Monologue from Crave (written by Sarah Kane)

The following is a monologue I came across from (what is quickly becoming) my favorite playwright, Sarah Kane. How did I find her? Well, I was browsing a this link about the top playwrights.

It was about the top 10 famous – or terrifying, to be article specific – playwrights. Many of them were the ‘classics’ like Arthur Miller and Samuel Beckett, Jean Paul Sartre. Something that would cause (anyone with an iota of culture in them) to raise an eyebrow, or at the very least leave a footnote in the conversation.

Yes, conversations have footnotes. It’s those fragments that leave with you into the night when you’re having that last cigarette before bed, or you’re lying comatose steadily watching the spiral of the ceiling fan. So good these bits are, you hesitate when reaching for the toilet roll, after you’ve taken a meaningful shit.

This is what Sarah Kane leaves buried in the best (and sometimes the more troubled) of us.

PhilosopherPoet

“And I want to play hide-and-seek and give you my clothes and tell you I like your shoes and sit on the steps while you take a bath and massage your neck and kiss your feet and hold your hand and go for a meal and not mind when you eat my food and meet you at Rudy’s and talk about the day and type your letters and carry your boxes and laugh at your paranoia and give you tapes you don’t listen to and watch great films and watch terrible films and complain about the radio and take pictures of you when you’re sleeping and get up to fetch you coffee and bagels and Danish and go to Florent and drink coffee at midnight and have you steal my cigarettes and never be able to find a match and tell you about the the programme I saw the night before and take you to the eye hospital and not laugh at your jokes and want you in the morning but let you sleep for a while and kiss your back and stroke your skin and tell you how much I love your hair your eyes your lips your neck your breasts your arse your
and sit on the steps smoking till your neighbour comes home and sit on the steps smoking till you come home and worry when you’re late and be amazed when you’re early and give you sunflowers and go to your party and dance till I’m black and be sorry when I’m wrong and happy when you forgive me and look at your photos and wish I’d known you forever and hear your voice in my ear and feel your skin on my skin and get scared when you’re angry and your eye has gone red and the other eye blue and your hair to the left and your face oriental and tell you you’re gorgeous and hug you when you’re anxious and hold you when you hurt and want you when I smell you and offend you when I touch you and whimper when I’m next to you and whimper when I’m not and dribble on your breast and smother you in the night and get cold when you take the blanket and hot when you don’t and melt when you smile and dissolve when you laugh and not understand why you think I’m rejecting you when I’m not rejecting you and wonder how you could think I’d ever reject you and wonder who you are but accept you anyway and tell you about the tree angel enchanted forest boy who flew across the ocean because he loved you and write poems for you and wonder why you don’t believe me and have a feeling so deep I can’t find words for it and want to buy you a kitten I’d get jealous of because it would get more attention than me and keep you in bed when you have to go and cry like a baby when you finally do and get rid of the roaches and buy you presents you don’t want and take them away again and ask you to marry me and you say no again but keep on asking because though you think I don’t mean it I do always have from the first time I asked you and wander the city thinking it’s empty without you and want want you want and think I’m losing myself but know I’m safe with you and tell you the worst of me and try to give you the best of me because you don’t deserve any less and answer your questions when I’d rather not and tell you the truth when I really don’t want to and try to be honest because I know you prefer it and think it’s all over but hang on in for just ten more minutes before you throw me out of your life and forget who I am and try to get closer to you because it’s a beautiful learning to know you and well worth the effort and speak German to you badly and Hebrew to you worse and make love with you at three in the morning and somehow somehow somehow communicate some of the overwhelming undying overpowering unconditional all-encompassing heart-enriching mind-expanding on-going never-ending love I have for you.”

Woes of a Twitter Kid

Recently I resurrected my Facebook account. I needed to keep abreast on the page my company has, and so (with great reluctance) I went and signed on again with my account.

For months now while my Facebook lay deactivated, I needed another crowd to be part of, so I took to tweeting every so often. After I while I go use the chaotic home page and the amount of scrolling my thumb endured on my iPhone. Yet I started to feel at home in this world.

I guess I was annoyed with people on Facebook, and when some people are your friends and acquaintances, you don’t really want to hear about their frivolous social meandering, and sometimes you’re too scared to delete them at the same time. If you delete them…then you’ll be totally alone. No one around to annoy you, or play the part of a tiny voice (you’d rather swat than kill). It’s a catch 22, really.

So after barring myself from Facebook lurkers, and cyberphants I went about adding (or ‘following’ to use the correct jargon) all the interesting people, continents and air-fares away that shared a common interest. It was fun and exciting, and although it wasn’t going to help me get laid any sooner, it was at least a giant play-toy to keep my energetic brain at bay.

Getting back onto Facebook I started thinking, aren’t these posts pointless? Did I really have the gumption to find this drivel interesting once-upon-a-time? I think I’ve grown old. When a social network no longer excites you, it’s time to hire extra pall bearers, since the chances are…you’re aging.

It this groovy and expanding world, it feels sacrilege to admits this, but Facebook started to feel…awkward. I’m not the social network whore I used to be. I’m thriving on little chirps because they make me feel at ease now.

Occasionally it can be mindless, but I love the way everything is shorter, succinct. You don’t have space to write pages and pages of awful poetry. You only have 160 characters, and you’d better make seriously special if you interested in holding my attention.

PhilosopherPoet

There are mumbles beneath the bubbles

I spent today the way anyone should spend their lazy Saturday afternoon. I watched cartoons with my kid sister (while checking my twitter in between pieces of dialogue). I helped her out with her guinea pigs, and replaced their water. Finally the evening ended off with grilled chicken, not to mention my parents and I quaffed away at the ruby champagne in our goblets like suburban Romans. Sounds all very romantic. (I know I do have that effect.)

So dinner finishes, and I guiltily bolt to the kitchen sink (before my Dad’s domestic voice goads me on). Wiping away grime, stacking plates, sweeping dirt – I don’t think any decent person can agree it’s the best place to be in an evening.

There is something that hauls back the conscious reins, something that brings me to attention. While the cleansing commences, an artistic side of me peeks out. Very soon after my hand reaches the pearlescent neck if the champagne glass, and its gleaming rim. The way soap suds jostle together then plummet down the slopes. They squirm and slide off the tip of the circular base. They tell my artistic eyes to stop…pause…and listen to the beauty talking back.

Maybe it’s the whole process of cleansing, and wiping away everything that tells me I’m turning over a new leaf inwardly? Perhaps, giving my hands something to do, gives my brain space and time to breathe?

I’ve wrestled long enough with my own Muse not to question it.
Just sit down. Listen. See where it leads.

PhilosopherPoet

I can believe (Neil Gaiman – American Gods)

Dear Bloggers

The following is an extract from American Gods (Neil Gaiman).

It’s one of the best monologues I’ve read…

Neil Gaiman – American Gods

I can believe things that are true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen – I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in Drive-In Movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian Shaman. I believe that Mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in the box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in empty godless universe of casual chaos, background noise and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what is going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no-one but a moron would trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, life is a cruel joke and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

 

PhilosopherPoet

Dylan Moran on Vegans

[Vegans say] you can get everything you need from pulses and lentils and things like that.

Yeah everything you need except company, which is not to be had because you are dying, bent double in a miasma of your own toxic farts.

- Dylan Moran (Yeah Yeah)

iTunes (The Jealous Girlfriend)

It’s your usual working day. Nothing has changed. You are composed, diligent an whittling away at the keyboard. The Boss walks in greets you with a firm handshake and says “When you have a moment I’d like to talk to you.” Now you’re ambivalent. Will you walk away with a raise or a graze?

This is the same feeling I got on my way back home today. I checked the software updates, saw there were a few to go. Before I left I cast my eyes down the list and saw…iTunes 11. The long awaited, anticipated, supposed-to-change-everything piece of software. My drive home felt a bit like waiting on the chair outside the Boss’s office.

Before I get into some of the awesomeness of iTunes 11, let me get a few things off my chest about the previous versions. The good news is I’ll be writing a follow-up article on iTunes 11 and it’s greatness. There are a few reasons why many mac users (i.e. that means you use it daily, it’s not your weekend toy) find iTunes tedious and even painful at times.

Aesthetics: When iTunes hopped from version 9 to 10 the sidebar was suddenly desaturated. All the vibrant colour in the Music, Movie, and Podcast Library icons was lost. It sounds like a giant knit pick, but when you are weeding through your music on a daily basis, a small highlighted icon can go a long way.

Media Organisation: Many people purchase Music, Movies, Apps and tons of other bits from the iTunes Store. I pretty much only download Apps. The reason for not getting music there, is my taste in heavy metal (my preferred genre) is rather eclectic and not mainstream. Now if I did – in theory – buy everything through one portal then my music would be far easier to organise. Why? Well, because iTunes would do it all for me. I wouldn’t have to touch a thing. In reality we have the odd CD we’ve bought, or an album or two we’ve downloaded (because iTunes wasn’t selling it at the time). Plus we have bits and pieces gathered from different parts of the internet. This makes it difficult to organise.

Then there’s the other charming element when you’ve amassed all of your .avi movie files, iTunes shakes her head and says “Please come back when you have mp4 files, my dear.”

It’s not just a media player. This next part confuses the crap out of most people I meet. iTunes allows you to sync your email contacts, transfer word docs to a compatible app, back up your apps, sync your calendar.

The iPad is a great business tool. The iPhone is one of the most reliable phones I’ve encountered. Yet I don’t like the way iTunes tries to control everything like a jealous girlfriend. For example, if you want to send contacts to the iPad. Logic tells me that I would go to my contacts app and then click a button that talks to my iDevices.

Where to now?

Apple developers need to decide, is iTunes a media player or a device manager?

At the moment it’s both, which makes things clumsy for the newbie. During it’s genesis iTunes was a music player. Period. It didn’t play video in a hurry and it worked well. Then video compatible version hit the market, later on the iPhone and it’s Apps joined the fray. Very little was done in re-working the way iTunes handles its media and devices. In recent years only the colour and (to some extent) the layout of the interface has changed, not much else.

A good complaint is only as valid as its feasible solution. So here is what I propose…

Redesign / Bring back iSync (or something similar)

I blogged about this great App earlier. The developer blokes need to rework this piece of software so it handles “any sync related aspect” of the iDevices.

Sync is a clipped version of the longer word ‘synchronise’. A better way to look at it is think of creating a mould. Pour the contents of your computer’s media, into the same surroundings (or framework) and you’ve got them ‘synced’.

So ultimately you’ll have iSync that handles any sync, transfer, managing of data, and then you simply use iTunes as your Library Player. This will result in iTunes being far more watered down, but then at the same token, less memory hungry, smaller to update (in terms of bandwidth). If iTunes sticks to being more of a player and less of a manager, then we’ve won half the battle.

 

Side Note: For the wise-guy who’s about to open his mouth about iTunes 11…just wait. Keep your eyes on my RSS feed (or email subscription). There’s a review coming soon…

only bleed if you have to…

Never Tap Out.
Those are the words that I read on the back of someone’s shirt as I left the gym this evening. Then a thought occurred to me. What if I wanted to tap out? Maybe I was in the ring and I felt like being the gentleman. Say for example I was a minimally aggressive non-conforming MMA fighter. Perhaps (while my brains were being purged from my skull) I decided my body could do with a bit of time out. Now if the initial phrase meant nothing to you, it may because you aren’t aware of all the knuckles and fists of MMA. Let me break it down for you…

MMA (Mixed Martial Arts). Unlike the name suggests, it has nothing to do with dressing in a white bathrobe and chopping up your opponent in a Bruce Lee-resque fashion. The best way to describe MMA is to think of boxing. If you’re a boxer and you decide you can’t stand the sight of gloves, and your opponent doesn’t bleed enough…chances are that MMA is the sport for you. Let me put it another way…think of men that always wanted to be professional WWE wrestlers but decided that the costumes were to flashy, and the speeches too verbose.

For more amazing shots check out…
http://henster311.deviantart.com/

Now what about the “tap out” thingy you mentioned?
What separates MMA from boxing is the specific style used. If you’re boxing you can knock out your opponent by landing enough blows from your fists. If you’re an MMA fighter you’re not limited to fists. In MMA you use a technique called “grappling.” This means you will get the other guy to the ground as fast as possible. Once he’s there, you’ll get him to into either a choke-hold or some other nasty position and win by submission. There’s a rule about this though. If you feel like your body can’t withstand the punishment anymore you reach out and tap the ground twice with a hand. That’s called a “tap out” or “tapping out”.

On the whole I’m terribly uninterested in sport as a guy. Any sport that involves any kind of ball, touchline, racquets, wickets, or beer drinking men gathering around a fire to grill meat and drink more beer, leaves me with a queasy feeling. There are only two types of sport I can watch where I will staple my eyes to the television screen for the duration of the conversation I have with you.

They are MMA, obviously, and motor racing. Anything where you can ride a petrol tank and hurtle down a race track  at blistering speeds, gets my blood going. Perhaps it’s the intensity of knowing that these people (MMA fighters and the helmeted gents) are moments away from dying. I’ll let irony speak for itself as I continue to stay engrossed, and slowly quaff away my pint of beer.

 

PhilosopherPoet