Love of Lights

As I have a passport from (in the eyes of the Great West) a meagre, lowly country, my travel opportunities are limited by needing a visa for nearly every country I go to. I'm English, but by paper and blood I am not, which overrides all else. To me, blood doesn't matter, to most of the world it does; but what ubiquitously does matter is papers.  While, by paper, I have the right to live in the United Kingdom forever, I am not British. I do not belong to Europe. And this makes it very difficult for me to travel freely to other European countries. My friend and I (like most people at some point in their lives, I think) have plans to travel Europe, and she has cancelled other opportunities recently in order to save money for these plans that we have. Unfortunately, being un-European by paper, travelling across the continent is more expensive and more troublesome for me. Travel is one of the few things I hold most important for an enriched life, and so it disappoints me greatly t...

I've come to realise what has been making conversation difficult for me in the past. I used to look at conversation as two humans in interaction; one with a repertoire of words and interests, and the other too. They come together and either meld well or they do not. However, I think I've been looking at it wrongly. A conversation, more than two separate entities throwing and exchanging words, is one singular experience with two proponents. When a conversation is initiated, it should be a joint effort to be interesting and avoid awkward silences. When a conversation goes downhill, something I need to consider is that it's not only going downhill for me, but for them too. An awkward silence is not just awkward for me, but it is a shared phenomenon. Upon entering into a conversation, you become one with the other and share an experiential tie via language. It helps to look at it this way because it aligns with the function of conversations. The function of conversation is t...

I'm still finding it difficult to accept the current romantic culture, in which the male courts the female or else condemns himself to a life of loneliness and unspoken loves. I'm also finding it hard to identify the point at which I should  be telling the girl I like her. At the moment I'm still working with the 'when you not knowing kills me more than the possibility of rejection' model, but it seems that the fear of the possibility of rejection has always been stronger ever since I told the last girl I liked her and was (essentially) rejected. I need to turn 18 and drink. Everything is easier with the aid of a slight haze. I won't be an alcoholic! Just a tactical drinker. (P.S. A note on tactical drinking: An alcoholic drinks for the sake of drinking; he has an addiction. The tactical drinker drinks to aid his purpose and occasionally for recreation. The tactical drinker always considers two things as he holds a drink: "Is it for recreational purpo...

I've decided I am more profoundly unhappy than I thought. I don't truly understand what it is or why it is that I feel this way. Though, I can attempt at a guess. I don't think I am the person I want to be, and have come to realise that the person I am isn't a changeable trait; it is something determined by current environment, genetics, and upbringing; it is something I dislike, but something I must accept. This isn't something I can run away from because it is carried within me as part of me; this sadness (or rather 'potential' sadness, as I will explain in a bit) will follow me wherever I go. I feel as though I can detect two levels of my emotional functioning. There is the surface level, which is very real, and fluctuates from content to unhappy depending on my interaction with the world around me.  For example, if I watch a really good comedian or eat a really nice meal or spend excellent time with friends, I will fluctuate to happy. On the other ha...

Perhaps catharsis does work. Perhaps tumblr is a cathartic weapon. I've forced myself to stop using tumblr during the week (mainly because I noticed it was an addiction and that it did nothing for my personal well-being; I often think up things like, "what am I doing with my life?" when I just scroll down my dashboard endlessly), but I'm starting to think maybe it does help in its weird way. Sure, I feel useless when I'm on it, but I feel useless when I'm off it too. At least on tumblr I can revel in other people's complaints about their inadequacies or anxieties or worries too. But no, that isn't ... I shouldn't do that. I'm doing a good thing by tackling my addiction to it; I just need to now do something that tackles my perennial guilt and anxiety concerning school and creative endeavour. In a recent 'agony aunt' post by author Maureen Johnson, she suggested time-blocking your days to give order to them, and then using at least...

Why, blogger! I have neglected you recently, haven't I? How uncomely of me; how indecent; how beastly. I do apologise. I actually have done a few things since I last saw you -- my life, although not as proactive  as I would generally like it to be, is being lived to the best of my seventeen year old ability. Last month, on the weekend of the 22nd, I visited what I hope I will be able to call my future home. I went to Edinburgh, Scotland. I wrote about this on tumblr briefly, but what I found most interesting about this long-anticipated visit was the effect physically being there had on me. There are two aspects to any experience: there is anticipation, or the imagination stage. This is what you think a place may be like, what expectations you hold, how you've romanticised it. And then there is the experiential stage: the actuality of it, how it compares to your prejudice (or prejudgement, if you prefer). This is often displayed in the 'expectations: reality' dichotomy...

Since I last wrote to you, Blogger, the two most notable things I have done are: returned to college and visited Cambridge. I won't lie to you, I'll be honest: there are things I could have written to you that I wrote to tumblr instead , but you can't control these things. Some things just seem more appealing sometimes, and tumblr is very good at gratifying you more instantly than you are, Blogger. But I shan't abandon you, because I like that you're of Traditional Blogging  as opposed to this new-fangled "microblogging". College has been okay. It's been interesting to return back to reality, and it has affected my mood in notable ways, but I still think there's an importance to being back "out there". I don't feel the need to go over this in much detail because I already have on tumblr, and this whole blogging deal is essentially me writing things that I can look back on, ponder, and reminisce about in the future. If whoever's...

I wrote this post on tumblr, even though I should have posted it here. So here is a link for that.

Here I sit, listening to Regina Spektor, thinking of all there is to come. My AS Level results came in. They were as follows: A - Philosophy B - Psychology C - Spanish C - English Literature The only shock was Spanish -- I (and nearly everybody that knows me) expected to do better than that, but we're not going to bother querying it. I'm just going to take it on the chin and try to do better at A2. It's sort of good that I did get a slight shock, though. Throughout my life, I've been academically successful and so I have sort of taken for granted that I'll pass all my exams and get into the uni I want to, but this might not be the case if I get any Cs in my final year. I need AAA-BBB to get into my first choice of university, so this means I have to 1) maintain my philosophy grade, 2) try harder in Psychology to push my final grade up to an A, and 3) re-take Spanish to try to get a higher grade at AS level, while working ferociously at A2 to hopefully ge...

I actually made the video! I did the best I could with my equipment/faculty (I'm not making excuses, but Windows Movie Maker seems very basic to me), and I'm proud! (I decided against my own voice-over and used Marcel Proust + Alan Rickman instead).

I'm thinking of making a short video for YouTube once I get my bus pass. I'm not sure, though. I'm mainly inspired by the cinematography of Submarine . I was watching some of the extras from the DVD, and I thought, "How beautiful Wales is; why can't Birmingham be as beautiful as Wales?" But then I thought, it probably is, I just have to capture it in the right light. So, even though I feel absolutely exhausted at the moment for some reason (it's only 01:34! That's early night for summer-me!), I sort of got a 'brain-crack', as Hank Green would call it. When I get my bus pass, I think I'll go to the canals and get some shots of me looking pensively around them. Then I'll get a few walking shots, too. I'm thinking of putting a voice-over on top of it, with something scripted, but I'm not sure what I'll talk about. Perhaps I'll talk about the (relative) beauty of cities? I don't know. It'll probably be awful, but...

This post is going to be photo-less because I haven't been taking many pictures recently. For some reason I've tried pretty hard to refrain from posting photo-less entries because I've somehow created this notion in my head that this blog will be words + pictures all the time, but, fuck it, just words today. There's a reason for the lack of photos. I haven't been out in ages! I have the sort of dynamic with my friends that makes sure I only ever see them when we're in a group and going out to do something specific. We don't just chill as friends do; we don't just get together and chat or anything like that. No, it's strange. We have outings and that's it. And if nobody has money for an outing, we won't see each other for weeks-on-end. I don't really think that's what friendship's about, and although I like my friends, I feel like I'm in this weird, undefinable space between 'friend' and 'acquaintance' with th...

Okay, I admit, yesterday I was initiated into an already not-so-exclusive club. One that has been around for millennia, one that you'd expect me to have joined at the age of 12 like the rest of the first world's teenagers, but no. I only experienced it yesterday. I got drunk. Well, maybe not drunk , I don't know; I think 'very tipsy' would be the better terminology. I didn't puke and I felt good the next morning and remembered the night with clarity, but I most certainly was not of regular mind last night. I had an array of alcohol and the result, I must confess, was fantastic. The edges of your eyes begin to haze and the world develops this dream-like quality. Things slow down -- not immensely, but enough for jumping or swaying from side to side to feel amazing . The alcohol itself is disgusting (unless it's an alcopop; they tasted good. The stronger stuff were all disgusting), but it's the effect, psychological and physical, I realise, that makes peo...

So, my friend and I took a train to Lichfield today. We explored. The Cathedral City is fantastic. Here are a few pictures from that. More at my tumblr if you wish. Lichfield is brilliant -- it's very clean, the Lichfieldians are friendly, and the mixture of old and modern architecture is excellently done. Also it has a massive, medieval cathedral. Cool for its architecture, not its practices. Erasmus Darwin lived in Lichfield On the way One of my favourite pictures that I've ever taken -- Our Creations Exceed Us They had a sign pointing to France and Germany as though it was just down the road...

Almost two weeks ago, I went to see Queen's musical We Will Rock You  with my friends. Needless to say, it was awesome and served to reinforce and remind me of the importance of "real" music (instrument-playing, vocally talented artists) in a world being flooded in autotuned, manufactured crap. But something I learnt outside the play (show? musical? I don't know what to call it! The Awesome?) was more important, more pressing. It was about the nature of people and interaction. A coach full of school girls apparently my age were aboard, coming to see The Awesome from a different city, and their coach got in the way of a shot I was trying to take of the building The Awesome was going to performed in. On a complete whim, I gave them all a sweeping wave and got many waves in return. Apart from feeling like a rockstar, it taught me that people are willing to interact, that not all people are surly curmudgeons, hateful of society. Sometimes you just need to wave first, cr...

I had an argument with my mom the other day. It was over something silly, something she blew completely out of proportion: basically, I had signed up for some online service without reading the terms & conditions closely; one requisite was that you be over 18, and I'm 17, so technically I wasn't allowed to have one. My mom found out and got absurdly displeased and said she'll confiscate my laptop for a week for this. I asked her why and she droned on about how taking my laptop won't let me do something like it again -- basically, completely missing my point -- so I pointed out that it was a mistake and I wondered why she is 'punishing' me for an accident, a (fairly common to all people) slip of the mind. She completely blew up at this. She is unable to handle the fact that her son is a rational, inquisitive being who likes discussion; she's a very traditional parent who likes the child-parent dynamic to be that of a tyrannical dictatorship (parent, dicta...

This post is going to sound a lot like an excerpt from a Bildungsroman, i.e. reflecting on the self and considering what it means to grow up -- that's me warning you in advance, in case you dislike that sort of stuff, or think it excessively corny. I was talking to my friend a week or so ago about how nowadays it's so much harder to get overly excited about something than it was when we were kids. A specific example of this is the Harry Potter films -- the last one is coming out soon and I'm really indifferent about seeing it immediately, whereas in the past I would be filled with liquid excitement the weeks leading up to it. It made me wonder if this is what "growing up" is about...  Does it mean not being uncontrollably excited about things any more? Does it mean being tame and lame, so to speak?  We talked about it for a while and we eventually concluded that no, that's not the case, it's just now we're excited about other stuff -- for example, in...

Yesterday I went to that old Ford of the Oxen. The ancient town, home of budding scholars. I won't lie; it did little for me. The buildings were pretty and the university nice, but it was so very half-way. It was modernity encrusted in antiquity, which I didn't enjoy very much. It enticed the city boy within, but it didn't satisfy and only served to make me think of how much better I would be suited to Edinburgh (Edinburgh being modern and  ancient, not a bit of both  like Oxford is), I think. (I mention that because our reason for going was my friend is attending an Oxford University summer school programme and Oxford is one of her choices for university. Not only am I, personally, unlikely to get into Oxford, but having actually visited, I wouldn't much want to). But yeah, all the same, I love university towns because of the buzz that students bring with them, but I wasn't enamoured by Oxford. (In all fairness, being 17 does restrict many things you can do, so p...