Why Not?

Automatic writing exercise.

I'm staring at a blank page. There should be words scattergunned all over this piece of paper right now, seeing as I've been sat here for the last five minutes with this pen in my hand. But no- it is now only, what, fifty percent covered? And does any of it mean anything on this page? No, I didn't think so.

Why not?

A fellow writer, a man from Scotland, once wrote: “There are days when extracting words from my brain is akin to setting upon a paperclip with a JCB. Or eating soup with a fork.”

But lo- look what I have! Boom! I'm on side two! A bit of pressure can help you produce, erm, anything.

Jesus. I only hope this noteboook was made from a sustainable forest. I'm imagining a lobby of displaced and very literate squirrels stumbling upon my scribblings.

“Well, that's just great, Matt,” the alpha squirrel says. “I get booted out of my tree so my home can be turned into a giant pile of Sainsbury's notebooks, and this is what you use it for? I'm appalled. If you were writing a journalistic, informative piece about the depletion of Britain's woodland, I'd be at least sympathetic. But no. This is just random.”

Well, you have a point, squirrel. There's nothing in this notebook to suggest it is recycled. It's apparently not even made from a sustainable forest. But that doesn't mean I'm going to stop writing on it. I have the remainder of my thoughts to shovel out and dump on this page, like it or not. After all... why not?

My Little Eye and Snowcake- Meeting the Director

'He stops for one second and he's totally overwhelmed by how big the world is and how small and unimportant he is. And as he turns around, we see his face look to the sky. And he says, very quietly, so that no one can hear him: "Dazlious". '
-Linda Freeman (Sigourney Weaver), Snow Cake

I've just skimmed through the TV guide to notice that the nerve-jangling thriller My Little Eye is on ITV1. I'm watching and typing- I've got the mirror next to my monitor so it reflects the TV behind me.

When are we talking here...? I think it was 2006 when I met the film's director, Marc Evans. The Scotsman was a guest at the screening of his then-new film, Snowcake, at Manchester's Cornerhouse Theatre. Snowcake stars Sigourney Weaver as an autistic mother who takes traveller Alan Rickman under her wing after he is in a devastating car crash. It's a real tear jerker and a world away from the claustrophobic tension of My Little Eye. I recommend both movies.

After the screening, I found Mr. Evans in the bar downstairs. He signed my Snowcake flyer that I picked up in reception. He also signed the leaflet that came inside the My Little Eye DVD; I thought I'd bring it just for the signature. The leaflet is back in the DVD and safe on the shelf.

Check these films out if you haven't already. Much respect to Marc Evans.

 

Rules of Haiku

I occasionally dabble in haiku, an ancient Japanese form of poetry. It's supposed to be about nature, but balls to such restrictions. You find haikus can be about anything these days. To explain how to do it, here's a haiku... about haiku.

Five syllables first
Seven syllables follow
End it with five more.

Well. Isn't that the most evocative, heartfelt thing you ever read. Maybe we should stick with nature-based haiku after all. God, I was bored when I came up with that.

Frantic Scribble

"I would often black out for 10 hours at a time only to realise that 10 more pages had been scrawled out."
-Bret Easton Ellis on writing American Psycho

The following is an exercise that I was given at a writers' group at my local library. With a set time (maybe two minutes), we were to write as fast as we could about anything. Here's what I scraped out of my brain and dolloped onto the page:

I was lifting weights when my mum called me down. Exercise, like writing, is something I try to do nearly every day. The reason? My writing mind is as much of a muscle as you will find on every other part of my body- it needs to be worked daily. If it isn't worked, it will shrink.

I put the dumbells down and when I got downstairs, my mum handed me the Chron. It was open on the Groups page. She'd found an advert for a writing group in Lees Library, just down the road from me.

I showered, dressed and darted out of the house. Opportunities like this must be grabbed by the throat. Hesitation must not hinder me.

As with a few groups I've visited, I was about half the age of the other members- and I was the only guy. Not exactly the clientele I should be marketing my drug-riddled, paranoid writing to. But, I thought, they might be interested in the poem that Aphelion Magazine took from me.

Who knows.

So now I sit in Lees Library, eating chocolate-chip cookies that one of the ladies brought in, and forming erratic, mostly meaningless sentences.

Afterwards, the group coordinator told us that the purpose of this was to get used to hand-writing words and to develop a rhythm- a counter to writer's block, in effect. To keep the words flowing. This two-minute challenge seems like a good way of starting a bout of writing, whether you're planning on a one-off haiku or full-blown, tolkien-length saga. I didn't revolutionise the world of literature, but I liked the pressure of it.

Try it. Step away from the keyboard, pick up the pen, set the countdown on your battered 2007 Sony Ericsson (What? Only I still own one of these?) and... write.

Jaqui Smith's Husband

“'Did I bring the porno?' What to I look like? Some kind of 'non-porno-bringer'?”
-Peter Griffin, Family Guy

It has been nearly a year since the husband of Home Secretary Jaqui Smith was caught using her expense to pay for two pay-per-view porn movies for her husband. Since then, the MPs' expenses scandal has deepened and deepened.

I've already mentioned in 'Human Nature', a previous blog, that greed is intrinsic to human character and that our MPs are just like every other normal person- they'll take what they can when they can.

There was something about this particular expenses claim, however, that didn't sit right.

The Daily Mail quoted Ms. Smith as saying, “I am sorry that, in claiming for my internet connection, I mistakenly claimed for a television package alongside it.”

What?

This is the equivalent of writing a cheque to your gas supplier and “accidentally” missing a digit off.

The majority of Britain was angrily asking, “Why are my taxes being used so that Jaqui Smith's husband can have a wank?” I, however, wondered who actually pays for porn these days.

Ms. Smith had already claimed for her internet connection, which is usually an up-front monthly bill these days. Did neither she, nor her husband, realise how much porn was available online, right at their, um, fingertips? No matter how weird or bland his tastes, he'd find his niche on the net: the internet caters for a wide range of tastes. Or so I believe.

What her husband did was ultimately pretty normal- the adult entertainment industry is the biggest industry in the world. Lots of people do the same thing as him. I just don't know why Ms. Smith used a medium she'd have to pay for separately in the first place, let alone claim for it on her parliamentary expenses. And why didn't anyone else ask this?

It just goes to show how up-to-date our MPs are with technology, society and the world. Why is it that the higher that people climb through the ranks of politics, the less of a grip they seem to have on reality?

Pressure

My back is against the wall, more bills than money to pay...
When I need relief I pray
- The Pressure, Sounds of Blackness


Early 2004. I was in third year at uni, desperately trying to catch up on the mountains of media coursework that had piled up. Something had gone wrong- I'd hesitated when starting the work, convinced I was going to fuck it up. And I was right. My assignments were laid out in ways that didn't help- headings were jumbled, practical projects were on hold while I caught up and team-members were getting impatient. Before Christmas there had seemed so little to do- then a few months down the line, I had a world of work to plough through and little idea of how to finish it all.

How was I supposed to tell a comedy club how to utilise their advertising budget? How could I have advised the heads of ITV on how to improve Parkinson when the talk show moved over from the BBC?

I'm just a simple man. After two-and a half years at uni, I started to wonder why I was there. But I was no defeatist. I would finish that degree.

Hence, I sat back down at the computer, the gold background blurring the contrast of the meagre 500 words that I'd managed to knock out. I could stare at the screen longer that way. I needed to finish this, fast. That's why I'd been living on 6 hours sleep a night for the past two weeks, jamming chocolate and Red Bull down my throat every evening.

A lecturer of a separate module had already snapped at me earlier that week, playing the tough industry veteran. I owed him some overdue work as well. Out of spite, I worked on something else to get his face out of my mind. Only this module was also perplexing me. Something about an inventor. He's made a microphone. We are required to advise him on how to protect his invention legally. We're studying media, not product design. This won't relate to our future remotely. I wonder how much of this course actually will.

My hands were moving over the keyboard again. There was an extra distraction of sorts, but something I might not feel if I wasn't so busy. Media legality slipped out of my mind as I stumbled to the toothpaste-stained sink at the other end of the room. The light above the mirror illuminated my reflection, my worn face obscured by months of fluoride-spit and grime. I forgot work for a moment and thought, Why didn't I clean here?

A growl of sorts responded to this, right from the centre of me. Then I blew chunks of pizza into the sink, strands of bread base congealed, hanging in saliva. My vision obscured behind watery eyes and my knees gave way.

Leaning with my head on a cupboard door, I tried to think of what I'd eaten and when. I couldn't place anything, but I'd not been hungry so I must have had pretty regular meals. It could only be one thing, I figured.

That was the most pressure I had ever put myself through. The right amount can get people to achieve all sorts- just look at how technology can leap forward during wartime. Without the Nazi's efforts to dominate the globe, America wouldn't have invented the atomic bomb. Britain wouldn't have developed the cavity magnetron for anti-submarine aircraft, and eventually the microwave oven. I got my degree in the end, so there was a certain sense of macabre logic to the insane graft that I put in- and the insane bullshit I put up with- even if it didn't pay off in the long-run. I'm still poor as fuck and the outdated equipment wasn't used in the industry then, let alone now. At the time, I was immensely pissed off with the situation. If the course had been laid out better, I would have had more to do in the first semester and less to sever my nerves with in the second.

Despite all this, I couldn't help feeling a sinister, nihilistic sense of enjoyment from what I put myself through. Lecturers wanted this work off me, or I wouldn't graduate. Today, in an attempt to get my writing noticed, I am the master and the slave. I write when I want and I stop when I'm tired. But how alive am I feeling? When was the last time I felt the constant thumb of pressure? And how much quicker can I get work written, and hopefully published, If I play the master a little more?

Well. Let's say I choose March as the month to test this. By the first of April I want to have written every day. I've got around 20 projects that I started and never finished. I'll polish off as many as I can. I never work to targets as I never have any idea of how long anything will take me, whether it's writing or driving or anything else. My only real target is to feel that burden until the 1st April, that daily guilt that I carried every day towards the end of third year at uni. Back then I had to work, otherwise- what was I doing?

Add to this the fact that I am using up leave and am in work for one day a week, for the next month. April 1st is the date that the annual year changes over, so I had to take my leave now or I would have lost it. Hence, the time that I have to do this should allow for immense wordage.

As Joe Cabot from Reservoir Dogs would say... Let's go to work.

Audacity

“With audacity one can undertake anything, but not do everything.”
-Napoleon Bonaparte

I've just received a letter from my old university asking me if I'd like to join many other graduates by donating money to help more students get through their degrees.

“For one nursing student, this cash injection has put a roof over her head,” it says.

Over the years, I've become more and more bitter about my Higher Education experience. I'm aware that I'm quite privileged to have been able to go, but I feel, in retrospect, that the decision was a rash one. I am £9,000 in debt because of my university course. This is a small figure compared to the average £12,000 debt for most 2005 graduates (my graduation year) according to The Institute for Education Policy Research.

I'm pretty appalled that The University of Salford has the nerve to send me this letter. I'm sure many other graduates feel the same. However, I can already imagine the university heads' response to this complaint. They would tell me that it was my choice completely to go to university. Nobody made me do it, and I knew I'd have a large debt to pay off at the end of it. They are right. I just did it because, at the time, it seemed like the right thing to do. What chance did I have of getting a media job with a Merit-level GNVQ?

Universities are businesses. They are there, primarily, to make money. I was a customer, and I paid for three and a half years to get a 2:1 in Professional Broadcast Techniques. Granted, I grafted my arse off to get it. But it would be nice if it was actually worth more than the paper the certificate was printed on. What did I want at the end of all this? I cannot answer that question, to this day. Here's why.

Britain's UCAS system (University and College Admissions System, I think- their website doesn't define this) allows people to apply for various universities at the same time as every other applicant: at the start of their final year at college or 6th form. This was certainly the point at which I went wrong with my adult education. Why apply for a university course when you are knee-deep in a college course? I was half way through this course when I was encouraged to start filling out the form. I was in the middle of one of many heavy modules, consisting of a 2500-word report, a practical project, research and an evaluation. And my grades were slipping. I was too busy to be thinking about the next step.

Let's imagine that my college course, a GNVQ in Media, was less work-intensive than it was. Let's say I had more time to think about my future. I would perhaps have realised that it was still too early to be thinking about my next step. I needed to know what my strengths and weaknesses were- and this couldn't be done with only 50% of my grade marks available.

Here's one proposal for the government, who are ultimately responsible for the growing numbers of people going through HE: force students to take a gap year between Further and Higher Education. Insist that UCAS applications are only sent by students who have completed their Further Education courses.

And here's a proposal for Salford University- and every university. Only put on a course if it will realistically prepare applicants for work in that field. My Professional Broadcast Techniques course taught virtually much nothing about the techniques of broadcasting anything professionally. Throughout the majority of the course we were making pre-recorded programmes. This is Media, in a way, but not Broadcasting. Broadcasting is defined as “to transmit (programmes) from a radio or television station.” I presented on a radio broadcast once, but using a university organisation's Restricted Service Licence. It wasn't integral to the course. Also, the equipment we used on the course was too old for industry use. So even if I wanted to be, say, a cameraman, I would have learned everything on a format that was outmoded. How similar would it be to industry-standard technology? Who can say?

Add to this the breadth of the media industry. If you want to work in TV, why study a course that includes radio modules? I didn't know what I wanted to do, but it was difficult to focus when such a variety of modules were on offer. Variety may be good, you might say. Yes it is, at Further Education level. Variety is vital then. It is the opportunity for students to recognise their strengths. But at Higher Education, you should be focussed on the line of work that you want to go into at the end of it all. Unlike a course tailored for one line of work, an unfocussed course ultimately won't help the students.

I have one last gripe. At college, I grafted consistently for two years. The modules were work-heavy and intensive. Before every deadline, everyone exhausted themselves to be ready in time. After one deadline was met, we were given another module brief. I finished the course with a decent grade and went to university with no idea what was in store.

In contrast, not only was the university course content too broad, it was also drastically mismanaged from the start. When I got to uni, the workload was so light, so unlike my intensive college course, that defied belief. In first year I was given virtually no assignments. First-year students all over the campus, each year, were in the same boat. Nobody had anything to do. In second and third year, the work fluctuated between sparseness and having six imminent deadlines. Work was always dumped on us in one giant heap. Towards Christmas in third year, I was under so much stress that I would vomit into the sink in my bedroom.

So no, University of Salford. I would not like to donate a portion of my meagre insubstantial wage back to you, after everything you've taken off me. However, even though I make a pittance and even though I am normally an extremely tight man, I still give £5 a month to Oxfam, to help people a hell of a lot poorer than any of your potential students.