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    November 2009
    M T W T F S S
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    Weight loss required

    I don’t want to go on about this but there’s no escaping the fact that I am, well, chunky is extremely charitable at this point. I eat emotionally; I went through a stage when I was 21 of not really eating at all and went to a size 12, but after my relationship ended eighteen months ago I’ve put on a LOT of weight. It’s not hard to see why - I got the bus directly to work, directly home, where I ordered a huge takeaway because I thought it would make me feel better.

    I just got back from holiday which was nice, but every time I looked in the mirror I was struck by how utterly huge I looked to myself. Having weighed myself, I’ve crept over 15 stone for the first time in my life which apparently labels me obese, according to the BMI. Even if that’s out quite a bit, it’s not exactly healthy, is it? I also struggle when cycling to work which, at 2.5 miles in 15 minutes, probably shouldn’t knock me out quite as much as it does.

    This is also one of my problems. I quite enjoy the cycling, actually, and do feel better once the sweat and gasping has gone. The thing is though, it’s getting me somewhere. It has a purpose beyond itself and actually the appeal is that whereas on a university day it takes around 40 minutes to travel the same distance, getting there in 15 means a bit more sleep.

    Weight today: 14 stone 13lb

    Oh so trendy

    This is a little confused. I might come back to it later, but it’s one of those things that I think becomes clearer when writing my way through it.
    There’s a lot of ‘new writing’ outlets in Manchester.They range from small publishing houses like Comma Press, magazines - Transmission and Bewilderbliss, sold locally and online -, regular readings at the library, reading nights like No Point in Not Being Friends recently at the Deaf Institute, and more. Manchester University and Manchester Met both have Creative Writing programmes. Though my experience was pretty shoddy, the course was going through difficult times and may well have improved since then. The fact that the department tries to integrate some of its writing into the literature scene (hate that word!) is probably a good indicator.

    A lot of these are probably very good. I know a lot of people involved in these kinds of things and many of them write things I enjoy reading, hearing and seeing. A lot of them, though, suffer from AchinglyHip disorder. These days, it probably has to be a disorder. it can’t just be people being twats.

    So many suffer from the post-post modernist disease. One such was the play I saw this week at the Royal Exchange, 0.0008. Part of the International Festival, it was a new work with one woman performing a roving monologue in the Studio. I have no idea what it was about. On the way home, with an English studenty friend of mine, we started talking about things like structure, meaning and form.
    Post-modern, as I understand it (and I may be mistaken) is often destabilising what has come before. Like every generation, it tries to destroy the one that has come before; as the Woolf generation destabilised the Tennyson, post-modernism destroys its ancestors. Using metafiction, mutating forms and questioning the idea of the almighty author to imply that everything is always twisting around. A poem becomes novel becomes play becomes scientific text becomes something else entirely, like words trying to find the right space for them to mean what they intend. It reflects the fragmented nature of post-WW2 life, when the world has come closer and further apart at the same time. They struggle with questions of meaning; what has meaning, and why, and whether it means the same to everyone - are there any universal meanings, anything which can pull those fragments together. While I struggle with aspects of modernism, mostly in the poetry actually, I also enjoy the questioning and the playing with form, making it less subject to absolute rules which cannot be broken.
    Post-post modern (what else do you call it? The modernists really weren’t thinking ahead) is almost a statement that no, nothing unites us. Everything and everyone is utterly fragmented that we can’t comprehend one another’s worlds.

    This is one of the problems I had with the play the other night, and with a lot of the writing at the places above. There’s a sense that there’s no hope for those fragments to come together, no hope at all. Everything’s infused with despair. The problem is that when despair is so isolated, it ceases to touch others, and that I think - in writing, this becomes a bit clearer to me - is what I want from art. I want it to touch me, somehow, to leave me with some kind of feeling that this has been an important experience. Despair can be written superbly. Sarah Kane is a fine example; her writing is torturous, despairing and still manages to touch a deep emotion.
    A lot of the AchinglyHip disorder is the style of writing - when it’s flowing sentences that continue for two paragraphs, phrases that you just know the writer sat back, though, ‘fuck, I’m good,’ then went and drank whisky at the local pub while reading something they think makes them look deep and interesting when the rest of us think they look a bit poncy, really. It’s the writer-as-persona, made cool by Hemingway and the Paris modernists, and all the tortured writers who managed to drag something beautiful and creative from their pain (this is a whole other post on the depressive/creative mythology). Hemingway’s prose approaches what I’m talking about, as does Fitzgerald at times. The difference is that while they wrote something powerful and emotive, those with AchinglyHip disorder write something that impresses themselves and nobody else can understand.

    The power of the internet for research

    God bless the internet.

    It’s a phenomenal thing. I was watching (helping?) my boss restore a backup from our network server the other day and just thought who on earth would ever invent a computer. Just sitting there one day, pen in hand, paper and abacus on desk, and think - I bet I can get electricity to work this out for me. What a leap of thought that is to take, never mind the actual transition to making it happen.

    I find it hard to imagine that I would have been able to complete my MPhil without the internet. Fingers crossed, I will (it’s still not quite submitted…). I would have had to spend a lot more time physically in the library looking at journals, cross-referencing books, travelling to archives.

    Today, for example, I have used: JSTOR and Muse (collections of online journal, essentially covering the majority of respected publications, all articles available in pdf format for download); the British Film Institute online collection of images, documentation of film productions and later will be looking at a couple of their online videos including one of Ellen Terry. I’ve accessed numerous newspapers from 1890-1910 including the Daily Telegraph, the New York Times, the Times, and the Dickens publications Household Words, and been able to search each one using the relevant keywords for articles I’m hoping to find - given that there is very very little critical work on Hall Caine, going back to the original commentary is essential. I’ve used Google books to check references, find more up to date references to follow up on and in some cases, simply accessed the entire book - one written in 1897, for example, which is available in its entirety - with illustrations in pdf (to download as well) or plain text for faster loading.

    On Google.com, searching for ‘dickens + collins + mathews’ rought up precisely the connection I was hoping existed between the three of them, as well as full text of Dickens’s letter to Collins discussing Mathews’s performance, in a quality edited book available in its entirety on Google books. Needing to know the precise quotation and location of said quote, in a book a little over 600 pages long, I can access the book on Gutenberg, search for what I think I remember of the phrase to find the chapter and significantly cut down the time needed to find the reference. The majority of that is also freely available. JSTOR and Muse are subscription through libraries and disappointingly, the Times Archive isn’t free - it was when it launched but I guess that was just to get people interested.

    This sort of goes against my upset at California replacing textbooks with electronic information. I don’t like the idea. I do think that books are wonderful - hello, I study English, have we met? - but it’s deeper than that. Above, the information I was looking for was very specific and I knew what I was looking for, if not quite where it was.  When I read a newspaper online, I click on the links that look to interest me. When I read it in paper format, I read the whole thing and consequently read a lot more, and learn other things.  I think you pick up more additional information when you’re going through a text book. Knowledge is so transient when gained from the internet, I feel sort of awkward about it. I’m not sure if that just makes me somehow outdated already, but I think books are essential and should be used alongside online materials. Not to mention the added complication that unless you’re giving all the children e-readers they can’t take things home, on the bus or train or whatever. That’s valuable reading time wasted! And then there’s the fact that after spending all day staring at a screen, my eyes hurt, and I don’t believe it’s a coincidence.