Dear You

Dear You,

 

Silver, Part 1

It’s a strong

Shiny metal

Cage. And I

Can see the line,

The small crack

That leads to the air. That

Leads to the release I‘m

Always on the verge of

But my fingers don’t seem to clasp

Around. And I push on the metal,

I push and beg and cry but it doesn’t move.

And I slowly slump down.

Chest heaving

Against the metal.

And I breathe

Through the crack until

I regain the air in my lungs

To push again.

I will push until

I see, I will push

Until I feel

The air of

Freedom.

Listen to me. I have issues with the way our system is run. Granted, most people do. Whether we are musicians, lawyers or florists most humans have issues with one system or another. Or The System as a whole. The running and ruling of this rock we take advantage of.

My issues, are issues, because I participate, somehow we all participate. If we didn’t participate we would be standing still. We get dragged or we run or we stumble forward, usually the further along the darker our vision, the more we fumble feeling around us with outstretched arms for something to steady us or help us walk in a straight line instead of simply moving in the same vicious unmerciful circle. I find as the years pass the confusion grows, the lines blur, the colours swirl incessantly –everything is right and everything is wrong. Simplicity is lost and found and lost and found. Expectations are made and abandoned–disappointment found and understood.

I have issues because I reject the average. I reject simply living a little. I reject a system that wants to place me in a claustrophobic cubicle where I speak when I am spoken to I contribute what is expected of me and I see what is in my near vicinity. I believe Art is my key to the cage. A way for me to stare the System down and say

‘Hello. I’ve been born and I’d like to play now’

As a creative practitioner I have always been flabbergasted (I feel a sincere fascination with this word) by how our relationship with our ‘object’ affects our psychological well-being and our grasp of ‘reality’ and the ‘self’. I am unsure as to whether or not a constant questioning of the status quo and a constant grappling with a form of existentialism is a disease that plagues all artists (and by its definition all who create) or if it is a personal issue that is irrelevant to your choice of discipline.  The extremist nature of the arts, the giant highs and lows, the insecurities and god-complexes, Its demand to grab you by the soul and force you to See Hear and Feel nothing but the colours that lie within its spectrum defies logic.

I believe myself to be a logical individual. I am practical, organised and level-headed. I insist I could have been an incredibly good lawyer. Yet when it comes to Music, when it comes to Art everything disintegrates. I see nothing logical. I find myself thrown into an abyss of obsession, where I am easily enraged, easily ecstatic easily morbidly lost within myself. I question everything, I do not understand why black is black and why it should be so. I wish it to be white and feel fury when I myself cannot make it so and cannot make others see why it should be so. Why it should be white.

I listen to Church Chants and I see God. I listen to an old man spit out random sounds and something flows through my ears and into my blood stream twines itself around my myogenic muscular organ and overflows my blood vessels by repeated rhythmic contractions. I feel as if a flame has been injected into my corporal skin.

Hello, this sounds melodramatic. Perhaps it is, perhaps it is not melodramatic enough. It does not say enough and yet it says too much.

I do not comprehend why.

I see no sense.

I believe I have no creative talent. I believe I am the poorest of the poor. I believe that everyone around me is capable of moulding and contributing so much more than I. I believe I fell in love with something that does not love me back. Yet nothing makes me feel as this does. Nothing reveals to me more poignantly that humans need to remember what it feels like to express life. Not just for the sake of being. Our souls, our minds, our flesh crave stimulation.  This is why I accept unrequited love. I accept that I may never contribute back what it contributes to me. I accept to relinquish logic and comprehension. I accept that other humans may not see what exists within me.

I accept and submit myself to the plague.  As long as I can keep playing with sounds and words and colours and light I will agree to keep breathing.      Whether it hurts or not.

 

Silver, Part 2

The crack has become

Wider.

The light has become brighter

I can smell it now.

My fingers stretch out and I

Can almost touch it now.

My body raises itself from

The slump

Slow movement

But movement still.

My skin, feels the tingle

Of liberation,

And I can push again.

Fire and blood electrify

My veins

And my body finds

Strength again

I am standing again.

Standing and

Pushing again.

Yours sincerely,

Jayne Do.

Moving In Moving On

Mothers Day Out

Background Noise

We Might Sell A TV to Maria T.

-Nicosia Walks 31/03/12

Nostalgia

Dear Stranger,

I know I havent written in a while but I guess this world is not for me. However I woke up this morning, and realised I have 4 more weeks in London. This is correct. I am moving, after three years of a love/hate relationship, London and I are parting ways.
Despite having more important things to do with my day, I started reading some update emails I would write to my friends the first year I moved to London and stumbled upon one I had written at round about this time three years ago.
I felt like I was reading a letter from an old friend. It sounded nothing like me.
I found it amusing to see the energy and excitement I had about this new world I had bee thrown into.
So I thought I would share, here is the email:

‘Its me again,

I’m on a roll.

I’m writing this while I should be napping. Yes like a child I enjoy my Saturday afternoon nap, I only have one hour before I have to get ready to go into London and I just climbed into bed thinking I’d shut my eyes for a bit, however I couldn’t get my brain to switch off so I decided I’d write you guys again.

It’s been a very good weekend, relaxing, put the books aside, I’ve given myself until Monday off before I throw myself back into the intensity of exam preparation. The beautiful spring weather has continued in London making life intensely more pleasurable, and even new cross as I described yesterday seems to have come alive.

Seeing as the climate has been so agreeable, yesterday evening I decided to meet a friend in central London for a bit of a stroll and a couple of drinks at my favourite bar in Covent Garden. I said to myself it was going to be a simple, peaceful, uneventful night and that I would be in bed by midnight in order to wake up feeling refreshed on my Saturday morning. Who was I fooling? We all know very well I am incapable of having an uneventful evening out, i must do something silly, must embarrass myself enough to make me cringe and hide under my sheets the following morning. I should have realised from the commencement of the night that it was not to go as planned. I was meant to meet my friend at 7:30, however due to the never ending torturous tube/train/bus cancellations of the reliably unreliable London Transport System, i only got there at 10-remember i was planning on catching the last train home which departs the station at 11:30. I thought ‘oh well i can chug down 2 glasses of wine in an hour and get home’. Ne re, Chance.

As per usual in my rush to leave the house dinner had been neglected-everyones thinking ‘Oh oh’. But im a bartender re pethkia-i can handle my alcohol. (Said in a self-mocking sarcastic tone). So anw me and my friend hit my favourite bar, this hidden gem in covent garden (yeah stef the place we discovered-its become my new hot spot), its a bar/restaurant/club which combines decorative aspects of all Mediterranean cultures (i just realised i was born on an island in the ‘mediterranean’ and yet im unsure of how the word is spelled, is it double ‘t’, double ‘r’, double ‘n’ or a combination?anyhow,ill ‘microsoft word’ it later) and on one side of the venue it blasts italian opera and the other side has more mainstream music playing, you feel like you’ve walked into an antique store that is too small for all its random pieces of art. Chandeliers, paintings of ancient greeks, statues, mixed matched multicoloured table cloths, birds, pearl necklaces hanging off statues of Buddha. In general a nutty place you just want to look at. And most importantly, decently priced rose wine by the glass. You all know what a sucker i am for rose, i can go though a bottle alone. And surprise surprise it was happy hour. It was so packed, the tables were basicaly set one on top of the other in order to squeeze as many people in as possible, as a result private coversations were impossible. Anything you said you had to be willing to share with at least 5 other strangers. And im loud. Im sure you all see where im going with this, after three glasses of wine which magically appeared on the table in front me ( i swear i wasnt ordering, my glass just kept getting refilled!) i was pissed. Gone. But not the drunk where you cant function, the happy drunk where you’re all smiley and love everyone around you. When im like that my stories get louder, my arm gestures more dramatic, my monologues more embarassing and my willingness to share in general greatly enhanced. So there i was dramatically telling my friend of my need to travel the world, save children from poverty, help Bono wipe out debt in Africa, learn 60 languages and dialects, adopt chocolate babies, be director of a Music Therapy center, and then decide which exotic country from the hundreds i travel to i would like to settle down in and in general be a single strong empowered woman who will single handedly eliminate any need for the existence of the male sex and then happily die at the age of 110 sky diving over China. I believe my friend- who i generaly attempt to censor my out of control nature around in order to not scare him off-was thoroughly shocked and overwhelmed by my passionate drunken self-confessions and unrealistic ambitions. So he sat there in stunned silence staring at me before finally mumbling, ‘but dont you want to one day go back home?’ Me : ‘Home?Home?i dont have a home, i will pick a country on my own and make it my home, i just havent decided which one yet’. At this point, this blond lady sitting basically on my lap (the table ‘next’ to us) grabs my hand and says in a north american drawl ‘Honey, go to Canada, from the sound of it you’ll love Canada, thats where im from’.
While normal sober me would have been intensely aggravated by the fact that this woman was blatantly not only listening in but interrupting and butting into my conversation/monologue, drunk ‘i love everyone’ me, turned around, scooted her seat over to the ladies table and with wide interested eyes said

‘My flatmate is from Montreal, im obsessed with French so it might be a good place for me, can you tell me a bit about it?’

And sat with these three canadian ladies for a good hour drinking wine-while yes, my friend sat at the table alone trying to scoot his chair closer to me so he would feel involved. At midnight he finally managed to pull me away from my new friends and attempted to get me on the right bus home, however-naturally- I was in no mood to go home. I was too hyper. So my friend patiently asks me where i would like to go. At that point we were passing by trafalgar square and in a drunken brain wave the drunk version of myself decides she wants to climb up and dance under the giant lions by Nelsons column. Yes people. I wanted to climb up Nelsons column in my nine inch heels and dance with the view of London. I was adamant. I wanted to dance with the lions. I kept telling him, ‘This is london, no one cares’. Exhilarated by the sense of freedom of living in a place of complete anonymity, i jump off the bus and cigarette in my mouth, manage to climb up to the lions with my poor friend staring at me helplessly, terrified that i was about to fall down and crack my head open in the middle of trafalgar square. But i did it. I got up. And i stood proudly under the lion, looking down at him waiting for him to climb up with me . His response ‘Dont you think its illegal?We could get arrested!’.
‘Well then Michael, you go home, i am staying right here.’ What was the poor man to do? Up he comes, looking terrified( he stumbled a few times so i think he was also embarrassed) and tries to make me sit down. But i was having none of it, i was there to sing and dance, at midnight, under a lion, in trafalgar square. I began to sing a sinatra song and dance around until he finally couldnt help but start laughing at me and he very good naturedly joined in. People started taking pictures of us, tourists, and then a few girls in party dresses drinking under us joined in and started dancing as well. After about thirty minutes my adrenalin started fading and i felt ready to go home. I thus allowed him to walk me to my bus, and drunkenly made my way back to the house by 2:30 am. I doubt my poor friend will ever go out with me again, and if he does, i doubt we’ll be going to a bar.

This morning i woke up for my vocal tutorial, with a headache from hell and after a few flashbacks hid under my sheets for 2 hours dying of embarrassing recollections before i managed to get going.

So thats my weekends update thus far. My napping hour has gone by and its time to dress for another ‘quiet evening’ in london.
Pray for me.
I hope i havent bored you with my usual descriptive narrative but you know i cant help but share these things with you guys.

Hopefully ill be good tonight.
Lots of love,

your loud opinionated american
me xxx’

- Three years later I cant remember the last time I even looked at the lions of trafalgar square. They are a stationary, taken for granted part of the background picture.

Maybe it’s time I discover something new.
I havent been dancing in a while.

Lots of Love,
Jayne
x

Introduction

A blog. An interesting concept. Call me late to pick up on the trends but I have only just deigned to begin reading a few of these ‘internet musings’. To be honest I have been hearing about them for a while now, from raving friends who have immersed and lost themselves wholly into this virtual world. Maybe it is a little left over teenage rebellion that was stopping me from indulging. I love to write, I love to read-why wouldn’t I have attempted it earlier? Perhaps it was the excitement over this new trend, this craze, that in fact put me off. I have an addictive personality myself. What If I Start And Can Never Stop?!

No seriously, I think the idea that hindered this commencement was slightly deeper than a primal refusal to ‘go with the flow’. When I write, I write for myself, as a result, my musings and ‘literary doodles’ take on a much more personal approach. I wasn’t sure if I could write without introducing myself and my life, the idea of revealing myself to an entire community of strangers terrified yet simultaneously intrigued me. So I avoided the ‘blog world’ despite my numerous addicted friends who were positive I would find it an exhilarating release.

Which brings me to why I am here.

A bet. I swear a quarter of my life’s decisions have been made through a reaction to a bet or challenge. Not so much as a way to prove the other wrong, but more from the blossoming of a seed. The seed is planted with a dagger and wilfully or not, the irritating seed blooms and overwhelms my mind with ‘what ifs’. To the point where I just can’t help myself.

Et alors mes pauvres, I am here to make an attempt and see how it goes. I hope I shall not bore you, but luckily for us all, the helpful little red vertical cross at the far right side of our screen gives us the luxury to choose whose ‘soulful exploration’ we will allow to fill our screens and minds.

I don’t quite understand the rules of this blogging world. So forgive me as I shall be making it up as I go along.  I have decided that to make myself more comfortable I will be addressing these musings to an unknown pen pal. Here we go.

Dear Stranger,

Firstly I will briefly introduce myself as limitedly as possible and let you gather the rest for yourself.

I am a young female bastard child. I say this because my roots and heritage are as confusing to unravel as is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I live in a cold quarter of London town where I have been residing for three years and will remain for the terrifying unforeseeable future. My passion is music and travelling, the latter I have been much more successful at than the first however I am stubborn and will continue to persevere with the first until someone shoots me. Literally.

I have always wished someone would place a hidden camera in my little home away from home and capture the craziness of the environment I live in. It would make for a riveting soap/comedy/tragedy-the genre would unorthodoxly depend on the day- worry not, or do, I shall elaborate.

I live with two incredible women. One is an artist and the other an actress. Both amazingly talented, both equally crazy. I fit in for once. We are all three mind-blowingly different yet the balance is just right. The actress we shall call Thumbelina. Forgive my lack of ingenuity but her tiny size could lead me to no other name. The artist we shall call, well, I can’t think of what to call her so for now we’ll call her ‘TM’. In the process of our correspondence dear stranger please feel free to suggest names for my character, proceedings demand she also is given one.

Back to our ‘Introduction’.  Thumbelina.

Thumbelina like her namesake is small, strong as a rock, and wise beyond her years. Not even. I must stress this, it is pivotal to the correct depiction of her character. She is a well of useful and useless facts. She knows things Wikipedia has yet to catch up on. I am a visual person, and this is how I visualise the workings of an average humans’ brain. I see a grey room full of bookshelves, a library covered in cobwebs and one organised section where the light is brighter and the books are categorized and dusted. This is because it is my belief that most human beings have one area of knowledge that they are more well-informed on. For example if I was to ask Gordon Ramsey to recite the traditions of Mongolian cuisine I am inclined to believe that he would be more likely to inform me than my plumber. However. My visual of Thumbelina’s brain is quite different indeed. I see a beautiful well lit room. It is a complete library of organised books, in alphabetical, colour-coded order. Furthermore there is a mini version of herself residing in this room, caring for it and constantly updating it with information received from snippets of conversations picked up from random strangers on the tube and websites explored by only the strangest of surfers. Every time Thumbelina is asked a question this mini version of herself climbs the ladder of her brain in a flash, finds the appropriate book/box/folder/encyclopaedia and whispers the answer in her ear.  I am quite envious. The mini version of myself has been sleeping in a rocking chair for years and has let me down on more than one important occasion.

Anyhow, Thumbelina luckily for us does not acknowledge her immense wealth of knowledge and is a modest humble creature that fills our house with laughter and lots of affection. She is also the hugger of the house. Big on physical affection she has managed to thaw even the two reserved cynics she resides with, she views the world in shades of pink and yellow seeing naught but the good of the world and humanity. Quite the character.

I am sure you will grow to love her dear stranger just as much as I have through our acquaintance.

Moving on to TM. TM is equally as complicated and exciting. She provides me with much mental stimulation. Most definitely one of the most intriguing characters I have ever met I see greatness in her future. Oh dear.  Forgive me; I am starting to sound like a horoscope. We all have our faults. Anyway, TM is the extreme opposite of Thumbelina and their friendship is scintillating to observe. TM is much more reserved. She is also extremely intelligent on an entirely different scope, she an avid explorer of poetry, art, music, architecture, history and the green world.  A free spirit, the one who reads the small boxes at the far right hand side of the back page of the newspaper everyone else ignores. Very decisive on her likes and dislikes. Unlike Thumbelina who will (unfortunately for us and our household) let anyone into her world, TM is very particular about who she chooses to let in, quiet and reserved towards those who do not know her, funny, loving and uncannily open towards those she has hand-picked. Her room is like a treasure trove. I enter and always find some new gem to entertain myself with or admire. For example. She has been searching wide and low for a cheap small radio and has found nothing but these new high tech ugly pieces of modern equipment. Today I enter to find a 60s style red box of a thing sitting on her dresser that unbelievably enough picks up one radio station from each of the following countries: England, Wales, Scotland and France. Amazing! She picked it up for twenty quid from a market in Angel. I was blown away, it looks like a vintage piece off a movie set from the 50’s and picks up solely the BBC (or so we have assumed) from England and YET it picks up stations from abroad. We stared at it studying it for a prolonged period of time before walking it around the room to find where it picked up its one station the best. She is always presenting us with things she has picked up from random markets around London. She explores areas we didn’t even know existed! As you can tell I hold great admiration and respect for both of my special flatmates.

Our household has its own time zone as well. If you walk into our house during the day, it is quiet, has an almost deserted feel to it. No movement, no sound. Yet if you dare to enter past midnight ( 4 am seems to be the average peak of our day) you will find the washing machine spinning, someone doing the dishes, another attempting a new culinary recipe and the radio resonating in the living room. There are heated discussions taking place, work of the day being started and a vibrant flow of adrenalin running through the entire space. There are personal touches of all three members on every wall of the house and a constant flow of people coming in and out. There is rarely a day when we do not have a visitor contributing to the energy of our trio and our tiny cold London town corner transforms into a warm haven perfect for escaping the dreary reality of the outdoors.

I know all this is probably of no interest to you. But I needed to document them as superficially as it may be in order to preserve them. One day I know all this will not be. And I will need something to look back on and refresh my decaying mind.

This was the introduction to my life. I promise from now on, entries will be shorter and less descriptive.

I hope I have not bored you to tears. I am just another random human being living a random insignificant life in a random city of the world but it has been lovely making your acquaintance.

Yours sincerely,

Jayne Do.