Month: June 2013

Mona Lisa & Centerfolds

We’ve been on a pretty good run for a while now. You and I have been plodding along through the previous few blog entries with a sense of optimism and a spring in our step. We’ve talked about catalysts that have reignited my inspiration to write, and how the past twelve months have served to alter the usually depressive and angry perceptions of yours truly. But as you know all good things must come to an end. And despite my optimism there is still a scorned writer seething within me. So now it’s time to open up and let my inner-arsehole shine. Today for a change of pace we’re not here to talk about writing; we’re here to talk about the slow decline of the human race into a world where men who deserve nothing more than to be punched in the mouth are allowed to prosper.

But before things spiral out of control we better back up a little; I’m not punching anyone just yet. However I am going to let off a little steam about an issue that has been bugging me for a while now. You see, in many respects I’m your typical young man. I’m twenty four years of age and have girlfriend that I adore; and come hell or high water I will stand by and support her. But unfortunately as of late I’ve been exposed to a seemingly endless string of fucking dead-shit men who find it acceptable to belittle and degrade women. It’s absolutely mind boggling as to the level of sexist shit I’ve been exposed to lately. And the fact that I as a man am offended by the level of sexism I’m witnessing serves only to highlight the degrading manner in which some men perceive women. Seriously, what the fuck happened? Was there some kind of memo that was sent out to all men that stated that it was suddenly alright to treat women as second class citizens that I missed?

I grew up in a good home. My old man was a police officer and my mum worked in a catholic school, which meant that respect was something that was instilled into my siblings and I from an early age. You respected your peers, your parents, your teachers, and authority figures. But most of all, as a boy and as a man, you respected women. The greatest lesson that my father ever taught me was that a woman is a man’s equal. He taught me that to degrade women in any way, be that physically, emotionally or otherwise was a most heinous act and it’s something that I’ve carried with me through my teens and into my twenties.

Which is why I find it alarming how many young men nowadays are consistently treating women (their partners or otherwise) like pieces of shit. Men the world over objectify women in the vilest ways and base their judgement on attributes that are only skin deep… I can already hear the rebuttals coming from some of you reading; that man is carnal by nature. And as such our basic instincts are animalistic and urge us to procreate and objectify. But unfortunately in this male’s opinion that piss-weak excuse went out the window centuries ago when man first decided to differentiate itself from the animal kingdom on an intellectual level by developing little things like cuneiform and the spoken word.

So where the fuck does some little piss ant get off thinking he has the right to talk down to a girl or demean her to his peers? We live in a world where women play an integral role in all facets of society, and to attempt to undermine their value based solely on their genetic makeup is about as open minded as saying that all Australian’s are beer swilling hillbillies, or that all African-American’s excel at basketball. What I’m talking about here is straight up sexism; I’m an honest guy, so if I think someone is a dick based on their personality or moral traits I have no problem with telling them regardless of their gender. No, what I’m saying is that I can’t stand the close minded bullshit from my fellow men that inspires comments about women belonging in domestic roles, or having a lower perceived worth or opinion based on the fact that they don’t have a set of nuts between their legs. But above all of this I have a particular distaste for men that objectify women in explicitly sexual manners.

That’s not to say that I’m a prude. I love a crude joke as much as the next person. And in many respects I’m your archetypical young man, I love and admire the female form, and am lucky enough to have found a woman who in my opinion is beyond desirable. Ask me what I think about my partner and I’ll tell you that she’s beautiful, that she’s sexy; but I will not enter into any discussion that demeans her on a sexual level. It’s a simple concept really… She’s my Mona Lisa; a piece of artwork that I stand back and admire. I’ll tell you that the Mona Lisa is beautiful; it’s a marvelous piece of art. But it’s not some cheap centrefold from a porn magazine. Meaning that I’m going to tell you how much I admire it, not how much I want to fuck it.

But could this be the problem society now faces? Have we taken our artworks, or women, who deserve to be put on pedestals and stripped back their worth and objectified them to a degree that they are now considered to be as valuable as nudie magazine? Is this mindset of carnal lust and our desire to blur the lines between art and sex what has lead us to the point where men view women as beneath them? The truth is that this theory may be partially to blame for my fellow man’s objectification of the female form. But unfortunately some of the blame does fall back onto the shoulders of women themselves for this conundrum that we see before us. You see, there’s an old saying that says behind every great man stands a great woman; which thanks to Laozi’s wonderful ying-yang theory would suggest that the opposite must also be true. Behind every chauvinistic fucking cunt stands a woman who for one reason or another is prepared to accept the degradation of her character by a human being with the below average emotional intelligence to match the below average size of his dick.

But regardless of how or why this sudden re-emergence of sexism has been allowed to enter my life I will say this: any man who demeans anyone based on their gender is a coward. Any man who feels that they are in some way superior to women due to their physical strength or misconception of their own importance as a half-witted fuck. And any man who wants to dispute any of this is more than welcome to let me know. Just be prepared that if you do so, you will get punched in the mouth.

The penny finally drops…

I have a little confession to make. It’s nothing too outlandish or perverse. It’s more of a simple fact that I’ve been neglecting to inform you of for a while now, and I’ve decided that it’s probably best that I come clean…

While I do study at University, up until two days ago I hadn’t actually stepped foot on campus for almost twelve months. Sadly I’m not one of those kids fresh out of high school that can live off of cask wine, water and two minute noodles; and therefore can forego entering the workforce in favour of their studies. I’m an average Joe with debts to pay who needs to work in order to survive, which unfortunately means that my studies often play second fiddle to my source of income.

Thanks to that crazy little thing called money I’m forced to complete my studies via correspondence. Or to be more specific: since my course isn’t actually offered as a correspondence degree, I am enrolled to attend lectures and tutorials. I’m just that name who is perpetually absent when the role is marked. It can be incredibly hard to maintain motivation this way. It’s often easy to simply forget about study when you aren’t actually attending lectures, and I’ve become quite skillful in the art of procrastination when it comes time to hit the books. But nevertheless I’m still plugging away at my degree with the hopes of actually completing it sometime in the next decade.

Thanks to my affliction of cynicism and urge to despise everything, I’ve always considered university to be a bit of a wank. And for a degree in creative writing it really is. How can an institution like a college, school, or university teach creativity? How can they realistically sit down and effectively measure the success of a course or degree based primarily around the inner thought processes of an individual? And if they are able to do so, how the fuck can they grade a story, poem, essay, or whatever on its creative merit? There’s simply too much room for subjectivity involved in the creative aspect of the course for it to ever be effectively managed by any one institution or individual. University in my eyes has always been a place for those of us who want to be teachers, or doctors, or engineers. And the only reason that I ever ventured into a course in creative writing was because I thought that it would help buff up my creative portfolio should my work ever reach the desk of a publisher.

But two days ago, two very strange things happened and suddenly I have changed my tune on the whole university ideal. It all started when around lunchtime at work when I checked my course program for one of my subjects and realised that I’d managed to mix up the due date of an essay, learning that it was actually due two days earlier than I had anticipated. Thankfully I’d completed the essay already and decided that I could simply drop off the assessment after work rather than post it in like I usually would. So, that evening at seven thirty, after a full day of work (and one of the most half-arsed workouts ever seen in a gym) I found myself trudging through the university campus for the first time in twelve months.

In my sweaty black t-shirt, basketball shorts, and runners I wasn’t exactly dressed for my triumphant return to campus. But nevertheless I raced across the sprawling lawns of the uni and cut through the maze of stone buildings, submitting my assessment in person. And there it was. Strange occurrence number one; I, Chris Nicholas, was actually at university. But that was just the beginning; my little endeavour onto campus still had one more surprise in store… With nothing else to do I began my walk back to the car park, once again weaving through the maze of stone before walking out across the sprawling well-manicured lawns that I’ve come to view as synonymous with my campus. And then, at that very moment, as cold grass crunched underfoot and the lights of the nearby sporting fields illuminated the dusk, the penny finally dropped and I understood why university’s offer creative writing degrees.

It’s not because they can teach creativity; in fact it’s often the exact opposite. A university lecturer or tutor’s mind is limited by their own creative impulses and anything outside of what their mind can perceive is considered to be foreign and frightening, or even wrong. No. Universities offer creative writing purely because they can provide a place of wondrous inspiration, filled with not only the great minds of the student and teacher alike, but also with an incredible beauty that truly has to be seen to be believed. They offer a place of limitless possibilities and inspiration that any writer worth their salt can draw upon to create brilliant literature.

The thought hit me like a freight train, causing me to take a few dazed steps before I finally stopped to take it all in. Here I was lost in my own thoughts for the thousandth time that day, thinking about a subject I’d pondered endlessly for three years, and suddenly a clear and concise thought had risen from the murky depths of my mind’s eye. I’d spent the last twelve months avoiding attending campus for the most ludicrous of reasons. I’d told myself that I hated the classrooms, the tutors, and the kids in my classes with purple hair, top hats and trench coats. When in reality the thing that I’d always hated about university was that I didn’t understand why I was there. I’d failed to understand the purpose behind my degree. I’d failed to see that there was more to what I was studying than just a course profile and a grade point average. My own inability to appreciate that something could offer more than what it appeared at face value had left me jaded and bitter.

Two nights ago I stopped and stood on the lawns of my university campus and breathed a heavy sigh of frustration, mixed with a twinge of hope as I stared out across the brilliance that learning institutions have to offer. I was frustrated at myself for leaving it so long between visits to an establishment that is costing me thousands of dollars to be a part of. But I was also hopeful that this new found affection for something I had detested for years might just see me actually turn up to my classes next semester. So with that I quickly jogged back to my car, climbed inside and drove off, staring back through my rear view mirror at an unlikely catalyst for a new found inspiration to write.

University & that slut called addiction

I think I’m suffering from some serious withdrawals from writing lately. I’m edgy, my sleeping patterns are out of whack, and I seem to be holding conversations with the various voices in my head more often than usual. It feels like forever since I have put pen to paper and crafted something imaginative to help quell my unrelenting impulses to create. But for once my lack of writing, and subsequent feelings of edginess aren’t coming from writers block; rather this is the end result of the fucking university degree I struggle so valiantly to complete.

Studying a degree in creative writing should mean that I spend the vast majority of my university life creating whimsical metaphors for the human existence, or reading through paperback after paperback produced by authors like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Orson Wells and so on. But instead I’ve spent the better part of the last two weeks reading through lecture notes on theories by Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, and fucking Moretti in preparation for an upcoming exam. It’s been a gruelling endeavour. Until now I’ve actually enjoyed my studies. But this… This has been torture.

So what have I learned through all this reading? What have I managed to retain from constantly devoting my time to such pieces? Well…. I’ve retained next to nothing. All I can tell you about the aforementioned names is that I now despise each and every one of them with a passion that would lend brilliantly to any manuscript. But despite my new found loathing of literary theory, I have managed to learn two things.

The first is that out of all of my time devoted to understanding the works of Marx I have managed to find just one single snippet of his writings enjoyable. It’s something that I found quite inspiring, and after trawling through so much work on literary criticism and critical theory, unearthing this diamond in the rough that has made the experience worthwhile. The second thing I’ve learned however has been more of a self-realisation and awakening; a buy-product of time spent toiling away at my studies. I’ve learned that I could not care less about the critical theory behind what, and why I write. All I know is that I love to do so and that is all that will ever matter to me.

The edginess? The lack of sleep? Those are the foreshadowing’s that I’m operating under the charms of that slut called addiction. When I don’t find the time to write I become like a junkie searching desperately for his next fix. I grow irritable and the spill over of my frustrations becomes evident in other aspects of my life. I become short with my peers and can seem disinterested in the world around me as I withdraw into my own imagination. As I write this I’m staring down the barrel of my last week of study for this university semester. I have nine days until my final assessment for the study period will be submitted and I can dive back into the writing that fuels me, rather than the drab critical theory laden bullshit I produce to pass assessments. I feel like a child waiting for Christmas morning, when the wait of advent is over and the presents finally arrive. My present will be the ability to return to writing what I want to again, but with each passing day the agonising wait for this semester to end seems to drag on forever. I’m growing edgier and more unstable with every passing moment; all I want is to throw caution to the wind and start producing something creative again.

I’m desperately waiting to slip back into my manuscripts and continue the development of characters I’ve come to hold very close to my heart. But in the meantime I just have to push through and finish out this university semester and take solace in the fact that I have managed to find that little quote from Marx that makes it all worthwhile. So in closing today, I’d like to leave you all with that quote. Read it, and interpret it as you see fit. Maybe you will, like me, see the beauty in Marx’s words. Or maybe you’ll gain absolutely nothing from it. Regardless, if it wasn’t for this single phrase, I don’t think I would have been able to survive the hellacious thirteen weeks that has been this semester.

As always, I promise to be in touch soon.

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point however is to change it.” – Karl Marx.