The incoherent rant

The heart-breaking thing about intelligence and indescribable creativity that so many writers hold are the perils that follow. The alcoholism, the depression, the feeling of futility. Why is it that people are only appreciated in death? I think it stems from jealousy. People love to put others down so that they don’t advance, don’t outgrow. In death, you are static. And they love it.

Reading gives so many people the ability to live, to feel. Escapism has always been important and crucial to human life and when people can connect to someone’s ideas so deeply, beauty is found; inspiration.

Roland Barthes wrote that the minute a text is read, the author dies; they no longer have any creative control over the text, but the reader is safe in the knowledge that they are alive. When the author physically dies, a real pain is felt. Even though the average person’s chance is minimal, the opportunity to thank that author for the escape, the rush of feelings, the worlds they created, the fact that they aren’t alive to be appreciated is a painful one. And that, I think, is the real death of the author.

Reading fills you up if you read the right things, it elevates you, it inspires and it makes you more of a person. But what is 'right' will always be an open discussion.

Literature is the greatest teacher. 

First Blog Post - 9/02/2015

Finally, I've decided to blog like a legitimate English Literature student. I've been doing it for years orally (ranting to anyone who will listen), but I felt like it was time to write it down. I promise to stick at it, even if my mother is the only person who reads this.

Due to my Mondays being chock-a-block with all of a 50 minute Genre and Context lecture (today's was on Great Expectations), I decided to drag myself along to a Creative Writing event being held 5 minutes from my flat in the infamous HumSS building, my intellectual home, to hear Peter Robinson and Shara McCallum read their poetry.

I wasn't sure what to expect because a) I had never been to such an event and b) I'd never read either of the poet's work. I was pleasantly surprised by both the essence of such an event and the actual content, although it seemed a lot fancier than I was used to/expecting - red and white wine was circulating and for a girl  young woman who gets pissed intoxicated on fruity cocktails, I set myself up for an hour of something I probably wouldn't enjoy.

I ate my words, as I usually do (I'm a very bad judge) and became truly fascinated with these two people's take on what life had thrown them. With Peter Robinson finding beauty and poetry and art in the mundane chore of walking home from work and Shara McCallum rewriting myths to fit her ideals and expressing both personal and cultural history, I could feel myself bubbling.

I believe my exact words upon leaving were "Who needs drugs when you can go and listen to poetry?" - I am still trembling from awe and utter, utter inspiration and motivation to not only tell everyone about it but to allow myself to absorb all I had heard, and all I hadn't heard.

In my four and a little bit months of being at Reading and embracing the challenges that thinking like a University student presents, I have noticed a few things:

1.  Nothing is real
2. You CAN spend a whole seminar talking about two lines of a text
3. Question 'I' - apparently it changes all the f u c k i n g time. 
4. Expanding your literary choices will be the greatest thing you can ever do for yourself.

I feel like I'm going off on a tangent here, but I may as well start as I mean to go on.
I do not plan to edit these posts. I would like to think it is a revolutionary, creative decision but it isn't; I'm just lazy.

Back to the reasons I actually decided to strike up this blog:

• I always meant to do it, but laziness came into play, as did forgetfulness
• I had one when I did Media at A Level and loved it
• I was spoken to - poet to poet, in a sense. When you see people reading their poetry to a room of about 20 people, you see it in their eyes, the 'I made it' look. I want that. I always have. And if this is what gets me into gear, writing and making my work public (if we can call it that), then so be it. I'm pretty sure you can publish blog posts on Amazon anyway.

Me, post-Creative Writing event