Lady V

False dichotomy

2012-02-13T06:55:00.000-08:00

My life's convictions have been shattered, suddenly on a Saturday night while watching Star Trek. I was sitting there, waiting to be bored and instead I was so so surprised that I was enjoying myself, so surprised indeed.

I was raised to believe that things are black and white in a certain way: people are either clever or stupid, not good or bad; books are either artistic or pop, not good or bad and so on and so forth. Now of course I listen to trashy music and watch shitty films and enjoy them, but I thought this was just my guilty pleasure. An old friend once told my that cheesy music is cathartic, and I believed him, but didn't ask why.

Still, I know in my bones that there is a difference between the entire current UK top 40 and "like a prayer". But how can I explain it, if my only tools are: posh vs. pop? And then it hit me that this is a false dichotomy. There is no such thing as deep vs. pop literature, everything in life is either GOOD or plain BAD.

Star trek is a pop movie, but it's a good movie.
The Carnage is not a pop movie, but it's a bad movie.

Madonna is pop but it's good pop (most of the times).
Vivaldi is not pop (well, maybe), but it's good music still.

This is the distinction in life: are you or are you not good in whatever you do? You lay the rules (of your genre), whatever they are and then you can follow them (in a good, inspired, or even profound way) or not.

If you don't follow the rules that you set, no matter how naive or simplistic they might be, then your (artistic or other) artifact will forever and always suck.

Over and out,
an enlightened Lady V

The new boring

2012-02-11T02:06:00.001-08:00

La petite bourgeoisie, how boring really...

Don't we all know it, that the middle class sucks?

We educate ourselves to mask our working class roots.

We dress up nicely to hide our stumbled fingernails.

We speak politely to disguise our animal instincts.

Polanski's new movie, with its excellent cast and interesting (if somewhat far-fetched) script tells us, once again, what we knew all along: that people are animals, and middle class people are animals in disguise. Like the pigs walking on their back two feet and wearing clothes in the animal farm.

What I particularly disliked about the movie (apart from the fact that it was boring) was that it was so naively transparent. Its intentions were extremely clear from start to finish. This movie very simply wanted to tell us that politeness is skin deep, it disguises the true nature of man. But this was so banal, so common and so clear that I really could not even concentrate.

Quel dommage!

Gavin Hewitt@BBC

2012-02-09T04:22:00.000-08:00

The President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso has declared: "I think all Europe has now the eyes on Athens." Europe's leaders are waiting, drumming their fingers impatiently.

Yet Athens is a city of false deadlines. They are made and discarded casually. Yet again today there is an expectation that the leaders of the coalition will agree to a raft of austerity measures and so pave the way for a second Greek bailout.

The text of an agreement was finalised last night. It sets out where the extra spending cuts - amounting to 3bn euros - will fall.

Protesters see the culture of austerity as of German design
Lurking in the wings are the accountants of the troika: the IMF, the EU and the ECB. These officials are consulted at every turn; they determine whether the cuts, which will affect the lives of ordinary Greeks, will satisfy the creditors.

It is a horse trade between those who will shortly be accountable to the people at election time and those who will never have to face the voters.

The outline of a deal is clear. The largest spending cut of 1.1bn euros will most likely be in health care.

There is undoubtedly waste in the system but I visited a hospital near Piraeus two days ago that had a shortage of syringes, dressings and basic drugs. A doctor told me his salary had already been cut by 35% in the past two years and he expected a further 20% cut.

Local government funding will be reduced. There will be a 20% cut in the minimum wage but annual bonus holiday payments in the private sector may escape.

If a deal is done today - and expect some last minute haggling - it will be described as historic. The leaders of France and Germany will praise the responsibility of Greece's politicians.

In reality, like bailout mark 1, it will buy time. The spectre of a messy default in March will have been removed. There will be a huge sigh of relief in Brussels.

It is wise, however, to be cautious. Any agreement will still have to be voted on in the Greek parliament. Secondly there is the question of whether the deal will go far enough.

The IMF has insisted that Greece's debt to GDP ratio must fall to 120% of GDP by 2020. With private investors taking losses of up to 70% on their investments, Greece's debt mountain should be reduced by 100bn euros. Then there are the spending cuts.

But there might still be a shortfall - perhaps by as much as 15bn euros. Eurozone governments may be asked to fill that gap and some countries will baulk at reaching into their pockets yet again.

If all that is done - what are the prospects for the real economy in Greece? It is expected to shrink by 3% this year. Businesses are closing by the day - 65,000 have gone. Unemployment is close to 19%.

I spoke to a gold dealer. In just one store between 25 and 30 people a day come in to sell their jewellery. There are now scores of such places.

It is just one barometer of a country hurting. Greece is in recession while further cuts are being insisted on. There is a distinct possibility that the Greek economy will continue its decline upsetting all calculations. It will continue on international life support whilst money flows out of the country and the best and brightest head for Australia and Canada.

Much of the political class in Greece argue that the country has no alternative.

Either the people accept this deal or they will face the chaos of bankruptcy. A majority of Greeks accept that argument reluctantly. The risk, however, is that this deal ushers in ten years of austerity that will break Greek society.

Yesterday - in torrential rain - there was a protest against the new spending cuts. On the steps of the parliament they burned a German flag. Certainly in Greece - and perhaps in Italy and Spain too - the culture of austerity is seen as of German design.

If the bailout only delivers more pain then the blame will fall on Germany - as the Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti has hinted.

This week has witnessed an extraordinary sight - a German chancellor openly taking sides in a French election. She justifies this on the grounds that we are all European.

The President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy has defended her. "We have gone through such a huge crisis," he argues, that "we are looking to each other in a different way than before".

"What we are currently going through is... the Europeanisation of national political life," he added.

It is an interesting observation from an official always worth listening to although the voters - as far as I know - have expressed no interest or support for "the Europeanisation of national political life".

It underlines what some regard as the most dangerous legacy of the eurozone crisis - the sidelining of democracy at both a national and a European level.

Does she still got it?

2012-02-06T04:20:00.000-08:00

You fucking bet she does!!!!

Madonna for president for ever (even if the new song sucks bit)....

The rain

2012-01-29T02:00:00.001-08:00

What do you feel when you listen to the falling rain tapping away on the window?

I feel relief.
I feel that everything will be clean and shiny after that.
I feel lucky that I have a warm house to cosy into and listen to the falling rain.

I feel like making a cup of coffee and reading magazines.

Good morning...

And remember, tomorrow is a new week and lousy January will be over for another year.

Grow up

2012-01-23T08:52:00.000-08:00

The sole purpose of this post is to make me feel better. I always felt that writing is therapeutic, so now is the time to put this to the ultimate test.

I've always been a good girl, I hate confrontation, and very often in order to avoid it I even lie. If a friend invites me to dinner and I don't feel like going, I might lie in order not to say to the other person "I can't come, because I don't feel like it". Society seems to like this, it's calling these excuses "white lies" or something. But they are shit, mostly because they make people weak, stupid, avoiding confrontation at all cost. So when you actually have to confront something, you cannot because you are not able to, you have never done it.

I have a manipulative person in my life, who has managed to manipulate me into a role that I do not want to assume.

Initially, I could deal with this, because I can deal with everything seemingly, I just grin and bear it.

I now find myself into a situation where it is impossible for me to function, because the role that I am forced to play is not feasible anymore.

The only answer to my problem is to confront this person and explain that I cannot do this anymore. This is the only possible, logical and right thing to do. Yet, I am finding it hard. Why?

All my life, whenever I had to do something like this, I shied away from it, I took another road. I stayed silent and waited for the problem to disappear. Sometimes this worked, sometimes it didn't.

This time, this is definitely NOT going to work; the manipulation is too big.

So I have to speak up. Will I do this?

You fucking better believe I will. Because, maybe now, at the age of 33, it is (maybe; just maybe) the time to finally grow up.

Grow up.
Speak up for yourself.
No one else will.

My dog died

2012-01-22T08:19:00.001-08:00

My dog Mourgos died.

He ate poison and died.

Who does this to animals? I don't care why people leave poison around, if it's for fucking foxes or whoever eats their chickens or whatever. You can't do this period. Fucking assholes. I hate them all.

We've lost so many animals like this. Suffering terrible deaths, poor dogs.

This is not a normal country, when nothing works and no one behaves like a civilized person.

Not so much...

2012-01-17T03:50:00.000-08:00

it's the movie everyone is talking about: silent but powerful, it is winning awards (including Cannes, Golden globes etc) and is the biggest favourite for the Oscars.

I was very intrigued, and went and saw it on Sunday. Great movie, fun and moving, but nothing to get one's knickers in a twist about, I think. The story is a cliché, done amazingly in the far superior Sunset Boulevard, what remains is the novelty of watching a silent movie in the year 2012. Great acting and recreation of an era, great dog even but really, why the hype?

It's really all been said before... And of course art repeats itself all the time, but no need to do it in such a way...

I;m ready for my close-up Mr de Mille.
Immortal line, immortal movie.

The new year

2012-01-11T02:28:00.000-08:00

The new year that came- 2012, leap year. Lucky? Who knows...

The red earth, with crops. Potatoes.

Does it make us feel safe? To have potatoes around.
At least we can eat that, one might think.

Greece is bleeding. People are sad, depressed, frustrated. Confused.

The fear is everywhere. Where is the optimism? Is there any left?

Who knows...

But it's the new year, this must count for something.

Took me a while...

2011-12-15T10:16:00.001-08:00

My first post from the iPhone, took me a while no? Maybe now I'll post more frequently than once a month. But then what is there to report when the best thing that happened to me today was eat a mince pie?
Happy Christmas!

Εσυ κερδίζεις μάνα μου και κύπελλο Ουέφα

2011-11-28T02:54:00.000-08:00

I know I've been a bad girl lately

2011-11-20T03:25:00.000-08:00

I know I've been a bad girl lately:

- I post once in a blue moon (literally)
- I post uninspired, sad vs. angry posts
- I feel the world is against me

In a desperate attempt to wake up my non-existent readers, I am posting twice in two days: a-ma-zing.

In an additional desperate attempt to cheer us all up, I am introducing you to X-factor guardian's liveblog

For anyone not from the UK, this is the most serious newspaper blogging for X-facor/scum of the earth TV. But it's amazing. It's funny, it's clever, it's indispensable.

Which makes me think, does the fact that I am reading the guardian cancel out the shame of watching X-factor?

Youkali once said to me a wise thing (one of many): even intellectual people need to embrace shitty popular culture once and a while. Pretending to be an intellectual all my life, and always having an identity crisis when I liked so much TV crap, I felt instantly better. You?

Which brings me to this post's final point: because we need a balance in life, and because I desperately need to keep up with the intellectual pretenses, I started reading "the count of monte christo" last night. The original. The one with the 50000 pages. You can of course always ask what type of intellectual has still not read this book at the age of 33. That's an easy one, I'd say: a fake one.

Anyway, have a good Sunday people. Ah and wake up please, send me a comment.
Am I alone in all this?

The fear

2011-11-19T11:35:00.000-08:00

What is it about fear that makes people so human less?
Normal people, your friends, your colleagues, people you've known for a while, when fear strikes them you cannot recognise them anymore.

Fear can do two things to a man: either paralyse or make them entirely vicious amoral and cruel.

These are difficult times, people have no money, there is crisis everywhere, recession makes it all dark, there is no hope, people's lives might change.

Fear has crept in, everyone is feeling it now, and there's classic each man for himself.

How foolish mankind is. Always the same. Man eat man. And then what is left? After the crisis and the recession are over? After we go back to a so called normality? Where do we go back to, when so called friends have turned against each other?

Fuck it all.
We are born alone.

Art saves

2011-11-14T04:15:00.000-08:00

In a time when education means nothing - art saves.

In a world where beauty equals fake boobs - art saves.

In a world where dancing is fake - art saves.

In a world where noone reads books anymore - art saves.

In a world where movies are hollywood blockbusters only -art saves.

God save Pina Bausch. Wim Wenders, Pedro Almodovar, Julian Barnes, Euripides and even JK Rowling.

God save the bourgeoisie that still thinks that art matters.

Art matters because Art saves.

The endless sameness of the days

2011-11-01T11:19:00.000-07:00

One more week under way. Next week I'll be calmer, I thought last Tuesday. But this Tuesday came and went and calmer I am not. Week after week, I am stressed. I have no time to read. I have no time to write. I prepare things at the last minute. Badly. And then I struggle to make them work.

Every week I say, next week I'll feel myself again. Next week I won't run around like a headless chicken. Next week I'll have a bit of time. And next week comes, and still, I go around like a headless chicken.

When I have no time, I freeze. I feel tired constantly and I don't want to get a proper break. I try to work but I can't. I get the unproductive stress, I go from one thing to the next, doing nothing well. I spend hours on the internet, reading shit. Feeling instantly guilty for that, feeling worse.

The only thing that calms me down is a bit of time. Taking some time to write my list, cross things off one by one, feel that my in-tray is getting emptier. Even if it's not.

These are hard times: they make you feel that it's a privilege to have a job that's why you need to work your ass off.
But it's not a privilege, it's really not. When I die, I will not say, I was privileged enough to have a job. I might say, I was privileged to meet wonderful people, to have an interesting life, to feel love. Not to fucking work.

I am angry and confused. I haven't written anything about the financial situation of the world, of Greece, mostly because I am not sure I will write something profound enough. But here is the thing: this is not a normal world. This world is going to hell. This whole shit is not normal. People have the right to live without feeling thankful that someone is not shooting them dead.

Anyway, this post is now definitely verging on the utterly incoherent, but what can I do? Delete it and pretend it never existed? No way.

(Besides it makes me feel so revolutionary to write "fuck" like this all over the place)

Love in techinicolor

2011-10-20T09:16:00.000-07:00

It's you, it's you, it's all for you
Everything I do
I tell you all the time
Heaven is a place on earth with you
Tell me all the things you want to do
I heard that you like the bad girls
Honey, is that true?
It's better than I ever even knew
They say that the world was built for two
Only worth living if somebody is loving you
Baby now you do

Steve Jobs Stanford address

2011-10-06T04:28:00.000-07:00

I am sure this will be reproduced all over the world, but it is worth it. Amazing man, amazing life.

Grey Autumn

2011-10-04T01:16:00.000-07:00

Days are going by.
I work.

When I don't, I feel brain-dead. I don't want to talk. I have nothing interesting to say. I feel tired.

I shop a lot. The addiction returns.

Why are there so many addictions? Why are we so prone to them? You stop eating and then you start shopping. What the fuck?

Anyway, I digress. I am tired, I was saying.

But on Tuesdays, I am myself.

I stay at home. I read and prepare for next week's class. I wonder in the empty house and look out the windows. I talk to my plants. I dig out my old music. Like the Beth Rowley version of Nobody's fault but mine. That reminds me of Motherless child. That if I were romantic, I would ask to be played at my funeral.

I sit in the empty house, trying to get psyched to start working. And I open my ancient ibook, that has all this ancient music that reminds me of a different life and a different me. And I feel like a kid in a sweet-shop. I am by myself and I can put it as loud as I want and I can sing at the top of my lungs " if I should die, and my soul becomes lost, it's nobody's fault but mine".

And this makes me feel strangely happy.
And not tired.
And a bit myself again.

Music saves.
How many times have I said that already. But it's so true.

Some of us are lucky in life

2011-09-20T08:51:00.000-07:00

Trying to buy a bit more time until blog-God throws me out and cancels my blog because I am not posting anything, I thought I would show you this. Enjoy :-)

I will post something (clever/nice/profound/funny/all of the above) soon.
I promise.

Hilarious...

2011-09-06T06:55:00.000-07:00

The importance of being absurd

2011-09-01T01:40:00.000-07:00

Almodovar, perhaps more than any other modern director, demands the ultimate suspension of disbelief from his audience. In order to get into his world, you must leave pretence, and expectation of any standard movie story-line aside. What you get in return is often magnificent. Perhaps "the skin I live in" is not his best movie, but the absurdity of the plot, makes it one of the most Almodovar-like in years.

Immortal lines encapsulate the Almodovar universe of "I can't believe what I am seeing":
From "All about my mother"'s
- I don't want this woman holding my grandchild!
- This woman is his father!
to so many more absurd storylines...

If one is asked to describe the story of Almodovar's movies, people might think you're joking:
Lonely male nurse rapes his comatose patient and brings her back to life; mother goes back to her hometown to find the transvestite she had a son with to tell him that their child has died, only to find he has impregnated a nun who is dieing of AIDS; brilliant surgeon kidnaps his daughter almost rapist, gives him a sex change, a new skin, and the face of his dead wife and embarks of an affair with him/her... If it wasn't ridiculous it would be tragic. Or the other way round.

That's the fine line of Almodovar's films: they are so absurd that they can either be construed as ridiculous, farcical or ultimately tragic, like I-killed-my-father-and-married-my-mother kind of tragedy.

Talk to her was a true tragedy that you couldn't leave the cinema without floods of tears streaming from your face.
In the skin I live in, the tragedy is not so evident. Perhaps because it is so beautiful, it cannot be so tragic. Still it has its moments.

Perhaps for hardcore Almodovar fans, this is not enough.
But maybe the beauty will convince you...

The obsession has started

2011-08-31T06:12:00.001-07:00

I cannot work
I cannot think

This is all I think about

What can i do?

Back for good

2011-08-08T02:16:00.000-07:00

The boom is left half-read in the bag. Five weeks and you're still in page 200 something. It has been transported relentlessly from the room to the bag to the beach every day, full of sand. It will get finished soon I guess. But no hurry, it's the summer.

All the bags have sea shells in them randomly collected by the beaches, they mean nothing during the summer but they get instantly precious when you're back. They get proudly displayed on some table back home: they are from beach blah you say when someone asks. Next year you throw them out. They are cracked and old. They no longer remind of anything. They are useless. They served their purpose.

The new post on the blog gets postponed.
Tomorrow, you say every day.
The heat has seeped inside your brain, your cells are overheating, you have zero inspiration. You watch no news, you read no magazines, all you think of is the heat. It consumes you.

You're in the airplane, on your way back. You look at your hands, the ring is still there, they look beautiful tanned. People around you order wine and tiny sandwiches for ten euros. You seem surprised. You take out your notebook, write down things, start getting organized, start putting your affairs in order. It's only August but for you the summer is over.

Until next year.

Massive Attack (the past)

2011-06-21T01:41:00.000-07:00

In the empty office, deserted from my disappeared colleagues, I am listening to Massive Attack. The offices next to me are being painted, the smell seeps the walls. The heating has been closed for the summer. The office is grey and cold.

You are my angel, come from way above, to bring me love.
(Loveme, loveme, loveme, loveme, loveme, loveme, loveme, loveme, loveme.....)

The sounds are familiar, eerie, otherworldly, but modern still.

Some things never change.

Angel will always sound perfect.

So will Heat Miser (thanks Hallo Kitty).

So will Risingson (Toylike people make me boylike)

So will everything else, including the sublime Paradise Circus from Heligoland.

Repeat.

Life is dark but beautiful, when you listen to Massive Attack.

Restart

2011-06-18T03:32:00.000-07:00

I have now started twice a different topic for today's post and deleted them both.

I am not sure what I want to say.

The first one was too banal, the second one was too personal.

I never managed to strike the right balance with this blog. I never know if what I write is too personal, and therefore irrelevant to people, or if what I write is too generic and therefore boring. Anonymity gives you some freedom, but what about my friends who read me? They know me, and I am not always sure if I want to write something so personal for them to read.

The other day, I was lying awake in my bed for ever, I couldn't sleep, and so many other times in my life, I had these brilliant ideas for a post, and never got up to writing it. Only thing was, it was about an excellent sexual encounter I once had, one that made me radically rethink certain things about love and sex and so on. Lying in my bed, I imagined the prose in my head, powerful and lyrical, strong and explicit, I imagined the whole thing. But then I couldn't write it, I couldn't bring myself to write it at all.

Can we only be free in absolute anonymity?

But then, I like sharing my thoughts with my friends that live all over the place through this blog so much.

Should I have a second blog, an alias of an alias, so I can write my dirty over-sexualized posts, dishing on exes and providing the world of explicit details of my life? Only, if you don't know who I am, it doesn't count?

I don't know, I haven't decided. Perhaps my need to discuss personal details will pass, or perhaps I will find a way to write my thoughts stripped from the personal but not turning into commonalities that have an effect on noone.

On vera...

Internet shopping

2011-06-09T11:18:00.000-07:00

I found amazing things on the internet this week!

First a lovely brand of jewelry in amazon: Pomegranate

Lovely, flirty and gold! As Hallo Kitty always said: gold is for the summer, so here we go, summer is here and Pomegranate rocks!

Find number two, courtesy of the lovely Lopi of fashion architect, it's Maria Lucia Hohan.

Everything is especially yummy, but the wedding dresses are actually the best I've seen in a while ;-)

Speaking of wedding dresses, have a look at BHLDN, their new wedding collection is on, and I think it's even better than the first!

Last, but not least: etsy!

A wonderful online shop, to buy and sell handcrafted and vintage stuff. It's full of pretty, often inexpensive things, but the Takemoto wooden glasses are simply amazing!

So, have you been paid this month?
If yes, go spend it all online...

Happy spending, fellow shopaholics!!

Mama

2011-06-03T06:58:00.000-07:00

I don't often post videos and i am definitely not part of the "cute cats" epidemic.
This however is amazing.

I am not sure what it tells us (are animals like humans, or humans like animals- cf. the ending of "animal farm") but when I watched it (courtecy of lifo.gr) it made me feel really warm inside.

Slow

2011-06-03T01:36:00.000-07:00

Another week is almost over.
I sit sluggishly on the sofa, looking ahead at my empty day. I am not sure what I will do today, I don't have much to do anyway. Or, I do, but I have no brain power to start. I am sluggish too, slow, I only think of the summer.

I don't often have the time to slow down and think. I usually run around trying to do 500 things at once (and failing). When I was doing my PhD, I used to adore these slow days that I spent in my room. I used to work a bit (slowly, thinking about things in some detail and not just doing things) and then listen to a song and think about it, read a book and think about it, in general feel the things I was doing and not just doing them.

In this brief return to the severely underrated notion of sluggishness, I am spending my morning sipping coffee and browsing the net. I am reading on Greece and the situation there. It makes me sick to my stomach, I worry so much. My parents are nervous, my friends are nervous, and I am here. I have a good job and I live a good life. Nothing lasts forever, I know, and the UK finances are not exactly the healthiest in the universe, but I am fine.

I don't know what I would do if I was in Greece, I don't know what I would ask for.
I am reading, I am reading and I am still so confused. Whose fault is it? What can we do now? Is there anything that can be done and not leave Greece in ruins?

Thinking about these things, I despair and still I drink coffee and enjoy the sunshine and browse the net.
Fell sorry for ME.

Memory

2011-06-01T04:28:00.000-07:00

She likes walking in the city alone. Looking at other people, strangers she stays in her own mind. She is thinking of her everyday things: what she'll cook later, that she needs to lose some weight, stuff about work. Then she might see something in the city, a person walking, a colour in a sign, something that reminds her of something from her past. When this happens, she instantly gets transported back into that memory, she gets transported somewhere in her past and she starts remembering things in detail. She starts remembering people that she had known in a distant past, for very little time and hasn't seen or thought of for years. She starts remembering songs she would dance to frantically. She starts remembering clothes she used to wear and now does not know where they are. She starts remembering of things she used to like, foods she used to cook and she no longer does.

This lasts some minutes. She might sit down on a bench and think about all this for a while. Or she might just keep walking and smiling. And then, as quickly and as suddenly as she was in that world, she leaves it again. And she is back to being herself, she is back to being in the now. And she forgets about all of these past memories, the treasures of the past until the next time something random will remind her.

Hanna, never let me go

2011-05-20T01:24:00.001-07:00

Art often deals with the definition of humanity.

Who is human? Who shows human characteristics? How much "difference" can we accept?
These are central concepts that (like so many other things) seem to be revisited time after time, in movie after movie, in book after book.

Hanna is such a story. Born "special" due to a secret American CIA program, Hanna is raised like a killer, ready for when Uncle Sam comes looking. Unaware of her being "different", she fleetingly tries to blend in. Yet, Hanna looks and very much acts like a girl her age. Is her difference really significant then? Isn't she human?

In "never let me go" the characters are raised in a dubious school, where all their lives they feel something is not exactly as it should be. When they finally figure out their fate, they try to reverse it by appealing to the people that they think might classify "humans" as "beings who can love". They, too, want a "normal" life, a chance in normality.

Why would we even care about what defines humanity?

I guess because of what being human implies.

If an embryo is classified as human, you cannot abort it, it's considered murder.
If a clone is considered human, you cannot use it to take it's organs, it's considered murder.
If a genetically modified kid is classified as human, you cannot use it like a killing machine, it's considered "inhumane".

The world's most important definitions are nothing but a big fat slippery slope. No-one really knows (or agrees) when an embryo starts being human, or when it is just a collection of cells. Any attempt to define it is arbitrary at best.

No-one known if someone eating shrimps is really a vegetarian.

In short, millions of years down the line of human civilization, we are not so sure about how to define many important things.

Definitions are futile. Philosophy has failed.

Art, with all its ambivalence, is all we have to debate and discuss these important things.

As always, then, art saves.

And still, I cry

2011-05-06T05:42:00.000-07:00

I love Harry Potter, I really do.

After getting courage from him to finish my PhD, in times when I thought that nothing could calm me down and my mouth was in pain with tension, I decided to revisit him in time for the grand finale. Though I always thought that the books were far from perfect, the world that JKR created is undoubtedly amazing. The symbolism, the complexity, the details, HP's world sucks me in every time. I hadn't read the books, since before the end, where reading served one goal and one goal only: to look for clues of how it would all end. This of course obscured the whole experience and made me devour the books without thinking much, without enjoying them properly. So I thought, this time I will do it differently. Indifferent to the ending, I reread all books slowly, sluggishly tasting every detail. I started the last book this morning and I really don't want it to end, for when it does Harry will be gone forevermore for me, at least until July when I will queue with all the rest of his fans to see the last installment in the movie series. I never liked the movies too much, they left so much out. And, I think, HP is not about the big things, it is about the small ones. The details that the books include, the nuances of the relationships, the inner thoughts of the characters, the little traits that page after page make these kids my friends.

So, now you know why I have been so absent lately, I have been sucked back to HP land, reading and reading, spending my days, the sunniest days Belfast had seen for a while, inside a book and not outside in the gardens, the river and the sunshine. But I really don't care, sunshine will come and go. Harry though will always stay with me, my friend forever. When I read the passages that I love - Sirius's death, Voldemort's rebirth, the Yule ball, Hermione's isolation in book three, Harry's constant quest for love and affection, Snape's story - I cry. And I always cry as if these things are happening to a friend.

Because, I guess, they are.

Strangers?

2011-04-10T01:40:00.000-07:00

Blanche Dubois from "a streetcar named desire", famously professed that she "always depended on the kindness of strangers". I, myself have been prone to it in this blog, here and here.

But today I want to talk about sort of the opposite feeling, the comfort that comes from being with people you know, people you know very well. Strangers can be exciting and fun. Nothing is at stake with them, if they are nice, all is good, if they are not, nothing is lost really. But people you know, people you know and love can bring another dimension to your life.

With the exception of one person, I live my day to day life here surrounded by strangers. They are all nice people, I've known them now for 4 years (!) but they are not really my friends, my emotional investment to them is sort of minimal. We meet regularly, we talk about work, we moan about life, we bitch about bosses/boyfriends etc but in the end, perhaps solely due to the fact that we don't know each other for long, our relationships are shallow.

Nothing wrong with shallow, don't get me wrong. But we need more, I think. I pass my days thinking that it's ok, I can talk to my real friends on skype/phone, it's all fine. But then, when my friends come here, and I spend a couple of days of normality, with normal people that know me well, going for coffees and all, I think that, fuck this, fuck strangers, love is all that matters.

To make up for my laziness... enjoy

2011-04-01T02:02:00.001-07:00

Ah, and happy April fool's day. Will you tell any lies today?

Growing up

2011-03-20T10:23:00.001-07:00

March hasn't been a good month for posting so far, mostly due to me being über busy at work. Today's post is about exactly that: challenges at work when you're über busy.

Normally, what I do when I am busy is that I sit down and do things. Sure, I am master procrastinator, but I am also fairly efficient when my work also involves others. Unfortunately, when people decide to collaborate two things can happen: either people do what they need to do or the want to fuck each other over and do fuck all because they know that there are people around to clean up the mess and do their work. I have had to put up with the second possibility many times and I usually say nothing, I sit there and take it. Why? Don't know, I often reply that it is because I am "not a confrontational person", but I think that's bullshit. It's not that I am not confrontational, it's that I am a wimp. I cannot tell people what to do. Who am I to tell people what to do anyways? If people don't behave like adults why should I try to turn them into ones? People like not to respect others, unless they are specifically forced to do so. It is sad but true. And the only person that can inspire respect towards yourself is you.

So this week, I didn't do what I normally do, I didn't turn the other cheek. This week I bit back. I sent emails, I confronted people, I called a spade a spade. In the process I had a terrible headache and I cried often. But in the end, I was ok. And I felt very strong. I felt that people should not mess with me. Does this mean that life is a jungle? I guess so, but then again, this is how it is.

Note to self

2011-03-01T07:08:00.000-08:00

: write something about 'the fighter', this year's most accomplished, best movie.

Write something about the predictability of the Oscars (not)

I hate facebook

2011-02-23T07:55:00.000-08:00

I have been meaning to write a post on why I hate facebook for a long time, but I always postponed it. And then today i read this and i can postpone it no more.

Although I see the point of it all, I still regard facebook as a giant gossip machine, complete with narcissism and need for procrastination and all. Don't get me wrong, I, too, am a narcissist. I, too, am a procrastinator (and a huge one at that). Also, most of my friends are on facebook. But for some reason, and without trying to be holier than thou, I just cannot bring myself to join a thing where you state your relationship status for the world to see, I cannot join a thing which will send email alerts to my 'friends' if I break up and I cannot ultimately join a place where friends come in inverted commas. You can opt out of all these hideous little details, some of my friends tell me, you can only use facebook as a way to keep touch with old friends. To which I defiantly reply: I don't care, I really really don't. If I like these old friends, I am going to call them, email them, make some time for them. I don't need 150 virtual friends seeing my pictures from my last holiday- or my idiotic narcissistic self-portraits, with an angle, from above, to look thinner.

I will just continue my lonely self-imposed facebook exile and will miss out on all of these things. I have no idea if some people from primary school would like to find me and giggle hysterically at my pictures. I am sure I can live without all this.

Be Creative

2011-02-22T04:52:00.000-08:00

For a good cause:

http://movingfaces.emptyfilm.com/

For art:

Just for yourself.

Be creative.

Do something. Beautiful.

Don't just sit there and think.

Thinking is not doing.

Sing.

Draw.

Cook.

Do something. Be creative. Just for yourself.

Cold War

2011-02-17T02:49:00.000-08:00

Can it really be that there are mainstream people that do a good job?
Mark her name: Janelle Monaé

How is this called?

2011-02-15T06:28:00.000-08:00

This is called the domino effect.

Defined as: The domino effect is a chain reaction that occurs when a small change causes a similar change nearby, which then will cause another similar change, and so on in linear sequence. The term is best known as a mechanical effect, and is used as an analogy to a falling row of dominoes. It typically refers to a linked sequence of events where the time between successive events is relatively small. It can be used literally (an observed series of actual collisions) or metaphorically (causal linkages within systems such as global finance or politics) (from wikipedia)

And the question is: is this odd? Should we have not been expecting all this?

Repression, depression and extreme power in the hands of few, it doesn't take a genius to predict where all this is going...

Don't know where all this will end, the good case scenario says in a different world, the bad case scenario says in loads of death and no real change. One thing is however certain: the domino continues...

Scattered thoughts

2011-02-04T01:19:00.000-08:00

Perhaps there is nothing more to be said about what is happening in Egypt and what just happened in Tunisia before that, apart from us watching again the amazing movie Persepolis. It's all been said there.

But perhaps things are not exactly the same: fascism, oligarchy and suppression takes many forms and Egypt and Tunisia were not extremely religious countries, the way Satrapi's Iran is in Persepolis.

I am following the news, listening to Chomsky's comments, Obama's empty words and can't help thinking that it all started with a boy who set himself on fire.

Is that what it takes?

Inadequate

2011-01-29T01:59:00.000-08:00

Black Swan is a beautiful movie.

It is beautifully directed, beautifully acted. Its lead actress is beautiful. The cinematography is beautiful.

But unfortunately it is so simplistic, that it is really inadequate. It doesn't live up to its own hype and in the end it is forgettable.

The story is such a cliché: innocent but obsessive ballerina (insert any profession here) dreams to play in swan lake, embodying simultaneously the white and the black swan. Unable to be in touch with the dark side, and throrougly assisted by her own psychological issues, she creates an alternate hallucinating reality where a fellow ballerina is after her and her role, and in the end she loses her mind. She becomes consumed with by the role she so desperately tries to identify with and in the end, only in death can she find the union between her two sides that she so craves for.

Simple? Yes (if you don't believe me just watch/read any production of swan lake).
Simplistic? It didn't have to be but it is.

I am trying to think why this movie didn't work for me. I wanted to see it so much, it ticked so many boxes. But in the end I left the theatre entirely unimpressed and emotionally distanced.

I think the problem of this movie is that it pretends to be something else, for so long, that in the end, when the truth is clear to the audience, the rest of the movie feels like a cheat. Why did it have to pretend to be a 'psychological horror movie'? Was it only in order to make us feel Nina's claustrophobia and paranoia? I am sure you could do that without the fake horror bits. Everyone feels that people are after them, but they don't visualize it as a horror movie...

What is left in the end? - I don't know.
Barbara Hershey was over the top, but good, in the role of the pushy mother.
Natalie Portman was very good in the first half, I think.
Female masturbation scenes are the thing du jour, so I guess, that's also a plus.

And my favorite scene of the movie: when Nina grows her black wings dancing. Impeccably done, beautiful scene.

But in the end, as always, what is beauty without substance?

What is there to say?

2011-01-27T08:09:00.000-08:00

Why don't you love me?
When I am so easy to love?

The same

2011-01-20T08:52:00.000-08:00

I think the biggest problem with growing up is losing your identity. Not exactly sure if young people do have one in any case, but let me explain what I mean.

You come into this world, young, naive and clueless. Do you have an identity, do you have an opinion? Well, you sort of do (kids do say 'i like this','I don't like that') but they are swiftly silenced by their parents, who quickly impose their own beliefs and desires to their children, creating an army of spooky mini-me's.

Then you grow up, reaching adolecence, and you try to find a voice, you read a little, travel a little, see a movie or two, talk with a couple of people who are different than you. You think you have an opinion, you think you are starting to find yourself. Only to find out,perhaps years later, that you did exactly what your 'generation' did: everybody raised in the same time, in the same country (or perhaps in the whole world) likes, behaves, thinks of the same things. Childern of the sixties, the Romantics, the yuppies, Genration X and so on and so forth.

Then you get older still and you really think you'll get it. You get a job, you become more mature and you think you can actually see the real you. But then the other tragedy happens, you find the person you love. And then all your own self is stiffled inside the all-singing, all-dancing monster of couple-dom. There you really lose yourself and you really do not know where your own thoughts, desires, opinions start and where the better half's end.

Having all this fairly pessimistic story in mind, it was a real pleasure for me to see my friend R who is seven months pregnant. Normally pregnant people go through yet another transformation: from their normal selves to this 'mommy' thing, who doesn't have another topic of discussion and concern apart from the unborn child (for things to become only worse when the child arrives - but let's leave this one asside). For someone who has no children, my biggest fear for when this time comes is how will I keep my individuality when the little person arrives. So, it has been such a pleasure to see that other people can actually do that, they can still be themselves even with a belly superimposed on them. And having children (or about to) does not necessarily entail a total loss of self.

Could we be in it to win it, us mothers-to-be of the new milleium?

Important questions?

2011-01-07T07:37:00.000-08:00

What is a new year? What does it mean? What does it bring?

It can be one of the same, you can continue doing exactly what you did the previous year and pretend that it's ok.

You can continue doing exactly the same than the previous year, minus a bleep in January, when you pretend that you've changed.

You can try to change - but fail.

Or you can think about it.

I don't mean 'think about it' in a cliché way, we are all so grateful and we need to evaluate our lives etc. You can really just sit and think about it. You can think, what's going on, do I like myself, am I cool, am I nice to other people, am I nice to myself? Do I like my life?

I think this is perhaps the best question one can ask oneself: do I like my life? Is it 'me', this life, does it suit me? Is it what I always wanted to do, is this where I always wanted to be?

Not all our childhood dreams come true, but there is a sense in which we need to be true to ourselves, at least as much as we can be. We need to remember and remind ourselves what we used to like, what we wanted to be like. And when what we are really, really doesn't match that, perhaps we need to consider changing. Not for any other reason but because clichés are true, and we only live once. And before you die, you know, you need to look back and regardless of anything else, you need to be able to say that you were happy. You need to say that you had one chance in this world and you didn't blow it.

And if what I say doesn't persuade you, I suggest you read The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy.

Other than that, Happy New Year everyone, and Happy New Decade!

Happy Christmas!

2010-12-22T10:30:00.000-08:00

What is Christmas? Why does it matter to everyone?
Silly, cliché question, you might say, but as all things cliché, it is also so true these days.

I think Christmas is just pure and unconditional love.
So I am happy to be spending it to my new home, for the first time, with the people I love.

Happy Christmas everyone, and I hope you all feel it these days, both the Christmas spirit and the love.

Is this the same person?

2010-12-11T09:47:00.000-08:00

Amazing charisma and swagger:

But also great voice and vulnerability

I always thought Jools Holland is amazing in introducing new artists...

Gearing towards the holidays, Christmas tree is up, not a lot of shopping yet, but there's still time...

Till then, let's sing:

Do it like a brother, do it like a dude...

Activism rules, Greek-stylee

2010-11-26T02:23:00.000-08:00

This is the website of atenistas, a citizen's group for Athens:

http://www.atenistas.gr/

For as long as I remember myself, there is one thing I hated in Greeks: their constant moaning and evading of their responsibilities. Greeks are unhappy, and they think it is not their fault. Most often it is the government (that they vote for), the 'others', the neighbors, the people who tax-evade, the Americans (everyone's favourite vilain).

But crucially it is never their fault.

But if it is not your fault then you cannot do anything about it.

Atenistas think differently. Perhaps bad things are our fault, not because we did them, but because we are not doing anything to change them. Let's do that then!

In a country with non-existent state presence, citizen's groups are long overdue.
The only ones who can do something are sensitive, educated, concerned citizens.

Good luck guys, I wish I were there!

The comeback

2010-11-21T04:27:00.000-08:00

I wouldn't necessarily post two videos in a row but this song is phenomenal.
And in the process it shows a couple of things about the world:

1. Mark Ronson is great. Version was not a one-hit wonder and Ronson is not a one-trick pony. This song is different, deep, pop and in short perfect.

2. Boy George has an amazing voice. We knew that already of course, not least because of another comeback attempt 2-4 years ago in the Antony & the Johnsons album, in their song 'for today I am a boy'.

3. Comebacks are amazing. Boy George has been exiled and neglected from the mainstream UK scene in the recent years. Perhaps because of his drug problems, perhaps because he seems to people to be a fat, odd-looking relic of the '80's. But this song, that has made him relevant, beloved and Radio 1-playable again, may haver put him on the map.

Like Travolta and Tarantino, comeback stories are even more glorious than success stories, perhaps because they are the ultimate success stories. Like a rise-and-fall-and-rise-again Scorcese movie, comeback stories show people that success is worth nothing when you lose it. Unless you manage to win it again.

This might be a useful message to X factor people.

K BHTA the Great, Papaioannou the Great

2010-11-17T02:58:00.000-08:00

Greek art lives!
In anticipation of MHDEIA2

Go left!

2010-11-14T01:56:00.000-08:00

Pet shop boys ironically urged audiences to do west in their 1993 cover of the village people. I remember arguing with my boyfriend then on whether the song was ironic or not. I didn't agree too much with that boyfriend anyway. But I digress.

Lat night I went into a little shop to buy some beers. Next to me was a poor woman wanting to buy a sprite. She gave the man in the till a pound. He said it cost 2.50. She thought there was an offer. He went and brought her what was on offer instead: a 7up. As she was waiting there in shame, holding up the queue, I thought of going to give her 2 pounds. Then I thought that would be insulting and I didn't do it.

I was sad thinking about this woman. These days, we are all so used to social inequality that it seems trivial to us, it seems almost normal. I am not sure on how this van be changed. I go through phases of caring and not caring. I go through phases where seeing people sleeping in the cold roads, in the rain seems fine to me. And then something happens and I stop and think.

It is really not normal, this inequality. No matter how self-absorbed we are, no matter how engrossed we all are in our own problems, it is important to remember every once and a while, that it is not fucking normal. It is shit. I don't know what we can do, I don't know if charity or ethical living or eco shit work in any way. I just think it's important to remember that it is not normal.

Reinvention

2010-11-08T03:17:00.000-08:00

Madonna is the queen of reinvention, or so people say. That's why she is so successful.

Sometimes she is a dirty 'virgin' with a 'boy toy' belt.
Then she becomes a live pin up in Dick Tracy.
Then she is an unstoppable nymphomaniac, circa 'satisfy my love' and the Steve Meisel book.
Then a siren/japanese geisha.
Then a cowgirl.
Then a disco queen.
Then a rapper.
And so on and so forth.

Lady Gaga follows big 'M' footsteps, having reinvented her style (copying Madonna relentlessly in the process) more times than one can count with one and only album (The Fame and the Fame monster are one album. Really.)

Every year around my birthday, I think about reinvention. Is reinvention the mother of rejuvenation, in other words do people keep themselves young when they reinvent their style?

I don't know.

I guess I should reinvent myself but I am too bored.
My self works fine for me, for the time being, I guess.

Until one year I wake up and feel this deep need to renew myself and become some sort of aerobic queen or something else equally preposterous.
Till then, let's have cocktails and celebrate our old and boring selves!!

Enjoy the silence

2010-10-29T07:03:00.000-07:00

Sitting in the empty house, listening to the rain on the windows.
Doing nothing.
At least nothing that other people would consider important.
I'm calling the bank, the doctor and the tax people to change my address.
I am trying to get a new car insurance.
I am dyeing my hair darker.
I am enjoying the silence in the house, the slowness.
No more lost months in the calendar. September went to November almost directly it seems, I never managed to see the October picture.

But fastness will be no more.
Slowness, silence and calm is the way to go.
I am sure I will not follow my own advice, but if anyone wants to hold me accountable, here is the proof.

The feast of the goat

2010-10-07T10:25:00.001-07:00

Tricky was right?

2010-09-30T08:56:00.000-07:00

Life doesn't move me - just like a movie
It doesn't move me
Life doesn't move me (Tricky, Bury the evidence)

Sometimes i feel like Tricky: my life goes by and I don't feel it. Good things happen, people come and spend time with me, I talk to friends but i am not 100% there. i live life, i perceive life in a superficial manner: I hear my friends problems and i feel them (sort of), i give advice, i am relatively connected, but not with all my heart, half my mind resides elsewhere. Half my mind travels to stuff i need to do for tomorrow, work that needs done, what i'll cook for dinner etc...

I never thought I lacked empathy, I always thought that I can leave my things aside and just listen to my friends. But this is not even about empathy, this half-hearted involvement with life does not only happen when i listen to people's problems. It happens also with nice things, i am hanging out with a friend and I am not all there. Half my mind is elsewhere.

But where, you will ask, where is a better place to be than in a pub having a drink with people you love/like and make you feel well? I guess in my head, being in work-mode seems to be a better place. But this cannot be true. It's not that I prefer this - i just cannot help it. But this is what I want to, what I have to change. Work and stress and stupid stuff is not something that can dictate my life to such an extent. When I was young(er) I thought that people chose to be stressed. Now that i find myself not being able to help it, I think it is even more important to at least try to.

My life is more important than this.
The love I have for people is more profound than this.

Life needs to move me - not like a movie.
Life needs to move me.
Not like movie.

Music saves

2010-09-21T07:50:00.000-07:00

When I am anxious I put on a song loudly and I dance.
And then I feel better.

Militant shoppers and other forms of civil disobedience

2010-09-10T00:58:00.000-07:00

This morning I stumbled upon this video from the bbc. It shows Greek 'militant shoppers' pleading with super market managers to lower their prices so that they can do their shopping. In the second part of the video, a driver refuses to pay the tolls and asks (calmly and politely) for the person who works there to get his vehicle number and have the company to sue him, if they so wish.

Various things came to mind when seeing this.

Firstly, needless to say that no greek media, to my knowledge, has discussed this phenomenon. But this is nothing new, that Greek media are corrupt and cheap.

Secondly, it makes me think that there is another way in that stupid country, there must be another way. Ever since the 'austerity measures' came to play, Greeks have done what they know best: they complain with no end, they become passive aggressive to people that are innocent, they moan, and ultimately they do nothing. They keep buying what they bought (especially for their children) and then say they have no money.

I am not sure Greeks can do civil disobedience very well, they are too hot-headed for that. But these people in the video proved me wrong. And I am sure I am not alone. In two old posts, one from me and one from youkali, we discuss what it means to be political and/or an activist in this day and age. It is important to remember that we are not sheep. It is important to remember that, if we live in a western country and are writing/reading this blog, we most probably are well-educated, fairly well off members of society. This, at once, makes us fairly privileged and at this day and age, one cannot take privileges lightly, one has to earn them.

Please vote!

2010-09-02T08:08:00.000-07:00

Watch this video carefully.

And then tell me: what is the sluttiest thing about it?

a) Beyonce chewing gum
b) The transparent bra
c) The plastic guns (a classic phallic symbol...)
d) A certain ass movement
e) The lyrics (and their implications)

f) Surprise me...

The return of le freak

2010-08-25T03:12:00.000-07:00

If you're reading this blog then you must know I have an affinity to freaks. I love Antony and the Johnsons and his starfish, i love Björk and Pagan Poetry and I adore, I adore anything by Tim Burton. Apart from his movies, i also love Oyster boy and the pin cushion queen. But most of all I adore staring girl, who found an unlikely friend in Florence and the Machine's song 'girl with one eye'.

Long live the freaks...

She told me not to step on the cracks
I told her not to fuss and relax
Well, her pretty little face stopped me in my tracks
But now she sleeps with one eye open
That's the price she paid

I took a knife and cut out her eye
I took it home and watched it wither and die
Well, she's lucky that I didn't slip her a smile
That's why she sleeps with one eye open
That's the price she paid

I said, hey, girl with one eye
Get your filthy fingers out of my pie
I said, hey, girl with one eye
I'll cut your little heart out cause you made me cry

I slipped my hand under her skirt
I said don't worry, it's not gonna hurt
Oh, my reputation's kinda clouded with dirt
That's why you sleep with one eye open
That's the price you paid

I said, hey, girl with one eye
Get your filthy fingers out of my pie
I said, hey, girl with one eye
I'll cut your little heart out cause you made me cry

You made me cry
You made me cry
You made me cry

I said, hey, girl with one eye
Get your filthy fingers out of my pie
I said, hey, girl with one eye
Get your filthy fingers out my pie

I said, hey, girl with one eye
Get your filthy fingers out of my pie
I said, hey, girl with one eye
I'll cut your little heart out cause you made me cry

advice

2010-08-24T06:45:00.000-07:00

When you are trying to finish something do not take big breaks: they fuck up your concentration and you end up dancing in your office instead of writing things that need written.

But, on a different note, isn't this a cool song to dance to?

Lucidity

2010-08-19T02:58:00.000-07:00

I wake up in the middle of the night and I have these lucid thoughts. Every night almost, I wake up for some reason and then i start thinking of something: an idea for work, an idea about the blog or just an idea. I think about it in amazing clarity and in amazing simplicity. All the lack of concentration that I have during the day, all the toing and froing of my mind, gives its place to the clear lucidity of the night. I think of beautiful sentences and I want to get up, turn on the computer and write them down but I never do. I am always too tired, too certain that I will remember them in the morning. But, sadly, I never do.

Preparing for the winter

2010-08-04T05:40:00.001-07:00

Until some years ago, if someone told me that I would be writing a post on preparing for the winter on the 4th of August, I would laugh. But this is not some years ago, and i am not laughing.

The skin is still dark and shiny but it's getting white fast. The feet are dry and the legs need cream all the time. The eyelids are shiny and the hair is light. But the dresses that needlessly travelled back with me will not be worn. The excessive collection of flip flops will be used only for the shower. The sunscreens will expire and smell funny. The ankle bracelets will live in a box. The coral toe nail polish will be forgotten (how silly it looks on the white skin).

But it's not death, it's hibernation. Until the next summer, where i will be frantically looking for my summer gear, my sarongs and my cheap plastic earrings.

Summer, the season of democracy, where plastic jewellery looks good.

And speaking of sunscreen:

New life 705

2010-08-02T08:20:00.000-07:00

Like the old song by StereoNova that i love so much, i am back and celebrating starting over, for one more time. Every year, coming back from holiday, i feel new, I feel that nothing phases me, i feel that i can deal with everything. Even belfast's grey sky.

But this year it's different, I have things i always wanted, i have happiness. And even if goodbyes are always hard, and even if nothing is perfect, i am happy.

Holiday spirit

2010-07-16T03:16:00.000-07:00

Classic images in the Greek summer.

Classic emotions: sun, sea, heat.

Will be back soon, relaxed and all.

Time flies like an arrow*

2010-06-22T00:49:00.000-07:00

Looking at my itunes library, I am amazed that my most recent playlist is called ‘2008 forgotten’. It’s almost surreal, not only it is two years old, it also contains tracks that I have forgotten. There was a time where all I could think of was playlists, I was making them all day, I was choosing them carefully and I was constantly dedicating them to people. Now, I make none. When I want to listen to music, I hastily search for stuff that I listen to without any care. But what to do, time flies and times change.

I never wanted to be busy; I thought I would always be free. That’s why I did a PhD, that’s why I became an academic. I always wanted not to conform to social norms, not to go to work 9 to 5. I always wanted to listen to cool music and read literature. And now? Now, I have no time. Not because I actually don’t have time, but just because I do so many things (badly and hastily) at the same time, that I actually don’t have any real time. I jump from one thing to the next without finishing anything, without really caring, just running.

Things need to change. I don’t want to be this person anymore. And I am sure I don’t have to be this person, I am sure I can do something else.

I think I need to go back to playlists and literature.
And perhaps the summer is the ideal time for all this.

Καλό καλοκαίρι…

(*fruit flies like a banana)

New-old song

2010-06-15T06:36:00.000-07:00

Addictive and poppy in all the right ways, 'Magic' by Ladyhawke is my new obsession.

Until i post something interesting listen to this and sing along:
One journey for you - and it's worth it
One life here with me - and it's magic

Welcome summer!!!

The end is the beginning is the end

2010-05-23T15:41:00.000-07:00

A lot of things finish today, Lost being one of them. But this post will not discuss this topic - yet.

This post is about saying goodbye to things that were both good and bad. English has a great word for the emotion that such situations give you: bittersweet.

Today I am saying goodbye to my flat of the last three and something years. And it feels utterly bittersweet.

This was the first flat that I got with my own money, it was the place of my independence. Although it didn't seem like that all the time, this flat was for my new beginning, in a new city, in a new (first, albeit initially part-time) job. I came here with no friends three years ago and the beginning was tough. Loneliness, lots of TV and general frustration. Then things went up and down and life went on. The sense of temporary reigned and I thought I was about to leave this city any day.

But then last year, almost this time, things changed. New life. Not always great, challenging at times, but new and exciting nonetheless.

And this year more changes. New house. My house. My own house. Never had this feeling before. I never wanted to be adult and conventional. But I guess resistance was futile. Now I am the ultimate 'young professional' with a big mortgage and new wooden floors. And I don't feel conventional. I just feel different. The same but different.

The importance of being earnest

2010-05-13T12:03:00.000-07:00

I never write political posts but today I will make an exception. Labour lost, Gordon Brown resigned and Cameron turned the Torries into government with a 'historic' coalition with Lib Dems. This whole thing makes me sick. I have never seen a more opportunistic, insincere individuals as those two in government today. How can you work with someone that you called the bast joke you ever heard? I mean, David Cameron has called Nick Clegg a joke. And now he says he is the next best thing since sliced bread. I mean, come off it.

I understand that Labour had to go. I think it had to be punished, if for no other reason than for the war against Iraq. And although this was Blair's thing, it is the same party after all, and it had to be punished. But the Torries are not the answer. People who want to give tax cuts as incentives for people to get married, are not the answer. As JK Rowling said, this reminds us why we don't want to vote Torries.

But in a way, I think Nick Clegg is worst. Nobody knew this man a month ago, then he goes on TV, does a 'good' debate (which, for what it's worth I thought was simplistic and crap), gets hyped up like no other, LOSES seats for his party and in the end becomes the 'key-holder' for this whole election. He spent 5 days talking to the Torries AND holding secret talks with Labour, and then, like any slutty girl who double-times her poor boyfriend with the new handsome boy in class, chooses the new handsome boy in class. Who is also rich. And has gone to an expensive private school. And looks like an egg-head.

The only tragic figure in this whole story after all is Gordon Brown. The most uncharismatic man in the history of politics, but alas a sincere man, a man of principle who lost simply because he was not Blair (or Cameron with his pregnant wife, or Clegg with his 'charisma'-whatever). It pains me to see his stepping down statement, but it also makes me happy. It makes me happy that these people exist, that they go into politics and that they win, sometimes, even for a tiny amount of time, they win and they try.

As the man himself said, 'thank you and goodbye'.

Why do the best thoughts about the Greek crisis come from non-Greeks?

2010-05-09T10:37:00.001-07:00

As published in today's Observer:

Deep inside the august halls of Athens University, the renowned political commentator Paschos Mandravelis will deliver a message this week that until very recently was lost on most Greeks.

His speech will focus on a single fact: that the country in the centre of the storm of Europe's worst crisis since the creation of the common market, missed the biggest story ever – its own looming bankruptcy. "Everyone," he says, "starting with the Greek media, was in an incredible state of denial."

Last week escapism was no longer an option as Greece's debt drama claimed its first lives and the nation, teetering on the brink of economic collapse, erupted into violent protests over unprecedented austerity measures.

The deaths on Wednesday of three Greeks, killed in a fire set off by hooded youths throwing petrol bombs into the bank in which they worked, has been the wake-up call – one more shocking than ever thought – to ask questions Greeks would have preferred never to ask.

Yesterday, as tributes continued to pour in for the victims – a man and two women, all recent British university graduates who had shown up for work despite a general strike for fear of losing their jobs – they were asking: "How could it come to this?"

"Greece," says Mandravelis, "is not only confronted with economic failure but a media failure and political failure, and that is what is so frightening."

The financial, and increasingly social, crisis gripping the country has, say analysts, brought the nation face to face with a myth: the myth of a democratic state that thrived not on meritocracy and progress but cronyism and corruption after the last chapter of its troubled history ended with the collapse of military rule in 1974.

As Athens prepares to receive the biggest bailout in history – up to €120bn dispensed from the EU and IMF over the next three years – the consensus is that Greece has reached rock bottom. A point so low that even Brigadier Stylianos Pattakos, the last of the dictators still alive, feels unabashedly vindicated. "In our time," he told the Observer in an interview, "there was no debt. Not one drachma went astray. The Greeks are not disciplined like the Germans or the British. They need authority."

Today the junta is embodied not by the likes of Pattakos, who at the age of 98 has no qualms about his role in quashing liberty in the birthplace of democracy, but the IMF. For the unions and tens of thousands who took to the streets last week – and are girding their loins for the "mother of all battles" in the weeks and months ahead – the Washington-based body is neither saint nor saviour.

Prime minister George Papandreou agreed to activate the emergency international aid after it became clear two weeks ago that Greece was heading for sovereign default, unable to refinance its staggering €300bn (£259bn) debt because of prohibitively high borrowing costs on international markets.

But for those on the left, leading the protests with flags emblazoned with the hammer and sickle, the intervention of the IMF has been the tipping point. The majority of Greeks not only see it as the harbinger of harsh economic reforms but the symbol of foreign occupation. For the abundance of conspiracy theorists on both the left and right, its involvement is part of a grander, but seemingly no less implausible, plan to subjugate Greece after draining the country of its resources.

"This has gone beyond economic matters to a battle for national independence," says Manolis Glezos, the leftist who shot to fame snatching the swastika from the Acropolis shortly after Hitler's forces streamed into Athens in 1941.

"Papandreou himself has admitted we had no say in the economic measures thrust upon us. They were decided by the EU and IMF. We are now under foreign supervision and that raises questions about our economic, military and political independence."

At approaching 88, Glezos embodies the Greek spirit of resistance – a leading light in the struggle against Nazi occupation, bloody civil war, authoritarian right-wing rule and the seven-year military dictatorship that ended with Pattakos sending a tank crashing through the gates of the Athens Polytechnic to crush the students' revolt that would pave the way to the regime's demise.

"We are," he says, "neither at the middle nor the end of political developments, of protesting what is happening in this country. We are at the beginning."

The Greeks' innate anti-authoritarianism, a legacy of 400 years of Ottoman rule, is also at the heart of the problem that has helped to push their country to what President Karolos Papoulias described last week as "the brink of the abyss".

More than any other European nation, the Greeks think nothing of taking to the streets in noisy outbursts of protests. But more than that, in a culture of cutting corners, they also have a problem with being told what to do. It is an attitude that could have profound consequences for Papandreou's ability to enforce policies that include painful wage and pension cuts – and the course of the crisis.

"The capriciousness of Ottoman rule and the weakness of the idea of the rule of law helped to shape the underlying values of Greek society and to determine attitudes to the state and to authorities that have persisted into the present," wrote Richard Clogg, Britain's pre-eminent historian of modern Greece.

Nothing encapsulates the strained relationship with authority more than the nation's predilection for avoiding the taxman – a hobby that has helped to push the public deficit to a European record – and Greeks' love-hate relationship with the state.

Assuming power after five years of scandal-plagued conservative rule last October, the Socialist government discovered that the tax inspectorate had virtually collapsed with revenue losses from tax evasion surpassing €20bn, more than any other eurozone nation.

It also emerged that fewer than 15,000 Greeks declare incomes of over €100,000, despite tens of thousands living in opulent wealth on the outskirts of the capital. A new drive by the Socialists to track down swimming pool owners by deploying Google Earth was met with a virulent response as Greeks invested in fake grass, camouflage and asphalt to hide the tax liabilities from the spies in space.

The country's black economy – estimated conservatively at 30% – has also helped to bring public finances to the point of meltdown.

"When the rest of Europe were living in dukedoms and refining democratic institutions, we were part of a huge empire living in an agrarian and feudal Balkan state," said Nikos Dimou, author of the best-selling book The Misfortune of Being Greek. "We had little relationship to our glorious past. Our institutions were imported or thrust upon us, our identity both eastern and western. It created a human being that feels very strange in his skin, culturally very different to other Europeans."

Dimou wrote the book in the latter years of the junta, but with ordinary Greeks now embroiled in the sort of soul-searching last seen at the end of the junta, the tome is selling like hotcakes. "Greeks want to know why they have got to this point, what went wrong," he says.

The austerity measures that have provoked such unrest aim to trim the budget of €30bn through 2012. Almost all are targeted at the country's dysfunctional and bloated public sector.

"Papandreou is paying for the sins of his father [former prime minister] Andreas, under whom Greece's debt soared," added Dimou. "The cuts he will have to make have never been made before. It is all very new."

But with poverty growing and the country's militant Communist party insisting that "the plutocracy pay" for the crisis, Greece could also be headed for a new class warfare the likes of which have never been seen before. Some commentators have not ruled out kidnappings and assassinations as Greek turns against Greek in the months ahead.

The conspiracy of silence that has marked Greece's troubles may be over, but the battle that could tear it apart has only just begun.

Beautiful things

2010-05-02T01:35:00.000-07:00

Always in my life i have been torn between my love for simplicity and my love for beautiful things.

My mother loves beautiful things, our house is full of them. Although I have grown my own taste for them, I have always felt a bit overwhelmed by them. Why do we need all these useless expensive things? This feeling was also matched with a dismay against my mother's own profession: decorator. A decorator, I used to think when I was younger, why on earth would anyone want to devote their life in putting things in a house and choosing curtains?

And then growing up, it hit me: decorators do not make beautiful houses, they make happy people. And things are not expensive and useless, they are just small reminders of places we have been to, artists we like, unique artefacts that we have found, in short our entire lives.

The reason I am thinking of these things and I decided to write this post is because I went to a lovely house on Friday night, a house full of things of beauty and rarity. But because the people that have it are nice people, and have chosen these things because they like them and because they make them happy, the whole thing did not look contrived and pretentious, it just seemed simply great: a beautiful house, with beautiful things made by beautiful people.

It is the person then, it is the person that defines the thing, not the thing that defines the person.
Nouveau riche people have made a much bigger disservice to beauty than they think...

Was it always so simple?

2010-04-18T03:55:00.000-07:00

I am a huge Lost addict, that is not news. I have written something about this series before, here and here but I haven't done any serious Lost fans theorizing.
As the ingenious series is approaching an end in 23rd of May however, and discussions on the net increase in number, complexity and literary credibility, I had an idea myself. As I am a fairly mainstream person, the column I am mostly following is Doc Jensen in EW, whose latest ideas had me thinking.

One of the most prominent literary references of Lost is that of Alice in Wonderland. As in Alice, my other two favourite tales for children, Miyazaki's Spirited away and Michael Ende's Neverending story also deal with a very important theme that is becoming increasingly relevant in Lost: keeping one's identity through memory, through remembering oneself. To cut a long story short, Alice, Chihiro and Bastian in the three respective pieces get lost/stranded in a magical/imaginary world and can only return to their own world, the real world if they manage to not forget who they really are in these magical worlds. In Lost, our heroes are stranded on this magical island and now with the sideways world they have these split lives. The only way they can come to their own world, the only way they can reconnect with their other halves -in this case their other half selves (Plato's Symposium anyone?) is through anamnesis, as Doc Jensen rightly points out in his column in another ingenious Platonic reference. Plato is clearly a major inspiration for the Lost creators (cf. the quite literal scene with the cave in 'Recon' of this season).

So, to cut the extensive name-dropping and to wrap things up: perhaps the answer to the question' what is Lost really about', I could provide my own spin on things. Lost is about being true to oneself, to one's true character and values and this connection, this memory of oneself is the only thing that can set us people really free, not just from the magical island as in Lost, but in life in general. And since it all makes sense so beautifully, read this again in my earlier post from this month where I reconnect with my roots.

Sometimes moodiness

2010-04-16T02:59:00.000-07:00

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Give me that slow knowing smile (slowly)

2010-04-13T01:28:00.001-07:00

The familiar: we always love more what we know best.

There is a deep, meaningful comfort and happiness when we are with people we know well, in places we know. When this happens to me, I feel that I am in some deep state of togetherness with my oldest deepest self. The older parts of me, the ones that are deeper, they are the ones that come out when I am with my parents, my family, my cousins. One professor of theatre once compared the characters and the plays oS Shakespeare to onions that have many layers. The comparison is not too new, I know, but i think it's also valid for people in general. We are born and in the beginning there is only the core of our character: nature. Then we grow up and we form our outer layers: nurture. The core always needs to be accessible though, always. And this is when familiarity comes into play: when you are with your family, with the people that know you best, in the places that you were playing as a child, you cannot escape from that core. You cannot pretend you're all layers. The stubborn child that you were once upon a time comes out again, and that's such a relief. No filtering, no nothing, just you and your core.

That's one of the reasons I love being home - it reminds me of who is me.

Not the me who teaches and tries to write papers.
Not the me who goes to nice dinners with colleagues.
Not the me who shops posh clothes.
Not the me who is a sensible, fake-lefty, essentially capitalist adult.

But the me I've left behind in Greece, the child who runs barefoot in the sand eating easter cookies.
And my mothers eyes always give me that knowing smile, when she recognises that child every time I go home... And I am happy because I know that she is still here, that child, underneath all these layers, she is still here, safe, in Greece.

Covers are AMAZING

2010-03-30T04:09:00.000-07:00

I have always adored covers - i don't know why... Perhaps because they give a new, a second chance to songs, perhaps because they remind us that there are many ways to see things, there are many ways to listen to a song. Often people think that good covers are reinventions of bad/mediocre/unknown songs. The cover that I have over here however is so NOT that... 30 seconds to Mars (indie American band that i didn't know but are fronted by Requiem for a Dream hottie Jared Leto) are covering Lady gaga's bad romance. And it's amazing. Stripped from the exuberant campness and theatricality of gaga, bad romance remerges as an epic, melodic ode to lost love, grief, despair and bad romance.

Enjoy... even without the classic roar 'ga ga ou la la'...

Things aren't always what they seem to be..

2010-03-26T12:36:00.000-07:00

When I first sew this young man in Jonathan Ross's show -I think he was probably wearing the same suit- I was immediately convinced by my preconceptions that I will definitely hate his music as much as I disliked his attitude. To be a bit more specific: my first thoughts were that he is an alcoholic, or at least a drug addict, or a Portsmouth football fan, or Pete Doherty's second cousin, he writes cheap hip-hop music, wants to be famous, wears a suit because he is on a Friday night show in BBC and most likely I will never recall his name or his music.
When he opened his mouth, two things happened: 1. My mouth dropped, I could not match the voice with the image and 2. I felt he could be the male version of Amy Winehouse. Although I haven't heard anything else form his work, this song stayed with me easily.

Blogger's block

2010-03-13T11:34:00.000-08:00

I am pretty sure that every single blogger in the universe has written a post on not wanting / not being able to write a post. I am not so sure this is an interesting topic for others to read but we all keep writing it anyway. Perhaps it makes us feel less guilty - for not having posted anything for a long time (like it does for me ) or perhaps it makes us stop seeing the previous post that has haunted our blogs for as long as our block has gone on. And also it buys us a bit of time, to think of something more, something new and interesting and posting it swiftly after our non-post.

So I will start thinking later tonight and I am sure I will come up with something really to cool very very soon.

Queen of the damned?

2010-03-02T07:41:00.001-08:00

I went to see lady gaga live in Belfast last week and i've been trying to write something about it for a while. The truth is I am not sure how i feel about lady g anymore, so I don't know what to write about her.

On the one hand she is clearly different from other popstars: she can play the piano (amazingly even), she can sing like a jazz singer, she is sexually liberated |(like only one other popstar-madonna), she writes her own songs, songs that are about her relationship with her alcoholic father. In the show she proclaimed herself as the queen of the freaks, the little monsters, her fans that she says she loves so much. She said repeatedly that she knows how to feel the odd one out, or feel like an idiot even, and she likes for her little monsters to feel at home with her, in the monster ball.

Now this is highly commendable, especially in a time and age where appearances is the one thing where people care about the most. To have a popstar, a member of the cultural elite of our times tell people that it doesn't matter how they look like is something.

On the other hand, there is no other way to put it: gaga is a shallow popstar. She has rilke tattooed on her arm, and dresses as if she comes directly from a fashion museum, but she is shallow. She writes and produces overwhelmingly shallow pop songs, with pop lyrics. The only thing that saves her is that her shallow lyrics are very sexual, something that is fairly oddball for a female song-writer.

And then it is her show: a weird mixture of theatricality, over the top-ness, wardrobe malfunctions (or not) combined with out of place personal confessions (about her alcoholic father for example and about how she loves us, the little monsters). Such combinations make the show look more mismatched than eclectic and make gaga look more schizophrenic and undecided than brilliant.

Prophets and other religious entities

2010-02-17T08:35:00.000-08:00

Prisons are for movie directors, what lollipops are for children: they cannot get enough of them. And just when you think you've seen enough of prison dramas and there no other new thing you could possibly want to see, Un prophéte appears and sets a whole new ball game all together.

Let me be entirely clear about something: I loved the movie. And funnily enough I didn't expect that at all. For once, it is a French movie and I don't get along very well with French movies, I find them slow, long, pretentious and tedious. But this one so was not all of these. I think the best way to describe the movie was that it was crystal. Some movies have this quality, of being so clearly good that you don't have to think about them, you don't have to qualify your answer, you don't have to excuse the mishaps, you don't have to half-cringe some moments when you watch them. You just sit there and enjoy them from the beginning till the end, and just simply like everything about them. I think the last movie I felt so clearly about was oldboy. And un prophéte is way up there with the cunning Korean.

Perhaps it was the script: the rise of a nobody in the microcosm of the French prison, Malik's relationship with Cesar: so complex and deep, the clear analogy between the anthropology of the prison and French society, the haunting relationship between Malik and Reyeb.

Perhaps it was the acting: The glorious newcomer Tahar Rakim as Malik, with his piercing eyes, Niels Arestrup as the arrogant and fooling Cesar and everybody in the supporting cast.

Perhaps it was the cinematography, the grittiness of the prisons, the bluntness of the blood, the sharpness of the Northern sun. Or the innovative techniques of freeze frames, the combination of cinema verité with magic realism and the colours of the movie.

The success of the prophet is found in the combination of all of the above to tell a seemingly banal story (petty criminal enters the prison as a frightened nobody and exits it as a crime lord) with an unexpected breath of fresh air.

If it doesn't win the foreign language film Oscar, I will eat my hat.

In anticipation (a.k.a. ode to the past)

2010-02-07T02:58:00.001-08:00

**** Update: awesome album! Fresh, exciting, dark but not solipsistic, modern yet a classic. As always.

Massive attack are releasing their new album, Heligoland, tomorrow. In anticipation of this, the guardian has a small retrospective on their work, their collaborations and their most inspirational moments. Reading it made me realise that some things are really classic despite seeming too era-specific. Let me explain: sometimes it seem that the notion of timelessness that is often associated with classic things is also in turn associated with something that when you see it (hear it, read it etc) it does not reveal the era that it came from. Ancient Greek tragedies for examples are archetypical stories, that when stripped from their era-particular characteristics, they can function perfectly in any space and time. You can direct Medea set in the 21st century and the backbone of the story (revenge and jealousy- the beast that lies in us all) can still work.

I think however that for something to become eventually a classic it needs to be exceptionally modern (almost ahead of its time) at the same time. Medea would have never been a classic if it hadn't been so modern when it was written. Hamlet would have never become a classic if it hadn't shattered the norms of theatre, with the introduction of the ultimate anti-hero, the reluctant prince, when it was first written. There is no way something will become a classic if it is not also painfully new and modern.

Massive attack's music is, for me, the ultimate '90's music. Unfinished sympathy is often labelled the song of the decade (like Paranoid android is the song of the '00's) and the band itself had been the pioneers of the quintessential '90's movement, trip-hop. In that sense, when you listen to blue lines or protection, some songs might sound dated and essentially yesterday-ish. But I think, this is what makes Massive attack's music so classic, it is a product of its time and yet it was ahead of its time. It defined and decade and can therefore classically represent this decade forever.

Holden's father is dead

2010-01-29T02:42:00.000-08:00

What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse. ~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 1

Anyone who knows me, knows that I adore 'the catcher in the rye'. I read it when I was 15ish and Holden has been my friend ever since. For some time, obsessively he was my best friend, I kept reading the book again and again, thinking that i would find something new each time i read it. The funny thing is that I did, I found new things all the time: a sentence that i had missed, a detail that made the story better, a line by Holden that was better, more intense than the previous one. I never read another book by JD Salinger, i am not sure why. Probably I was scared i wasn't going to like it as much and i would feel bad about catcher in the rye as well. Or because I thought that what on earth can ever be better than Holden Caulfield?

I remember being intrigued at the mystery of JD Salinger, his self-imposed seclusion, his aversion to the press, his life outside the limelight. And now that he died, all I can think of is that he will not have to hide anymore.

I don't even know what I was running for - I guess I just felt like it. ~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 1

Bored of the previous post

2010-01-25T02:45:00.000-08:00

I have no time to write - I am too busy letting my life pass me by - but I couldn't stand seeing my pathetic new year post for so long.

When i return from hibernation I will write about all the things i am thinking about: the new movies i saw (nine and the road - each of them imperfect in a different way), the books i am (not reading), the gigs i missed (bonobo) and the ones i am looking forward to (go gaga for gaga), the weather that is changing, my white hair that is multiplying, my diet that is not working, the beneficial results of spa (galgorm rocks) and other tales from the new year. Ah yes, and the lists of 'bests of 2009' that I never wrote. Perhaps because the only thing i wanted to put in is the film 'Let the right one in' and the old, reread and beloved book by Σώτη Τριανταφύλλου, 'Σάββατο βράδυ στην άκρη της πόλης' that makes my insides warm just by thinking about it. Perhaps not because it's so perfect but because it is familiar. Familiarity though, and other deep and thoughtful topics are not for now, not for a Monday morning at work with a long list of things to do, the longest in a long time.

A bientôt!

Happy new year - for the lazy!!!

2010-01-03T12:22:00.000-08:00

What is that we want from the new year, any new year?

Change, I guess, and something better than the last one...

Sometimes I think of the years passed and I confuse one with the other: my last birthday with the one 5 years ago, last christmas with the one of 2005 and so on and so forth. So, if there is one wish I have for the new year is to remember it more. I want to do things that are interesting and distinctive enough to remember. And possibly worthy enough to write in this poor blog, that I have neglected so much over the last few months.

In any case, happy new year people, whatever 'happy' means...

P.s. I hope to write a 'best of 2009' post soon... But this means i have to stop being lazy. Oh well....

Lazy

2009-12-04T03:12:00.001-08:00

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

2009-12-03T09:27:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-20T05:29:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-12T09:29:00.000-08:00

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....

2009-10-30T05:19:00.000-07:00

.... 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

2009-10-16T08:14:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-10-13T09:36:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-09T08:19:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-02T07:27:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-27T04:08:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-17T08:09:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-13T01:20:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-12T03:29:00.001-07:00

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

2009-09-09T06:55:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-05T03:16:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-01T00:41:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-23T02:28:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-07T04:14:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-21T03:06:00.000-07:00

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.