So today my uni halls were meant to be doing a pub crawl. The theme was my big fat gypsy wedding, but I decided since I’ve never watched that show in my life to do a gypsy inspired outfit…don’t know how far it’s particularly gypsy-ish but I do like it…mostly clothes I haven’t warn before; dress and bracelet bought from this gorgeous shop in Leeds called Ark, when it was having a 20 percent off sale (with music and champagne!), and this necklace I got in San Francisco which I’d never warn. Did two little plats at the front of my hair and pulled them back…really like my hair like this!
But then…it rained. And pub crawls aren’t fun in the rain. So then it got called off.
I don’t actually mind; I went to dinner and met some highly amusing guys, and staying in is probably a good idea, as I’m going back to London tomorrow (yaaay! I’ve missed London so much!) and have to get up way, way too early.
So now I’m gonna go spend my evening with a beer, a sandwich, a book and my flatmates…rather than drinking my 17 drinks at the 17 pubs we would have been going to.
I’m sitting in a room in my house where the light doesn’t work. We had a leak and since then…it just doesn’t turn on. So when my dad turned off all the lights in the other rooms before he went to bed, I was left with just a lamp, and my laptop light. Of course I could turn the kitchen light on if I wanted more light, but I don’t want to. I’m liking the dark. I’m liking the way that the lamplight makes things look prettier.
So I’m sitting in the lit darkness, looking through this blog post by Kayley and feeling inspired, and then I look at my write and see the deathly hallows symbol, and start thinking about how none of the hallows are really, good things; even the invisibility cloak…that’s really about hiding and although that maybe sensible, it’s not a good value to take into your life.
So then I started thinking about what good things the deathly hallows could represent, and wrote those on my arm under the symbol. And then I filmed a video about it. Now I’m downloading music for a video about the outfit I wore to Nottinghill Carnival, and writing this blog post.
I’ve been feeling tired all day…but now it almost feels nice. The sleepyness feels restful and dream like, while my eyes itching feels very…human.
I’ve done a lot of planning today. Planning for a few days ahead; some things I will do and many things I hope to write and make before I go to university and life gets very busy and I can’t write and make things for a while. And planning more long term; I chose my university classes (I, in a very Hermione Granger esque way, put down far more classes than I need to take)…though I’m sure I will change my mind and redo things later. The future seems exciting to me right now.
I’m also working on my “Performance Theory Work Book” for a drama qualification that I’m taking. I’m starting to remember that this isn’t just a dreary task; it’s actually something that can be creative and interesting. It’s about time. It’s about dealing with the lack of time and making the most of the time we have. I’m liking the darkness and the half light. It’s pretty. The light and shadows on my hands look pretty as I’m typing this.
Now I’m going to post this and then go back to editing the video, and then hopefully post that and then sleep. And then I’ll wake up and it will be light again and I’ll start another day.
"We’re in a generation where, if you don’t document it, it didn’t occur." - Jesse Eisenberg I’m obsessed with documentation. This mainly comes out in the form of photos. I know I can get annoying with the amount I’ll pull my camera out, but I love having that image that will evoke that memory that will just…be there afterwards (I also like the aesthetics of photographs, though I’m not good at taking good ones…but when a wonderful one occasionally appears through my camera lens it makes me wonderfully happy).
I also write blog posts and take dailybooth pictures and I’ve started making videos. And there’s facebook statuses. There’s a facebook app that, at the end of the year, you can go back and see all your old statuses and put them in images which you will then…well, have. I write facebook statuses with this in mind; thinking that at the end of the year, I’ll have that record.
Sometimes I take photographs or write statuses that completely share (or, as far as any experience can be shared) with those who see it. But sometimes I write or photograph things that mean something to me, but me alone (or me and people I shared the experience with); a quote, maybe, but a quote that has significance for what I’m doing or feeling at the time, or a photo of a landscape or object, but that evokes so much more with me.
I also collect objects that remind me of things; this I’ve done all my life, literally as long as I can remember, but I have recently been doing it with a new kind of fanaticism and (some) attention to order. I love going through the things and thinking about things I’ve done and things I’ve seen and things I’ve experienced. There are three key reasons why I’m so obsessed with doing this. First, I have this massive paranoia about…not doing anything with my life. I don’t mean, like, not really accomplishing anything (though I have that too somewhat…), but just about, being lazy and not ever really experiencing enough or creating enough or just having enough fun…I think because I am pretty naturally lazy and apathetic, and this is something I’m constantly working against. And my various forms of documentation are proof, to myself, that I have done things and am doing things.
I also just love looking at things and remembering. If things were good…or even if they weren’t good, but were powerful or important or significant…it’s nice to be able to somewhat relive those emotions from that time or experience. Clearly, there’s such a thing as spending too much dwelling on the past. But a little is just…it’s nice.
And finally…it helps me make some sort of sense of my life. With photos and fragmented pieces of prose and random quotes and video clips and leaflets and old tickets and old programmes and old newspaper clippings and many, many other bits and pieces I’ve collected…by sorting them out and having them to look at, it feels like I can make some sense of and have some grasp of what has past. You don’t know what’s coming, but you know what happened, and you can string it together to make some sort of flow. I’m a natural storyteller (I don’t mean I’m good at telling or writing stories, I just mean that my brain naturally works with and forms narratives) and understanding the narrative of my life makes me feel so much more…secure. Content. Real. Working out what’s happening in my life, backwards. "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." - Soren Kierkegaard
I’m eighteen years old. That makes me a teenager, right? Well, technically, yes, I guess. And in many ways I’m very teenager-y; I go out and I drink and probably the most important thing in life to me is hanging out with my friends and I spend way too much time on the internet and I fight with my parents and I’m still far more idealistic than an average person whose lived their life longer than me…but I don’t really feel like a teenager anymore.
Of course, this raises the question of what a teenager is. On my plane home from California there was a girl of about thirteen right in my line of sight. I noticed her because she’s was such a stereotypical young teenager; reading a magazine about Miley Cyrus and The Jonas Brothers, with a quiz on “how should YOU rock stripes?”, and adamantly staying awake for the majority of the flight despite the fact that it was an overnight flight.
And that’s defiantly not what I’m like.
But it could be argued that that kinda phase is more the pre-teen phase, that maybe for some gets carried over into early teenagerhood.
I guess I see a teenager as what I was from around fifteen to seventeen (when I was thirteen/fourteen…I don’t know what I was. I was very aimless and didn’t really have a life). You start going out a lot and start developing a teenage style social life based around drinking and parties, in my case you develop a tight nit circle of friends, you start learning how to dress and do yourself up so you don’t look like a complete mess, you have things with guys…you’re still very young and in many ways innocent, but you probably don’t feel it because you’re having all these experiences that are all new and shiny and exciting for you. And you are maturing. You’re starting to learn to view the world and people more complexly, you’re having to make some real decisions about the future (even if at first this only means what A levels you’re going to take). But you’re still, really, quite young.
Not that I’m not young now. In some ways I’m way more aware that I’m young than I was when I was fifteen. But that’s because I have far greater perspective than I did when I was fifteen.
But take a fifteen year old and a twenty one year old…and I would defiantly group myself with the twenty one year old. In the past year I have grown up a lot; I’ve had to deal with stuff that I could not have at fifteen, I’ve done things I probably would never have been awesome enough to do at fifteen. And I’m still making decisions about my future, but now those involve money and relationships and jobs and really long term plans and looking after myself.
And that’s a big one.
Looking after myself.
I really believe that you should and mostly will always have people in your life who will help you out. We are not totally independent creatures; we work together and look out for one another. But how that works, for me, at eighteen, is very different to how that worked just a few years ago.
Because now I feel like a part of a web, and an equal part of it; I have loads of people who will help me and look out for me, but I’m not…well, a child. Clearly when you’re young you are responsible for the things you do…but less so. And you’re looked after. I was pretty “mature” at fifteen, but I was still very much looked after. And although now I’m still financially supported by my parents, the dynamic is very different. I’m not just a helpless kid anymore.
I’m still very, very young.
I’ve done loads in the past year but in so many ways I’m still very inexperienced. Hell, I still don’t know how to cook. But I don’t feel like a teenager anymore, not really. I still go out and drink and do “teenager-y” things, but what twenty year old doesn’t do those things?
I feel like an adult. A young, sometimes very silly, adult. But an adult none the less.
Written on 3rd/4th August on the plane home from California.
The weed laws in California are wrong. Whatever your position on the drug debate, they are wrong. Because, as it stands now, you can only get weed as prescription medication. But you can buy a prescription, perfectly, legally, in a shop on the street, so, essentially, weed is entirely legally accessible to anyone with the money, but, because it is “medicinal” it is not taxable, and if it were, it would greatly help California’s financial situation. Either we decide that weed is a dangerous substance that people should not be allowed to consume, and thus should make it more inaccessible to people, or we decide it’s safe enough/people have a right to choose, and make it entirely legal, in order to bring in tax revenue; right now, in California, weed is entirely the wrong amount of legal.*
Though I may think that the current California policy on weed is flawed, none the less it made California a good place for me to try the stuff for the first time. As an asthmatic, I chose a lollypop over smoking, and over pills, as I thought with a lollypop it would be easier to regulate the amount I was taking. I went through the standard “I don’t feel anything” phase, before it started to feel kind of nice. I felt…floaty, and happy. I tried to move my arm and found that, despite the floaty feeling, my arm had actually turned into a piece of lead. But that was OK. I felt relaxed. That was good. Then I found myself getting sleepy, partly because of the weed, I’m sure, but also because I was just really, really tired. There was some Red Bull on the table, so I drank that, and with it came a burst of energy, which found me tap dancing in the middle of the room, to the amusement of my friend.
This was followed by a sudden craving for tea…and while I was sitting there waiting for the water to boil, I started to feel strange.
It was like there was a…duality in my thinking; like whatever facet of my brain takes in my surroundings and controls my basic functioning was high. It was relaxed and sluggish and only somewhat aware of what was going on. But behind that, another part of my brain, I guess whichever part thinks about things deeply and solves problems and things like that, was functioning far more normally.
And so I started to feel trapped. My inner thinking self was caught inside my high exterior. And what got increasingly clear was that I couldn’t just shake it off. When I’m drunk, I know that I’ll pretty much always be able to sober up, at least somewhat, in an emergency. With weed, I didn’t think I would be able to.
This reminds me of somewhat of Evanna Lynch’s blog post for the HPA about how being trapped in a body bind is her greatest fear. I would probably say my greatest fear is more about being totally out of control of whatever situation I’m in; but the idea of being trapped in a body bind would fall into that category.
And that’s sort of how I felt on weed. I felt that if something bad happened, I would be helpless. And even though there was no reason something bad would happen…I just felt trapped, because I could see no way to get out of the state I was in.
So then I started to panic. Except that I couldn’t really panic, not fully, because my body would do nothing but just sit there. So it was just this one part of my brain struggling to panic by itself, with the rest of my body and some of my mind refusing to join in. This was not helped by the realisation that my friend was also high; I mean, clearly, I knew he would be, but I suddenly started to really notice it in his behaviour, and then it occurred to me he was probably as helpless as me…so he wasn’t, well, as there to look out for me as normal (this, I should point out, was in my mind; he was no where near as high as me, and largely still competent...he was high enough to be strangely facinated by a small patch of spilt tea on the floor, but yeah; no where near the place that I was. But in the state of mind I was in, his amusement at the tea was a cause for alarm).
Not that there would be any need for him to look out for me, even then I did know that, but still, right then…I was scared. I had some tea before going to take my make up off. I wanted to sleep. If I slept, I’d wake up the next day feeling normal. I wanted that. Seeing myself in the mirror, I realised that my eyes were red. It looked pretty horrible. As did I. I’m not the vainest person you will ever meet, but I certainly have a vain streak. I don’t like seeing myself looking bad, but normally I would just shrug it off. Right then, it disgusted me.
One thing I’ve discovered about weed, or at least me on weed, is that I can’t tell how far away sound is coming from, so I could heard voices, from presumably outside in the street, buy it seemed to me like they were in the room. I knew that they weren’t really, but it was a bizarre experience.
I was also really, really tired. I was taking long blinks, and Everytime I blinked I’d fall asleep for maybe half a second, before waking up. It was insanely disorienting. The real world around me was becoming increasingly dreamlike too, and not in a good way. Everything seemed surreal and angular and distorted. I got into bed. I slept. I woke up feeling completely exhausted and spent the day with whatever the weed equivalent is to a hang over.
I’m glad I tried it, for everything. It wasn’t, mostly, a good experience, but it was an interesting one; I was curious, and now I’ve somewhat satisfied my curiosity. It’s not had, like, a lasting negative impact, and I look back on it mostly with interest rather than negative feelings.
I’m still pro the legalisation of weed, and people being able to use it if they want to. But I’m not sure if I’m pro me using it. Maybe I just took too much. I’m a small person, and there was a lot of stuff in that lollypop. It was nice at first, after all. But a similar nice effect could probably be achieved with alcohol. So for a bit, at least, I think I’m going to stay away from weed. My eyes look best when they are blue, black and white.
*My friend pointed out that I was somewhat wrong about this:
"although it's true that marijuana isn't taxed in the way alcohol and tobacco are (although it should be), it IS charged sales tax when it's sold medicinally. So there is SOME state revenue generated this way that wouldn't be if it were still illegal."
Being thrown back into the real world after the most amazing two and a bit weeks of Buffy’s high school and Disneyland and Comic Con and beach time and road trips and cultural and shopping trips through San Francisco and Vidcon and meeting Stan Lee and chilled out LA times in California…being thrown back into reality has proved quite a shock.Thinking about things I have to do and sort and make happen is proving somewhat overwhelming to me at this moment, hence the fact that I’m awake at 2:30 in the morning (that and jetlag), writing this and sorting my over a thousand pictures (yup) from the trip.
The two focal events of my trip were the two cons; comic and vid. They were both really, really amazing in entirely different ways. I find myself missing them for all the obvious reasons involving awesome people and awesome events…but I also, in the current OMG I HAVE SO MUCH TO DO fog, find myself missing the general con…way of life.
Vidcon only went on for two days, but even that was enough to be more than just event, and become something of a temporary style of living, while comic con was five days long so…yeah. At conventions, the problems you have to solve are simple; how do I get to this event? How early will I have to stand in line to get a good seat? Am I programmed out? Do I want to deal with the hell that is the intersection to the nearest road with restaurants or face the inedible food here? (applying only to comic con; the food at the vidcon hotel was lovely).
Being entirely “relaxed” isn’t always relaxing…it makes me think to much about future big life stresses. But the stresses and need to organise and need to problem solve that a con brings…they keep those thoughts at bay, while not being overwhelming themselves. Because if my problem is what time I should go and stand in line for a panel…well, I work it out, and do it. No big life consequences, no long term effect or regret, just problem > solution.
Which is so, so, so nice. It reminds me somewhat of theatre; during a play, you don’t worry about big life shit, you worry about x person getting on stage at y time.
Life could never stay like that forever, clearly, it would get boring, clearly it would end up seeming meaningless, clearly I would get tired of Captain Americas pushing past me…but right now, I’m defiantly missing the simplicity…part of my current “I miss everything about California and do not want to be in London right now” mood.
Written on the 21st April 2011 A few weeks ago, I went to see my brother in his school production of Hairspray. He was only a chorus role, being a little 'un and all, but it was his first school production since being at his new school, and it was nice and I was proud of him and lovely things like that.
But I found myself sitting there, as the curtains went up and the first number began, fighting back tears. Now, I'm not going to lie, when I saw Hairspray in the West End, it made me cry; the ending of Hairspray can quite easily reduse me to tears because I'm a softy like that. But that's the ending, when it's all happy and sentimental and all that. Not the opening number. It took me a while to work out why this was happening. And it was because...that used to be me. Watching my brother, dancing and singing on stage...I used to be the person on stage. And watching that rendition of Baltimore and me, I really, really missed it. A quick bit of soul searching later, and I came to the conclusion that it was not the actual acting that I missed; the reason that I've started to zone acting out of my life and why it is definatly not a route I intend to follow anymore in a life plan sense, is that I fell out of love with pretending to be other people with different lives tomy own. I believe that if you're going to endure what is in many ways a really rubbish life to be an actor, you have to really...not just want...you have to need that; need to play at being other people. And I don’t need it anymore. I don’t even really enjoy it that much anymore.
So as I was holding back tears watching Hairspray, it wasn't that that I was missing.
It was the community you find in theatre; the connectedness. I am, at heart, a team player; I like my own company and need time alone, but I love, more than anything, being part of a larger group, who work together and look out for one another.
I've heard from many people in the theatre world that actors are egotistical people. And, yeah, with some actors...there's truth in that. But acting isn't an egotistical exercise. You are so dependent on the rest of the cast, and they are so dependant on you. You look out for one another; you cover for a some's late queue or help the panicking lead with their quick change.
I never made any really close friends through productions. Some good friends through drama classes, but even then they aren’t really close. But while you're putting on a play, for those weeks or months or however long the rehearsal period is, and for those few hours on stage, you feel closer to those people than to anyone else in the whole world.
Some of those feels of collective endeavour I have been able to find elsewhere; in politics, in the new found closeness my classes at school seem to have found in the run up to the most stressful exams we have yet to experience.
But nothing can quite match that unity that was putting on a play; that unity both practical and creative.
After the first two big numbers I somewhat managed to get over and instead be grateful that I didn't have to deal with the serious problems with the mikes that the cast were experiencing...but that slight stab of loss still lingered. I'm very, very happy that I have the experiences I've had in the world of acting. But I also in no way regret leaving it; this is in so many ways the right thing for me to do.
But that feeling of togetherness and community...sometimes, yeah, I miss it.
It just turned and I may finally have a blog layout which I’m somewhat content with.
So, several months ago now, for certain reasons I privated my old blog. Today I finally got round to unprivating it, however, I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a new blog for a bit so…here it is. I will probably flick back and forth between the two; I want this to be for proper, written, structured content, but will probably continue to use my old blog for pic spams and things like that. Soon after privating my old blog, I started to try and cut back on my internet activity. This had a lot to do with my then up and coming exams, and the fact I didn’t want to fail them at all, and so, for the first time in my life, really, properly, seriously and determinedly studied for my exams. However, I still ended up spending a good deal of time on the internet. I was successful in not dailyboothing, except for a couple of occasions, and I stopped reading blogs and watched less youtube videos. But the type of activity you participate in is different to the actual number of minutes spent online, and twitter and facebook…well, I was still on them. Quite a lot. And probably more than I should have been. However, looking back…I wasn’t on the internet as much as I thought at the time. Then, any time not working felt like forever because I felt like I “HAD TO BE WORKING 24/7 AND IF I DIDN’T I WOULD DIE OMG!!!!”. And twitter and facebook were a good outlet, as well as helping to generate and maintain a sense of community with my fellow examinees. Still, I probably could have spent just a little less time refreshing my browser. When exams were finished I thought I would be back online a lot more. But I also was determined to kick the habit of being online for no good reason, and really doing nothing there but refreshing twitter and facebook or watching and reading things I wasn’t actually interested in. I wanted to be active on the internet; to blog again and better, to start making proper youtube videos, to actual go on skype more and talk to people…but if I was doing none of these things to get off the internet and do something else. What ended up happening wasn’t exactly that. Since exams ending, I have been very busy. It’s been truly, truly wonderfully busy; so many things that I had been unable to do for around a month leading up to exams, and even before that that I couldn’t do without working out how I was going to off set the lack of work done while I was shopping or watching TV or doing out. Just being able to read a book for pleasure (which I did immediately on the train home from my last exam) felt so good. The freedom was, and still, really, is, amazing.
But that business (in addition to preparing for a drama exam and, now, working at the local primary school) meant I ended up spending far less time on the internet (and for that matter a great deal of time away from home) than I had been, probably, during exams. It certainly meant all content creation went out of the window.
Something of a lull, however, in my activities (well…debatable…my to do list for today was freakin’ long, but I am at least at home somewhat) has given me an opportunity to start the new blog I’d been planning. However, despite my long (and may I add, once I publish this blog post, completed) to do list, I managed to find a good couple of hours today to do basically nothing on the internet.
And I need to stop this. It doesn’t make me happy.
In fact I felt really pretty low during it and straight afterwards. But then after going to the bank, spending far too much money on make up, going on our tred mill and watching the west wing, reading, having a bath…I felt really, pretty good. I love the internet.
And I want to be active on it.
But I don’t want to be wasting hours on nothing.
This isn’t, logically, a hard balance to strike.
I just have to get some fucking self control.
In other news, the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 premiere was today. I only watched a tiny bit of it (have I mentioned today’s long to do list? Cause it was long…), but I was aware of it’s…presence.
I know everyone and their mother (well, probably not actually their mother…since…generationally…that wouldn’t make all that much sense) has been talking about how they grew up with Harry Potter and it’s like the end of childhood. But…yeah, same for me. The final Harry Potter movie comes in the same year as me turning eighteen, as me leaving school and as a bunch of other things that leave me feeling…like an adult. I know, I know that I am still really, really young, but I just don’t feel…like I child anymore. Well, in some ways.
In other ways I still do, as the butterflies in my stomach at the Harry Potter music would indicate (and the fact that I own a wand and stuff…).
Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home...
