"Forty years ago, the Beatles asked..."

"Forty years ago, the Beatles asked the world a simple question: they wanted to know where all the lonely people came from."

(Fiction/Non-fiction, Bullshit/Poetic ramblings: your take.) 

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Where do lonely people come from? My latest theory is that they don't come from anywhere. They become lonely. Because of circumstances.

Unknown

1. You're walking alone and you have your music on, you're listening to Portishead because it's sexy and melancholic. Your green parka is way too big for you and the wind is blowing way too harsh on you, so you put your hand in your pockets; they form a fist. You're walking quite slowly because, well, it's a sunny day and you don't get many of these here. Your hair is in a ponytail and is hidden beneath a black beanie hat that covers everything but your eyes. You suddenly realize you look like a homeless person, the thought makes you laugh.You decide to go sit on a bench in a park and read the book you always carry in your bag: it's the latest Murakami. You read until the character gets into the other world, you feel serene and calm because that's what beauty does to you. You decide to go home for coffee. On your way back, you bump into a puppy, he's jumping around you, yelping, and licking your new shoes. You want to pet him but his master walks away with him. You want a dog. A cat. An animal. A fish. A book. Lies, you want someone. But you don't. You don't even have a fish.

2. You're in a club. You're moving your body to some underground new-age electronic music and you're feeling the beat- really feeling it. After ten minutes you look around and you don't recognize any faces, you see guys and girls sweating, people making out, people waiting for the drugs to kick in… You need fresh air , you don't feel anything in here apart from the pulse in your veins and somehow it is not enough. You go outside for a cigarette, you ask this cute guy in black for a lighter. He gives you one. You like black. And lighters. And people who give you lighters. You light your cigarette, take a puff and for a nanosecond all you can see is black. You hand him back the lighter and in the process, your fingers brush his hand. Suddenly you see his hands: they are long, and bony, and not nice at all. They are veiny, white, and the fingers move too fast, the way they wrap around that tiny lighter is too much for you. You long for those fingers. They could paint you. But they don't. You say thank you and you go smoke under that small roof because it's starting to rain. And hard, by the looks of it.

Côteau-du-Lac Explosion

3. Your eyes open. You're in a bed. It's not yours. This one is smaller and colder. You don't recognize anything. All you see is white and pasteurized green. Everything is blurry. You can't breathe properly, the atmosphere is heavy and your chest feels dry- like an autumn leaf. You try to move your hands, you try to say something, but you can't, your words and your vision are too hazy. You realize that underneath your white robe, you are naked, and cold. And heavy. You don't know what's going on, but you do know you don't like it. Where are you? What happened? You don't remember anything, except the heavy weight on your chest and the darkness that followed. You wait. You want to cry and to scream but nothing comes out. So you wait. How long has it been? Five minutes? An hour? At last, a woman comes to you and greets you with a smile. "You're in the recovery room" she says. Except it doesn't feel like it. You're cold and scared but she doesn't see it.

SASHA KURMAZ

4. You wake up in the middle of the night and you don't know who you are. You had a dream, a nightmare, or both, you don't remember. You don't even know your name . Your brain is still in its "asleep" phase, somehow your body managed to wake itself up.  You don't understand. You don't recognize your own room. It feels like you could be anyone, after all, you don't know who you are. Maybe you're a person who hates animals, maybe you're a painter… The hesitation only lasts seconds. The memories of your life rush back. Oh, you're this and this, not that. You go to the bathroom. You go back to bed, there is no one else in the room. You lie back down on your white pillow and your hand reaches under it. Nothing there. You roll around to the other side of the bed- it's empty. You wake up in the morning with no recollection of this. You don't even remember having that nightmare. Or waking up to go to the bathroom.

Missed connections: the tube is a lonely place

Barry Stewart

I'm currently sat on the scruffy but comfortable seats of the Bakerloo line, and I am surrounded by strangers. A middle-aged man with hands the size of a small plate is sat in front of me, he is reading the Evening Standard while nervously pulling at a loose string of fabric on his red scarf. I notice a ring on his fourth finger and I wonder: Did he marry his high school sweetheart? Is he cheating on his wife? Is he happy or does he feel trapped in his wedding? Does he believe in love? Next to me, another stranger. An art student, judging by the canvas she is holding. Chances are, she goes to my university as we both went on the tube at the same stop. It appears that she has emerged from a 90s sitcom: her long green plaid skirt reveal mustard socks tucked in a pair of chunky black creepers; her fur coat is way too long for her and her hair is the exact copy of Gwen Stefani's circa the 90s. I look at her and I wonder if she is struggling with her art, if she is afraid of dying, or of success, if she admires or despises her mother. Truth is, I will never know. These days, taking the tube in London feels a lot like being deaf: you see but you cannot hear. Sure, you might strike up a random conversation with an even more random stranger, but either way you look at it, the tube is a pretty lonely place.

Having lived in London for more than a year, the tube is one of my familiar spots. I know which lines run the fastest, which lines are great for planking, which lines have the most cozy seats and which ones are best known for fire emergencies (Victoria Line -If you are wondering whether hell exists, yes it does and this is it). But what all these lines have in common is this: silence. Silence, fear and perhaps, yes, curiosity. Every time I am on the tube I cannot help but wonder: what is this person's story? Is he like me? We often forget that others have stories as complex and twisted as ours, that their personality is not flat, just like their thoughts and desires. I am always curious about others' thoughts as it is unfathomable for me to conceptualize another inner world but mine. I almost always wonder about their inner struggles; whether they have found their home yet, whether they believe in God or not -and whether it makes it easier for them to live, whether they are going home to someone or to themselves. I wonder about their secrets, their dark fears, their silly beliefs... and I also wonder if they will go home and think of me, if they ask themselves what my story is -if I am scared of heights or if I enjoy greek plays. It feels to me that if we are all thinking of each other at the same time, somehow, somewhere, there is a connection. A string that connects us all and makes us more than just meat machines riding the tube to go to work or university.

David Harris

Perhaps one of the most fascinating and intriguing idea is that we run into so many strangers at a certain given location and time, that some of them are bound to appear in our lives at some point. Last year was my first year at University of the Arts London (LCC) and I didn't know anyone when I first came to London. I have since then met a lot of people and created very special bonds with some of them -most of whom I now call family. When talking about our first encounter with each others, it appeared that the first time we talked was actually not the first time we met or ran into each other. A lot of my very close friends at university were at a Fresher's Party in LCC last year, which I attended as well. What this means is that we were all together in one same room, at the same time, without knowing each other, and without knowing that in a few months we would become friends. I probably passed one of my friend on the way to the bathroom, or smoked a cigarette next to another one... Who knows? You have certainly experienced something similar, or felt that the people in your life right now have been there the whole time -you simply didn't know them or saw them. This brings me back to the tube because it makes me wonder: how many of these strangers will make an impact on my life? Maybe this man reading the news will turn out to be my husband's father. Maybe this lady with her baby will be trapped with me in a faulty elevator. Maybe this man will become one of my university tutor. I never know, and chances are I never will, but spending so much time in the tube with a sea of strangers always makes me wonder what connects us as humans. And the answer is always this: stories. Everybody has a story to tell, but we fail to remember because, let's admit it, sitting in the tube is pretty damn lonely at the end of the day.

Life of Pi : Book review

Warning: Contains spoilers

Whenever I buy a new book, I always read the last line. It's a perverse pleasure, I despise myself for doing so, but more so, I loathe myself for enjoying it. Yes, I suppose you could call me a masochist with severe emotional issues. Life of Pi is written by Yann Martel, who won The Man booker prize, and is currently being adapted to the hollywood screens by Ang Lee. 

The last line of this novel goes like this: "Very few castaways can claim to have survived so long at sea as Mr. Patel, and none in the company of an adult Bengal tiger". In my book, this is what I consider a satisfying last line- revealing of the plot but also not ruining the book. Everyone knows that the hero of this novel survives; it is, after all, a tale of survival, as described in the summary. Consequently, because this last line did not shock me and make me question the whole plot twist, I decided that this book was worth a long read (which means that I would read it on several days and not in one go). I read some chapters in the tube, some in class when the seminars got dull, walking to work, during breakfast and snuggled up in bed. It was a great read, and I was satisfied with the narrative, until I read the last chapter. It was so unexpected  and left me hanging so quickly that I marveled at Martel's talent to sneak up on the reader without him noticing it. I was caught off guard and was left wanting more (we have an expression for this in french: Rester sur sa faim -to stay on one's own hunger). The ending is, for me, what really elevated the novel from satisfying to genius, and Martel does an excellent job playing with the reader.

The story begins with Pi, the son of a zookeeper in India, who recounts his childhood. He remembers his fascination with the animals-especially the dangerous ones, and his curiosity with absolute faith, leading him to practice Hinduism, Christianity and Islam at the same time. The first part of the book is mainly focused on science and this little boy's perception of religion. The reader knows, then, that the book will evolve around religion, faith, but mostly- about choice. With Pi explaining the traits of each religion he finds attractive, the reader is forced the choose to either believe or not. Although Pi's childhood is a large part of the novel, the narrative eventually shifts to the main story: the sinking of a cargo ship in the Pacific. 

In the second part, Pi and his family are moving to Canada, where they are planning on selling their animals. To do this, they must travel with them on a cargo ship. The ship sinks and Pi find himself thrown on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger, a hyena, a zebra and a female orang-utan. What follows is an amazing journey through faith, life and death -punctured by occasional disturbing and fascinating events. Seven months later, when Pi's lifeboat finally touches ground in Mexico, he is interviewed by two japanese men. He recounts his tale the way we read it, the way we believed it throughout the whole book (although we are asked to take leaps of faith). He recounts how the tiger killed the hyena, the zebra and the female orang-utan, how he had to train the tiger to survive, and how he found a magic island that seemed to swallow anything that set foot on it. This is the version we are being told throughout the whole book, the version we are inclined to believe. It is the adventurous version, the brave version, the one that makes us believe in faith, survival, strength and life. Beautiful words that do not seduce and convince the two interviewers. When faced with their incredulous questions and their disbelief, Pi finally gives account of another version, a darker, more sinister yet more realistic version. 

He was thrown on the lifeboat with his mother, a sailor, and a cook. The same facts are taken into account, but without any animals this time: this story is far more brutal and savage. The interviewers slowly realize that each of the animals correspond to the people on the lifeboat : the mother, the cook and the sailor. What also comes into light is the parallel between the Tiger and Pi, who, in this version, killed and ate them for his own survival. From this point, the reader is forced, like the two interviewers, to make a choice: which version do they believe in ? In the end, the interviewers choose the animal version, just like Pi. 

When asked about the structure of the novel, Martel admits that it was specifically designed so that the reader would be forced, subconsciously, to choose whether he would believe or not, so that the ending would be theirs. He is, throughout most part of the book, asking us if we have faith or not, and if we are ready to walk that extra mile to believe, despite the turn of the incredible events. He argues that the core of the story lies here : in this choice. Choosing the better story- the one with animals or the one with people. Interestingly enough, this choice is also at the center of his religious faith: choosing the better story.

What Martel makes us question eventually, is reason over faith -the ultimate debate. However he rejoices in the fact that he is making the choice extremely difficult for the reader. Jumping from one story to another is what Martel wants us to be doing- jumping from faith to reason; and to make this choice even harder he wrote the incident of the magic island, where the meerkats' bones were found in Pi's boat at the end. This episode occurs shortly after Pi, who has become blind for a period of time, encounters another blind survivor, at lost in the Pacific as well. At this point, disbelief kicks in and the reader is trying to make sense of the story, thus asking reason to come in. The reader shakes his head in disbelief and asks of the author the truth; yet when he is given one reality of the truth he is cornered in his own trap: asking for the truth results in being given a darker version, an uglier version of the story, with only flesh and blood.

For Martel, who exposes this post-modernist view, subjectivity is truth. There is no ultimate truth to Pi's survival, only what you believe. And in Pi's own words, let me ask you this: "Which is the better story?".

Movie review: A single Man

Tom Ford is one of those men around who ambivalent opinions and critiques emerge: You either love him or hate him. He is either a pretentious well-dressed man or a genius with artistic talent. Since he is mostly known for being a fashion designer, I only knew him -up until now - for his sharp designs and his controversial adverts promoting his perfume, carefully placed between a pair of tanned and oiled-up female legs. After that, the hate was obvious. Overrated and over-priced clothing joined with bad advertisement is a no-no in my book of men to love and lust about. However, I recently came about to watch his cinematic debut: A single Man, and could not help but be baffled with awe at his genius and artistic sense. Everything, from the colors, to the soundtrack, to the neat skinny black tie; everything made me want to melt in a luscious cloud of beauty, drinking whiskey with a sharp sense of loss.

Loss remains the main word whispered throughout the whole film. We follow George, an english professor, who is unable to cope after the sudden death of his partner Jim. Before you say anything about how cliche this may sound, set yourself back in the 60s. Although we do not get the immediate pressure on homosexuals from George and Jim's relationship, the oppressive and heavy atmosphere is quickly set up by the environment.

Colin Firth does an excellent job at playing a cynical English professor at loss with his own identity -constructing and deconstructing himself all throughout the film simply to be able to "wake up in the morning". The one great scene that elevates the film from simply great to brilliant is near the end, when Firth contemplates the naked body of one of his students, Kenny (played by the excellent ex-Skins actor Nicholas Hoult), who is passed out on his couch. The look on Firth's face tells it all for me. He manages to capture the whole promise of the film in one glance -loss, survivor's guilt, survival, lust, longing, sexual desire, grief, numbness, sadness, life, and, ultimately, death. And his gaze is so human, so naked that one cannot help but feel tears in one's eyes.

Firth and Moore

Tom Ford also offers us luscious scenes, from the one in the gas station where Firth is being seduced by what looks like an Italian model, over a cherry-champagne colored sky; to the opening scene, where Firth is seen floating naked in water, in trance, a voluptuous yet naked tableau. As to the women, they are as charming as a skinny black tie: George's best friend Charley (played by the very excellent Julianne Moore) is a sharp and exuberant divorcee who drinks her way through life. She is beautiful, cynical... and yet somehow she is not enough. Ford likes playing with this idea that to certain people, life is not enough, and you end up deconstructing yourself, falling into fragments. Of the few shots of Charley, she is seen one half of her face pampered with make-up and the other naked, she is seen dancing for one second, before bursting into tears and hysteria, she is seen with longing eyes that are quickly clouded by mistrust and hurt. Fragments. Sometimes hell is within.

The movie's structure is even more so fragmented, the audience is introduced to a gun in the first few scenes, but Ford succeeds in distilling that tension into pastel colored skies, champagne, and cigarettes. Which is why the audience is more than surprised at the ending, which is, coincidently, the climax of the movie. Ford's mastery of colors and style even makes us forget the plot of the movie, which is superbly acted out by first class actors. A big bravo to Ford, consider me converted now!

Generation Y : sneak peak

For those of you who have asked, here is a little preview on an article on which I'm working at the moment! Stay tuned for the full article! 

GENERATION Y: Y SO ANGRY?

I recently came across an article on the New York Times, published a year ago: The Entrepreneurial generation. It tried to paint a picture of my generation, a generation of self-absorbed nihilistic young adults. And the punch line was this: we are a “post-emotional generation”. We have “no anger, no edge, no ego”. Suddenly, my generation wasn’t a statistic anymore, this felt like a personal attack. I looked around me and my friends and felt that actually, we are an angry generation, we are a generation of deceived believers, a generation that is fuming at the world we are being left to deal with. It is true that we spend more time on social media than in the public library; that we consume more than any other generation –be it knowledge, media or products. Yes, we are a generation of consumers, of sellers, of young entrepreneurs… But above all, we are an angry generation, we are generation Y.

Suzanne Zhang

On Beijing Punk

We often think of punk music and chinese people as polar opposites, but it has recently come to light that these two can sometimes merge into one and produce some of the most promising punk rock bands, at least according to Shaun Jefford's documentary "Beijing Punk".

Misandao

His documentary follows a few Beijing based punk groups: Demerit, Misandao and Hedgehog. All three are underground punk bands and all three of them have the same motto: truth. What you find in common between these bands is not the anti-Chinese government lyrics but rather a search to expose truth and to "stay real", in their own words. When asked if they wanted to become famous and live the lives of real punk rockstars, they simply answered " We just want to stay true". A nice philosophy nicely put in action when we see their houses and their recording studios. Most of these bands share a little flat in the dark areas of Beijing, but admit they wouldn't trade it for anything. Between the lack of financial support, the censorship from the government and the bad reputation they have to deal with (Misandao, in particular, have been known to strike fights during their concerts), these punk artists are finding it a real struggle to have their music streamed internationally. All three bands sing in English about their conditions of living, the Chinese mentality, and of course, alcohol and drugs.

Hedgehog

What is striking about these young adults (Demerit and Hedgehog) is that even though they might have some recognition in the punk underground scene of Beijing, they still really are trying to have fun with everything they do. The documentary follows several of them on a night out, drinking cough syrup to get high, illegally smoking weed on the outskirt of Beijing, and generally waking up with no memory of the previous night. A particularly funny incident occurred when the cameraman drank too much cough syrup and Chinese "Bai Jiou" (A strong chinese alcohol that "kills you if you drink too much of it"), and consequently ended up in the hospital for a diabetic shock.

When asked about the Chinese government, the chinese Olympics and their way of living, most of them are completely lucid and aware of what is happening. They sing about it in their songs, but rather than calling themselves rebels or anarchists they simply call themselves musician. All of them make a point of making themselves apolitical when it comes to governments, although one does get the sense that everything they say is doused with double-meanings and innuendos. On one occasion, Misandao's manager had to censor some words for fear of being caught by the government, who greatly disregards the Chinese punk scene.

Not all chinese punk bands struggle to strive internationally, Misandao has toured in Germany and Hedgehog just finished their American tour. As to Demerit, they were denied Visas and are still trying to perform in Europe. 

What finally emerges from this documentary and these punk "skinheads" screaming Oi is their will to explore, to live passionately and to produce good music. As the lead singer of Demerit said : "We don't care about the future". Rather focus on the good right now, right in front of us.

Watch the trailer here: Bejing Punk

Wine

If you were wine, I would drink you and leave three drops:
One for my heart
One for the lilies by my bed
And one for the times when I am sad

Berlin, or the city where people are unhappy

I just got back from a crazy week in the capital of beer and electro music: Berlin! I was there to explore the post-war atmosphere of the city, which is meant to be buzzing with art, underground music and parties (most of the time the parties are so underground you cannot find them. I swear. ). After some rather disappointing sight-seeing trips and non-concluding talks with locals, Berlin makes up for it with its crazy music (and by crazy I mean the DJ-Panda playing violing at an electro-techno rave), crazy drugs (maybe too much? The only drug you need is loooove, mate), underground parties, graffiti and an excellent music festival line-up.

The problem with Berlin is this: they hate tourists. I understand that they can be fu**ing annoying, as I often curse the gods when I see them in London, but they're part of the economy and part of life, so, the best way is to smile and not lie to them about where that museum really is (Come on, it happened to the best of us...). On many occasions, my friends and I (all of them are London based internationals and speak perfectly good english) were being told we were too loud and too foreign. I can't keep track of the number of times people have stopped by in the streets to stare at us (in a rather disgusting way). I also couldn't believe how rude and impolite some of the stares, whistles and insults were. I have had my ass groped by an old man in daytime, and after causing a scene about this he simply walked away without embarrassment. On another occasion a man called us "dirty whores" then proceeded to ask for cigarettes. Is this really what the streets of Berlin have come to?

Despite Berliner's rude attitude, I had a really fun time there, especially at the Helmut Newton Foundation and the festival. The food was also really good, and those mini-eggs really helped my daily hangover, which usually consisted of wine, tequila shots and bad decisions. The clubs were also very good (once you knew where to find them... mmh mhh Goldengate & Magdalena!) though sometimes unnecessarily selective and rude (berghain.. :( ). The only time I felt truly accepted by the people was at the music festival, which had really big names like SBTRKT, Paul Kalkbrenner, Bonaparte and Django Django. I won't spend too much time describing how fun it was, so I'll just say that it was so crazy I fainted (oops!) and that I discovered a new band called Sizarr! You should check out their songs Icy Martini and Purple fried!

A sad story about work

    It is almost 11AM and I am browsing a complex and dull-looking website that will tell me how much money the clients of the bank I'm working at will lose today with the stock market. It's called current liquidity excess, it is repetitive and uninteresting, and it needs to be done twice a day to ensure that no one loses a vast amount of money, like, say, 3 million dollars. All is well, none of the clients have their names in red.

I started my internship on the 25th of June 2012, and in two weeks I will be done. As a media undergraduate who attends an Arts College, working in a bank goes against all my beliefs and principles. I hate money and how it enslaves people, I hate that money is the biggest entity in the world, I hate the political schemes of corporations and banks, I hate what it makes people do. But most importantly I hate that I have to work for money, eight hours per day, five days a week, all year long. I guess you could call me a naïve idealist who believes that we can live on poems and flowers. 

What my job consists of is making sure the clients' transfers are archived by numbers and dates, that the stocks they've bought are correct, that their amount of cash at the end of the month does not differ from the one in the bank's system... Hours of archiving and numbers and maths, and Excel graphs and tables. HSBC, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Merril Lynch have become part of my daily vocabulary. As a student who used to cheat her way through her maths class (and still miserably failing to get a simple PASS), this was torture. I could never get the same result twice, and would often opt for the number that seemed most appealing to me (34500 or 256... mm 256 pounds seems reasonable I guess). I found it hilarious that I couldn't get the same result for a simple addition of numbers, even with a calculator. But this was overestimating my capacities in maths: 38000 dollars became 83000 dollars, pounds became euros, hong kong dollars became swiss francs... I was a disaster. And when the cash at the end of the month did not match the bank's system, it was my task to find out why they had lost so much money (we are talking millions here). I thought it was completely absurd to let a 19 year student (who, to make it worse, got the internship without any interviews or skill assessment... Nepotism at its best) find out why the client had lost so much money, but they thought it was normal. After pretending to find mistakes in a twenty pages long cash statement, I finally asked the un-askable : "Maybe someone stole his card and then spent all the money! That would explain why he lost 38million euros and 256 million dollars! That explains it all!!". To which my boss looked at me as if I were a dinosaur. After a couple of hours, it came to light that I had entered the wrong data and thus the whole incident had been engendered by my maths mistakes. Oops. 

Another incident that makes me giggle (but shudder in shame at the same time) is the day I inadvertly printed out 250 pages of cash statement. It lasted around 10minutes, during which my infuriated colleagues  couldn't get hold of their faxes or prints. It was hilarious. After realizing that I had printed the wrong pages, I quickly flipped them over and put them back in the printer, as I did not want to look like a stupid, soulless and tree-loathing person. But in my purely altruistic act, I had not flipped the pages on the right side, and my colleagues were both shocked ( at my stupidity..) and irritated to find that their prints and faxes had been printed on my printed pages. They couldn't read a thing and we had to throw everything away. I couldn't stop laughing, but I was the only one. After that, they ceased giving me complex things to do, like printing out excel charts  or anything that involves numbers. Instead, I am now in charge or the archives and spend all my hours on 9GAG, because it is one of the few websites that is infinite. Sometimes I watch movies without the sound, because I like living on edge. It also makes for interesting plot twists. 

Apart from the sporadic hilarious incidents (mostly caused by me...), work is a dull pain in the ass.

I've only just come to the sudden realization that I will be graduating from university in two years. And then what? The real world? A job? I don't feel ready to become a person with a job. The only thing that I learnt from my internship is that I do not want to work in an office, I do not want to work in an environment that involves money or dealing with numbers. I want to learn new things everyday, I want to have a job where ideas are thought-provoking, a job where I can discuss compelling issues and contemporary problems that affect me... It pains me to see that people have jobs that they hate, but cannot quit for financial reasons, I hate that not everybody is given the chance to choose what they really want to do in life, it pains me to see that everyday is a repetition of the day before and before and before that... And it's worrying, because if I can't enjoy a simple and secure job like what I have right now, what will life be after university? Will I have to wake up everyday to a job I don't like? A lifetime seems pretty long...

Is it normal to be this scared? 

Written on the 2/03/2012

I am constantly confused, dissatisfied and tormented by the idea that there is ''something more'', ''something better''.There has to be more than what I have, there has to be a wider range of feelings, a wider range of views, of emotions, of experiences- be it spiritual or simply anodyne. There has to be something more beautiful, something so overwhelmingly good and perfect that man can never touch except with his fingertips, in his dreams. But, concretely, there has to be something more. I long all day to find it, but the question that there is nothing more for me always haunts me at night.

Nostalgia for a place

Unknown

I always find myself longing for something that I cannot have. Travel and family is one of them. I am constantly longing for the place I have just left, only to return and long for someplace new. 

Can I never be content in being in an exact place at an exact moment? Will I ever learn to let go of nostalgia and longing and realize that I must live in one place only? My problem, unlike others, is not living in the future or the past, it is living in a given space, a given location.

I would like to be everywhere at the time, to be everything at the same time, to be everyone and experience everything at the same time


Written on the 14.02.2012

The XX

© Suzanne Zhang

I was lucky enough to go see the XX in concert last week, thanks to my friend Elen, who won tickets in a lottery. The concert was in a small venue, which made it very cosy and intimate; I don't think we were more than 100 in the room.

© Suzanne Zhang

© Suzanne Zhang

Cinco de Mayo & haïkai

On saturday I celebrated Cinco de Mayo with some friends, in West London. As usual when there is some wine involved, I start writing haïkai (this is a tradition with my friend Robin, we believe we will eventually get a poetry book published). This time though, I did something different, I asked everyone to write a little haïku in my notebook - think of it as pass the joint, only more poetic.

This is the result:

Haïku 1

Burn me with love

and I'll burn hearts

...

Haïku 2

Cowboy boy

Mexican Tomboy

Together we are one

Haïku 3

Bigger hat

Lower ego,

Are you high?

Haïku 4

Baby Cowboy,

You are wrong,

eat more nachos

Haïku 5

Follow the river, 

Smoke some weed,

Follow the kings cup' rules

Haïku 6

Cinco de Mayo,

Tengo que escribir algo

Nada que decir

Suerte a tódos

Haïku 7

Too much smoke, 

lung hurts,

but heart more

Are you scared of a shake?

A short poem

Your skin is like pastels
from it I draw clouds and scents
Your veins are like watercolors,
When I kiss them they blush feebly
Your beauty spots resemble the night sky
deep and rich, dark and vast
Your skin is like pastels
from it I draw memories
your skin is like pastels,
it softens at the touch of my tears

Suzanne Zhang

I found the quote 'your skin is like pastels' in an old notebook, and decided to write a short poem, starting with this sentence. 
This was written during the Christmas holidays, back home in France, snuggled up in my bed drinking hot chocolate.

__

Get the sky for your birthday

Freelance photographer and glider pilot Jaanus Jagomägi tells Suzanne Zhang about flying, and the importance of training in extreme situations. 

“The clouds there look really nice, let’s go there”. In what world does one have that kind of freedom? To navigate in the sky and choose your own route just because the clouds look nice. Imagine that kind of freedom; that calm and appeasing feeling you get when you see the soothing sky? Well now it is possible to actually be there. To say to yourself, ‘hey, let’s turn right after the second cloud’. We know it’s every man’s dream.

“Flying a glider is like having a bicycle in the sky”, says 20 years-old Estonian game design student Jaanus Jagomägi. It is easy and instinctive, but unlike when you are on the ground, when you fly, “all your senses are heightened, but in a more relaxed way”. A glider is a small plane with no engine that is transported by thermals; so there is a very natural feel to it, says Jagomägi. Ironic, as it is made out of glass fiber with wings spreading to at least 18 meters wide, like the LET L-13 Blanik, the most common glider in the world.

It was on the L-13 Blanik that Jagomägi first learnt to fly a glider, when he turned 16. “Flying has been in the family ever since I was a kid, since my father was a pilot”, tells Jagomägi, who remember growing up in airfields, next to gliders. He passed his first license when he was 16, which is the legal age in UK. However, the gliding license is not an easy simulation test, it requires time and practice. You are required to pass seven exams: navigation, aerodynamics, meteorology, human factors & limitations, rules & regulations, and finally, a full-time two-day medical course at the hospital. All this was easy for Jagomägi as he had several tips from his father and friends, “all airfield instructors”.

His brother recently passed his license, a birthday present since he turned 16. When asked about the different prices in Estonia and in the UK, Jagomägi raises his eyebrows and explains that “in the UK they are after your money, whereas in Estonia you can fly for very cheap because they are not being opportunistic”. You should expect 17 pounds for a 12 minutes flight and 34 pounds for a 30 minutes flight (and then up to 10 hours). In the UK, however, the prices are much higher: 200 pounds at the London Gliding Club and around 444 pounds at the South London Gliding Club. Thus getting the sky has its very own price.

When asked about fear of heights, Jagomägi replies that he “used to be scared”. The scariest part is not flying very high because “when you’re low you’re going to need to land in a random place, and you can’t see well”. The further high up you get, the safer you are, as the thermals keep you safe from hitting the ground. But is flying a glider as safe as they make it sound? “Small manoeuvre accidents are bound to happen, but you are always prepared thanks to the training”, argues Jagomägi, who has had two frightening experiences. His scariest moment was two years ago, when he was “flying in a really big triangle (when we go flying we put three points on a map)”. The weather changed abruptly and the clouds disappeared, which means that the thermals are not stable enough to carry a glider. “Looking for a place to land and not seeing anything was one of the scariest things”, says Jagomägi. His glider lost height because of the lift to drag ratio, and he was suddenly at 300 meters above ground. From what he remembered from the textbooks and the practice, he needed to land as quickly as possible in a big flat field. Because he couldn’t see any, he flew over a combine since it released a thermal from a field, which is what all textbooks advise you to do, and “got up to 900 meters, which was more than enough, although [his] heart was racing”.

Jagomägi emphasises the importance of the textbooks and practice as he recalls this adventure, telling me that “it’s not all about instincts, up in the air it’s very technical”. He recalls other experiences, when he went skydiving and again argues that for your survival, practice and the textbooks are what will save you in the end. So what about people who get scared easily and have a mediocre sense of orientation? “It’s doable”, replies Jagomägi. In his opinion, when you get up in the air, you must feel the plane, the mechanics of the manoeuvres; but this is a skill you learn to master. And GPS and maps are always a necessity on gliders, which means that really, anyone –even with fear of heights-could fly a glider.

Contact info and photo: http://foto.jaanus.cc/ 

Real women....identify as women

I was going through my newsfeed on Facebook a couple of days ago when a status caught my mind. It read : 'Real Women have curves, deal with it'. And although I do advocate the normalcy of all shapes and sizes in women, somehow the phrase 'Real Women' is something that infuriates me (If you've never seen me angry and would like to, saying this phrase will suffice to unleash my inner Caitlin Moran and end up with both of us yelling at each other). 

Girls, there is no such thing as a real woman. Curves don't make you real. Boobs, fat rolls and a big ass don't make you real, just as a size 0 doesn't make you real either. In fact, there is no such thing as 'real' woman. 'Realness' is a clever 21st century marketing concept. And the first problem with this 'realness' idea is that it is a divisive one. If you don't have curves, you're not real, and thus you are fake. Worse, you don't exist -I mean, you're not even real! And to be honest, I feel that there is nothing worse than being reduced to nothingness because of the way my body is. Yes, I know that some girls mean well by trying to subvert the unattainable ideal of a size 0 to another ideal, but what they end up doing is the same : setting an ideal of beauty, of femininity and realness. And this leads to shunning others who are not part of this 'curvy girls group' (and by curvy, I mean Scarlett Johansson curvy. Fat is not curvy. Obese is not curvy. Don't try to make things prettier. Being fat and obese are medical issues that affect your health, they're not a fashion statement). 

I am all for raising the self-esteem of women of all shapes (and yes, skinny girls have body issues as well, self-esteem doesn't necessarily increase as your weight line drops, this is not an economic graph), but telling someone what their ideal of beauty - even worse, what their ideal of being a 'woman' and being real is the most vile thing one can do in the beauty industry- and god knows it's a big industry. Yes, I am aware that this happens on a daily basis throughout the media, but take a time to think next time you hear something along the lines of 'Real women have/are...'. No one holds the power to dictate your way of thinking and your way of seeing yourself. Concepts of realness are vapid and not supported by any valid arguments. Women's bodies  are commodified through this 'real women' phrase and it suggests you have no power over your own ideals and beliefs, when really, you do.

Real women ......identify as women. 

Ps: this picture is to be taken as seriously as the sentence 'Real women have curves'

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river

izz me