The Art of Wasting Time

Dolce Far Niente - John William Waterhouse

I have often thought myself to be a Jack-of-all-Trades, the silent "Master of None", always quite audible to my mind. I was an all rounder at school (except sports which I forgoed as soon as I realised that my lack of co-ordination, read concentration, meant that I would have to work extra hard to be just average.

Since leaving University I have walked through my professional career believing that I am decent at most things I try my hand to, but not especially exceptional at anything. I have since realised that this is perhaps an ingrained mental belief in “not being good enough” that finds safety in hippity hopping between skills and completing them with passable ability rather than stepping out of the safe box and owning brilliance in something or other.

It is a classic trait of insecurity and something I am now trying to rectify. In leaving a traditional, full time, salaried job, I am having to learn to fight against all these learnt instincts. My life and career is now what I make of it and I need to believe I am the best person to do X, Y, Z.

This is especially true in the novel and play that I am writing. For the best friends of Jack-of-all-Trades are Unfinished Projects, Procrastination and the skill of Wasting Time.

The amount of times I have said I wanted to do something whether that be enter a particular writing competition, join a rowing club, a drama club, do the three peaks challenge etc and not completed it are innumerable. Sometimes it has taken me three hours to make a phone call to, for example, the dentist to make an appointment. My talent in time wasting is exemplary.

Confirmation Bias Against Yourself?

I was reading the other day about a tendency in law, politics and science to "search for, interpret, or recall information in a way that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses." It is called "Confirmation Bias, or Myside Bias" and it can be very damaging in legal cases and international decisions. Science Daily outlines how "decision makers have been shown to actively seek out and assign more weight to evidence that confirms their hypothesis, and ignore or underweigh evidence that could disconfirm their hypothesis."2

But what if we also do this to ourselves, how damaging can that be? 

I am talking about this in reference to people who are apt to self-criticism, depression, jealousy and insecurity, not to those - who in the opposite way- may seem to have overinflated egos. 

For, if we already walk about this earth with a certain set of beliefs, surely there is a propensity to reconfirm these to ourselves daily, every time something happens or someone speaks to us. And might this mean we become our own jailers.

The Nether at Royal Court

I can't use a witty title for this one because honestly The Nether by by Jennifer Haley was one of the most disturbing yet absorbing plays I've seen in a while. Following the recent spat of celebrities, politicians and more who have been uncovered as paedophiles after years of cover-ups and enabling by "those who didn't tell"; this play's subject is right at the heart of the public conscience at the moment. 

Its subject matter however is not really paedophilia, though the most horrifying of crimes is the vehicle used to lead the audience to the questions it asks; namely, on the Internet and virtual reality and morality. 

In summary, the Nether is set in a future where the Internet or the Nether as it is now called is an entire immersive world where people can log in and exist (much like The Matrix) in a virtual reality with their own chosen persona or avatar. Here they can live out their fantasies as they cannot in real life, look like they want, be with who they want and create realities that are the most aesthetically pleasing to them; a virtual wonderland if you will. For the reality that now exists in the play's present time is a grey world with no trees or natural spaces. 

The play focuses around a character named Sims or 'Pa' in the Nether who has created a server that is unreadable by the loose authority that polices the Nether, yet they know what goes on there. In the primary scene he is being interviewed by a Detective Morris, unsure how he has been found out.

The action switches between the present interviews, with Sims and another character Doyle as Detective Morris questions them endlessly about the goings on in the Nether and in particularly "Pa's" Victoriana throwback, the Hideaway to goings on in the actual Hideaway.

Here is where the play becomes magnificent really, because the set design and lighting takes us into a truly beautiful world, where there's green and trees everywhere and hyper colours and lightness. The Hideaway is almost abnormally beautiful and the use of light displays that show the matrix beneath it are also impressive.

Here we meet "Iris" - one of four children who live in the Hideaway to service the needs and pleasures of those who visit; "Pa" and another visitor "Woodnut" who seems to fall in love with Iris. The play continues from here as the characters nuances are shown and we get to grips with the question of whether such virtual behaviour helps or hinders these type of people when they go about in their in-world (real) lives. Does it not cause them to want to behave like this more? Additionally, Jennifer Haley has made the adult behind avatar Iris, in-love with Pa... which confuses us further.

"I've read the studies. No one has been able to draw a conclusive correlation between virtual behaviour and behaviour in-world."- Sims/Pa

The Guardian* subtitle says, Does inclination pre-exist exposure? This is again one of the questions that has continuously reappeared when referencing online and gaming behaviour, but the influence, the influence though.. there must be some the papers shout. I would hasten to agree with this even though nothing has yet been concretely proved it.

I was uncomfortable throughout the play, with the subject matter, with the young girl actress who played Iris (Isabella Pappas on my performance) being so affectionate with these old men. The production forces you to confront this fear and discomfort. 

However, to me, what it is really about is philosophy - if you make a certain choice or do a certain thing that is wrong - even in a virtual world, you have still performed this act. The tree has fallen in the forest even if you do not see it or hear it. That is my opinion. That is all. Others would disagree. There's also always disagreement about what is right and wrong, so there's that too. 

I would give the production, script, acting and especially set and lighting five stars and fully recommended The Nether. Expect to be blown away though.. I think I came away from it a little more fearful, a little more aware and winded by our current world.

The Nether is at the Royal Court until August 9th 

Images are (c) Johan Persson 

*The comments on this Guardian article show how much the subject riles

#100HappyDays...

How busy are you right now? Do you have five minutes to read this... Are you sure...? Won't you be late for something, I know you're stressed.. Work, social life, gym, relationship, family etc... Are you sure? Are you happy? Would you describe yourself as anxious or pessimistic? How often do you really appreciate what you have?

I first saw the hashtag surrounding this campaign a while ago on instagram and disregarded it as some hippy, new age thing. However after it reappeared on my news feed again and again, I decided to have a look at the website and I'm glad I did as it's a pretty simple concept.

"We live in times when super-busy schedules have become something to boast about. While the speed of life increases, there is less and less time to enjoy the moment that you are in. The ability to appreciate the moment, the environment and yourself in it, is the base for the bridge towards long term happiness of any human being.

71% of people tried to complete this challenge, but failed quoting lack of time as the main reason.These people simpy did not have time to be happy. Do you?"

All you have to do is find something that makes you happy every day, take a photo of it and upload it to your aocial network of choice using the hashtag #100happydays. You can sign up on the website 100happydays.com. 

I'm giving it go and I'll be documenting my efforts through weekly posts on this blog. Really is this much of a challenge.. One little picture. A moment of happiness per day. One important concept is 

"#100happyday challenge is for you - not for anyone else. 

It is not a happiness competition or a showing off contest. If you try to please / make others jealous via your pictures - you lose without even starting. Same goes for cheating."

Really this is obvious and it's only yourself you're going to cheat. We are all guilty of social media bragging. Don't tarnish the challenge, because often, it is the small things in life, so be honest and go for it. I'm going to try and be as organic about it as I can and actually feel when I am happiest. Follow me on instagram: @wordyloveslots to see my daily pics.

Goodbye and be happy little Valentines...  

Day 1... #100HappyDays Valentine's with this one..

www.100happydays.com

Dwell in Possibility...

"Dwell in Possibility" was my umbrella new year's resolution for 2013. I like to think I did towards the end. I do love the so-titled Emily Dickinson poem, thought it is a little sad.

Watch out for my 2014 New Year's post coming in the next few days. Also, a slight breakdown post over turning 28 on Saturday. G~A~H.....

The Pride at Trafalgar Studios, Love and a Casual Tom Daley Reference

Two weeks ago marked a first for me. I went to the theatre alone. Not a huge event some might say and indeed I've never been one of those people who are uncomfortable in my own company. If anything I quite enjoy sitting in a cafe alone with a book or wandering quietly around an art exhibition. However, the theatre, something I love to engage with and debate and which warrants necessary social interaction in the interval where a glass of wine and a cigarette - for the dirty smokers still resolutely among us- is part of the enjoyment, I would always prefer a companion.

However, there was just no getting round this one. The Pride at the Trafalgar Studios was coming to the end of its extended run and I could find no friends able to come with me in the last four days. I'd wanted to see it since it opened, even telling my housemate who promptly took her boyfriend and raved about it. So I stomped there alone on a Wednesday night,  ticket-less and hoping that I was right and a last minute cheap ticket would be available and would warrant my 40 minute journey from work. (Since then I have found out that there is a UK tour starting January 14th - details at the bottom)

I was incredibly lucky, not only was there one £10 ticket left - in a box, restricted vision - but once I entered the theatre I was promptly moved to the second row where some seats were spare.

Written by Alexi Kaye Campbell and directed by Jamie Lloyd, the basic premise of the play is two parallel love-stories, two love-triangles if you will, one now and one in 1958. The play explores the changing attitudes to homosexuality and how people love. It uses the same characters as if they had existed now and before and how their lives differed.

From the beginning, the quality of acting was clearly quite extraordinary. That was one of the major gratitudes I took from being able to see this play. From Harry Hadden-Patton's portrayal of the repressed, shamed, married Philip in 1958 and his more relaxed and hurt counterpart is effortless.  With incredible projection, even in his 1958 rages at the more self-accepting Oliver, he loses not one word.

Matt Horne, loved by many on the small screen in Gavin & Stacey, Bad Education and more showed real adaptability in three small roles as a gay escort, lad magazine editor and a doctor trying to "cure homosexuals". He manages to exhibit wonderful comic timing alongside real emotional moments in a performance which made me want to see much more of him in the theatre.

Al Weaver depicts both versions of his character with great emotional range. Oliver's weaknesses including promiscuity and sex addiction and his temper tantrums which seemed to sprout from self-hatred could be a little tiresome if Weaver did not so successfully weave them with the fragility and idealism of his earlier counterpart. His character, of them all, is so well-merged and recognisable in both it's forms as a reaction to the time. Due largely to Weaver's great talent.

Finally, heavenly Hayley Atwell. Already a favourite of mine in such roles as TVs Upstairs Downstairs and films like The Duchess and Brideshead revisited, she comes alive in the theatre. In the 50s she is Sylvia, the vivacious yet disregarded wife of the unhappy Philip, her sadness, awareness, brave spirit and desire to be loved is heart-breaking to see. Her modern doppelganger is as vivacious and witty as she, but with an earthiness that is just so attractive. In both modern and old tales, she is relied upon by these men but never the first priority. In the second it seems she has found love. Though we never meet him. He stage presence throughout brings a light to the production as she personifies the gilded survivor, adapting and adapting to extract the most from life. Always caring about others. A beautiful actress - I love her.

One of the last scenes in the play involves the modern versions of the separated Philip and Oliver alone on a picnic blanket trying to work out their differences,in the midst of Gay Pride as the crowds parade around them. Whilst in the fifties final scene we see a meeting between Sylvia and Oliver as she reveals she is leaving Philip as she wants to be loved and it is just so sad.

With the recent backward movements of Putin's Russia, the play is very relevant. In fact we are pointed towards this at the end as the cast bring on placards reading "To Russia, With Love." Indeed it certainly  illustrates the immense changes that have occurred in the last 50 years.

And what this play is really about is love. About being allowed to love honestly. How rare love is and how treasured it should be and how it has its difficulties, no matter the sex, age, religion, nationality. The ability to love and be loved is what makes us human and whoever we should choose to fall for matters little as the process itself is both elating and difficult and frightening. Yet is a gift, we alone have. Why make it more difficult by judging whom people fall for. It is a minefield for us all.

In the two weeks since I saw this play, the country and the world has reacted outwardly with mostly positive delight to the revelations by teenager diver, Tom Daley that he is dating a man. In his YouTube confession, one of the points he made was that "it shouldn't really matter" and he's right. It was a brave action because of the way he chose to do it, not because of who he chose to date. Love is about the person after-all. The reaction to this event has proved that our country at least has generally become more accepting of that which is not considered "normal".

However, the recent documentary, Out There presented by Stephen Fry, which looked at what it's like to be gay in various places around the world, which range from a non-acceptance of homosexuality to complete abhorrence, it is obvious, we still have a long way to come. We are all responsible for that. We are all responsible for fighting for love.

So have Pride in love, I say to all. None of the rest of it matters.

The Pride was at the Trafalgar Studios until November 23^rd  

A UK tour begins January 14^th - 1^st February visiting Brighton, Manchester and Richmond with Naomi Sheldon taking Hayley Atwell's role as Sylvia. All other actors remain in the same roles.

Images (c) The Trafalgar Studios and Marc Brenner

WhatsApp of the Week: 1 - On Women, Men and Sex in Your Twenties

So I have realised for a wannabe-wit, my blog has not been that funny. Mostly serious I think I'm well cultured kind of posts with snippets of philosophical musings and my own brand of wordiness. So I am introducing a regular feature called... WhatsApp of the Week to cheer things up a bit.

It will be interesting/funny/weird conversations I have had with my friends over the previous week. Some times with background, sometimes not. 

Please take it as lightly as it is meant. I like to consider myself slightly above average intelligence and a very open, non-judgemental, in fact quite liberal in most ways type of person. However, the banter you have with your friends on instant messenger is not always thought completely through and I am usually looking for a quick judgement or a cheap laugh. #sorrynotsorry. See, I used to be a language nazi and now I use hashtags and digital phrasing. Whatever. Also, I will keep all the convo in, except names and similar.

This first one is between myself and my theatre-date friend. It all started with an email.

This is a snippet of said article in the Telegraph:

 

And blah blah on it goes..you should know that we are 27- so a little older than this..

Here is the conversation we managed to have over this. I think we made a complicated issue quite light work ;)...

Until next time...

The Sublime.. It's in the Stars Don't You Know...

Earth and Space - Highly Commended:

Snowy Range Perseid Meteor Shower by David Kingham (USA)

 

A Personal Appreciation of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2013 at The Royal Observatory Greenwich (from 19th September 2013 - 23 February 2014) and the Sublime.

 

It started as a sunny, October Sunday when I started to drive the not altogether pleasant route to Greenwich from South West London. Then almost as soon as I left the rain came and came and came. It was very wet rain... wet, large drops that leave everything saturated and heavy, not the lazy drizzle almost unnoticed by Londoners. 

Very soon the water ran arrogantly down the streets - fuck your drainage systems - poured over my car - it's wipers almost rendered futile and London was all grey streams and reflective surfaces . Why had I decided to break the mould and actually do something more than stumble upon roast and red wine on a Sunday, I admonished myself. I was driving though, so I hoped I'd be able to park near the Royal Observatory. 

I hadn't reckoned with my total reliance on my google maps app in an area I don't know at all - it lead me to a parking spot that required a walk. I began to walk it, a token scarf tied over my already soaking hair, my pumps slapping and squelching in what I can only describe as the pond I was walking through. I ducked into the National Maritime Museum, which had clearly been the idea of several others and the smell of human damp and sweat under cagoules and the water running down my face was almost enough to make me give up and drive straight back home. I called my cousin, a Greenwich resident, who I was meeting and who I was already one hour late for... "It's OK... You can drive here.. Just go back along the main road." Back through the rain, back in the car and I did make it. The car park was so close that I barely had to go outside - ironic given my already sodden state.

Perhaps my rambling introduction of how hateful I was feeling when I entered the free exhibition, will give some idea of how not-in-the mood I was. Wet, ill-tempered and miles from home, guilty that I was late, sliding all over the floor in my ballet pumps, aware that the building closed in two hours so we would have to rush. 

People and Space - Category winner: Moon Silhouettes by Mark Gee (Australia)

And then we went to see the photos. 

Overall and Earth and Space winner: Guiding Light to the Stars by Mark Gee (Australia)

I should mention that I am no scientist, whilst I proffer a mild interest in the sciences, it is mainly in basic biology - anything that links into art and literature or anyone that does. I hate Chemistry, though I comprehend it. I can't understand Physics and I don't pretend to; the only part I really enjoyed at school was Space and the Universe. That does interest me. 

Deep Space-Category Winner: Celestial Impasto: sh2–239 by Adam Block (USA)

The images ranged from depictions of the transit of Venus, comets, nebulae, aurorae and more and some pictures include parts of our tiny earth in them showing further scale and perspective. Winning entries have come from all around the world and this year was a record breaking year, with more images entered than ever before.

As I knew before I visited, every image was stunning, in the literal sense.   

When I saw this exhibition was on, I had to see it. Not just because of the sheer magnitude and art of the images but because of the feeling of smallness in the world that looking into the sky at night (and depictions of it) gives me. Some people hate that, I love it, it thrills me, a reflective thrill - sometimes slightly melancholic, but a thrill none-the-less. It does what views of cityscapes do (also called sonder); what vast natural and rough landscapes do, what outpourings of international emotion - good or bad- do, what great machines or lavish buildings do. It relaxes me, it scares and delights me and it makes me feel insignificant and I love it. It's like a drug. 

Our Solar System - Category winner: Corona Composite of 2012: Australian Totality by Man-To Hui (China)

The term sublime was originally coined as an adjective in the 1st century AD but I came to it in 18th-century terms at university through the philosopher Edmund Burke musings on a sort of pleasurable terror in his A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757). Burke’s definition of the sublime focuses on such terms as darkness, obscurity, privation, vastness, magnificence, loudness and suddenness. Mostly though, I studied it through the Romantic poets, Coleridge and Wordsworth who recognised the redemptive powers of nature, but also the vastness and turbulence of the natural world and the human response to it. 

Young Astrophotographers - Category winner:

The Milky Way Galaxy by Jacob Marchio (USA), aged 14

The modern philosopher, Alain de Botton says:

"It had been the icecaps, the deserts, the volcanoes and the glaciers that had given us a sense of finitude and limitation and had elicited a feeling in which fear and respect coagulated into a strangely pleasing feeling of humility, a feeling which the philosophers of the eighteenth century had famously termed the sublime."

And Richard Holmes, the Romantics biographer says:

"Physical vision - one might say scientific vision - brings about a metaphysical shift in the observer's view of reality as a whole. The geography of the earth, or the structure of the solar system, are in an instant utterly changed, and forever. The explorer, the scientific observer, the literary reader, experience the Sublime: a moment of revelation into the idea of the unbounded, the infinite."

To be honest, at uni, I didn't really get it, the literary language and fussy poetry took all my attention from identifying the feeling. It was really on my own, that I realised what it meant and grew to love the feeling of incredible smallness and insignificance. 

In the modern world, as I said it is not just in nature and the stars but in the way we live our lives, in seeing the wider picture and our role in a living breathing world of which you are just a tiny part. See below the definition of Sonder, which is supposed to be a sad feeling, I think it is wonderful.

It is why I loved this exhibition and all the talented photographers involved in it. It is why I think that sceptics who ridicule astrology and say - how can these stars and planets affect us, it's ridiculous, are a little ridiculous themselves. I mean how can they not, we are tiny, they are huge, the sun lightens our hair and darkens are skin and naturally wakens us. I am not endorsing the daily horoscope but simply looking at the unquantifiable vastness of these rocks and gas balls, surely they must have a little affect.

I'd recommend all to see the exhibition, whether you want to see a pretty picture, enquire over the techniques used or get off a little on how large and amazing our world is.

Blurb

The Royal Observatory Greenwich is proud to present the winning images of Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2013. This free exhibition showcases some incredible images of the sky, ranging from within our solar system to far into deep space.

www.rmg.co.uk

 Quote 1: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Alain de Botton

Quote 2: The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, Richard Holmes

Images are all (C) the photographers and RMG.co.uk