confessions of a moron
I want to talk to you, internet, though I'm not sure why. I suppose I have too many thoughts that are too strange to communicate to people in the proper way, or too dull.
Such as: How much I hate Alan Titchmarsh. How the mere thought of him morphs me into Phil Mitchell and longs for that fantastic fashion with which he flushed Ian Beale's head down a toilet. [I don't even watch Eastenders anymore. This is one of those aforemtioned thoughts that I apparently have a bizarre desire to express.] My hatred for Mr. Titchmarsh is probably best explained by his Desert Island Discs appearance where he explained that if only Hitler had been given some plants when he was young... Oh fuck.
No doubt this all stems from watching Parky tonight. For some reason I began contemplating my own arrogance, because there is no doubting it is there. What I find odd is that said arrogance is not really internalised. I think I'm brilliant, but I don't really. I think I am, like the majority, entirely pointless, and deeply strange, and without much merit in terms of the progression of our feeble species etc. I think I am brilliant from an unnerving viewpoint somewhere outside myself where I believe I should be brilliant. It's that perspective that tells me: No, you can't learn The Knowledge and become a black cab driver, and not just because of your understandable aversion to mopeds/the expense involved/the fact you'll end up becoming Travis Bickle.
This relates to university, I suppose, and its imminent return for one last year of formal education. There is a voice that tells me that even though I might not measure up to the intellecutal standards set by some of my peers, I am somehow better in some strange way - in some bullshit city way, perhaps, or in the detached attitude I have to almost everything. This leads to exclamations of my complacency with something like pride and a half-hearted belief that I will do fine. (Though I must add that this is not helped by the fact that I continue to slide upwards on a marking scale I don't fully understand, even if I still fail to express myself properly.) The main problem appears to be that university has passed me by almost entirely. Perhaps I have learnt; I have worsened and improved - though, again, mostly externally. I tell myself: this experience is most likely pointless, financially etc., so learn. And I have tried, in my own lame way, and I will try harder now time is finally running out. I think I do know that I will never have an opportunity like this again, and I certainly haven't had one before.
Though I still feel disengaged. Oh fuck, I think, I should've written for the uni paper or whatever it is that everyone else seems to do. But I lack something, and the closest explanation I can give is that I'm without the confidence to accompany my adopted arrogance. I guess this is what happens when you attend one of those unis: a public school uni, where the arrogance of others has been nurtured and encouraged whereas mine flounders to the point where I just long to be friends with Billie Piper. And, as such, they speak with a self-assurance that astounds me, whilst I occasionally offer a delinquent mumble that indicates my ability in scrimping baccy over my knowledge of the intricacies of Victorian Realism. And so on.
But then I think: hold on, surely I once had that confidence? When did it slip from me or did I just imagine it all along? I suppose it's easy in environments where you're precious, and teachers think: Let's not rock the boat unless yours truly's clearly fractious mental health disintegrates to the point where we'll no longer be guranteed that A. ... Irrelevantly, primary school was the most fun. By the time my memory starts, there was a fair handful of gentrification immigrants. I think it amused me, even then, to think of them with their extra-curricular tutorials and entrance exams to excel, and to know that I surpassed them anyway, and how irritated their charming parents must have been.
So, I head back to uni with a sense of vague embarrassment and premature loss - of potential perhaps. Which relates nicely to the piano, it seems. Which I miss, like a strange twitch I get sometimes walking down the street. I don't think I can play it anymore; I'd have to struggle to read music. I mean, I could never play properly, not the way it's supposed to be played, with a reverance, with a delicacy in touch when taught in earnest. I suppose it didn't help that I failed to learn, that a piano was just one of those random things that was picked up by my mother when a school closed down, and that I didn't care enough when I could. And now I'd be embarrassed to try, in the same way I can't quite bring myself to buy new strings for the shit guitar I was given in lieu of a nice acoustic. The piano is still at my dad's, but he wants to get rid of it to make from for the uber-classy big telly he intends to buy in the near future. I want to request it, pay for it to be shipped into an awkward place in my room in front of a stack of books or something, so I don't have to attempt to tap Take 5 on a table again, so I can see if I can bring it back somehow, quietly.
I was at my dad's on Thursday, and we ended up watching a bit of the BBC programme Who Do You Think You Are? - about celebrites investigating their family histories. It awakened some instinct in me to do the same. Though I am not a celebrity, and no-one cares, so I won't be receiving the BBC's valuable aid in indulging my whim. It's strange: I know some, but not quite enough, because so much of my parents' past seems to be shielded due to the weirdness and misery that lies within. I have a strange desire to expel it all, to speculate on the rest, but it's unfair. In a way, since I hardly know my family now, it seems like some distant, twisted story I'd pore over only for own intrusive gratification. Like an unauthorised biographer, or something, struggling with issues so diminished over a generation or so that I can barely grasp at them.
What is it that causes one to want to get in touch with one's roots (yuck)? I suspect my disease might be loneliness. Or, once again, detachment. Every time I listen to The Rat by The Walkmen, When I used to go out, I'd know everyone I saw/Now I go out alone, if I go out at all seems completely true. And it never is really, but still. I have bouts of suspicion about the idea of friends. I sometimes veer between convincing myself I have none, and telling myself: I don't need anyone anyway, in that shitty childish way. It's difficult, and I find myself not knowing what to say in the midst of major babbling. I think what I've noticed recently is how quickly time passes, how swiftly scenes seem to change, and I'm always one step behind, or ahead, or sideways. Or something. And I change so much - or at least my opionions change, irreversibly, sometimes.
Today, at my quaint little teaching job, I had the following conversation:
Child: You set me this, don't you remember.
Me: [Thinks: Of course not.] I'm getting old. My memory's going.
Child: Oh, you're not that old. Only twenties...
Me: How old?
Child: 28?
...
I think I have reached the age where it is no longer useful/flattering/at all pleasant for someone to assume you're noticably older than you are. Although I suppose even years ago it could be embarrassing.
Argh, argh, when to stop? Work to do, books to read... Finally, though, I've got to say that I was deeply disappointed by the end of the great John-Paul&Craig love in Hollyoaks. Very unsatisfactory. This is what happens when one person leaves a soap and another doesn't. But surely, just because Guy Barnet (Craig) is currently staggering his way to a dole queue near you, doesn't mean such a beautiful love story has to end with such a whimper...
Such as: How much I hate Alan Titchmarsh. How the mere thought of him morphs me into Phil Mitchell and longs for that fantastic fashion with which he flushed Ian Beale's head down a toilet. [I don't even watch Eastenders anymore. This is one of those aforemtioned thoughts that I apparently have a bizarre desire to express.] My hatred for Mr. Titchmarsh is probably best explained by his Desert Island Discs appearance where he explained that if only Hitler had been given some plants when he was young... Oh fuck.
No doubt this all stems from watching Parky tonight. For some reason I began contemplating my own arrogance, because there is no doubting it is there. What I find odd is that said arrogance is not really internalised. I think I'm brilliant, but I don't really. I think I am, like the majority, entirely pointless, and deeply strange, and without much merit in terms of the progression of our feeble species etc. I think I am brilliant from an unnerving viewpoint somewhere outside myself where I believe I should be brilliant. It's that perspective that tells me: No, you can't learn The Knowledge and become a black cab driver, and not just because of your understandable aversion to mopeds/the expense involved/the fact you'll end up becoming Travis Bickle.
This relates to university, I suppose, and its imminent return for one last year of formal education. There is a voice that tells me that even though I might not measure up to the intellecutal standards set by some of my peers, I am somehow better in some strange way - in some bullshit city way, perhaps, or in the detached attitude I have to almost everything. This leads to exclamations of my complacency with something like pride and a half-hearted belief that I will do fine. (Though I must add that this is not helped by the fact that I continue to slide upwards on a marking scale I don't fully understand, even if I still fail to express myself properly.) The main problem appears to be that university has passed me by almost entirely. Perhaps I have learnt; I have worsened and improved - though, again, mostly externally. I tell myself: this experience is most likely pointless, financially etc., so learn. And I have tried, in my own lame way, and I will try harder now time is finally running out. I think I do know that I will never have an opportunity like this again, and I certainly haven't had one before.
Though I still feel disengaged. Oh fuck, I think, I should've written for the uni paper or whatever it is that everyone else seems to do. But I lack something, and the closest explanation I can give is that I'm without the confidence to accompany my adopted arrogance. I guess this is what happens when you attend one of those unis: a public school uni, where the arrogance of others has been nurtured and encouraged whereas mine flounders to the point where I just long to be friends with Billie Piper. And, as such, they speak with a self-assurance that astounds me, whilst I occasionally offer a delinquent mumble that indicates my ability in scrimping baccy over my knowledge of the intricacies of Victorian Realism. And so on.
But then I think: hold on, surely I once had that confidence? When did it slip from me or did I just imagine it all along? I suppose it's easy in environments where you're precious, and teachers think: Let's not rock the boat unless yours truly's clearly fractious mental health disintegrates to the point where we'll no longer be guranteed that A. ... Irrelevantly, primary school was the most fun. By the time my memory starts, there was a fair handful of gentrification immigrants. I think it amused me, even then, to think of them with their extra-curricular tutorials and entrance exams to excel, and to know that I surpassed them anyway, and how irritated their charming parents must have been.
So, I head back to uni with a sense of vague embarrassment and premature loss - of potential perhaps. Which relates nicely to the piano, it seems. Which I miss, like a strange twitch I get sometimes walking down the street. I don't think I can play it anymore; I'd have to struggle to read music. I mean, I could never play properly, not the way it's supposed to be played, with a reverance, with a delicacy in touch when taught in earnest. I suppose it didn't help that I failed to learn, that a piano was just one of those random things that was picked up by my mother when a school closed down, and that I didn't care enough when I could. And now I'd be embarrassed to try, in the same way I can't quite bring myself to buy new strings for the shit guitar I was given in lieu of a nice acoustic. The piano is still at my dad's, but he wants to get rid of it to make from for the uber-classy big telly he intends to buy in the near future. I want to request it, pay for it to be shipped into an awkward place in my room in front of a stack of books or something, so I don't have to attempt to tap Take 5 on a table again, so I can see if I can bring it back somehow, quietly.
I was at my dad's on Thursday, and we ended up watching a bit of the BBC programme Who Do You Think You Are? - about celebrites investigating their family histories. It awakened some instinct in me to do the same. Though I am not a celebrity, and no-one cares, so I won't be receiving the BBC's valuable aid in indulging my whim. It's strange: I know some, but not quite enough, because so much of my parents' past seems to be shielded due to the weirdness and misery that lies within. I have a strange desire to expel it all, to speculate on the rest, but it's unfair. In a way, since I hardly know my family now, it seems like some distant, twisted story I'd pore over only for own intrusive gratification. Like an unauthorised biographer, or something, struggling with issues so diminished over a generation or so that I can barely grasp at them.
What is it that causes one to want to get in touch with one's roots (yuck)? I suspect my disease might be loneliness. Or, once again, detachment. Every time I listen to The Rat by The Walkmen, When I used to go out, I'd know everyone I saw/Now I go out alone, if I go out at all seems completely true. And it never is really, but still. I have bouts of suspicion about the idea of friends. I sometimes veer between convincing myself I have none, and telling myself: I don't need anyone anyway, in that shitty childish way. It's difficult, and I find myself not knowing what to say in the midst of major babbling. I think what I've noticed recently is how quickly time passes, how swiftly scenes seem to change, and I'm always one step behind, or ahead, or sideways. Or something. And I change so much - or at least my opionions change, irreversibly, sometimes.
Today, at my quaint little teaching job, I had the following conversation:
Child: You set me this, don't you remember.
Me: [Thinks: Of course not.] I'm getting old. My memory's going.
Child: Oh, you're not that old. Only twenties...
Me: How old?
Child: 28?
...
I think I have reached the age where it is no longer useful/flattering/at all pleasant for someone to assume you're noticably older than you are. Although I suppose even years ago it could be embarrassing.
Argh, argh, when to stop? Work to do, books to read... Finally, though, I've got to say that I was deeply disappointed by the end of the great John-Paul&Craig love in Hollyoaks. Very unsatisfactory. This is what happens when one person leaves a soap and another doesn't. But surely, just because Guy Barnet (Craig) is currently staggering his way to a dole queue near you, doesn't mean such a beautiful love story has to end with such a whimper...