Lazy

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

On the nature of the critic

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

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

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

Choose life

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

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

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

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

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

busy

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

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

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

You call it procrastination....

.... I call it psyching!

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

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

and so on....

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

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

Why I love this city

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

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

Art?

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

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

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

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