Afternoon everyone. How’re you all doing?
A post really just for the sake of it today, and because I’m bored. The title: inspired by the Guns n’ Roses song November Rain, but because it’s October naturally I changed it. But it is raining though, and has been all weekend – pretty miserable really. So currently I’m sat in the newly revamped York St John University library on one of the supposedly brand new computers, which, will not allow me to access Facebook (but I can still use Twitter, so all is not lost). I’m not actually doing any studying at the moment having just finished a three hour lecture on the anthropology of religion, I’m waiting for a friend. 55 minutes to go…
This might be a long one then…
I don’t really know where to begin, or even what to talk about! So it might not be that long a post after all. I suppose you’re probably wondering why I’m bothering to write at all if I don’t have a clear topic in mind – all I’m doing is wasting your time (and perhaps mine too), writing words on a screen that have no coherent meaning or purpose. But does everything have to have a purpose? I’m not going to get all philosophical on you, don’t worry. Truth of the matter is, writing for me does have a purpose; in the same way that crafting music, art or dance releases some people, writing frees my mind and takes me out of ‘it’ for a short time – whatever ‘it’ is.
I guess as well, given the fact I’m feeling quite isolated at the moment, writing to a potentially infinite audience makes me feel not so alone. The fact that I’m talking to ‘someone’, even if it is just myself as I recite the words I’m typing before me, can have great therapuetic power. A number of people ask me why I feel it necessary or even appropriate to ‘bear my soul online’, to open up and lay my feelings, thoughts and emotions for the entire world to see. Why do I seemingly “seek attention” from those around me or indeed those I’ve never met? The answer is actually quite simple. It goes back to this feeling of isolation.
The computer screen and keyboard to me, is what the notepad and pen is to the songwriter. The musician expresses their feelings through a medium which is shared with an audience, the only difference between them and me is that I don’t posses the artistic gifts required to be creative and clever with language as to ensure my emotions are wrapped up in cryptic metaphor and euphemism. My ‘music’ comes in the form of long-winded blog posts; emptying my mind of whatever’s going on in there for a potential audience to take notice of. No, my ‘music’ isn’t always entertaining (if at all ever!) but the process of attempting to articulate my mind goes a long way to helping.
Sorry…went off on a bit of a tangent there. Just to sidetrack for a moment if I may…I’m having an interesting discussion with a coursemate at the moment, about the ordination of gay and lesbian clergypeople. Given the fact I’m currently attempting to set up a debating society within the Theology and Religious Studies department at university, I think it would be quite a good topic to begin with; what do you think?
Well it’s been 25 minutes since I started this post and to be quite frank I’ve not gotten very far. Perhaps because I’ve been editing as I’ve gone along and been periodically checking Twitter to further my debate with the wonderful Cherish Bere…but, I’ve sort of run out of steam. I started at 17.05 and let my mind and thoughts control my fingers. I then stopped, read over what I’d typed and made it a little more PC shall we say (politically correct for those of you who thought I was reffering to a computer).
So now I’m probably going to start my new book, Fatherland by Robert Harris; it’s about a world in which Hitler won the Second World War so it should be an interesting read. Having just finished his novel The Ghost I can say that I might just have a new favourite author…not that I ever had a favourite author to begin with, apart from Dick King Smith when I was in primary school – The Hodgeheg was always my favourite. Anyway, enough from me. I shall leave you in peace (if you haven’t already gotten bored and gone back to doing whatever it was you were doing before you starting reading this).
Enjoy the rest of your Monday.
Love to you.
And you.
And you.
But most of all, to you.