My Cambridge letter was sent first class.
It was a notification that I didn’t have a place.
I can honestly say, without any hint of sarcasm, that I am happy about this: it simplifies my choices to a great degree: I now know for certain where it is that want to go, and (if the fates should allow) where it is that I shall go.
Tomorrow.
That date holds nothing but a test of the postal times of the Royal Mail to me: it is the date upon which the acceptance and rejection letters for places at Cambridge University colleges are sent out, but it won’t be until the Saturday of this week or Monday of next week that I find out whether the UK’s best (according to the Guardian) university is willing to stump up for first-class s for their applications or whether, as the case may well be, they hold possible students with a high enough level of contempt to send their letters via the slower service of plebian Second Class.
In all truth, that is all that this experience will hold for me: I have no interest as to the contents of this letter. I am completely indifferent. If I am rejected, it has no effect upon my university applications, other than the fact that I a can drop to a B in one of my subjects and still go to a university which offers me a wealth of possibilities possibly greater than those which could be offered to me by Cambridge: the loss in cache between the Cambridge degree and the (hopeful, aha) LSE degree would be negligible and I’d be equally as employable with either of the two unemployable degrees. If I get the place, I will (no doubt) be rather happy about it and drink myself to a state of merriment far beyond my years, but I doubt that it will change my plans much. I still feel that LSE would be my favourite.
Fuck the esteem which is conventionally invested in Oxbridge I want to have a life at uni, not just work. As much as students may say otherwise, it’s not the same experience in these dull, solely student and tourist oriented cities.
The Free Software Foundation, as part of their Defective by Design anti-DRM campaign, have undertaken something of a festive approach to their latest efforts: they are in the process of producing a ‘35 Days against DRM’ series of articles, no doubt a nod to the ubiquitously understood ‘12 Days of Christmas’. Whilst noble in and of itself, the entire effort falls down when they suggest that the most inanane of efforts be attempted in order to compaign against DRM: a boycott of the iTunes paid service. The concern for DRM being a niche concern as it is, what do the FSF really hope that this call to arms of the very small number of interested parties that it has within very limited demographics can accomplish? The best that they can hope for this that MC Chris’ label realises that sales have died for a day, and such niche artists may move to a DRM-free distribution method. This won’t change anything worthwhile, unfortunately: the biggest digital music distributor in the world won’t be held back by the readers of the 300,000th most well-read (according to Alexa) website in the world - the fact is simply that most people don’t care about these limitations.
It really does pain me to say this, especially with my fervent distaste for DRM methods, but it’s here to stay for the time being: every new medium has its own DRM methods built in, be it HDTV or Blu-ray. Of course, the ingenuity of those who would not wish to be encumbered by such draconian restrictions on their use of the media which they have purchased will always eventually triumph over the efforts of the media conglomerates: just as BD+ was cracked in a matter of months the first time, it will be again with this new revision.
I’m my three or so years of interest in photography, I have never fully understood the attraction of any of the traditionally ‘lomographic’ cameras: be it the Holga, Diana+ or the Lomo LC-A mentioned in the title. To an extent, I can understand the Diana’s and the Holga’s appeal: it’s cheap and it’s something a little different to have fun with - the fun to be had lies in the cheap construction, and that’s the entire point of the ownership of such cameras. The LC-A, however, is a different beast entirely.
With worldwide distribution rights bought from LOMO plc, the Lomographic Society possesses the monopoly over a product which was designed to be a ‘people’s camera’ in the Soviet Union. This camera which was designed to be ubiquitous is sold for £180+, and what do you get? A metal bodied though still cheaply-made and refurbished USSR throwback designed to be faulty. The fact that the vignetting of the lens is marketed as a benefit is completely and utterly offensive to anyone with an sound understanding of optics: the entire point of having a frame to fill with a lens is that the frame is filled, not cut off by bad optical design.
As for the concept of people taking snapshots with crap cameras: that is something I have no problem with. The lomography lot, however, have found a marvellous way to market their overpriced wares: a set of ‘golden’ rules for their practice; a set of rules which by their very nature require you to spend more money on film. And of course, the only way to get the ‘best’ results is to buy their heinously overpriced expired film; because, you know, the light leaks just aren’t enough for completely and utterly degrading the picture which you are taking.
Lomography’s Golden Rules
I hope to God that someone from the Lomographic Society is reading this and just thinking ‘yeah, he got us right.’
Johnny Whitney said it best on The Blood Brother’s track Devastator, from the album Crimes (which, by the way, as an album is brilliant): ‘everybody needs a little devastation.’ Our reasons for needing this dereliction may differ, but we all still nonetheless need it. Myself? I require a sense of crushing morbidity and something which could be termed as a self-oppression to keep me motivated: to make me carry on striving for whatever fatuous desire has taken hold of me that given day; week; month - I always operate better with a little bit of sadness in my mind. Some need it for some sort of vindication of their efforts: if all is not to go to plan, something determinable as ‘devastation’ may help them to see that the efforts weren’t in vain per se: something came of them - of course, this makes sense: it’s a way of anticipating failure and a symptom of the inevitability of the decay of flesh; the feeling that all earthly actions have to play a part in some design in order that they not be completely and utterly redundant. Both of these are human reactions: coping mechanisms.
Others, and these are the type which (yes, which - I can’t consider them any more than sacks of flesh: nothing ‘personable’ about them) I can’t stand, need their devastation to help them forget about their pasts: they need it as a distraction. These people will hyperbolise every little event in their shallow little lives to make out that every action which they undertake is somehow self-derelicting and how every action undertaken by others unto them is with the sole end of derelicting them. These are the people who repress their less favourable memories and instead choose to focus on their abundant ‘negatives’ they fathom from the recesses of clearly idle minds; rather than dealing with the aforementioned true negatives. These are the people who make the temporary infinite and strip the temporal of any concept of meaning, no matter how fleeting. These people cling onto their fallacies to prevent themselves from having to deal with their undesirable realities: these people relentless lie to themselves and have no way to stop themselves.
These people become their own sense of self-imposed devastation. These people devastate me.
Door underarm, and with a new lock in what must have been amongst the flimsiest of plastic bags I have ever had the misfortune to have been given, I made my way back to the car in sleet commensurate to the mood at hand: the precipitation a mix of the particulate excitement of liquids and the more reserved decorum of the pseudo-solid masses therein; it perfectly followed my fear of and parallel longing for what this intruder may have been. A kindred spirit, perhaps? More realistically, just an opportunistic vandal with a penchant for underwear. I kept on coming to the same conclusion as the lock burred its way through the fraying strands of the bag constituent of environmentally-friendly, but useless for the purpose for which it was designed, biodegradable condensation polymers: was too well organised for an opportunist; it was intended. I really did have a playmate.
Another car journey which was to prove all too long: my hands trembled with the intense excitement of a new player in my game; one with the understanding of what I was, with no reservation in their acceptance of what I was. It was the same feeling which had filled me from the initial realisation, and had begun to consume me to the point of a yearning for this stranger; this wonderful stranger.
Arrival, and the fitting of the new door began. Misplaced screws widened drilled holes for hinges; hinges which were thus to be fitted in a manner not parallel to the doorframe; a door which was further to be fitted to the hinges in a manner not straight - a single mistake catalysed by a sense of complete and utter confusion; of excitement; of longing; of sheer uncontrollable desire for the possibility of understanding leading to each further step’s accuracy being limited: it was a microcosm of the nature of life itself. How workmanship meant nothing to me, though: I needed evidence of my instinct, proof of my fellow traveller on a path infrequently followed. Lock fitted; door closed; barrel turned: tight and a little too much force was required to, but it would do. It would have to do.
Just as I went to return to my own flat, Tanya called me in that impenetrable husk of hers:
“I apologise for my rudeness earlier: you’ve been so helpful. Come in for a drink.”
A flash of the cleanest of white hopes appeared to me: as she prepared my drink, I would have at least the smallest of opportunities to search for the evidence I so desperately craved. Naturally, my acceptance of her offer was inevitable, and I walked into her dank, damp, unkempt ‘abode’, if such a lavish term could be applied seriously to such a place. The most depressing part of all of this is that she’d actually cleaned up: clothes now had homes once again, and her personal order was restored; but the flat as a whole was still an example of the most candid of fetid homesteads. It was, in a way, something perfectly reflective of her: all of these flats were sold as pristine showhomes, furnished and tidy; the very ideal of yuppie perfection. Tanya had had her days of beauty and her youth of consumerist fantasy; but she became bitter and disaffected with the entire matter. The smells emanating from her home had gradually increased in the extent of their appalling vigour as this process had continued: watching her intrigued me, as her physical decay really did occur in perfect accordance with her mental. Once full cheeks had diminished into the sunken cheekbones of a starving whore; just as any sense of my respect for her privacy was to degenerate into flagrant mooching.
She retained that ever-so elegant casual air, even in spite of her overt disturbance. She looked jaundiced now: her previous grey shading making way for a yellow accentuated by the warm cast of thirty-pence lightbulbs. Lock shattered; door splintered: her mood was made instantly explicable by the drama played out by her surroundings.
“Wha… what’s happened?”
Of course, my lack of aptitude in the perception of the painfully obvious had not failed me here: it was startlingly apparent that her flat had been broken into; her drawers rummaged through; and her belongings strewn everywhere, latching onto whatever would catch them. Jumpers on the hung paintings, coatstand and ridiculously oversized television; one pair of jeans on the bedpost and several others strewn across the floor with a perceptible lack of care; but the underwear was far more orderly in its relocation. That isn’t to say that it was neatly laid out in folded piles, but there was far more to it than the pseudo-random launching of clothing in all directions. It was just women’s clothes; women’s clothes following what could almost be diffusion patterns, with not concentration being the factor in where everything moved to, but rather the proximity of pieces of clothing to genitalia: it was the vandalism of the sexually frustrated.
This seemed… familiar. Memories came back to me. This reminded me of myself: a focus on the clothes, with a certain care paid to the more personal of garments. He was undressing her with clothes off to begin with: the clothes which come off first had been flung furthest. Could it be that I had someone close to my heart to close to my home?
“What do you think happened? Someone’s broken into my home and destroyed any sense of order which I had in my fetid homestead.”
Taking into account her complete and utter lack of understanding of (or will to use) colloquialisms, English being an unfortunate second language in her eyes, she sounded quite impassioned and somewhat annoyed at my question.
“Is anything missing?”
“Well, no; but that’s not the point.”
“Don’t fret. I’ll fix your door and you can get to getting things back in order.”
She hadn’t noticed. She hadn’t noticed the order to her chaos: I may still have the chance of finding a new playmate, if not a protegé voyeur if the sloppiness of this operation was anything proportional to his inexperience in his, our art.
Woodworking never was a strength of mine, so the concept of any repair of the door was out of the question; but the drive to Focus for a new door and lock was more than enough of an excuse to contemplate what had happened and what it meant for me: if I was right, I was no longer alone. I no longer had to hide my more socially reprehensible act. I no longer had to act alone: I could gain an enabler in my activities; someone to facilitiate and inspire me. The premature yet inevitable splintering of rotting lignin and cellulose had afforded me such a possibility in opportunity.
This was not down to chance: this was down to some wonderful, divine cause.
Cambridge: interviews done, waiting to hear back.
London School of Economics: conditional offer; AAB.
York: conditional offer; AAB.
Durham: no response yet.
Edinburgh: no response yet.
I am so terribly impatient and will take any rejection very personally.
A botched installation of a light fitting sheds its red-filtered light over this entry: my entry always to be accompanied by the elegant paroxysm of irises contracting and relaxing relentlessly to find their new area of comfort in this weakest of electric lighting. Polyvinyl chloride trays reflect varying hues and saturations of reds back at me, to gradually shift into focus when my eyes eventually adapt to these new surroundings. Everything in this room is unnatural, forged by the hand of man: perfect in its inorganic nature; perfectly synoptic of this room’s purpose.
6 o’clock comes, and my head is back in the office: 15 minutes of work lost to the wondrous siren song of the careless fancy desired such that it approached trance. The return to the reality of my still being and hour and a half from my dimly lit refuge hits me with a force which could only be surmised as ‘crushing’. I leave; I had to leave: the journey is all that now matters. Home is all that matters, and it’s close to a crippling hunger at this moment. Never mind: right turns and traffic lights will distract me from longing for the comforts of home.
Time: that inalienable but oh-so human of constructs. Arbitrary measures of quantities which are not real; quantities which just measure that passage of events in the grand scheme of things: a second is nothing real; a second is an idea. Time just makes things seem further away: there are six traffic lights on the way home, each of which could hold me up for a maximum of thirty seconds: that’s three minutes, bringing my total journey time up to ninety-three minutes, assuming the best of conditions otherwise. One hundred and eighty seconds, essentially wasted. Pointless. To be quickly forgotten. Why can’t people move faster? Why can’t people have the common sense to look before crossing? Why can’t people take a little risk?
If I didn’t measure time, things would just take as long as they took. Things would be simple. Things would be more relaxed: the distinction between haste and speed would be an empty one.
To my delight, everything goes well; and I’m outside home in what is probably a personal best time: it’s seven twenty-five in the evening. Tanya, The Russian Neighbour, is waiting in our shared hallway: my mind races as to work out what it is that she wants, in spite of my all-consuming desire to be inside my apartment, viewing the end result of my work. She pulls me to one side in that typical way in which she always does: the sidewards head-tilt causing her fringe to fall from her eyes, an action performed in unison with a purr always hinting of a faux-desperation. She is a manipulator if nothing else; but her calibre with regard to this is something that is truly incapable of being criticised.
“Hey.”
It wasn’t just the purr which sounded desperate anymore: she looked frail, almost grey in spite of basking in the throw of this dreadful tungsten lighting: even the warm colour cast of the light was insufficient to put even the slightest of colour on the ever sagging skin under her cheekbones; the most gaunt of cheekbones. It was impressive to see this strong woman reduced to a wreck: stress truly is a destroyer of man and woman alike.
Colours splayed out over the walls: transiently going from being merged in an aesthetic symbiosis to pulling apart from one another with all of the grace of a back-alley separation of conjoined twins. Back and forth: these two binary states, each with their own infinitesimally small graduations far too gradual for any change to be noticed in small amounts; only the leaps from blended colours to distinct separations were discernible.
It reminded me of nothing but that experiment my physics teachers did with cellophane and a projector to amaze the more simple-minded, more blackbird-like students amongst my peers: they’d take this sheet of cellophane and rip it in front of the light to show the effects of this increased stress upon the material on its refractive properties. There would always be a point where the plastic ceased to be clear upon the screen and the yellow, red and green coronae would appear in their resplendent glory instantly; without no prior warning as to what was about to occur. ‘Ooh’s and ‘ahh’s accompanied this demonstration, of course, to be met with my almost trademark cynical sneer.
It wasn’t so much the opening and closing of the shutters which was bothering me: it was the separation of the colours of light. Perfect single-coloured bars were formed with each time that the shutters were closed: the red, green and yellow filtered strobes ceased to combine to create an elegantly off-white light on the wall of the office; each colour bled its diffracted light to me through usage-weathered polypropylene. Everything was unbalanced; unsymmetrical; unnatural.
The shutters opened once again, and I was bathing in my preferred pleasant beige light; capable of doing the glamorous office dogwork for which someone of my abilities and qualifications is so wonderfully suited. You know; filing, photocopying, even, on good days, the unparalleled glory of post sorting: those tasks designed for the graduate with First Honours from a top-ten university. I suppose that this is what I get for taking an Arts degree, though: a lack of definition in the job market and an overwhelming predilection for the subjective.
Just as the light split into its constituent parts once again, my mind mirrored its change in state: my surroundings were no longer my mental habitat. My thoughts splintered into the realms of home: the opening of the kitschly rotting door bearing it’s gift of that unusual scent which could only be defined as that of my home; that combination of the natural smells of the innumerable amount of fruit and the chemical smells emitted so strongly from lazily unclosed bottles of ammonium thiosulphate happening in such a small studio apartment, whilst overbearing, was mine and mine alone. Esters meeting ammonia - the perfect example of the concept of neutrality: the sweet meeting the foul. This was my haven; my sanctuary.
The laziest of partition walling split that tiny room into two: a single piece of chipboard with a five foot, six inch ‘doorway’ cut into it. Thick black drapes hung from the top of this hole-in-the-wall: the perfect protector of my little voyeuristic antics from the derelictor of them that light would be. This was my true workplace.
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