So I haven't really been around here much for a while. Could offer explanations but won't; nevertheless, if I were to they would definitely be of the positive kind. I may not have been writing here very much recently but I have been writing a lot elsewhere ,- "I draw on anything for inspiration: a piece of paper, a fond memory, the walls in a train station." I am sun-drunk and have been running around and playing lots, as is the summer custom, but I am also in a phase of overt academic activity too. This means that my time is divided between the library (or other place of study), various drinking holes and my bed at a ratio of roughly 3:3:1. I love it. I get such a kick out of reading up on something that interests me and making headway with an idea, it's better than any drug could ever be.

Anyway I thought I would stop by and post this because on my cycle into Uni, I was thinking and I tend to try and get my thoughts out these days and into the relatively stable medium of words because if you don't tie down an idea to a signifier of SOME sort then it risks floating away into abstract oblivion, and I don't like to think of those poor lost little thoughts drifting off into the universe of the never actualised, the land of might-have-could-have-what-if-but-didn't.

I am thinking a lot, at the moment, about theories of modernisation - particularly post-modernism (Baudrillard, Lyotard, Jameson for those who are interested - recommendations always appreciated with love&kisses) and the constrictions on the individual that accompany the present state of western society (Capitalist, late capitalist, consumerist, post-industrial... you get the gist). Specifically, at the moment I'm concerned with the means individuals find to transcend the "cage" of these constrictive societies, and to pinpoint even further, the ways in which such transcendence (or the desire for it) is portrayed in contemporary literature.

So, for men in the land of the fictional, apparently, it's violence. Violence is what gets you out of your cage; it's through violence that you lay claim to the identity that our secular-anonymous-sterile-technologised-void world takes from you, or so the literature seems to think. Then there's sex. "The only time you feel like you're really alive." Another potential avenue for transcending the cage of individual subjective experience, which is presumably open to both men and women. Yet there are intimations that neither of these experiences are capable of subverting the prison of the normal, of providing us with meaning in a world in which "meaning itself" has ceased to hold meaning. I have completely wondered away from my point into the realm of cloudy, rusty, transient thoughts that I have not yet realised (this time in the land of might-have-could-have-what-if-still-might) and am at risk of getting lost amongst them so I will firmly march myself back on track and give voice to the thought that I felt deserved words in the first place:

So how do we, women, get out of this cage? Why don't we want the violence and the blood and the gore and the paradigmatic sexual experience? I'm not saying that we should, rather simply observing that we don't, really, to the same degree; and it interests me why. How are we getting our kicks?

One suggestion is that it is through motherhood that we derive meaning for our selves. I can understand this, to some degree. To be able to give birth, to create life, is one of the greatest gifts that our lives have been granted - the ability of life itself to continue, to propogate. I think that having children is probably one of the greatest things you can do in life, and one day (in the very very distant future) I hope that I am willing and able to do so. But somehow I can't accept this idea that my life, as a woman, can only derive meaning from what it can potentially give rise to. This idea, of deriving meaning only from what I could potentially contain, calls into my mind the idea of chinese boxes, Russian dolls, each having worth based only on what it contains, again and again in some kind of infinite regress. And of course, an infinite regress doesn't provide adequate support for believing any proposition to be true. and I dream of being something other than a vessel

At first, coming back to the real world post-festival always makes me feel a little disoriented, in a way I can't quite put my finger on. This time, I came to the realisation that living in towns and cities, amongst big concrete and glass structures - and the other kind, the invisible but far bigger structures that govern what we say and think and do and the role we slot into - doesn't make me feel like part of a bigger picture, some rich tapestry of human life in which I am but a thread. Rather it makes me feel smaller - I feel less of a person than when I am camped under the sky, rolling around on the grass and surrounded by an organic and ephemeral world. Perhaps city life, suburban life, mainstream existance is so solid and unforgiving in it's forms and values that it leaves little space for the individual within it. I feel more of a person away from it all.

It's interesting because, looking back at a few of the quotes I've posted in this blog over the last couple of months, I suppose this is probably a theme that has been occupying my mind in one way or another for a while now. Trying to negotiate a personal space to inhabit within our society is an interesting challenge filled with inherent contradictions and something tells me that it could be one of those funny but awkward little games which doesn't ever end and requires constant redefinition.

Glasto was fun anyway, it's such a big place that you have to dig pretty deep to find the soul of it but it is in there somewhere, the pulse of the festival beats a vibrant tattoo at the heart of it all, a jungle drum calling the faithful to arms. Met a pride of lions with a princely young man cat who, at our encouragement, leapt onto a post and took refuge amongst the rafters; as security came over, Mummy and Daddy lion came and stood at the foot of the tree, coaxing him down. "He's a climber," they told me, "He was right up all the scaffolding in Shangri La before." Later, he slunk back over and began preparing to jump up again, until a lioness scooped him up in her mouth and took him back to his tent. We danced until dawn, faithful patrons of Slippery Dick's Love Shack, and at 6am met a friend I hadn't seen for a whole year, since we walked together to rescue a friend from prison in Serbia. (there are some kinds of friends who only ever appear at 6am, when you're watching the morning rise backwards.) We spent the following hours nestling in a big womb space that one entered by pushing through a big cushiony pink vagina, until my friend became worried that the various sperm painted on the walls were beginning to threaten him and we vacated to daylight.

Anyhow, I really should be unpacking at the moment - I am surrounded by boxes of glorious property and stacks of blank canvas. My bedroom at my mum and dads house (my base camp for the gypsy summer I have planned) is very small and has a big window that takes up one of the four walls, which has the not unpleasant effect of making me feel like I'm living in a fish tank. It's weird, I was worried about coming back because it's the first time I will have spent a long period of time here in more than 2 years, but I think it's going to be really nice! I forgot how many other people are back, due to finishing degrees and whatnot; and it's nice being five minutes from the woods, and in driving distance of the beach, and being able to spend time playing piano and painting and writing without the various distractions of Hyde Park. Hyde Park is a vortex - it sucks you in and some people get trapped in a strange time loop there; unless you are tethered and grounded I think it's pretty easy to get lost. Leaving was hard; it's the first place in a long time(maybe ever) that I've felt at home - but sometimes it's important to push yourself out of your comfort zone. This is a lesson I've learned on a couple of occasions but every time it's as though I'm realising it again for the first time - it surprises me and makes me realise that those achey, raw feelings of fear and sadness and loss that come from change are just a part of the gateway to something new and different.

Wow, this has ended up being longer than I expected. I should stop procrastinating and actually do some tidying up..