Five Years; Five Pro-points

A week tomorrow I leave Bristol and return to Hounslow (anyone with whom I share correspondence, please don't send me any more Brizzle mail). This city has been my home for nearly 5 years now, and I don't mind saying that I really don't want to go.

5 years. How is it that in one breath I can feel that my degree has taken a lifetime, and in the next I'm wondering where the time went? It has been suggested to me, more than once, that me taking a degree was a "waste of time", and until I get a job I can't really judge one way or the other, but, although it has been a momentous struggle, it would be a lie to say that there aren't some things from the last half-decade which I can already recognise as positives. In the interests of balance - as they say on the BBC - it seems only fair to share some of the good things in requital for the seemingly endless stream of negativity so far published here.

Five Years; Five Points in their Favour

1. Living Solo:
   Okay, so I didn't adjust too well to all the changes to my life which I encountered on first moving to Bristol, but having my own place was a great boon to me. A place of order, where I could lay my hands on whatever I needed, as soon as I needed it; a place where I lock myself away and hide when I was at my worst; a place where I could go and not have to talk to anyone or be obliged to make conversation; a place where I could shout at the television and not disturb anyone but myself...
2. Family:
   I have a reasonable number of relatives in the West Country, but over the years, for one reason or another, we had lost touch a little. When I came to Bristol to study I was able to reconnect with them, and they were as great as I remembered from my childhood. My aunt and uncle (to say nothing of the dog) saved me in a not insignificant way, and were brilliant and understanding company, both when I was really sick and when I improved. My two cousins, whom I pretty much idolised when I was growing up - I think they came second only to my brother as my role models - have become "grown-ups" since I was last in any real contact with them, with partners and mortgages and the like, but they're tech-savvy, drink friendly, geek grown-ups, who are cool to spend time with and gave me some very sound advice during my time here.
3. Unintended Friendships:
   I have to say, if you'd asked me 5 years ago to predict this list, I would definitely not have put friendship. I have never had, or felt the need for, many friends as they don't really seem to me to be necessary, but over the years I have encountered some people who just seem to fall into that category. At Uni and through church I have met people who have had a real impact on my life, and the starts of pretty much all of these friendships have had very little to do with me.
   Take my Best friend, Maddy, for instance. Now, Maddy is a genius of the first degree (literally, she actually got a 1st), who has a life, a good degree, a black belt in Kempo and now a good job, and yet on the first day of the first year of lectures, she met me and seemed to decide that I would make a good sidekick. For a seemingly well-balanced person, this has always struck me as a bit odd, and I can't for the life of me work out what she gets out of the relationship, but I think it's been good for me in a number of respects.
4. Rekindled Hobbies:
   I think that I always quite enjoyed photography, helped, of course, by the fact that my father was a photographer, but it was just one of those things that one did on holiday. I've also always had a bit of a thing for the countryside and for good architecture, and Bristol has both in abundance. So what would be more natural than to take some shots? It was at this point that I discovered I really enjoyed photography, and when my uncle gave me his old film Canon, I found I could have some real fun. I have no pretensions to creativity (my brother got all the family "artiness"), so my shots are neither imaginative nor particularly pleasing aesthetically, but they're fun to take, and I have, in the past, tried to get some inspiration from sites such as ephotozine and flickr.
5. An Interesting Diagnosis:
   At the end of last year I was diagnosed as having Asperger's Syndrome (AS), a condition on the autism spectrum. It may seem strange to list this as a positive, but this is a life-long condition which is now recognised and may explain quite a lot for me. I don't know for sure what difference knowing I have AS will make in my life, although there is a chance I will be able to get some more support with certain aspects of it, but it does seem to shed light on some things both from my past and my present (certainly my mother thinks so), and it is at least a piece of knowledge for my internal files.

The Voices

My schedule has my final "Work" period of the day down as 1900-2100, but having been a bit under the weather lately (I caught a couple of the "start-of-term" bugs that're always flying around academia at this time of year), I have let myself stop at 2000 instead, with a few more breaks during the day as well. Hopefully as term progresses and my health improves, I will gradually increase the number of working hours again - I see the coursework decreeing a few "all-nighters" in the (not so distant) future too... If you want to know the sort of thing my coursework entails, I have a blog chronicling my final year which, although currently quite sparse, will hopefully, during the year, shed some light on what is apparently quite an obscure discipline to a lot of people.

In the meantime, here is a poem I wrote about 10 minutes ago - it's a bit "meta" since this was written to try and quell some of the noise to which it refers:

It's noisy in my head,
Like a telly on the blink.
But the noise is more than static -
There are madmen in my attic.

How can I make them see,
That these half-formed words and sounds
Just flood my brain and knock me down -
It only takes an inch to drown?

I hope they mean no harm,
But their presence all the same
Really does me no good at all -
True thoughts displaced by inane drawl.

I see a pattern emerging...

Different poem, same theme:

And how,
In this world of promise and light,
Do you see so little
In the way of illumination?
Could it,
Though, in truth, I shudder to ask,
Be that your blinkered eyes
Look not for a brighter path than this?
Tis plain
This lethargy runs far too deep
Dulling the mind and wit -
An apathy to be fought in vain.
A cloak
Is draped heavy about the heart
An enveloping force
Quells a passion never even there.

A Conversation

I feel like a ship
Broken in two

But everything's fine
What's wrong with you?

Waves of confusion
Break on a forgotten shore

But you got what you want
You can hardly want more?

If the answer were simple
Would the question exist?

What question is that
I don't follow your gist?

I wish I knew
And could see some light

Why do you feel so wrong
When it's all going right?

Why is it no different
When I see what I've got?

How is it that still
You're not content with your lot?

Contentment is one thing
Harder to reach is an easy mind

So you're sticking with melancholia
To accompany your daily grind?

Sounds of Simon

A number of people have expressed a desire to see what my writing is like when framed in a more up-beat context, so here is a contracted review of my favourite musician, instigated by the glorious (and most likely once in a lifetime) experience of having seen him in concert this week.

Disclaimer: These opinions, while stated as fact for the purpose of publication, are entirely my own. You are perfectly free to disagree with the ideas presented here, in the same way as I am perfectly free to hold them in the first place.

Unless you are a complete heathen – and I am aware that such people do exist – it seems to me to be impossible not to appreciate Paul Simon on some level. A master wordsmith and the embodiment of versatility, his career has spanned over half a century. Does that mean that he had a career and then spent the proceeding few decades milking it and thanking heaven that he didn’t die along with so many of his contemporaries? Certainly not! His current tour is not a mere nostalgia trip: he is in fact promoting his 16th studio album (that is, not including soundtracks, lives or compilations), So Beautiful Or So What. Nor is it a comeback, since he never really went away. True, he is not churning out an album a year, or whatever the going rate is these days for those new artists who manage not to be a one-hit wonder, but his last was only 5 years ago. When you consider that he is a family man, still semi-regularly touring, approaching his 70th birthday, who has produced a record containing such beautifully and intricately arranged original tracks, that timespan suddenly moves from the mundane to the phenomenal.

Why do I say he should appeal to everyone? The expert spanning and conjoining of genres and, indeed, cultures – as witnessed by the African/Caribbean influences and collaborations in his recent works; the mix of subtlety and transparency in his wordplay, generating the span from tears to chills, to laughter; the glorious instrumentation and rhythms, causing an inescapable urge to move and give in to the call of the beat; his ability to remain continuously relevant, with old and new material alike; his continual productivity, and his general, all-round ‘nice-guy’ attitude combined with his dedication to his music, his band and his fans are but a taster of the virtues of a man whom I have no compunction about describing as an artistic genius.

Thought Saturation

I have been trying a lot of things lately to try not to think about my impending exam results. Today I was editing and finishing off an essay that I started a while ago. This particular piece was tricky to finish for reasons which will become clear if you read it as the subject matter is somewhat self-explanatory.

As always with my writing, it was a difficult decision upon completion as to whether to publish or burn the piece. Two times out of three I will opt for burning (or in some way seeking to destroy), but this time I thought it might be interesting to publish and gauge opinions.

So, if you fancy taking a look, please click the following link: THIS IS THE LINK.

If you do decide to read it, please let me know what you think. This is still a relatively early draft, but without having an English teacher anymore, it's hard for me to look at it objectively to see where to improve.