:

'It can't be deep. It's a cartoon.'

Since then I've come to realise that not only is this somewhat blinkered but it is also this argument that demeans graphic novels, advertisements and graffiti. There are works in all of these fields that are some of the most inventive and, yes, deep things around in popular culture.

And I don't think it's a tragedy that there is more art in the Guinness adverts than there is in some of the works in the Tate; I don't think it's a sin that there are greater layers of meaning to the graphic novel 'Maus' than there are in certain modern plays. Surely that's the point? To push the limits of a medium to beyond stretching point and create something that provokes, that lodges in the brain for a mite longer than the average duration of a dustmite's fart? And if it does, shouldn't that be celebrated rather than tarred with the same brush as the dreck it may or may not rub shoulders with?

So fine, okay. Tell me that Alan Moore, or Banksy, or Hayao Miyazaki, or Trey Parker and Matt Stone aren't the same kind of genius as Picasso, Michaelangelo, da Vinci, great. They aren't. But don't ever try and tell me that they aren't in possession of their own brand of genius, or at least some kind of intelligence, in order for them to do what they do so well.

Soupy Twist
Liz

You ever get that feeling when you feel like you're plummeting several million feet, and you think you're going to wind up like Yuko in Battle Royale with your internal organs decorating a ten foot radius of land, but then a trampoline magically appears and you're actually okay?

...Maybe it's just me.

But I've just had the most reassuring tutorial, ever, and that's without a hint of hyperbole. For the past 8 weeks I've worked at this project and struggled to get anything approaching something I like. Then at half past three this afternoon, upon presenting an incredibly rudimentary maquette of my final piece, Emily smiles and says:

"It's a massive improvement. Well done."

In terms of work this year it's got to be one of the best pieces of reassurance I've received.

So now I'm off home to capitalise on this success and try and blitz as much as I can for Monday. The hand in's on Wednesday but as the thought of an all-nighter doesn't appeal tremendously, now's as good a time as any.

Second year may not be a total washout after all.

Soupy Twist
Liz