romance myth-conceptions

Self-help has me in a spin. In any situation I find myself- I can simply consult a fix-it manual and work through the various steps- with a guarantee?! that my problem will be rectified. Unfortunately when any kind of self-help material is chucked at my person my stomach turns and I start to giggle ferociously. I am bucking the system like a true rebel: flat out refusing to mechanise my responses and to tame my inner beast. But was I a beast to begin with?! And am I really the rebel I claim to be?!

Admittedly strange thoughts where I morph into a shrew a la the Shakespearian play have been bounding into my mental zone of late. And I can’t help but think I am becoming a bit too suggestible in my old age- I have never encountered this kind of displaced sense of identity before (or maybe not thought about it- too much on the telly). I don’t want to be enmeshed in a litany of weird textual references gathered from the ethereal eggnog (virtuality). I want a sense of self and I don’t want it set against a makeshift backdrop of how to/s, why not/s, will do/s.

So: how do I properly extricate myself without the pervasive sense that I am simply another cog in the modern day paradigm of expected responses? It can’t simply be a matter of writing like a wanker in an attempt to elevate myself above the common hordes. For I am a commoner- a carrot topped warrior slipping through various systems and processes- a product of my ancestry, my family and my life experience (including the hours spent watching trashy teen flicks where the woman is a dunce and the male lead rescues her from spinsterhood)… I must consult Oprah- surely she knows!

And that was me being funny- because Oprah is apparently the modern day messiah of reconstructing yourself from the various bit parts and gurus who appear on her special program for lost souls. Only this morning my colleague gave me an article written by the good woman on how to behave in romantic situations. It seems with more women and fewer men we have to fool them into falling for us. But will holding my fork less like a toothbrush really help?! I would have thought the act of eating might remind the gents we are human beings (surely a no-no) with an appetite! As guru Sian (a newly adopted guise)- I say eating should be more like cleaning teeth- an instant suggestion of good oral hygiene and a tempting avenue to pash rash.

Having established that Oprah can’t guru my way through this little challenge and furthermore that she is the antithetical force wavering my emerging convictions I must make a rapid segue way. I must become a little more me-centric perhaps- and in the process guru Sian has been slashed and burned because I have to admit I am totally confused and clueless when it comes to "romance". The idea of romantic love has been transmuted a great deal over time- from the old slow burn courtly love to the hyper wham bam unreality of speed dating. Much like the development of the English language and its current deterioration (in my opinion) romance has become an entirely empty set of abbreviated encounters.

So where do I situate myself in this mess? Looking at my behaviour in any “romantic” encounter, I am far from the cookie cutter ideal. In fact, my previously mentioned thoughts of shrew-dom seem to be bolstered by the modern models. Yet peculiarly enough- I don’t have any problems gathering together a line of suitors. Perhaps these men are my male counterparts- but I really think as long as you have tits and an arse and can hold together a few sentences you can pretty much abandon ‘the rules’ altogether.

So why have people become such self-help junkies when it comes to romance?! Can’t they just sit back and be happy with themselves?! I think if we spend too much time focussing on our flaws, the flaws themselves start to emerge in relief against the face and any kind of “changes” become superficial and more importantly unreal to say the least. The whole thing is utterly oxymoronic- it takes the self out of help and replaces it with a whole bunch of rubbish imposed by a bored other.

I will finish this rambling cacophony with a quote by Vonnegat:
Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.
(Paraphrased) Be kinder to yourselves- don’t listen to Oprah and honey you don’t need fake tits juss a better brassiere.

lachrymal silences pop out untoward, mis-informed yeller belly- Bobby.
his face an odious task to follow- as it sweeps through various dilated dog shits.
oops!
and so it was, once, when she wilted against flimsy curtained facades- blithering, bloated.
pus fuelled and reasonable- a relic of exotic extradition- ordinary.

There are many different variants (or should I say mutations) in female formatting. This strange electronic analogue sits suitably against the hyper hum-drum of today. And within these formats I have noted a particularly mal-formed (or mis-informed) sub-species. As far as my extensive studies suggest- there is only one case of this particular syndrome in the world- and “it” resides in uncomfortably close proximity to my quarters.

For the purposes of this article she will be known as BRENDA, and to appropriate her disguised identity I will make things blazingly apparent through a rather nonsensical acrostic poem. This fits because she, like it, is true nonsense.

B- ovine eye hollows leap out with pus coated un-clemency
R- eactions coated in wall slobbering monkey foot movement
E- asy access late at night- wine bottles float out of piss pockets
N- eanderthal: monkey fluff flying, feral floating; ceaseless
D- eranged distribution of flesh- linen smocks not obscuring
A- ggressor of space intrusions and other apposite slovenly slips.

SO there she is, ever present- lurking- squealing- fat floating and flubber fluttering- not in the wordswor-dian-way. On yr bike dike. Eat a ripe potato raw. You have clotted my week.

quick question-
why do elderly ladies always choose pastels?!
is it because they feel it represents their lives fading away.../?? How depressing! I think i will finally adopt fluro when i get old!

The Good, the Bad and the Bitch Face

The whole time she was yelling at me I couldn’t help but stare at that angry red birthmark over her left eyelid, her double chin wobbled in response to the flicks she made with her head festooned with dark brown curls. She was like an angry fighting bull that needed a good poke from a dominating body to make her behave, preferably a male but her kind has to take what she gets. Yes I am in nasty mode today, please don’t judge me too harshly, after all I retaliate in the face of massive bitches like the one I had to deal with recently. I happen to be of the mind, especially now, that ugly women are one of the angriest breed of women around. This state of unhappiness stems from all sorts of places, but what I am most interested in discussing today is the hatred that ugly women have for attractive women. Some of you, my gentle readers, may be already taken aback by this topic of discussion, but hear me out and reflect for a moment, are you an ugly angry person and is anger making you even uglier?

Let’s do some calculations, although my maths is a little rusty from my high school days but this is easy stuff. Happiness + confidence + goodness= Attractive, angry + low self-esteem + evil= Ugly. Wow my year seven high school maths teacher Mr Troupe would be proud of my conversions. Those of you who can see the holes in my logic, humour me okay. So from this we can ascertain that ugly people and attractive people are indeed at odds already with one another even before they meet heads. You can’t deny the maths! This sow, this cunt (pardon my French); I couldn’t help but wonder if she was angry at me because I was more attractive than her, her short stumpy legs and wide frame was a contrast to my long legs and I think I can say alluringly curvy figure. Did she fall into my calculations of angry ugly people? Well she was definitely angry, low self-esteem well I’ll assume so by the look of her, and evil to the core yes! I have stumbled upon a mathematically truth to explain ugly women.

I would like to go back to my bull analogy to finish this off and offer some advice to those bulls of you out there. It is in the bulls’ nature to attempt to master it over the beautifully coloured clad fighter, it can’t help but be drawn in by the magnificent performance. But, and here it is, hidden behind the bright material flashing in front if your face is a pointy sword, excuse the phallic reference, that will inevitably kill the bull dead or at least wound it quite badly. This is a lesson to anyone who assumes that beauty equals passivity and to never accept something at face value. But this is a common mistake for lunatics. I’d be angry too if I had to look at that in the mirror everyday and realise it was me.

You self-righteous bitch, I hope you choke on your rage!

Library Liver

I often feel like my liver is a reservoir for past mistakes. Lately I have been thinking a lot about my own alcohol consumption and how memory doesn’t really draw in the artefacts of my inebriation.

Sometimes these artefacts live and breathe beyond my own bod: dogs for example. But eventually they move away and what am I left with really? I mean I have the memory of the day after, and, if there is material evidence I can sometimes piece together what might have been. This leaves a doily though: and I have never been one for crochet. But my liver is a knitter: it knows what I’ve been up to! Maybe I can treat my gut like a filing cabinet and pull out the odd sock here and there.

Liver: I like you, but lately you don’t like me.

Beyond the white cube: into the silicon labyrinth

I am in the initial throes of writing a piece about spaces for creativity and, as an extension of this- access to art in our hyper-real computer age.

Some questions: but no answers…

How does the artist come to grips with this boundless domain? (the audience has become so intangible, yet is only a click away)
How do we cope with the saturation of imagery (as an audience), when the internet, after all, is all about commerce and capitalism..??
How does the artist use the space as a medium (the internet has its limitations: bandwidth etc.) ??
Where does the gallery space fit in- or doesn’t it? (is it simply a pre-cursor?!)