Lazy

Being lazy is a must not a luxury. We live in this stupid, über-fast world where we need to do things all the time (or in my words - I live in a world of constant list-writing. Today I stayed home to do some marking (yuk!) and since I woke up, I've done nothing: I have talked to d/a on the phone, wrote a card to an upcoming bday girl, sluggishly made coffee and then indulged myself into my guiltiest of pleasures: watching trailers of romantic comedies on apple.com. I love this shit, really. Soon I go to cut my hair and then maybe, just maybe, I might do some work. But you know what? Enough with the pseudo-catholic guilt, you know? Fuck it! I am lazy and loving it.

On the nature of the critic

Η σχέση μας με τον Άλλο αφ΄ ενός προϋποθέτει, αφ΄ ετέρου συνεπάγεται την καλύτερη γνώση του εαυτού μας. Το παραδοξολόγημα του Ουάιλντ υπαινίσσεται, παρόλη την υπερβολή του, κάτι που οι πιο υποψιασμένοι κριτικοί γνωρίζουν καλά: ότι το πραγματικό θέμα μιας κριτικής δεν είναι τόσο το κρινόμενο βιβλίο όσο ο ίδιος ο κριτικός. Με άλλα λόγια, η κριτική είναι μια μορφή αυτοβιογραφίας· η μόνη πολιτισμένη μορφή αυτοβιογραφίας, όπως έλεγε πάλι ο Ουάιλντ, «πιο συναρπαστική από την ιστορία, επειδή ο συγγραφέας εξομολογείται, πιο απολαυστική από τη φιλοσοφία, επειδή το θέμα της είναι συγκεκριμένο και όχι αφηρημένο, πραγματικό και όχι αόριστο».

The gist of the above comment in Greek can be roughly summarised as follows:
The real topic of a criticism (a piece of work with your opinion on a movie, a book or whatever) is not the thing itself - rather it is your own self. In other words, criticism is a form of autobiography.

Reading this, i felt suddenly relieved as I finally understood what i have always been trying to do, when i write: I am trying to understand myself. It always made me feel weird how i started a piece that was supposed to be about a movie and ended up talking about my views on life. I thought i did that because i was a self-centred bad writer, but in the end, it seems that everybody is self-centred. Or perhaps, we are all self-centred but not because we are necessarily bad, but because this is the only way we can be. Perhaps the only topic we will ever be able to discuss in some depth and some sophistication, is ourselves. And perhaps the only reason we do anything in life - the books we read, the things we study, the movies we watch, the people we hang out with - are just means for us to understand ourselves better.

Choose life

Apparently Robbie Williams decided to check himself into rehab because he didn't want to die young a lose the banality, but also inspiring excited-ness, or everyday life: we wanted to live, and get married and have children and see the sky and the sun and the news and Sex and the city and Man United games. This proclamation has been described by Lifo as the 'revitalising banality of every day life'. When I read this beautiful sentence, one of the many I've read over the years from the talented writers at Lifo, I immediately thought of out beloved Renton's Trainspotting monologue (beautifully complimented with iggy Pop's lust for life):

Choose life.
Choose a job.
Choose a career.
Choose a family.
Choose a fucking big television,
Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers.
Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance.
Choose fixed- interest mortgage repayments.
Choose a starter home.
Choose your friends.
Choose leisure wear and matching luggage.
Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics.
Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning.
Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit- crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth.
Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing you last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself.
Choose your future.
Choose life...
But why would I want to do a thing like that?

I chose not to choose life: I chose something else.
And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who need reasons when you've got heroin?

This, in turn, reminded me of the other masterpiece of pop-culture, Radiohead's lyrics in 'fitter happier':
Fitter, happier, more productive,
comfortable,
not drinking too much,
regular exercise at the gym
(3 days a week),
getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries ,
at ease,
eating well
(no more microwave dinners and saturated fats),
a patient better driver,
a safer car
(baby smiling in back seat),
sleeping well
(no bad dreams),
no paranoia,
careful to all animals
(never washing spiders down the plughole),
keep in contact with old friends
(enjoy a drink now and then),
will frequently check credit at
(moral) bank (hole in the wall),
favors for favors,
fond but not in love,
charity standing orders,
on Sundays ring road supermarket
(no killing moths or putting boiling water on the ants),
car wash
(also on Sundays),
no longer afraid of the dark or midday shadows
nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate,
nothing so childish - at a better pace,
slower and more calculated,
no chance of escape,
now self-employed,
concerned (but powerless),
an empowered and informed member of society
(pragmatism not idealism),
will not cry in public,
less chance of illness,
tires that grip in the wet
(shot of baby strapped in back seat),
a good memory,
still cries at a good film,
still kisses with saliva,
no longer empty and frantic
like a cat
tied to a stick,
that's driven into
frozen winter shit
(the ability to laugh at weakness),
calm,
fitter,
healthier and more productive
a pig
in a cage
on antibiotics.

I guess the tension in all of these writings is the following: does everyday life numb you, kill you and in the end makes you a shadow of yourself leading every single one of us to boredom and embarrassment, or does it anchor you, give you a hope and a sense of stability and ultimately saves you, saves you from yourself?

busy

I am always busy. Have no time for anything. Is this right? Is this how it's supposed to be? Today i was teaching for 6 hours, my throat hurts like mad and i feel drowsy. I go to work every week feeling like a phoney, i know i should be doing so much more than I am, my lectures could be so much better, my control over my life and my work could be so much better. But still I am, like always, a last-minute person. Will this ever change? Will I ever become this perfectionist who finishes things well in advance and feels on top of things? I don't know. And I don't care. All I want is for this term to end, so I can sit and do nothing for a couple of weeks, feel like myself again and try better next time.

Something tells me however that I will be writing a similar post in April....

I don't want to leave you with my grumpiness though, so here is lady gaga in her new, outrageous video where she wears skimpier clothes and dances like a cross between thriller and twist and shout. Genius or dramatically overdone?

You call it procrastination....

.... I call it psyching!

I've woken up since 7, in order to stay home and work in my paper.

Since then, I have:
(a) washed the dishes
(b) showered for millions of time
(c) done washing
(d) hanged the clothes
(e) done my hair, including trimming my fringe

and so on....

I thought I should beat myself up a bit and get working but you know what? I think that this is just trying to get ready and get psyched and immersing myself into work.

And now without further ado, I have to get back to work.

Why I love this city

I queued up today in a shabby building that houses the West Belfast Festival, in order to get free tickets to see Noam Chomsky. It was a lovely day here, still is, the sun is shining, and the tickets would start been given away at 1 in the afternoon. I have to say, I never expected to see a queue. I thought I lived in a country where people queue to get into stupid clubs (usually drunk and/or scantily dressed), pick up things from the post office, or pay their bills. But I guess I was wrong, as I also live in a country, or a city to be more precise, where people queue up to see Noam Chomsky, the world's most important intellectual alive. This made me smile and filled my heart with hope: people queueing up to get tickets to listen to a most uninspiring speaker talking for an hour on political issues. The funniest thing is that the people that queued up were various kinds: old and young, working class and well-dressed, women with dyed hair and old men with canes, young men with hoods, girls dressed in black with oversize glasses (that was us) and all other kinds of people. And everyone was there in advance, waited patiently, went in and picked up their tickets and went out with huge grins. People here grin because they got Noam Chomsky tickets. Beat that!!

I think that this made me realize what is I like about this city: people here have a strong political conscience. They have to, sure, this part of the world is filled with politically troubled past, and perhaps this is the only good thing about the troubles: they nurtured generations of politically active citizens. So politically active that people were, until very recently, willing to die for what they believed. How many places in the world still are there that can say that, I wonder.

Art?

This is the new video of Florence and the machine's new single, drumming.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpLXQorSQe8

It's an excellent song and i love it, i was a bit taken aback though I have to say when i saw the video. The issue is that this is a video by Old Florence who is hailed as an underground-y, arty singer, quite the opposite of Beyonce for example. The woman nearly got the mercury prize for christ's sake, and in the video she has a choreographed dance, in a leotard no less!!! Choreographed like a Lady Gaga video, not a Feist's 1234, mind you. And it's not that I have anything against choreography, quite the opposite. I just think that if mercury prize nominees produce these videos, that are a cross between Madonna's 'like a prayer' and Beyonce's 'single ladies' then what should we expect from the ladies in question themselves?

Where is art heading towards?
Will Antony show us his abs, JLS style, in his new video, I wonder....

La tristesse

Et quand la tristesse on visite encore, je reviens a la même chanson encore une fois.
Même si il est un froid journée du Janviers, ou une journée qui pleut a Belfast, la tristesse es la même...

Sadness is always the same.

Undecided

I don't know what to write about today, I am not focused.

I have been having various thoughts and after a long time, I've been having blog-specific thaughts: is this thing post-worthy or not?

I was thinking of writing about inadequate people: people who have bigger shoes to fill and are constantly looking uncomfortable in the process. All of us feel like frauds occasionally (one day they will find out I'm useless and I'll lose my job or something like that)- but these people, these poor creatures go through life trying not to make fool of themselves. A truly sad sight.

But there are other things: the rainbow out my window, the new four tet remixed CD I bought (with the excellent remix of Sia's 'Breathe me'), how I am fixated on 'Lost' season 4 (the one with the flashforwards-genius!) and how I might buy a Mac Air (looks so good).

I will try to arrange my scattered thoughts another time and try to write other more focused posts, this one stands no chance, I think...

Tragedy and laughs

I like Martin McDonagh, i like him a lot. I liked 'in bruges' and i am convinced i am going to like 'the pillowman' when I get round to reading him. In my previous post about 'in bruges' i concentrated in the fact that the movie was a tragicomedy, in the manner of Shakespearian 'tempest' or 'twelfth night'. Such an interesting genre, tragicomedies are, and a very risky one at that. The issue with them, is that the atmosphere they build can be spoilt very easily. In the same way, Almodovar threatened to spoil his dark, sombre, tragic atmosphere, in 'Broken embraces', with his last scene (but didn't), tragicomedies are constantly walking the same thin line.

'The beauty queen on Leenane' runs the same risk: Martin McDonagh's first play, is a deep and profound tragedy of human inadequacy, laced with darkly funny one-liners. The issue is that the fact that this IS a tragedy has to remain clear to the audience throughout, or at least it needs to be prevalent after the tragic storyline starts to unravel. When i read the play, it was clear to me that this was a tragedy and the humour was just there to undermine but ultimately underline the tragedy of it all. When we saw the play on friday however, the audience made up of well-dressed mature women seemed to fall for the comedy rather than the tragedy part of the play. The result? A really uncomfortable two hours where I would hear the audience audibly laughing at every hint of humour, entirely disregarding the drama that was unfolding in front of their eyes. It almost felt as if they were desperate to see only the funny bits of the play, exactly because the dark parts were too dark and too tragic.

Talk about art being poignant...

Love and loss

I was looking through old pictures yesterday and although I knew what to expect, I was still a bit taken aback. It is terrifying when you revisit your old life, via all these snapshots of the past. You see yourself smiling in the arms of men you don't even recognize anymore, you see clothes you forgot existed, people whose names you have forgotten. You see your collection of exes, exes of exes and exes of friends. And when I say exes, I don't just mean boyfriends: ex-friends, ex-flatmates, ex-important people who are important no more. I saw my millions of haircuts, my drunk self in birthday parties form what seems to be the previous century. I saw myself in houses I didn't even remember existed.

And all this makes me think about loss: it's so much a part of our lives yet every time it happens, every time we lose someone, we act as if it is the most outrageous thing in the world. It is painful, yes, but outrageous or rare, no! It happens all the time. People feature prominently in our lives for some time, they are the centre of our world and then they disappear.

Sometimes, they even disappear without leaving a trace - as if they never existed. Odd but true.

Self reflection

The blog is two years old today. If it was a child, it would be walking, talking and be ready for some potty training.
Like a child, I love it and I am glad I have it, but sometimes I get bored with it and it constrains me.

Two years ago, I wrote my 'hallow world' and decided to bring my thoughts and lame literary attempts to the blogosphere. I am happy I did, because there is something deeply satisfying in thinking that someone you don't know, might read your stuff and connect to it and feel the same affinity you feel when you read bloggers you like. In short, there is something deeply satisfying in feeling a certain connection with strangers. I don't know what it is, but it's there.

We're all in this together, I guess.

Broken but mended

Almodovar is on top form. Again. I have to say I didn't like Bad education very much, if at all. And Volver was good, (the final scene with the mother accepting her fate as a 'ghost' forever hiding, going from one house to another in her village still haunts me) but there was something missing, I thought. I often call the thing that is missing: emotional involvement. I always say that I regard something as good art iff it moves me emotionally. A lot of people have criticized me for this (pseudo)definition but I think it's a great barometer, actually it's the only barometer. If something moves me-it's art, if not-it's crap. (Life doesn't move me, just like a movie, life doesn't move me.) I don't care if something is aesthetically perfect, well-thought, interesting, all this is good but not good enough. In needs to move me, I need to cry, be moved, think about life in different ways, I need to be affected.

So, when I saw the trailer of broken embraces, I though, good here we go again, Almodovar is going technically perfect with no emotion... And he's cashing in on Penelope's sex appeal. Again. (After the close-ups at her cleavage in Volver).

But I went to see the movie, because he is Almodovar after all, and I am his biggest fan (with Youkali of course). And I am so glad I did, so glad indeed. Because Broken Embraces is such a good movie. It's emotional, melodramatic, noir-ish, surprising, funny, all at the same time.

But most of it's all that AND technically perfect. I read somewhere that after the Amante Menguante movie within Habla con Ella, Almodovar became obsessed with the movie within a movie trick. He tried to replicate it in Mala Educacion, but failed miserably (perhaps because he should just accept the fact that he cannot have a successful movie without women) but here he masters it entirely. The final scene of BE, a scene replicated from Women on the verge of nervous breakdown, is genius. Although a funny scene might very well break up the dramatic ending, in some weird ironic way it supports it. And everything falls into place, Almodovar is in top form, Penelope is stunning, Broken embraces is perfect and the world is safe again.

Alone

It's odd when you're alone after you've not been used to it for a while. Initially it feels odd, I walk around the house bumping on the furniture, not knowing what to do. Surfing on the net endlessly, as if I was not allowed before, like a child that eats a lot of sweets when mummy is not around. I don't talk on the phone, I sit and think, I do my nails, I make coffees for myself. It's funny because I'm an only child and I thought I had the capacity to cherish my loneliness forever. When I was a kid, I was always going around with a little bag with some toys, so that I felt safe that if I found myself alone at some point, I would have something to do. When I grew up a bit I would always go around somewhere with a book, even if I accompanied my parents to a place I knew would be other people, I always took my book with me 'because you never know'.

Now, I'm never alone. And I am losing my touch as a loner. As I said, I don't know what to do with myself.



Kate Moss dances like a stripper for the homonymous White Stripes video. I think I shall refrain from such carry ons and just sit down and write my paper. Much as I am bored and akin to procrastination.

An ode to infidelity

Listening to La Roux's exceptional song (and Skream's exceptional drum&bass remix) I realized that I hadn't fully understood what the song was about, since I was mishearing the lyrics... Take a look at an extract from this inspired song:

We can fight our desires, but when we start making fires
We get ever so hot, whether we like it or not

They say we can love who we trust - but what is love without lust?
Two hearts with accurate devotions and what are feelings without emotions?

I'm going in for the kill, I'm doing it for a thrill
Oh I'm hoping you'll understand, and not let go of my hand...

In the refrain, I thought she was saying 'and now let go of my hand' but I was wrong.

Thinking about the song I think it is the desperate plead of a person to another to let them be free. In the excellent line 'they say we love who we trust - but what is love without lust?', I think La Roux gives a fatal blow to boring, convenient, sexually dead relationships. She says, love is cool and all, but sex and lust are underrated. And I agree, people seem to be happy to disregard sex as unimportant, but as a friend once said, whatever a couple fights about during the day, they can deal with it in the evening when they go to bed. If they don't sleep together though, or if when they sleep together, they don't like it, then they can solve nothing, I think. So, long live lust (and who cares about trust?)!

The defining moment

What are the defining moments of our lives?

Is it when you submit your PhD, holding it in your hands, giving it away to some administrative officer, and getting congratulations in return, and a receipt?

Is it when you sign for your first job, going up to a funny looking HR department, 'signing your life away' and finally feeling like a normal adult?

Is it when you present a good paper at a conference and feel the respect of your peers?

Is it when you teach and you make your students understand something, something they wouldn't have understood otherwise and you look at their eyes and see crystal and sincere interest?

Or perhaps it's not it, not it at all. Perhaps defining moments are of a different sort alltogether.

Is it when you meet friends you haven't seen in a while and just sit there and be comfortable and be reminded how wonderful people can be?

Is it when you go to concert and feel elated by the music, you feel like waves crashing in your heart, filling it with happiness and emotion?

Is it when you hear of an amazing song, and just sit there and marvel in the beauty of the simplicity of pop ("they say we love the ones we trust, but what is love without lust?" -la roux)?

Or is it when you look into someone's eyes and know you love them and they love you back? Is it this moment that you feel that the heart is the only organ in your body working? Is it when you feel this absolute acceptance, serenity and excitement, all at the same time?

Perhaps the questions is wrong alltogether, perhaps there are no defining moments, or at least not just one anyway. Perhaps a bit a of everything defines us, each in a different way.

The inspiration

Long before the time of blogs and on-line diaries, I used to write by hand: a diary, some notes, childish poems, texts etc... Back then I used to read and re-read my writings all the time. This gave me a sense of thread, a sense of a direction. My diaries looked like series in formation. Often I started writing when something happened and finished when that thing ended. Then I stopped writing for some time, only to start at a later time, promising myself not to stop writing again, because it is good for me. Back then, my inspiration was my life and the benign details of it.

Blogging is different. Tedious details of your life make no sense on an electronic page, a post is not for splashing your heart in public. Blogging is often for me an exercise in concealing: writing something personal without revealing too much about it. It looks a bit distasteful if I did that, I think.

But recently I am very much consumed in myself, my life and my things. So my inspiration for posts is a bit dried out. I was thinking the other day that perhaps the blogging craze has passed. I have been so sad to see neglected blogs on the net, blogs that lasted a couple of years and are still there now, like relics, frozen in time somewhere in cyberspace. I don't want Lady V to be one of them. I think if I even stop writing, I will delete the blog, I don't want it to stay there, out of time, for the world to see.

But worry not, devoted reader, I am not stopping right now. It's just that in the general reevaluating times that I am going through, I need to find time for inspiration and reevaluate writing. Sunday mornings, with coffee and music are the best times for blogging, I find, so I'll just start from there.

I'd love to change the world

For my other anniversary post (200 and counting), I got inspired by a song again. Can blogs save the world? Quoting the 'ten years after' classic (covered amazingly by Matt Turk), people tend to leave that to others:

I'd love to change the world
... but I don't know what to do,
... so I leave it up to you...

Perhaps we don't need to do much, perhaps we just need to write a good blog, an inspiring post, a small comment, a snippet of reality and perhaps that changes the world somehow... Or perhaps I'm just lazy and I think I'm doing something meaningful by indulging myself and writing my stupid (and often shallow) thoughts. I don't know... So I leave it up to you...

The summer continues...
I'm off for a second round of holidays with d/a!
Youkali deserves congratulations (Congratulations Youkaliiiiiiiiiiiii!!!)
All is good.

People I know

It always amazes me when I get profoundly surprised by people I know, or think I know anyway. You have this idea of someone, you think you know who they are, how they would behave, how they would react to certain situations and then, they behave totally differently to what you thought.

Sometimes people surprise you pleasantly. They show you you've underestimated them. You think they might not live up to what the circumstances demand of them, but they do. You think they might fuck up, but they don't. You think they might get scared and walk away when the goings get tough, but they don't. And then you have to take a step back, reassess and revaluate.

Some other times though, people surprise you negatively. They show you you've overestimated them. You think they're cool, and they're not. You think they are gracious and polite and they're not. You think they are strong and honest, and they're not. And then you have to take a step back, reassess and revaluate.

How do you distance yourself from people that have been your friends for years, but have let you down. Not let you down because of something they did to you, but because of who they are, or who they've let themselves become. How do you tell someone, sorry I don't like you anymore. I thought you were better, I thought you were cool.

I find it extremely difficult to do that, because at the end of the day, it's not even the other person's fault if you misjudged them. If you thought they were someone they're not. If you, at the end of the day, possibly superimposed a different character on them, a character different on who they really were.

Or even worse, it's not their fault if they just changed into something you no longer like.

The circle

It's funny how the mind works.

I get this thing sometimes, especially when I am among people I don't feel like being around with, when I close my eyes and I get a flash of another life, a flash of being somewhere completely different and this makes me feel in my own little world. This makes me feel secluded, it makes me feel myself. But it is also a bit scary, I think what if they knew what I was thinking, what if all these people knew where I really am in my mind when they think I am with them... My thoughts make a small circle around me, and I feel safe and alone. It often happens when I'm back in Greece and I get fed up with family and social obligations. Then I just sit in my corner, and I close my mind and I let everyone else think that I am there with them, while I am miles away, thinking of what I want. Thinking in English helps: a different language makes me even more secluded.

Long live my second tongue then that makes me feel free!

Nirvana

Just a quick post from the heat to note the surrealism of Greek summer: as I was driving to come to the internet café of my village (which is enough of a surreal thing to do) I heard Nirvana on the radio. Nirvana? Who plays them anymore? Greek stations, it seems. Brought back excellent memories of a past life, teenage angst, first cigarettes and immature fifteen year old boyfriends. Memories of a life that is long gone, a life that could be mine, could also be someone else's.

Have a good summer y'all and listen to Nirvana again. It's good for the soul. Especially in the Greek heat, driving, with the windows rolled down.

What to say

Sometimes happiness is so overwhelming that you don't know what to say.
I never wanted to write a personal blog, I never wanted to just recite what is going on in my life, but sometimes, just sometimes one cannot avoid that. But then perhaps subtlety is a good thing, perhaps one does not need to scream things or to tell them explicitly. Perhaps it suffices to say that you are happy and you don't need to say why.

It's been a tough year, it's been a fucking tough year and now it is becoming this dream come true, it's becoming this out of this world experience that I cannot believe.

I've never believed in fate, I've never believed in this weird force that drives one's life. The Ancient Greeks did though and perhaps they were right. When I first moved to Belfast, on February 2007, I hated it. I hated my life, I hated everything. Part of the reason was because I always felt temporary here, I could never plan my life here, I had no long term plans. But now things are different. Now I can plan ahead and not start my sentences with 'if'. No more conditional sentences and hypothetical scenaria. I can now be a normal adult and plan ahead. My first plan is to go on holiday and the rest will just come naturally.

Bring it on!

The kindness of strangers II

I didn't remember I had used this title before, but I like it so much. The previous post with the same title was somewhat simplistic and naive. I remember the heat of that night, I remember my bed in Athens, the bed that I will never go to again because we moved from that house. So many houses I will never see again. But I digress...

The beautiful quote from Tennessee Williams has always been in my heart from the first moment I heard it, somewhat out of place in Almodovar's 'all about my mother'. For me it always represents this state of mind, the state of mind of trust that I strive to achieve. Trusting others, accepting that not everything is up to you in life. Accepting that you cannot all do it alone, You do what you have to do, you do it well, and then it is up to others to give you what you want.

I am fairly zen, I have to say. I try to accept that it is not up to me much anymore.
And when I stress too much, I watch a bit of Lost...

Fatalism

The summer is here and although it is hardly notable where I live, I have to say I feel it. I feel the dampness in the air, the humidity and the heat, the green leaves, the occasionally blue sea. Even the rain feels different in the summer, it is, how to put it, kinder. It falls politely on you, not like autumn rain that is heavy and relentless. More importantly though, the summer is different because it feels sluggish and slow. It takes me twice the time to do anything that I am usualy doing, I am slow and absent-minded. And I feel the anticipation. By the end of this summer things will have changed. Things are changing as we speak, my chopped nails tell me so. Change is scary, change is fucking scary, but you know what? What if it is? I say, bring it on. Things have to change, and they do, regardless whether we're afraid of that or not. And all these painfully true clishés, show their painfully true face: whatever happens, happens. This phrase is so simple and overused that it's also devoid of meaning. But when you feel it in your bones, that whatever happens, happens, and that there's nothing you can do with it, that no matter what YOU do, whatever happens, happens, then you feel ok. You almost feel zen. You feel like, fuck it man, whatever happens, happens.
Bring it on and konichiwa bitches.

What is style? (I defy...)

After reading a Lifo piece on 'the others', the alternative influential people of athens, which included DJs, bloggers, musicians, artists, I discovered Greek fashion blogs. I have to say, I am a bit slow with the Greek blogosphere, and I am always very happy to see something new that I like. The ones I follow are Fashion Architect and Streetgeist. They are very different from each other, visit in each of them will show you what I mean, but they both care about style, and recently I have been asking myself the old question, what is style?

We all have some ideas about what it is, what it means to have it and how it works. Hallow Kitty once told me that style rests on mix and match: one expensive piece with H&M trousers for example. In general, style seems to be something very personal, almost innate, intuitive, something that people either have or don't, it seems not be able to be easily acquired and definitely not purchased. The problem is that style means something different each decade and it is easily confused with fashion. So, these days, for men, style usually means nerd-chic: oversize black-rimmed glasses, checked shirts and cardigans. For girls, I am not sure: I think vintage (perhaps because I like vintage), oversize glasses (again) skinny jeans and ballet pumps. But this is not style, and it pisses me off, this is just a cheap imitation of Vogue.

All of this makes me think that style is to be able to go against fashion and superficial trendiness and still look fashionable and trendy. And that's why I think that streetgeist captures style perfectly: alkisti and aris photograph people who ooze individuality and seem to defy any good fashion rules. They sometimes seem to have tried too hard, and this, for me, is always off-putting: I think a necessary ingredient of style is being (or at least giving the impression of being) effortless, anything that looks thought to perfection looks very clinical to me. But in general the people photographed by the streetgeist guys look oblivious to fashion trends and magazines. They look like aliens, you cannot pinpoint them chronologically. And therefore they look stylish and cool.

If style then is defying superficial trendy rules then being stylish is a deeply revolutionary act and therefore it carries my seal of approval forever. (Viva la revolution siempre!)

Tired

I have nothing to write, I am just tired of seeing the previous (stupid) post.

To be more precise, I have a lot of things to write (I even have notes on them) but I haven't organized my thoughts yet. And orginizing thoughts, one must do, at least before writing.

Summer has come, uncertainty is still on, I need to wait more for my definite plans, but what to do?

I wait.
And when I adequately organize my summer thoughts, I will post them.

Older

Because I am getting older, I have more white hair by the day.

Because I am getting older, I love my students more.

Because I am getting older, I like all things vintage.

Because I am getting older, I pay a lot for food.

Because I am getting older, I love my mother more.

But.

But I still like loud music.

But I still like unbuttoned tops.

But I still like pizza.

But I am still reckless.

What means this? Do I roll the bottom of my trousers or do I wait?

Inertia creeps

Talking about relationships between people of a different cultural background JT told me two days ago "(I don't want to be) stuck in the ever-decreasing social circles of cultural inertia." After gasping at the beauty and the precision of this sentence (hence it is a quote and not a paraphrase) I remembered how I felt the first time I had to form a meaningful relationship with someone who was from a different country than me. I came to the UK in 2001 and always thought that my English was fine. And it was, sure but it was not adequate for any deep, profound, soul-searching conversation, of the ones you do with your friends and the people you love. When you are forced to communicate emotionally in a different language, I think it is then when you actually realize the importance of language in accessing our emotions. George Orwell in 1984 talked about Newspeak, the fictional language of the new regime that would lack dangerous words like 'freedom' and 'democracy' and therefore people would not be able to think 'in those terms'. The chicken and egg problem between language and thought, debated with great liveliness in linguistics today, is a true problem and not just a theoretical riddle. Do we talk in certain words but we think abstractly in some other language of the mind or does language actually limit our thought? Was I ever aware of mind-blowing concepts of 'nondescript' and 'understatement' before I encountered these words in the English language? Did they exist in my mind, like concepts, but they were never expressed because I didn't have the words to express them, or did they form themselves, did I create a mental image of them after I first heard the words themselves?

The other issue about all this of course, has to do with the formation of meaningful relationships among people of a different cultural and linguistic background. A long time ago, when I was in Boston, one of the first people I met was this Greek guy, who was my housemate. The first time I went out for a beer with him, we spent two very enjoyable hours talking to each other. This made me think that this guy might end up being my friend. When we went home however, I though of the things we had talked about and I found that they were all easy cultural things we had in common (Greek jokes, Greek music, Greek TV shows we watched when we were kids etc). And then it hit me how much harder does one have to work to bond with people he has nothing culturally in common with. And then perhaps I thought that maybe this means that relationships with people one does not have anything cultural in common with are far more superior than relationships with people with whom you share a background with. This is of course a sweeping unfair generalization, because I do have extremely meaningful relationships with Greeks, but you have to agree that when you manage to have this level of connection with someone from a different country, it feels different, profound and important.

Nearly God (and the role of ecstacy)

Ecstacy (1): MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, also known as Ecstasy) is a semisynthetic member of the amphetamine class of psychoactive drugs. It is considered unusual for its tendency to produce a sense of intimacy with others and diminished feelings of fear and anxiety. These effects have led some to suggest it might have therapeutic benefits to some individuals. (from wikipedia)

Ecstacy (2): Ecstasy is subjective experience of total involvement of the subject, with an object of his or her awareness. Because total involvement with an object of our interest is not our ordinary experience since we are ordinarily aware also of other objects, the ecstasy is an example of altered state of consciousness characterized by diminished awareness of other objects or total lack of the awareness of surroundings and everything around the object. (from wikipedia)

Ecstacy (3): Ecstasy, (or ekstasis) from the Ancient Greek, έκ-στασις (ex-stasis), "to be or stand outside oneself, a removal to elsewhere (from ex-: out, and stasis: a stand, or a standoff of forces)." It is used in philosophy usually to mean outside-of-itself. (again, from wikipedia)

When Tricky sings, he looks like he is on ecstacy. He is outside himself but he is with others. He moves, he sticks his tongue out, he hits his bare chest with his microphone so we can hear his heart. He thanks us. He thanks us for 'taking the time' to be there. He is a God-like creature, he jumps up and down, He sings wispering and yelling. He lets a song build up slowly. He has a bad-ass drummer.

He didn't sing my favourite line. He didn't sing 'life doesn't move me, just like a movie'. But I forgive him. Is allright. I will see him again and he will sing it, sure.

Indescribable

How do you describe a movie that is about:
(a) Vampires
(b) Romance between 12 year olds
(c) Bullying
(d) Loneliness
(e) Love
(f) Loyalty
(g) Friendship
(h) All of the above (and then some)

Quite simply you just can't.

I saw 'Let the right one in' yesterday and I was amazed at the complexity of the movie: it was scary, funny, sweet, loving and still made sense as a whole. I guess the most impressive thing with it however is how it managed to do all this with children in the two lead roles. I am not saying this because children are not good actors, far from it. I am saying this because I find artists to be disturbingly clumsy when they deal with children in movies or books. They either deal with them as cute little idiots, or just as decorative objects but they never allow them the complexity that children have in real life. This movie does that, and that is what makes it über special.

Go watch then, and be amazed.

Allegory of life

I just watched the finale of the first series of "Lost" and I have to say I'm impressed. I realize that half the authors of this blog are mocking me for getting into this so late and only realizing how good it is just now (and only having been indoctrinated by M and d/a, again, thanks guys!) but better late than never, right?

Again, I do not want to write something profound about this series now, I don't have anything profound to say anyway, and it is too early for it, but I have to say this: for anyone that loves allegory and symbolism (two related but not identical notions-often frowned upon) "Lost" IS the thing to watch. And given that allegories and symbolisms can be simplistic and tiring, it is this what makes the series so great: it takes a basic idea and executes in a way that it is simple but not simplistic. The simple premise of the series is, in my opinion, the premise of an archetypical society where the science vs. faith dilemma (as it has been explicitly mentioned in the series finale by Jack and Locke, who represent the two) can be played to the extremes.

The island with the magic powers, the stranded group of people, the hatch that according to Locke has 'hope' inside it (what a wonderful modern allegory of Pandora's box), the Others, the archetypical couple (Sun and Kim) and so much more form this mini-universe, a miniature version of society where everything, all the issues that have troubled literature, theatre, philosophy and religion for the last 2000 years or so can be laid out and explored.

Nothing short of genius, truly.
Series 2, here I come!

I grow old, I grow old

I was just reading stuff on the net and then, bang, I had to be rudely reminded how old I am. In an article about Roxette being reunited, the journalist saw fit to tell us that they have been around for 20 years. Well, this makes me old enough, right, since, I do clearly remember 'the look' as an LP featuring prominently in some of my earliest parties. What to say apart from to quote T.S.Elliot, appropriately as always:

I grow old, I grow old
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled

Tsitata (mottos)

'When the rapist approaches his victim, he whispers sweet words.
The person who loves you mumbles and doesn't know what to say.
Who will you trust?'
(S.T.)

My teenage years (that I seem to dwell on a lot these days - 'I grow old, I grow old...') have been deeply affected by this line, which featured prominently on my wall for years. I loved it so much because it seemed to excuse the inadequacy of the people I loved to exress their feelings to me. I felt that the less they said, the bigger their love was. But I am not sure anymore. Love can be expressed, not with cheap sweet words perhaps, but it can be. I am sure of it now.

Yesterday, when talking with d/a I came up with the following profound statement: 'The issue is not to love your people, turning the blind eye at their inadeqacies. The issue is to love them, in spite of their inadequacies.' Profound, huh? What I mean, I guess is that I have no patience for people who say, 'oh I loved so and so a lot, so I didn't see their faults'. I mean how stupid is that? Youkali said to me that it is the faults of the other person that will make your heart skip beats more than the good things. This is when you know you love them truly: when even their shitty traits seem sweet.

How often does THIS happen though...?... On verra...

Kinds

When I was young(er) I used to make sharp statements. I thought I was great and that my friends were great. Also I was deeply elitist: if you read such and such books you were great, if you listen to this and this music you were great and if you wore so and so clothes you were also great. Anything else was not going to cut it. I think I am over this by now, although sometimes I surprise myself with my harshness.

Another favourite past-time of my younger days was putting people into categories. I remember I used to say: there are two kinds of people, clever ones and stupid ones. I was actually going around saying this thing, thinking that I was so clever for saying it. I also thought I was so clever because my categorization was one of cleverness and not one of goodness, as so many other people did. Goodness, pif! Who cares about THAT?

I still think people can be clever and stupid, but I also think that this is not so crucial. It is crucial, don't get me wrong, but it is also so insufficient. When you're an academic, you are constantly surrounded with relatively clever people. If this was all that mattered, then our lives would be so easy. But they're not. I am surrounded by clever people, some of which are fine. But there are also so many that are not fine, there are so many that are tiring, self-absorbed, needy, assholes, arrogant, uniterested, insulting, strssful etc. So, I can only gather that being clever is not enough for happiness. Happiness for oneself and for the other people.

So if cleverness is not it, the question is: is there a characteristic that defines people? Is there a characteristic that fundamentally runs through the human psyche, essentilly putting people in categories?

I think not. I no longer think such distinctions are necessary, feasible or even useful. Who gives a fuck if people are either clever or stupid? Only elitist teenagers like my former self, who clearly knew fuck all about life, happiness and other exotic animals.

Caution: sexually explicit lyrics (remove children from the vicinity of this post)

Oh, he treats me with respect, He says he loves me all the time,
He calls me 15 times a day, He likes to make sure that im fine,
You know I've never met a man, Whose made me feel quite so secure,
He's not like all them other boys, They're all so dumb and immature.

There's just one thing, That's getting in the way,
When we go up to bed your just no good,
its such a shame!
I look into your eyes, I want to get to know you,
And then you make this noise, and its apparently its all over

Its not fair, And i think your really mean,
I think your really mean, I think your really mean.

Oh your supposed to care, But you never make me scream, You never make me scream,

Oh it's not fair, And it's really not ok, It's really not ok, It's really not ok,

Oh your supposed to care, But all you do is take, Yeah, all you do is take.

I lay here in this wet patch in the middle of the bed,
i'm feeling pretty damn hard done by i spent ages giving head.

Then i remember all the nice things that you've ever said to me,
maybe i'm just over reacting maybe your the one for me.

There's just one thing, That's getting in the way,
When we go up to bed your just no good,
its such a shame!
I look into your eyes, I want to get to know you,
And then you make this noise, and its apparently its all over

Its not fair, And i think your really mean,
I think your really mean, I think your really mean.

Oh your supposed to care, But you never make me scream, You never make me scream,

Oh it's not fair, And it's really not ok, It's really not ok, It's really not ok,

Oh your supposed to care, But all you do is take, Yeah, all you do is take.

I am finding so many female songwriters writing sexually explicit lyrics, these days (see my earlier post on Lady Gaga). The question (apart from whether women are really sexually liberated these days) is whether these are parallelisms with other things and they do not just talk about sex. So, although this song is clearly a 'spaghetti western ode to the premature', when Lily sings "you're supposed to care, but all you do is take" perhaps she means something more. Perhaps? Perhaps, men who 'never make you scream' are also egotistical idiots?

If this reading is correct, it really takes away all the sexual liberation bit from women and is thus deeply unfeministic. I remember when I saw 'y tu mama tambien' when I realized that this sexually liberated woman was only willing to have a threesome with those guys because she had cancer and was dieing, I became so upset. I mean, can women never be sexually liberated for the hell of it? Does there always need to be some other hidden, deep reason for their liberatedness? I sure hope not...

Nurse vs Hero (=Lost?)

I am hooked on Lost, have I mentioned that?

D/a and her man got me totally addicted and now I am on four a day (episodes that is). I want to write about this series properly at some point, but now is not the time. Now is the time to just make a minor comment about Jack.

If you know anything at all about the series in question, this is Jack. Jack is this doctor guy, who is very good and heroic. Basically he goes around and saves people. He even tells them so in advance: 'I am going to save you' he said to a poor guy that died half an episode later (which is an unfortunate example, since he often succeeds). In the flashbacks that the series makes, we also see that he has even saved his wife, she was his patient, who he saved and then married. How appropriate, don't you find? Anyway, let me get to the point, instead of digressing cynically.

Men like Jack, a.k.a. the 'hero' types, remind me of another familiar female stereotype: the nurse. Apparently, a lot of women suffer from the 'nurse syndrome', that is women who are always on the lookout for someone to save. The interesting thing about this female version of the 'man-hero' is the way of salvation: a woman nurtures and cares for, while a man simply saves. The female stereotype requires time and commitment, while the male one simply requires heroic behaviour, usually in a flash. I think this is a telling difference between the sexes, a difference that is so self-explanatory that I do not need to expand on it here any longer, I think.

People

People have various lives. Sometimes they are in procession, you live a life for some years then it's over and another one begins. Some other times, we have a lot of lives at once. One where we work, one with the people we love, one with our parents and so on and so forth. It is interesting when our various lives intertwine, it is interesting when people from one life come in another one, it is interesting to see how that works out.

I can tell the people that are important to me, if they come from one of my lives and they fit in all of them. If they come into this new life, like parachutists but they don't look alien there, they look as if they fit.

People were walking the streets of Belfast this weekend and they were my friends. And they fit and that made me happy.

Insecure

Can insecurities ever leave us? What does it mean to grow up and be wise?

Young people are insecure, they're constantly afraid that they are not liked enough, that they will never be appreciated for what they are. But then we grow up and (at least in theory) we get more used to ourselves, we like us, we think we're cool, we don't rely on others to tell us what we're worth.

But there are always these people that make our knees shake, these people whose opinion of us is so important. Funnily and interestingly enough, these people are often part of our families, the one place where love should be taken for granted.

Usually it is mothers, overcritical ones especially, that do the trick: you can be cool, happy about yourself, self-accepting etc and then the overcritical mother comes along and destroys every inch of self-confidence you have painfully built over the years.

Some other times it is siblings and your complex relationship with them. I have no siblings, but from what I hear they can be a pain, too :-)

And then there are fathers. Being a Greek female only child, my relationship with my father is complex. I love him and all, but I am not so sure that I love him love him. I love him because I have to, but our relationship ranges from polite indifference to profound lack of understanding, to deep affection. To put it bluntly, I usually think that he does not understand me at all. He does not know where I am coming from, he does not understand my choices, he'd rather I was a bit more normal and like other girls my age. But there are also some times, very few, I can think of three in my life, that we talk and I recognize something in his voice, something that tells me that this guy is not just this polite guy my mum is married to. Something that tells me that he is my dad.

Loud music saves souls

What is it that makes my heart crave for loud music in times of turmoil? I want to block my thoughts and what better way to do it than listen to whatever I feel like loudly? I like to dance, clubs are cathartic. Chemical brothers overload. I dance at home, frantically, my neighbors must hate me, I am sure. But I do not care. I cannot sing, so I must dance. I want to go to all the rave festivals this summers. I want to go to Glastonbury and sleep in the mud. I want my eardrums to hurt from the loud beats. I want to dance.

New music does not move me (just like a movie). I need my old stuff, the things I know, the things I love, only they make me happy. Especially repetitive, house-y tracks that stroke my soul. Repetitive music strokes the soul. Oh, I am so poetic, aren't I? So, true to the spirit of this post here is some classic, beloved Chemical Brothers, that will never ever let me down.

Semantics

Listening to the Nouvelle Vague cover of the Tuxedomoon classic, I am thinking of words and their meaning.

In a Manner of speaking, I just want to say
That I could never forget the way
You told me everything, By saying nothing

In a manner of speaking, I don't understand
How love in silence becomes reprimand
But the way that i feel about you, Is beyond words

Oh give me the words, Give me the words
That tell me nothing
Give me the words, Give me the words
That tell me everything

In a manner of speaking, Semantics won't do
In this life that we live we only make do
And the way that we feel, Might have to be sacrificed

So in a manner of speaking, I just want to say
That just like you I should find a way
To tell you everything, By saying nothing.

Oh give me the words Give me the words
That tell me nothing
Give me the words Give me the words
That tell me everything



I was thinking of the meaning of words and how fluid it is, how much it depends on who you say what to, when. While this is clearly true about big words like 'love', 'friends' etc it works also with seemingly factual words like 'white' and 'sweet'. Even more disturbingly so this is the same with entire conversations. Some time ago I saw an old friend with whom we don't really have much in common anymore. I had a good time with her and we talked about important things. But the feeling I got afterwards was so empty and void. This surprised me because I thought that the bad thing would have been if we didn't talk about 'serious' stuff and horsed around instead. However, I had this dodgy feeling that although we had a 'deep' conversation, this was still not enough and in the end not illustrative at all about our relationship. I had never felt before that this was possible. For me people fell into two categories: people I talk shit to and people I talk serious stuff with. The former are my friends the latter are my acquaintances. This time I felt that the topic of a conversation does not define a relationship and to put it differently, the words you use do not define a relationship. You might say more or less with someone, use heavy words or light ones, but they don't necessarily mean what you say. The act of conveying meaning is much more complex that just choice of words. This is exciting but also deeply upsetting. How will I get my message across if I cannot even rely on choice of words for it? There must be some other conventional way of people to do that.

Sick

My mouth is dry: I cannot breathe from my nose and I keep it open all the time. My eyes are painful and glassy, I feel I have a fever. My nose os blocked, I cannot breathe at all. The worst thing from all this is that I cannot taste anything. I cannot smell anything either, but not being able to taste anything is worse. I make a sandwich, and I know what it has inside. I know it has cheese and ham and that the bread is focaccia. I eat it and all I feel is that it's hot. I feel the texture of the bread and the cheese and the ham in my mouth as I chew. But I cannot remember the taste. All of a sudden I remember the scene in the Matrix:



In the scene, he betrays the resistance just so that he can eat again a steak and enjoy it and have his brain be brainwashed that it's a steak, instead of the 'real' porridge they eat in Nebuchadnezzar. "Ignorance is bliss" he says.

I feel sick today and I feel awful. I feel that my sense will never come back, I feel that I will never understand what I'm eating again. I feel desperate. But I know this is not real, and that soon focaccia bread will taste again like focaccia bread. And I will be sick no more.

Quizas, quizas, quizas

Perhaps I needed a bit of holidays to love my blog again and look forward to writing to it. Sometimes I feel good about my texts, now I don't necessarily do, but I do enjoy the urge to write that I feel.

I saw Watchmen the other day, and I was so disappointed. It was so mediocre because it was painfully literal, there were no layers whatsoever, no hidden meanings, nothing. The ultimate 'what you see is what you get': a bunch of "deeply flawed" superheroes and their views on how the world should be saved (or not). There were a lot of clever details, tongue in cheek sex-scenes between tormented superheroes who can only get it on if they're wearing their costumes, but in general the whole thing was such a disappointment. I love futuristic, dystopian movies or books (I'm reading 'handmaid's tale' now and I am really enjoying it-will write about it soon) but watchmen was just infuriatingly plain and uninspiring.

And then last night I saw 'changeling' which was again painfully mediocre. Clint kicks ass, that's true, he's a good director and all, but the story was so fragmented, going from a woman's personal drama, to a story about how corrupt LAPD was, to a female version of 'one flew over cuckoo's nest' (hence the casting of Jolie-cf. oscar for girl, interrupted) to a whodunit, finally to a movie about the rise of the serial-killers in America. The connection between all these subplots was so loose, so accidental, relying too much on Jolie and her beautiful face (actually just her enormous, red lips) that it made me fall asleep. Take-home message for directors everywhere: when you're making a movie, choose ONE story, and perhaps you'll do well. Ah, and if you want your viewers to sympathize with your heroine, who is a tormented mother, don't choose the most overexposed woman on the planet: she evokes no sympathetic sentiments to anyone.

This brings us to the 'perhaps' in the title: mediocre movies are so painful. It's better if they suck, at least this makes them interesting. Ah, the pain to sit through mediocrity, never again...

Convergence/Narcissism

It always amazes me the sameness of couples. They all look alike, as if they're participating in incestuous illegal unions. When they are younger, they dress alike, a goth with a goth, a raver with a raver. Middle aged tacky men with sleezy hair with middle aged tacky women with pink suitcases. When couples get older they look even more spookily alike, not just like two people who are similar but essentially two people who grew to become the same. You start off like a normal person and then you become a tartan-loving woman, with a tartan-loving man, part of a tartan-loving pair, that makes people sick.

People often say this is inevitable, some even say it's good if couples look like each other: it seems they're compatible.

I think such human traits,this morbing longing for sameness only unveils a tendency towards narcissism: I love you because you look like me, sort of thing.

Is this true and are people truly incapable of liking (and appreciating and loving) anything that looks remotely different to themselves? Who can appreciate being different these days?

The music

TV sucks. I know I've been watching too much of it and I constantly write about it. I know I love 'friends' and quote them all the time ('love me, define me' still works...) and I love House (or at least I used to before I got a bit too tired of it) and all other crap that I watch in the evenings to unwind.

But today I had the TV closed, and had the music on for a while and things just seemed different. Maybe it's also because I had Greek music on, something that I don't usually do. The day was beautiful, sunny, perhaps the first proper good day of spring, the windows were open, the music was on and I was making a tomato sauce from all the left-over tomatoes in the fridge that I didn't want to throw away. And then it hit me, TV sucks, it only stops you from thinking, clouding emotions like panadol clouds the pain of migraine. And then it hit me again, aren't we supposed to know this, about TV? I mean we know it sucks, but we watch it. Even clever people like me (!) watch it and hate to close it. What does this mean, is it because we're insecure and lonely?

I would sit here and write about this, but I have to go and watch the rest of 'friends'.

Who drops the bombs?

My favourite Greek journalist and blogger whose new editorial is again impeccably written, once wrote a text entitled 'who drops the bombs' in his old magazine, 01, that was my teenage obsession. I don't remember what that text was about, but it's title always appealed to me. The question is always relevant-who the fuck drop the bombs, in people's lives, in people's minds, in people's hearts?

Sometimes, we do it ourselves: who see a nice little town and we drop a bomb on it. We call things with their names (and not with other, fake, sugarcoated names) and we grab bulls by their horns. We then feel instantly better, empowered and the rest of it, and we then enter the time of indecision-we go back and fourth being sad and happy, angry and calm, empowered and powerless.

Some other times, it is the 'other'-he drops the bombs. The other is a powerful entity, he often has the ability to make one feel helpless and all but the question is: does the 'other' ever drop anything, or is it our own bombs that are dropped again, only by reflection? Nobody has the power to fuck our world-it is only if we leave the window open, it is only then that the bombs will come in.

And finally, sometimes the bombs fall from the sky. It's nobody's fault, it's just that things happened. Unexpectedly, unbelievably, frustratingly, things happened by themselves. Again, is this ever possible? I don't think so.

I think it's always us, that drop the bombs in our lives. Either actively or by keeping open windows or not looking enough at the sky.

I will leave you to ponder about all this, with my new find: Nteibint and his awesome music courtecy of Lifo.

time

Speaking of movies and life... I haven't seen a movie lately without relating it to my life. Big questions like: ''When I am going to meet the man of my destiny as I was promised in all these movies? Where is he? the one who will be waiting for me for so many years and when I say 'Sleep with me', he will just reply 'Absolutely!'
And most and above all, when will I go sailing with him in our own little sailing boat, witnessing all the phases of the moon and discovering our beautiful planet together? Not to mention the road trip to South America, the island hoping in Indonesia, the big Africa tour and the mount trekking in Nepal.. when? when will I do all these things?
I despite movies based on real stories; they just remind me that everything is possible and I am doing nothing. And the most painful thought is that I am running out of time. I somehow got trapped to this Monday-Friday life style when all I wish to do is enjoy life, love, my young body, the sleepless nights. This is my ambition. To go along with time, not just looking at it slipping away. I need to stop watching these movies. I need to stop thinking about time. Time is just to remind me that I only have one chance to live this very second..

Life doesn't move me-just like a movie

This song has always made me feel so strong. It is an amazing combination of seemingly mutually exclusive emotions: angst, sadness, cynicism, anger, indifference and blends them together. On the one hand you have the music which is so strong and so angry and on the other hand there are the lyrics that are so blasé. Who wins?

Life doesn't move me-just like a movie, It doesn't move me-love doesn't move me. Move me! It's like a movie-just like a movie, life doesn't move me.

Fuck off vibes

So, my friend d/a told me about this concept that I found very interesting. The issue has to do with women who are nice, dynamic, successful etc yet they cannot seem to find a man to suit them, accept them and make them happy. (I already realize that this sounds like a cliché, but bear with me, it gets better.) So the question is (the eternal question I would say) why is it so? What do these women do wrong?

And the answer is... they emit fuck off vibes. Their attitudes are like, fuck off, I'm great, I have succeeded by myself all my life, I'm better than you, I don't need you one bit, but do you want to be my boyfriend? I realize that this is a fairly anti-feminist thing to say, but I shall persevere because I think that although it sounds politically incorrect, it might be true at some level.

The answer to this anti-social behaviour is, according to a friend of d/a, daily exercises of 'femininity' of sorts. So, apparently, these kick-ass women, in order to get rid of the hostility they ooze, they need to do daily exercises whereby they ask for something from various men. They can go around asking for help in fixing photo-copying machines, lifts, help with doors, lifting things and other girlie things. They can also go around asking for help with their jobs, help in understanding things etc. They other part of the exercise involves women addressing every potential man they talk to, as 'the one'. In other words, they have to flirt with everyone.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, wtf are you saying that women need to sabotage themselves, undermine themselves in the eyes of men, in order to be accepted by them? Well, that is definitely one way to look at this. But there is another way, no? We can all see it just as indulging men's egos, and nothing else. We don't need to think it's a big deal, it's just an exercise in style, not substance.

Or not?

Candy Marie Candy

I really wanted to write something good for the blog this time, something thought provoking and poignant and stop linking to all these videos. But then I watch too much TV, so it's useless to resist.

This is a video for Comic Relief by Little Britain. It might very well be the best funny clip I've seen for a while.



I really promise to write something poignant soon.

Define me

I saw this 'friends' episode again today (I know I'm a bit obsessed) and it struck me again, how amazing the writing of this series is. It's from the first series, when Phoebe is dating this obnoxious shrink that pisses off everybody. Phoebe confronts him with her friends disliking of him and here is his response.


Phoebe: It's, I mean, it's nothing, I'm fine. It's my friends. They-they have a liking problem with you. In that, um, they don't.

Roger: Oh. They don't.

Phoebe: But they don't see all the wonderfulness that I see. They don't see all the good stuff and all the sweet stuff. They just think you're a little...

Roger: What?

Phoebe: Intense and creepy.

Roger: Oh.

Phoebe: But I don't. Me, Phoebe.

Roger: Well, I'm not I'm not at all surprised they feel that way.

Phoebe: You're not? See, that's why you're so great!

Roger: Actually it's, it's quite, y'know, typical behaviour when you have this kind of dysfunctional group dynamic. Y'know, this kind of co-dependant, emotionally stunted, sitting in your stupid coffee house with your stupid big cups which, I'm sorry, might as well have nipples on them, and you're like all 'Oh, define me! Define me! Love me, I need love!'.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The important line here being 'define me'. I mean, c'mon, american sitcoms are not meant to be so genius. 'Define me'??? I'm amazed.... (and obsessed)

Blasphemous!

Courtesy of D/a, and still laughing...

Friends

I love friends, i literally love this series. They show it every day on TV and I watch it every day, two episodes a day. And when it finishes, all the brilliant ten years of it, they show it from the beginning and I watch it all over again.

I am never bored with it. I know all the jokes, I remember the lines, I even remember the tone of the actors' voices when they say their lines (Rachel: 'you were asleeeeep?' - true aficionados will remember the one I mean), but I still watch it happily. As a matter of fact, I watch it even more happily when I recognize which episode it's going to be, because this way I know the jokes in advance and I laugh even before the joke comes.

Sometimes I bring lines from friends into every day conversations (my colleague said the other day that she doesn't like ice cream, and I said, yeah ross doesn't like ice cream either). I think I treat the characters in this series, as if they are my friends. I laugh with them, not at them. I do not think that they are brilliant actors, but I think they are great in this series. I think this is one of these magical moments where film actually captures extreme chemistry on screen.

But what I find even more impressive (or depressing, depending on how you see it) is that I am actually touched by their stories. Tonight I saw (I think for the third time now) the last episode. I cried like a little girl with the ross/rachel story all over again. I find everything about them touching and real, although they are the characters of an American sitcom, something that could be the epitome of fakeness.

I guess one can never know where truth might come from, and as we know it can be found in the weirdest of places - like American sitcoms.

She is I

On a sunny Sunday, my alter ego is Lady GaGa.

Firstly, because she shares a first name with my other alter ego, the one you see here: Lady V. I accept that this might be confusing to some, so let me explain myself.

I am I, my name is not important. My alter ego (for the purposes of this blog) is Lady V. But Lady V exists as a separate entity because there are some people (admittedly, very few) who only know Lady V and not me. So the independence of Lady V makes it crucial for her to have an alter ego as well.

And the alter ego of Lady V is Lady GaGa.

I like Lady G (that's her affectionate nickname) because she is cool, theatrical and sexually provocative (as she makes it explicit in her videos, rubbing herself on a plastic sea toys) and in imaginative lyrics like: 'and baby when it's love, if it's not rough, it isn't fun').

So, Lady G for president and yeah, Britney eat our dust.

Self / persona

A lot of serious scientific work in pragmatics, philosophy and comics has preoccupied itself with this issue: the need of a alter ego. Apparently, the self need not just be divided to body and soul, the good old Platonic distinction. It can also be divided to a self and a persona. This distinction need not worry us in a philosophical way. Instead we might think about it in every day terms: what does it mean to say that every one of us has (or needs to have) a self and a persona. And do we need to have just one persona, or could we also have more?

I guess this is where comic-books and superheroes become relevant. The substance of every superhero is the fact that he is a normal (usually geeky, run-of-the-mill, unassuming) person, a person that no-one would ever think has anything to do with superpowers, and then he/she also has this other life, this other part of his character that transpires through his/her masked persona. And the important question here is, why do we need a mask to bring our personas to life? Is the persona mutually exclusive with our everyday, socially acceptable image?

The other important question is of course whether we all need this self / persona distinction in our lives. Do we all need this because our socially acceptable self is suffocating and we need something to help us break off some steam? Can we only function within these restricting lives that we lead, only if we have a persona, be it just a crazy girl who dances a lot in weekends?

I think we do. People are multi-faceted entities, they have a lot of layers (like Shakespeare always liked to illustrate) and their lives can only let them show so much. It is only in the freedom of a mask, in the freedom of an alter ego that we can only be free.

What's your alter ego?

Art imitates life imitates art

Slumdog millionaire is a rag-to-riches story, a movie about a boy from the slums that goes on to win a million rupees and the woman of his dreams. Slumdog millionaire, the movie itself, is a rag-to-riches story of a movie that was supposed to go straight to DVD, a movie that was not picked up by any distribution company in the US until it was shown to the Toronto festival, was then adored by the crowd and only then was picked up and distributed in cinemas in the US and ended up received 8 oscars this year, including the one of best movie. Life imitates art, as it is supposed to be (and not the other way round).

The Wrestler is a movie about a wrestler, played by Mickey Rourke, who used to be great and is now no longer on top of his game. Mickey Rourke is an actor who was at the top of his game, then lost it all, only to be reborn (artistically and perhaps personally) through the movie 'The Wrestler'. Art imitates life, as it is supposed to be (and not the other way round).

Mickey Rourke did not get Slumdog's Oscars happily ever after, Sean Penn (who has no relevance with the topic of this post whatsoever) did instead.

Slumdog's producers were criticized that they exploited the children actors from the slums, by not paying them enough. To close the nasty mouths, they brought the slums at the Oscars and they all celebrated Slumdog's big win, appropriately together on stage, in true Indian style. They did *not* burst into a Bollywood sing and dance, much to the producers' dismay. But, sarcasm aside, they did show that movies are made by a crew and a cast that all deserve to accept their award, together.

Can anyone make a movie imitating that?

'Old' is the new 'new'

I found this bag in the bottom of my closet the other day and I couldn't believe it. Some time ago I loved it and wore it every day and now, I have forgotten its existence. When I saw it, it felt like I was buying it all over again, it felt like it was new. I put it on then, and went out, and felt like it was the newest thing ever. And then my weekly urge of shopping suddenly went away. I felt that my craving was satisfied for this week, because I had found this bag. It felt that my bag was new and exiting and shouldn't be overshadowed by anything else this week.

This post could be just about that: how we don't need to buy new things if we look closely in our closets. But I think there is an interesting Freudian analogy creeping underneath this simple thought. Perhaps what we do with clothes, we also do with people as well: we love new people, they are exiting and new and we don't know whether we are drawn towards them because they are exiting or because they're new. Resisting the urge to go find new shiny people to hang out with then, this post is about old friends, who are the coolest, exiting-est, shiniest people in our lives and who cannot be overshadowed by any new and shiny ones. Because old is the new new and because old friends are the best.

Against

I'm obsessively opposed to nostalgia. I hate the idea of it. It doesn't work. And it doesn't interest me at all.

What's important is not what I did last week, it's what I'm going to do next week. I made great records - I love them. My kids play them now. But that's for them and everyone else.

There's an awful lot of Britpop reunions going on at the moment and I find it embarrassing, personally. I think it's got no relevance to what's going on at the moment.

I know it's good fun and everything and sure, you can't deny someone a good night out but personally, I just feel uncomfortable with nostalgia.

If I could dedicate six months of my life to one thing, would it be somebody who's doing something that's interesting and totally new, or something that reflects something I did 15 years ago?

You couldn't possibly be a human being and be motivated by that.

Thus spoke Bernard Butler, ex-Suede guitarist and current producer-of-the-moment for Duffy.

Can people really be divided into nostalgic types and the "other ones"? People who move forward and the ones that stay in the past? Is this really, that simple? I though I was fiercely against nostalgia myself until I found myself obsessively thinking of the past, sometimes. Sometimes I walk and I just start thinking of people that I used to know and I just see my previous life in front of me, like a movie. I get emotional sometimes, but usually I move on. I don't sit and dwell, or rather I do sit and dwell, but I don't feel bad. You know what I mean? I don't think of my previous life and think, oh it was so nice then.

With music it''s different. I love past things, they give me such a comfort, to know what's coming next in a song, such comfort. Sometimes, I don't want to listen to new things people send me, because I don't know how they're going to be and I feel I'm too fragile to risk any disappointments. Musical disappointments are not to be taken lightly, I assure you. The reward of new music is sublime, when it works, mind you. But, as in life, I guess it takes some courage to be exposed to newness.

D. It is written

I was waiting to see this movie... I was well prepared: I had seen the trailer, I had downloaded the soundtrack, I had watched the BAFTA and I knew, I just knew for sure that I would like it. Why? Well, it was all about fast motion, beautiful photography, suspense, fantastic soundtrack (that is definitely not just in the background), and most of all, it was about hope and karma.
As a last attempt to catch the attention of his beloved Latika, Jamal decides to take part in a tv show that can bring him millions and change his life. But he is not there for the money. All his life has been a battle to have money, to survive with one way or another (stealing or working), but not this time. He was there to push his luck, to live his karma and get back together with the only woman he ever loved. Every question is a big chapter of his life. And he knows all the answers. All the nation is watching, awaiting for the outcome and the big mystery for the police to solve is if Jamal knows all the answers because he is cheating or... is it written?
This is a story of three musketeers, Jamal, Salim and Latika. But also a love story of two children who meet under unpleasant circumstances, separate, meet again in their teens and they can't be together as adults. A story of two very different brothers who try to survive the poverty and the loneliness and hurt each other. A story of a big city, Mumbai, full of life, religion, crime, death, culture that is changing.
It's only at the end, a very Bollywood end indeed, with Indian dance and music that made me forget that this is all a European film. If you enjoy Danny Boyle's latest film, you may want to book your next holidays to India, like I do, or if you don't like it, well.. it's probably written!

Cover

I've been wanting to write a post on covered songs since forever and finally here it is. Initially, I wanted to write it because of Mark Ronson's album, but then I got distracted. Today however I found the following videos and I loooooooooved them. It is from Radio 1's live lounge that although I knew existed, I never got too much into it.

Enjoy!



and...



Priceless!

The anniversary

People have all sorts of anniversaries. Anniversaries with their partners, their first kisses, their first times going public with their relationships, their marriages.

There are also anniversaries with break ups, that one remembers and feels relieved and anniversaries with break ups that people feel nostalgic about.

There are also birthdays, or dates that I call anniversaries with the self (like the one Youkali has today, happy birthday baby!!). Birthdays are viewed nicely as anniversaries with ourselves, I think, because this way we acknowledge that life is a relationship, a relationship with yourself and it is only up to you to make it work (this sounds cheesy, but you know what I mean).

My favourite anniversary is with me and my PhD: 8 December 2006 people, what a lovely date. I still remember the feeling of release that made me feel so free. The transision after that was not always smooth, but whatever.

Today however is my anniversary with Belfast. I arrived here two years ago. In the beginning it was hard and I felt lonely, miserable and sad. Now though, I feel ok. It's perhaps not my favourite place in the world, but it is, and will always be in my heart, the place where I gained my independence. And that is a very nice thing, indeed.

Haapy anniversary to us then, Belfast dear.

The success

In the program of Dimitris Papaioannou's new production, Medea 2, it says that Medea is the only successful avenger. Anybody who knows me, also knows how obsessed I am with the notion of revenge. I love Medea and I've never thought of her story that way. But it's true, Medea does the unthinkable and then leaves with her head high on the Sun's chariot, like a winner.

Papaioannou's Medea is not a winner, she leaves crushed with a look on her face that is unthinkably sad. But she is a winner, she is a winner as a piece of art. I cannot explain Papaioannou's vision to whoever has not seen it, and it is not my intention to explain anything. I just wanted to write a small post just to say that Medea 2 is a masterpiece, probably the best thing I have ever seen in my life. The man is a genius.

The porridge

It's a beautiful morning here, the sun is out and the cold is crisp, like a snowflake trapped inside your favourite ice cream flavour. When I make CD compilations for my friends I like to give them names and I have one that is called "crisp & cold", which has the song I post today.

It's not so much of a song this one, it's actually a blast from the past. I was listening to it obsessively some years ago, I think 4ish, when I was in Cam. I distinctly remember cycling to this song, going from my work (remember Hallo Kitty?) to my house and vice versa. It's awful cycling in the cold, but I didn't mind too much then, I think. What I find funny with these songs that mark an era, is the immediacy with which they bring back to you emotions and thoughts that you think are long gone. It is funny listening to the songs that marked a place in your past, listening them to a new place. And although you run the risk of them sounding out of place (and time for that matter) it's always good giving them a try.

So today what I am doing is enjoying my blast from the past: listening to old songs, making porridge, marveling at the winter sun. Σάν να μην πέρασε μιά μέρα, indeed.