If books could kill...

...the students at my university would be quite safe. Trying to come up with a clever title for this I initially came up with 'Show me the Monet' but realised this would be better suited to an art-free art gallery than a book-free library; which is what I am on about in case I'm not quite making sense yet.

Yes, the library at my university is a library in an airport departure lounge's clothing. But with no duty free. Interestingly the notion of something being free of duty takes on a sinister meaning when considering what the role of books and the suppliers of books (i.e. the university you are paying to make available the literature you require to gain knowledge on the subject they are going to award you a degree in) should be in the context of an institution of knowledge and learning. There should be a duty to make books the centre focus, both physically and in the "spirit" of academia. 

What the "library" - the quotation marks are always present when I refer to what was once a library in my university - offers students now is...er, nothing. Really there is nothing in there except computers and various seating areas. The books are hidden away in rooms and on other floors like stock in a warehouse. The ground floor now resembles a phone shop. These places always make me feel a little uncomfortable because there is nothing in them except for a few stunt phones standing in for the 'real' ones, bored staff and various seating areas. Next time I am in the "library" I am going to check that the odd couple of books I occasionally see stacked on the front desk are not just hollowed out boxes in disguise. Like those VHS cases my parents had in the '90s that looked like leather bound books.

What all of this seems to have done, for me at least, is create a sense of ambiguity. A "when is a library not a library?" gag but with no punch line. If a library is not a library then what is it? An empty space. Why are we paying higher fees for empty space? I can pretty much predict the answer I would get from educationalists who use words like "business facing" and "crafting individuals" when talking about students who want to learn more about, well, anything: "the empty space means you can create the contents, it's up to you guys. If your mind can conceive it, you can achieve it. Now, how about a freshly squeezed juice and some yoga?" If anything I would suggest that, to get thinking again, students of this generation need help from books even more than ever. A sense of academic community arises when you see shelves and shelves of books by people who dedicated their lives and work to thinking about stuff you think about, trying to make sense of stuff you worry about whether it be cures for diseases or trying to negotiate the very nature of existence.

I once said to a friend that before coming to university I would regularly have panic attacks just thinking about what I thought was the futility of life but after reading the work of Nietzsche/Plath/Kafka/de Beauvoir/Bataille (I could go on) I felt quite happy about being in the same boat with the same final non-refundable destination, as long as these guys were along for the ride too. It's like enduring a shit nightclub because your best mates are there. Yes, the vodka is probably watered down. Yes, the music is indescribable and you feel older every time you to attempt a night on the town but look your mate is with you and you'll make the best of it together. 

As a teenager (who am I kidding? I'm on my way to 30 and still feel like this) being regularly hit with the propaganda trotted out by the media in all its many, glorious forms, finding there are boat-loads of others who don't actually agree is both crucial and comforting. I have been assured that academic institutions once provided an alternative to the 'real world' of 9-to-5-jobs-to-pay-the-bills. If, however, they now resemble a shop one would visit at the weekend (when on two day release from such jobs) I am no longer sure they offer any alternative and so, fellow students, we must go in search of them ourselves. And reading books is a bloody good place to start! Books have provided me with so many examples of alternative ways to think and live, separate from the ideologies of capitalist neo-liberalism. Take these away and what are we left with? Empty spaces where thoughts should be.

I confess!

Warning: lazy blogger! Here's my homework for my Life Writing class. A very rough draft which become increasingly apparent:

I'm pretty wiped guys - deadlines and all - but still have glimmers of enthusiasm so, briefly, here's my rule-break:

The rule: "Do not smoke indoors Lucy!"

The break: I only went and smoked indoors, didn't I!?

My mum and dad found out that I smoked when I was 15 which was quite good going for me since I was throwing up regularly from nicotine rushes from about the age of 12. Either way the rule was 'smoke in the garden' or at least blow the smoke out of the back door in the kitchen whilst shivering on the door step.

My folks regularly went to stay with my mum's brother and his wife (aka my aunt and uncle) so I had the house to myself. This was when I'd sit on the sofa in front of the 'big telly' (the one in my room is a 'medium telly') and light up a Marlboro Light (are they still called that? I think it's just Marlboro now).

How did I feel? Well, firstly, warmer than I do in the garden but also independent and empowered. 'This is what it'd be like if I had my own place', I'd think. I did indeed have my own place for 1.5 yrs where I smoked EVERYWHERE - in the bath, even whilst cooking. Yep! - but being an impoverished student I came back to mummy and daddy, tale between my legs, ready to take my place in the garden. I sound like a dog don't I?

When the folks were out I was the Lady of the house and I smoked in that house! BUT, there is a price to pay for taking such liberties in a place where they were never really yours. The price here was anxiety and an obsession with the smell of smoke resulting in me spraying air freshener, walking out of the living room and then walking back in nose in the air sniffing around. Again...like a dog! What's going on here?

So, yes, it was nice being warm and comfortable, nice to puff away in front of the, quite frankly 'massive telly' but in the end, I felt very guilty and anxious and somehow increasingly like a dog.

Here we go again...

As is the Friday tradition I went to the pub for a drink and a chat with some other students from one of my classes. Some of them I know very well and some I've only briefly chatted to before. This mix seems to create an odd dynamic of relaxed exchanges between friends and stunted and edited exchanges with mere acquaintances. It was this dynamic that left me driving down the M6 having imaginary arguments with several of them.

We were chatting about an upcoming assignment and I mentioned how French sociologist Jean Baudrillard used the fantasy of having sex with identical twins in relation to his work on simulacra and simulation. A student I've not known very long suggested that it's all just about sex really and that academics are just like the rest of us (who knew?): driven by sexuality (not necessarily my opinion). Another student who I know particularly well concurred and joked about my naivety when it comes to befriending (male) lecturers; something about them genuinely wanting to talk to me but ultimately being driven by their libidos. Again, I'm putting it 'nicely'. What followed was cackles and hypothetical scenarios that were both rude and derogatory to all involved. And they wonder why I look elsewhere for conversation (this, of course, is not true of all my student friends. I'd say around 3 of them are friends of mine).

After advising the group that I talk to particular lecturers because of shared interests (music, books, film, food, etc) and that I have never once felt targeted for anything else they calmed down a bit. I understand that within the banter of a few beers after class this sort of thing is to be expected if you admit to associating with the Others: the 'tweed wearers'. You know: blow job = A grade and as vile and disrespectful as this was to me, as a student, and to the integrity of academia I accept that this sort of lecturer/student mythology exists. This doesn't mean I like it though, in fact, it really winds me up because I have worked at my education with a passion and dedication I didn't know existed in me and have earned every one of those grades. But, yes this kind of ribbing does go on, especially if you're the one doing well.

What really wounded me was when another student said, quite nonchalantly: 'it is all a bit weird though'. As if it were immoral, icky even, that I, a human being with particular interests, have conversations and connections with other human beings with similar interests. The 'confession' that I have also had lunch with lecturers was met with bemused faces and 'well what does your husband think of that?' Of what, me having lunch and discussing my thoughts on the counter-hegemonic practices of the Goth sub-culture? Not a lot as it's not really his area of interest.

Given that I do enjoy delving a little deeper into social interactions and what they may be saying about the individual or indeed society, I could really go to town on this and observe what may be afoot, both from my perspective and my fellow students. But then I decided not to bother because I've better things to do and what the others in my group were suggesting is just as banal as it has always been: lecturers are all sex-mad predators and us students are either vulnerable or out to exploit the situation for a decent grade. Yawn! It didn't surprise me to discover that they didn't bat an eyelid when I mentioned that I regularly email and speak to a female lecturer in the 'real' world too. I can befriend an academic as long as it's a female of the species? Again, yawn.

THE END.

The murky depths.

Having just watched an episode of Shameless where the residents of the Chatsworth Estate were plunged into darkness following a blackout (resulting in lots of drinking, violence and sex as is the case with 100% of Shameless episodes) my thoughts turned to French writer Georges Bataille's work on eroticism and being human.

According to Bataille (and others I'm sure), eroticism, a state of transcendental reality, is induced via the loss of self. The self, in this context, being the person we identify with in our day to day lives: Lucy, 26, student, wife, black hair, two eyes, one nose, etc. During this loss, experienced for example in orgasm or la petite mort (the little death) to use the French idiom, we enter a state of non-knowledge, oblivion. For those who don't have orgasms it can be likened to losing your temper or being excessively drunk. For those who don't get angry or drink alcohol, go and read another blog.

After this 'loss' we eventually reconnect with the self we were before, it may be somehow altered following the experience but we retrieve a sense of self once again. There may be feelings of shame, guilt, anxiety, increased desire; all things that will hold sex/anger/intoxication in a state of reverence until an energy founded on desire overwhelms us once more and we seek another transgression (have sex/get drunk). Simone de Beauvoir, despite being involved in a notoriously hostile feud with Bataille (alongside Sartre) appears to have encapsulated the 'real life'/eroticism dynamic in her superb book 'The Second Sex' (1949): 'desire, which frequently shrouds disgust, reveals disgust again, when it is satisfied'. Such desire may occur after a tough week of being communicated at by people and computers trying to extract or insert something in you for reasons not entirely known to you. This is a seemingly continuous rotation. It is, according to Bataille, what makes us human. This is neither a good thing nor a bad thing it just is; good and bad are binaries that we must not bog ourselves down with when considering such matters as the human condition.

For Bataille, what makes us human is work. Our human work. Having sex all day, drinking all day, being enraged all day (although I often do the latter quite well) is not conducive to productivity. Lying around in our own filth, shagging anything that moved would not have invented wheels, would not have built houses. No McDonalds. No Twitter. No blogs. Having sex occasionally, getting wrecked at the weekend, however, have uses in that they appear to 'renew' the ordered, day to day running of our lives. For example, going on holiday and coming home to your own bed, a bed you couldn't wait to leave 2 weeks previously before the excesses of rest, sun, food and alcohol in the Costa del Somewhere. Once home your bed feels like your mother's womb, your friends are interesting again and your morning cup of tea has a new charm. Put simply, the holiday is needed as much as the non-holiday. The suspension of daily life is required in order to keep the cogs of, in our case, Capitalism turning: you’ll turn up for work after two days away from the office doing something else. With this in mind we could suggest, in a Daily Mail kind of way that the characters portrayed in Shameless contribute little to society as we are expected to know it. That they aren’t quite as human as the rest of us.

The residents of the Chatsworth Estate don't have 'proper' jobs. They are on benefits, they make money on black markets, they have sex at 2pm on a Wednesday, they give in to violent impulses and they often drink all day. We're supposed to laugh at this, Other them, view them in such a realm of ridiculous that we couldn't possibly entertain the fact that they might be experiencing something that could well rival the shiny BMW on our driveway. Their supposedly chaotic lives seem perversely simpler than ours. They've cut out the middle man, the tax man, the policeman and are getting on with it. They aren't, however, going to build hospitals or schools anytime soon; they aren't going to provide security and safe peaceful family homes. They are also not going to start any world wars or make decisions that will affect the lives of millions of people. Wallowing in the muddy depths of base urges leaves little time for such things as civilisation, being human; often identified as being good/evil, something.

If I were to suggest Bataille was onto something (and I do) this ‘being human’ malarkey is an interesting position to consider. It seems to involve denying that which makes us animal in favour of that which generates money and power but also that which writes books, music, dances, sings and makes witty comments on social networking sites. The question to ask yourself in relation to your self, then, is where you'd really like to stand. If the grass really is greener or, if you prefer, muddier on the other side.

Won't someone think of the children?

Here I am, in 'Simpson' form, yesterday after the inspiration for this post struck:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh2sWSVRrmo

It used to be that the responsibility to fuck kids up good and proper fell on the shoulders of parents. Exposing young and malleable humans to all kinds of stuff. There's competitive passive aggressive exchanges between mummy and daddy where everything appears to be hunky dory yet the air seems to have turned blue. Not forgetting lovely heart to hearts with mummy where she tells of the pain she endures staying with daddy just for lucky little you.

Yes, parents do a superb job. So much so that it may add insult to the already overwhelming injuries to join forces with the caring folk in the media and do something like this:

'What Not To Wear'

Not content with forcing middle age women with fat middles to equate clashing prints and unruly hair with total human failure conjoined bitches Trinny Woodhall & Susannah Constantine set their sights on the children of these badly dressed atrocities. It was during a daytime channel surf last week I noticed this show was still being aired. I actually used to watch this show when I was a kid so was interested to see how I'd view it now that I am older and have spent many hours learning how evil the media can be. If I were to take something positive from this experience I would suggest that my University tuition fees are pounds well spent in that within 30 seconds of viewing I was practically spitting my teeth out at the shocking scenes unfolding before me. This is where the silver lining ends.

The first scene viewed was at the workplace of the sub-human female Woodhall & Constantine were trying to save from certain doom. It transpired that the woman worked in social services, specifically, child welfare and regularly had to attend court hearings. Woodhall asked a colleague of their prey what she thought about the shoes she wore for work. Yes, when attending important court dates where the safety and future of a child is in question, they wanted to know if she was wearing the right shoes. I am not lying. You really can be as appalled as I hope you are by now.

The second scene, the scene that resulted in me turning the television off before I had a stroke, involved Constantine coming into contact with her prey's son. Ironically, whilst at court in the wrong shoes, protecting vulnerable kids, badly dressed woman's own kids were in danger. Now, we should all know that the first rule of protecting yourself from supernatural evil is to not invite it into your home. It was too late for this family, Constantine was in the kitchen and had the child in her sights.

Happily eating a bowl of cereal a young boy aged no more than around 6yrs old was asked what he thought of mummy's tummy. Was mummy's tummy fat? As he nervously giggled, looking confused at the task of communicating how his mothers gut made him feel he was blindsided with another question from Constantine: 'have I got a fat tummy?' More nervous giggles followed by an encouraged 'no'. Constantine then lifted her shirt and stuck out her gut. 'How about now?' The child was then expected to compare her tummy with his mother's and show, like in a maths exam, how he worked this out. This is where it all went a little hazy for me.

Of course I am not loading all of the blame on Woodhall and Constantine, they work in a vile industry and are not the only ones who prey on the weak for their own profit and satisfaction. They were just the ones I saw that day yet I fail to see how either of them could ever justify asking a child to objectify his mother in such a way as to make him question her worth on the basis of her weight and appearance; it reeked of 'grooming'. Preparation for a life where he will ascribe value to the beautiful/well dressed at the expense of other less superficial things. Not to mention confuse the poor sod in a society that is confusing enough 100% of the time anyway.

In the spirit of being optimistic, however, I found something online proving not all parent/media unions are evil and exploitative of both child and audience. In case you didn't know past TV Presenter Emma Forbes is now a spokesmodel for cosmetic company Sheer Cover who offer a 'natural' range of products that help uncover the 'real' you. When asked in, I'm sure, a completely spontaneous situation about her love of the wondrous products Forbes decided the best way to answer would be: 'I hope my children benefit from seeing me take care of myself'. 'What a lovely way to put words in the mouths of your children for the financial benefit of a soulless beauty industry company', I thought before retreating to a dark room, with gin.

More than just sex.

When I started University a friend and I joked about a particular ambition of ours. We called it 'Operation: Nail a Lecturer'. Basically, get a lecturer into bed. It was both juvenile and reckless, traits I prided myself on at the time hence my personal life being in a permanent state of chaos. I had spent 25 years knowing everything and being right and suddenly these men (most of my lecturers are male) appeared and unveiled a world I never knew existed, using words I didn't understand about people I had never heard of. I was intimidated and didn't know how to react. In retrospect I think I figured getting them into bed would be my way of taking back some of the power I was worried they were taking from me.

Before University I worked full time in an office and maintained a social life where looking good and getting drunk were your main concerns. It was the numbing effects of that life that led me to University as a means of escape; I knew there had to be more. The men I encountered at University didn't appear to care about what I looked like or whether my coat was ‘cool in an ironic way’. They were interesting and interested and had knowledge and passions beyond anything I could have imagined. This discovery appeared to induce both admiration and resentment inspiring this sudden need to seduce. When researching this topic last year I came across an article on 'The Times Higher Education' site. Simply: Sex and the universityhttp://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=401935. The words from academic Jane Gallop (on sleeping with two of her lecturers as a student) outlined my position perfectly:

"I think I wanted to get them into bed in order to make them more human, more vulnerable. These two had enormous power over me: I don't mean their institutional position but their intellectual force. I was bowled over by their brilliance; they seemed so superior. I wanted to see them naked, to see them as like other men. Not so as to stop taking them seriously as intellectuals (I never did), but so as to feel my own power in relation to them," she says.

It was Gallop’s admission that motivated me to address my own 'ambitions'. It wasn't a case of a bit of fun it was a case of me trying to locate myself within this world via my sexuality, perhaps this was all I thought I had to offer (we’ll save that one for a therapist perhaps). Needless to say I am getting from University what I paid for: new ways to think about myself and the world around me beyond appearances and potential conquests.

It feels important that I make it known that I have never had sex with a lecturer and do not intend to. I have lunch, a few beers and interesting discussions with several of them and class them as 'almost friends'; there are still necessary boundaries to observe in the student/teacher dynamic. Interestingly, it seems one of the hardest things to do is convince them that you're not trying to get them into bed and, given what I have disclosed, I can’t blame them. I think it fair to assume there has been some blurring of lines in the past leaving a bad taste in the mouths of some. I happen to think such caution is a useful component in building a rewarding relationship with an academic; I only developed connections with my lecturers either after tutorials or if they had marked my coursework. I think it was within these contexts they recognised passion, my hunger to learn and my willingness to work my arse off! And, for me, this is worth so much more than being told I look pretty and am ok in bed.