Explanation and Plans

Sorry for the neglect. I won't do it in future.

Hey!
This is the first "This is what I have been up to" blog I've done so I hope it works. If it doesn't, it probably won't even get published but I finally (FINALLY) feel as if I am able to write about myself from my own point of view after a bumpy month of not being able to write anything at all - bar a couple of lines that I quite liked.

Anyway, the reason for today's blog is because I have finished the first draft of a piece *insert triumphant trumpet music here*. It is the first time I have seriously written anything other than prose so it was a bit different but there are several characters that I am quite fond of. Now, I can't explain the characters until I explain the setting. It's like society crammed down into a tatty old circus. In my mind's eye, I see it as the "baby brother" to Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork orange (Minus the "ultraviolence", drugs and giant ceramic penises.)

It's a wonderful love story between a boy and his dreams. The main protagonist is the Stagehand, who is far below where he should be. The circus is full of washed-up old tarts and this boys has a glistening potential. There is a small main-cast. They are the Ringmaster, a character who speaks entirely in verse, Madame Velo (Vee-lo), a drag queen with a penchant for boys in uniform, the Tart, speaks for herself, and the Fortune Teller, a mysterious woman who is the estranged daughter of a billionaire.

So yeah, they're the characters. It feels like I know them and I hear their voices, so there must be something working with it.

Hopefully, it won't be shelved like my last few pieces *cough* Untitled... *cough*

Doctor Who: An Average Morning (Fan-Fic Short Story)

Of course. I'm a Whovian. This features the Eleventh Doctor and his companion Adam, a character I have created. I've had this idea for a long time that the Doctor has a son and they share adventures together. I don't know why, it just seems right. I know how I would introduce him and I'm currently writing that now (Possible upload in the future) at the moment, I'm just testing out the character. This is an early version of him. He has more emotional depth now. I hope you enjoy this because I sure as hell enjoyed writing it. :)

Ps- there are a loads of references to earlier Doctor Who episodes... Please excuse my lack of originality with some quotes and locations.

*

An Average Morning

I awoke to the gentle, soothing hum of the TARDIS. Groggily, I made my way to the console room. The corridors seemed to go on forever. Until finally, at last, I was there, at the heart of the ship. The Doctor was flamboyantly dancing around the console as he piloted her to our next distant destination across the stars. He looked me in the eye and gave his most wild, broad grin. It was like he hadn’t slept; to think of it, I had never known him to sleep. I walked down the stairs and leaned against the console

‘Where are we off to, then?’ I said, wiping the sleep out of my eye.

‘Further than we have ever gone before!’ He declared triumphantly . He threw a lever and the machine roared into life. The moans and groans of the ancient engines made me feel strangely at home. Every way to describe the TARDIS makes her sound violent. Maybe roaring is the wrong word. She sang. She sang as we flew into the vortex.

I had been on the TARDIS for so long, yet it all seemed like a bizarre dream. Or nightmare. The planets and the stars, the aliens and the monsters; I couldn’t imagine any other sort of life now. I was in love with the travelling, in love with the TARDIS and held the Doctor so very dear. He was so often preoccupied with his past, and his future, that he would often forget about me. His own son. But that didn’t matter; I knew I would always come second to her. Nothing could ever come in between them. She was magnificent; she could do anything. There was something special about the Doctor, though, and just by being with him, made me feel more special. Well, before I even stepped foot on the TARDIS. I thought there was something unique between us. Then he showed me the funny little police box which was to become my home. At once I knew I was not magnificent.

 ‘Barcelona!’ He said, straightening his red bow-tie and throwing on his tweed jacket. ‘A planet, not too far from Earth, with huge oceans! We can visit the Horseshoe Island and go to the home of the dogs with no noses!’

It seemed impossible to believe a thousand year old man could run with such a gleeful air, especially over something he does every day. He darted towards the door.

Undoing the lock, he looked back to me and waved.

‘One problem, Dad…’ I said, ‘I’m still in my pyjamas.’

He remained oblivious and unfazed by this.

I darted back to my room, rummaged through my wardrobe and found out an outfit suitable for a beach planet. At least, I assumed it was a beach planet. Oceans and islands Let’s hope it’s not like Space Florida, I thought. That was a let-down.

I walked through the same corridors as before. They felt distinctly shorter… The TARDIS has a nasty habit of switching rooms. I half-expected to walk into the swimming pool, rather than the console room.

Thankfully, that hadn’t happened.

Yet.

I was there again. The sheer scale of the room never ceased to startle me.

And there he was. My father. He was sonicing a clump of hardware with his ever-so-trusty screwdriver. Noticing me, he dropped what he was holding and ran to the door. He threw open the door, presenting me with the world outside. Nothing is constant here, I thought as I walked out onto a new front garden.

‘See you later, sexy,’ the Doctor said, winking to his machine as he closed the door behind him.

Journey's Beginning

"You look into the broken hearts and find the words you find."

Sometimes, it's more difficult to look into your own broken heart because its so much more personal and, no matter how hard you try, there is always a void between how you feel and what you write. Part of this journey of self discover we are all on is to be able to come to terms with this, to be able to comprehend, process and express this. Journeys progress with time and as time progresses I will become more skilled in forming this link between my emotions and my pieces Like in chemistry, fusing to separate substances to become one, my heart and my pen will soon bond and form something that, as of yet, I am unable to describe. This is because I'm just setting out. No one knows who they want to be at nineteen years. No one knows where they will end up either, which is vital in making the journey all the more interesting. Yes, there are worries about the future and insecurities but if there weren't we wouldn't be human and not be the person we are. I feel, as I grow older and grow in confidence, I am able to express and harness insecurities and reassure others (I am more skilled in the latter, it seems). On the other hand, I have the ability to be a great actor -cough- and can at least pretend to deal with these emotions when, in fact, all I wish to do is run away and hide from them.

While I wouldn't describe most of my fictional writing as auto-biographical, I would say there is a lot of myself in my pieces. My thoughts, my feelings, my perspectives. Some may see this as a negative personality trait, whereas I see it as a good thing. I share a connection with my pieces and character that is clear to an audience. Hopefully, my audience shares a connection with my writing  

Memory Scrapbook (Short Story)

OKAY. SORRY. THIS ONE IS BEING USED FOR SOMETHING ELSE SO I CAN'T HAVE IT ON THE INTERNET ANY MORE.

A Little Love Letter...

Define Art.

To me: the expressions of oneself through a creative medium. Expressions of oneself are influenced by the artist’s opinion, and these are derived from the society they were born into, grew up in, will grow old in but also what they wish for and what they long to escape into.

You don’t need to be intelligent; you need to be gifted. You need to be gifted in the ability to express yourself. You need to be able to swim against the tide. You need to be able to hold your head up high, when all you want to do is curl up and die. You need to put everything into it: your heart, and soul, your love, your lust, every emotion, that lingers in every dark and forgotten corner of your mind.

Art a middle finger salute for other people’s ignorance. Or the expression to cry out; to make other people realise, crying out in the form of words, images, drawings, rhythm.

Three Little Letters.

The Three Little Letters that can change the world.
The Three Little Letters that can change a person.

But art is also apparent in language and language is how I chose to express my art.

Define Language:
To the ignorant, English is less than a language. Merely a disrespected tool. Something they use every day and do not care to appreciate.   But to me, she is more than that. She is a friend, a lover, a constant companion through the bitter times of my life – as she has been there for many men and women before me.

She is a medium through which I can confess my deepest, darkest feelings which must be hidden from the world. There is something almost magical about her mystery. How she steers the certain through their paths and aids the uncertain onto theirs. How she can be a rock to support you at the saddest moments and a glimmer of joy in happiness.

But who is she? Who is English?

She is a framework. She is the subject of study. She is controversial. She is beautiful. But, ask yourself in the deepest hour of the night: Who is she?

She is French. She is German. She is Latin. She is a composite of her past. A representation of England herself maybe? She is the sum of her experiences.

As is any other person.

Could this be why we relate to her? We have so much in common, as we are not to be taken at face value. If you look deeper into the depths of your soul, you will soon find a delicate beating heart, no matter how tough the iron exterior.

"Lovers may come and go but you remain constant."
-26/11/2010

Eleventh Commandment (Short story)

Okay, this is the first short story I've published to my blog. I based it on some poems by Richard Siken (who I absolutely adore) and there are a few lines in it are quite Isherwood (Who I adore in equal measure).

I really enjoyed writing it and I hope you enjoy reading it. 

Eleventh Commandment

I remember that day like it was yesterday; the day the blond boy in red trunks tried to kill me.

Pushing me under and under.

Deeper and deeper.

Until I couldn’t see anymore. Through the muffles of splashing water and laughter, I heard my salvation. A long, shrill blast on a distant metal whistle.

And I surfaced again.

Breathing, panicking, I settled back in the pool which nearly killed me.

But I was saved.

Not safe.

 The lifeguard, however, was most unforgiving. When he saw it was me, he gave the other boys a look.

 Good work lads, he thought. Kill him. Kill the queer. The others shared his thought, too.

And they were right to try and kill me. I am wrong and unnatural… But I saw that bulge in his red trunks under the water. So I knew that I wasn’t the only one. The blond boy was unnatural too.

I dragged myself out of the water. A thousand glaring eyes were watching, silently stalking me. I was to be their prey, dripping wet, baiting them almost, like a deer before a lion. They were ready to pounce and I was prepared to die. All it would take is one to pull me back under.

And this time, the whistle wouldn’t blow.

*

Folded arms, grey beard and podgy stomach. The principle was no hero. He will never rescue me or anybody like me. I was an infection, that must be destroyed, a parasite.

But he can’t. He would if I was anyone else. If I was on the street, or in another school or state or country.

His father made a kill once. No one spoke about it but everyone knew it. He got away with it.

And so he should. He wasn’t the one at fault.

*

Outside the school, there was the blond boy again, this time not in red trunks. Dressed. Sitting on his father’s old pick-up truck with a girl on each arm. No bulge.

But he was strong, so he would never say.  He was better than me, so he could never say.

*

I grew through this; the teething pains of life.

A year later, I met this brown-eyed boy, bruised on a street corner with ripped clothes. I helped him home and tended to his wounds.

He wore the scar on his stomach like a medal.

As we grew, we healed. We built our lives around each other, spending and sharing every moment.

And we had no hesitations about falling completely in love.

Our summer dates smelt of cheap wine and cigarettes. As we walked through Central Park on our vacations to New York, we planned our lives together. We would buy an apartment and watch each other grow old, while growing closer.

Or, at least, that was the plan.

*

I went home, expecting to see this boy.

My boy, with eyes like golden autumn leaves.

We had been through a lot during our time together. But he ripped open old wounds when I realised he didn’t love me as much as I loved him.

There was a note on coffee stained paper left in his place, saying he had gone to New York with the intention of starting a new life.

In desperation and isolation, I clung to the good memories because they don’t hurt. Words from the past echoed to me: you need to acknowledge the bad times to make the good ones better.

This, however, works in reverse. The good memories make the bad ones so much worse. And this was the worst of times.

That night, I packed up my things into an old suitcase, the battered leather showing its age. I threw it into the back of my car and drove down to the cliffs. She was running out of petrol but I didn’t fill her up.

I had no intention to make the return journey.

*

Nevertheless, I’m lying here now, with a wound from a rock that I could have only got from the fifty foot cliff I flew from, thinking of these memories as I take my final breath and saying hello to the incoming tide, reassured by the sirens that will never arrive. 

Swearing

Swearing.

We all do it.

Some more than others.

I swear a hell of a lot, especially in speech-mimicking text (for example, Twitter) and in real life.

People who think swearing is a sign of a lack of intelligence are completely misguided. To me, that is like saying Americans cannot drive because they use the right hand side of the road instead of the left. It's not wrong; it's just a different way of going about it.

The same can be applied to language. People who swear can make the same fucking point, if not a stronger one, as one who does not use profanities.

See. Using a profanity as an adjective draws attention to it and makes you acknowledge it in a blog that has been deliberately designed to be dull.

I feel swearing demands attention and this may intimidate people; however, overuse has left us somewhat accustomed to this. Excessive use can detract from the original point but occasional usage shouldn't be taboo, should it?

I think, in modern language especially, it is important. When writing, a character can be defined by the words they use. Time is moving on and we need to accept this. Culture is evolving and swearing is just part of this evolution. Obviously, it shouldn't get out of hand (like swearing in a school environment) but it shouldn't be frowned upon and scrutinised as much as it is now.

I could go into the origin of profanities but I don't think it is relevant to my point. I just want people to accept that swearing is not a solid base to judge someone's intelligence.

In summary, you can be smart and say shit.

A New Direction?

Once again, I am in the position where I cannot turn to anyone, so I turn to my dear old friend cyberspace.

I've been thinking about taking a new direction in my life. The road I am currently walking on isn’t working for me, despite my best efforts to try and keep a steady pace. Nothing seems to be working for me and, it’s not that I don’t care anymore, it’s more. I am passed caring. It seems everything is objective to me now. I can’t relate to people, things, events and I’m sure this is a symptom of stress but I can’t help feeling that I am in some way broken. 

Even though I’m not. 

I don’t think.

The only problem is, as I’m sure you are aware of being in similar positions yourself, that a new direction is one that is completely different to where you are heading now. And that is scary and intimidating and a little bit sexy.

Because the unknown is always alluring.

I find myself on my current path, not through choice as it should be, but rather forced by circumstance. We are raised from a young age that there should be a strict progression to successful life:

School – High school – Post 16 – Higher Education – Job.

Given my experience in the field, I am more than qualified to stick a huge middle finger up to that entire idea. This path is only in place because it has been taught by those with experience of it; they have lived their lives through this route. Yes, there may be some deviation on the way, but roughly everyone follows the same path.

What they don’t understand is that this isn’t the only path. And this path doesn’t work for everyone.

The point of this post is to convince myself, and you, that no matter where you are or how lost you feel, there is always a path to destination that would suit you but you need to brave enough to make the decision to deviate from the main road.

Time and Chaos

I wanted to talk to someone but there is no one. So, I decided to talk to everyone. Hello, Internet. My name is James and I am a real boy with real thoughts.

As a teenager, you exist in a state of what seems to be eternal disorder and confusion.

Nothing seems to make sense yet everything is organised. Life, to me, seems to be a jumble of structured chaos. Part of me loves this galaxy of disorganisation but an equal, and opposite, part of me detests it and longs for order and a logical system of progression.

Often, life is in flux between these two states and is never explicitly one or the other. Instead, I see it as a pendulum swaying in the void. Some points are more structured. Some points are less structured.

I find myself longing for the less structured moments. In my opinion, these are the more exciting. Evens in my life are mapped out before I have even thought of taking them as an option: University starting dates, University finishing dates, coursework topics and lecturers.

We are trapping ourselves in the one thing we have no control over. 

Time.

We can’t control time. We never will be able to. We are just forever plodding on into this unknown called ‘the future’ without the faintest possibility of going back. Of course we can guess because of the more structured moments but there is that glimmer of wonderful spontaneity that gives us all that little kick and makes us feel alive.

Time is finite.

One day it will run out and no one can escape this.

I also believe time is a concept that we attribute meaning to. I found this by walking through a graveyard today and seeing the dates on the tombstones. Fourteen year olds are resting next to seventy years olds.

Even if nobody ever reads this, I will feel closure on these thoughts. Just to express them to a wider audience than my own brain gives me a reassuring sense of self-longing and contentedness.

(I didn’t know contentedness was a word. Now I do.)

In short, we worry too much about the future and not enough about the present.

This entire thought process stemmed from me being a little bit jealous. I thought to myself “Why am I jealous now? I will have my entire life to be jealous and my jealousy won’t change it the first place. I need to accept this and move on with my life.”

Accepting is part of life.

If you can’t change something then don’t work yourself up about it. Don’t get upset, or jealous or dragged down.

Just accept it.

Although people have said this to me before, my own mind brought me to this idea. I now feel as if I understand what these people were saying to me and I’d like to tell you that, if you are feeling the same as I am, you will have an epiphany similar to mine soon.