15th - 23rd April 2015

15 - 16th

Sometimes these pages look better on photograph than they do in real life.  In the instance of this particular blog entry then this is the case.  The situation is very much damaged.  My hands have a very ambivalent approach to the creation of art in these pages.  My hands have an ambivalence in their approach to anything at the moment.  The word ambivalent never means ambivalent.  Ambivalence isn't ever used correctly.  When people use the word ambivalent then they are rarely ambivalent.  They are often passive aggressively stating that they are ambivalent in order to cause some kind of hurt or to cover the fact that they care but are unable to engage with that caring.  I have decided this so for the purpose of this narrative it must be true.  I wonder if there is a self aware/ironic emoticon that I could start to make use of.

17th - 19th

The first weekend in a long time that I've spent indoors by myself (for the most part).  Managed to attain a new pattern contract and also pop out for a potentially traumatic adventure on Sunday morning.  Thankfully it wasn't traumatic.  I am hoping for more sunny weekends indoors away from socialization rotations.

20th - 21st

This is interesting... and might explain why boastful creative statements need to be shielded with some form of irony and/or self awareness... (insert self aware and/or ironic protection here)

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante

I'm wondering if perhaps many of us are afflicted with some sort of "self aware" and "ironic" conditioning that is endemic of our culture at this point in time, irony is even fashionable these days. Every time I write something that could be even vaguely boastful or pleased with myself I feel the need to protect myself from the enforcement of the law of Jante... and it's not being enforced by any of you but it's being enforced by myself. Which sounds crazy. Like part of my brain is conditioned to enforce this law onto me. Therefore my own pride and ego is caged in by myself. Is this in order to protect the world and to protect myself from the resulting delusions and disappointments of having an unleashed ego? Or is this mechanism for restraint happening in everyone's minds in order to keep us insecure and uncertain?

 

22nd - 23rd

Notice how the above image is less sharp and pixellated.  

Why?  

Because my hand moved whilst taking a photo.  

Why don't you retake the photo?  

Because it's possible that it might look better pixellated.  

Does it look better pixellated?  

No.

30th March - 14th April

30 - 31st March

This is my best friend at Siemens.  We have lunch together every day.

It isn't a nice friend.  Today It told me that all my day to day actions are vindictive acts of passive aggression.  It also added that this is symptomatic of my struggles with a vain narcissism mixed with an idealism which is shattered to the point that it has become a dual identity... this cracked reflection makes me unsure which ideals are mine and which belong to the other me... and vice versa.

I try to disagree.. but then It asks me why I am sharing this experience on social media? Then I realize that this status update is a vindictive act of passive aggression.... and now that I am typing it I am pathologically unable to stop.

It asks me to what or whom am I being passive aggressive against?

It laughs when i don't immediately answer.  Finding it funny that after 33 years I still don't have any idea whom or what my enemy is.  Then it tells me that my entire life has been futile.

I tell It that what I want is freedom and complete autonomy over my existence and that I am unhappy with The Way Things Are.

It then compares all my actions to that of an 8 year old kicking a piece of rubbish down the street... and shows me a future in which I am an 88 year old kicking the same can down the street... and reminds me that with every moment my time is being wasted and that this future is inevitable.  It also adds that as I kick the can down the street I turn towards every reflected surface I pass to check how my hair looks.   It then describes me as vile, disturbing and distorted... and tells me that nothing human should be anywhere near me.

I hope my best friend doesn't follow me home again.  I don't like how It sits on the ceiling or the way It points and laughs at me.


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1st - 2nd April

According to the gas and electric people I barely even exist.... I'm like a microscopic anti-integer - I have a non radix - baseless - a fraction of a molecule.... it probably costs them more money to bill me than it does to actually provide me with gas and electricity. I am like a dark matter compound in their financial universe... when I get a call from a sales company trying to get me to change suppliers I'm always happy to talk to them... always happy to tell them how much I am paying at the moment and see if they can better it... because they can't... and I can feel their voice sinking as they realize that they are speaking to something that isn't even a person anymore. A creature with no warmth or spark that is constructed from rotting but naturally refrigerated meat.... meat wrapped in moth eaten jumpers and blazers. Death comes to Chorlton. You see me in the street and some of you invite me into your homes, but there is no joy in me, and you find it perturbing how I stand in your kitchen and stare at the pilot light on your boiler....

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3rd - 5th April

Bank Holiday weekend.  Lots of going out and partying and catching up with friends on the Friday.  On the Saturday I went out clubbing.  Here are two Facebook posts that sum up my feelings on that:

"People who go clubbing every weekend are like people who keep going on holiday to the same place. The similarity is even more profound if you compare it to someone who keeps going on holiday in a featureless, boring, dark box which is cramped full of sweaty, boring, featureless people..... a box that is buried underground, or better still, under the sea."

"There is a key difference between voices in your head and people in your mind. Voices will take on a physicality and seem to exist on an auditory level (I think) whilst the people form a democracy of varying personalities which separate themselves into separate viewpoints... becoming more and more numerous depending on the complexity of the situation.... once they are seperated they argue and the painful process is not just the argument but deciding which person in my mind is most representative of myself... as I usually agree with all of them to some extent.

It's quite strange that at age 33 I have still not worked out which me is me and if anything it has actually become more complicated. Instead of acting on impulse and following the decision of the loudest division of myself I feel the need to fully understand the impact of words on my environment. This is why development of a code of ethics is important. Like all governments the mind needs restrictions in what it is allowed to do... part of my mind has been constructing nuclear bombs whilst another part has been writing a list of terms and conditions. Do I launch bombs or create terms? Which one is me and which one is some Other?

What the most insulting aspect of this is that it means that the me that is writing this is really just a flesh puppet controlled by a large democratic parliament that exists inside the electricity charged broccoli inside my misshapen skull."

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6th - 7th April


Not so much stepping out of my uncertainty and the fact I have no idea what is going to happen in the future but at least feeling that the world has some colour again.  Highlighter yellow/green is my favourite colour.  When I see it I feel like I'm so lucky to have the use of my eyes. I even enjoyed looking at the Siemens canteen on Tuesday... if you sit at a particular angle it looks pretty amazing:

This looks much better than most night clubs.

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8th - 9th April


I've reached a point in which I've had enough of certain and things and situations and people.  So a little bit of "time out" is required.  So my going to Doncaster on Friday is an essential.  A weekend away to sort out my fractured into factions brain and bring it all back together into one unified force. The above image shows the effects of my internal democracy... that all these different aspects of me demanding different things are getting to be annoying.  If you are split into several different people all with different needs and different obligations how do you tell which one is you?   Time to regroup my consciousness.

I hate the word consciousness... it has very stereotypical hippy connotations to it.  Like the word Psychedelic. 


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10th - 12th April


Very pleased with this photograph:

The effect is achieved by taking a photograph of a window and capturing a good reflection as well as the contents of the room behind the window.

Also like this photograph I took on my way to visit my mum and brother in Doncaster...

it's very looming and captures something of the essence of Doncaster as a place.  When I was young I remember it being lots of dessicated wastelands and brick buildings that no longer serve a purpose.  Now it is slightly regenerated and with glass buildings that are yet to serve a purpose.


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13th - 14th April

I can't remember anything that happened on either of these days.... and as of writing this the 14th April was only 3 days ago.  There was simply nothing.  Emptiness.  I've tried to do some drawings that symbolise something but they don't.  They are just bland generic abstract drawings.  Nothing to show off about, the sort of images that I can do in my sleep.  They have no value.  Neither does anything that I am writing now.  So what I'm going to do is invert this particular entry and duplicate it below.  Not for any reason at all just so these two days of my life have some significance.  It might even make it look better...

13th - 14th April

I can't remember anything that happened on either of these days.... and as of writing this the 14th April was only 3 days ago.  There was simply nothing.  Emptiness.  I've tried to do some drawings that symbolise something but they don't.  They are just bland generic abstract drawings.  Nothing to show off about, the sort of images that I can do in my sleep.  They have no value.  Neither does anything that I am writing now.  So what I'm going to do is invert this particular entry and duplicate it below.  Not for any reason at all just so these two days of my life have some significance.  It might even make it look better...

16th - 29th March

16th - 17th 

Hope in future interactions comes with a fear of failures that are understandable based on all past experiences.  Permanence appears to be impossible to attain but hope still remains.  Hope is similar to Faith, except it isn't nearly as strong.  Are these lies that we tell ourselves, a way of filling in the things we don't know with positive potentials in order to keep us going.  There is never any real tangible way to predict the future, we can only derive percentages of possibilities and these figures are based on little but supposition.  We cannot judge one another.  Our heads are teeming with opposites and our very nature is to lie to ourselves.  To be in a permanent relationship we require trust in the other person, is this possible if we cannot trust ourselves.  What we really need is hope in the possibility of existing outside of this negative outlook.  This is why we have hope.  Once hope is gone then you end up lying in bed, not moving, not doing anything.  Hope makes me continously try to connect to permanence.

18th -19th

 What is permanance?  Should I write an essay about it?  Probably not as my academic abilities are flawed.  I would be able to string a very long paragraph together on what permanence is but it would contradict itself and then change direction and eventually become something else. 

Question:  Do you want permanence? 

Answer:  Yes but I also want ascension. There would be no use in permanence unless it permanence in an area lifted from my current standing in life.  

Question:  Permanent Happiness?  

Answer:  Probably.  

Question:  How do you believe this is to be attained?  

Answer:  Perhaps a mixture of success and a settled relationship.  

Question:  Do you realize how ordinary this all sounds?  

Answer:  Yes.  

Question:  Then why do you try to make it sound confusing and unique to your situation. 

Answer:  Because this is, in effect, a diary, it would be silly not to write about the issues that are effecting my life no matter whether or not they are universal or individual. 

Question:  You don't actually think you are better or different from anyone?

Answer:  Yes I do believe myself to be very different from other people, but my needs and functionality as a person are not much different, I still require and deserve the same things as other people.  In some ways I deserve less and more but it all evens out into being the same.

Question:  Why are you different?

Answer:  You already know the answer to that.

Question:  But do the people who are reading this who are neither you or me?

Answer:  There is no one else out there reading this.

Question:  Are you sure?

Answer:  No.

20th - 22nd

A lovely trip to Ireland for the weekend with my friend Jack.  I ate too much food and drank too much Guiness, and too much I mean two pints.  I saw this:

http://templederry-londonderry.com/

A very interesting experience of spiritual silence.  It reminded me of being 4 years old and watching Yorkshire Main Colliery being demolished in a large controlled explosion.  There was a quietude that spread across the whole area and only children, like me, actually made noises because they didn't understand the ramifications or in the Temple's case, symbolism.

Ireland is a lot like England except the people are nicer, the food tastes better and everything is ever so slightly better in general.  I wish people in the UK were more accepting.

23rd - 24th

I sent off my work for this exhibition on the monday:

Then I went back to work on the Tuesday....  I woke up that morning and realized that for the past 6 months I've been working in Finance.   It was quite an odd sensation.  Why haven't I realized this sooner?

25rd - 26th

The above image is actually a drawing of something real.  You can see a settee, a cricket bat, a plastic pot plant, a picture, a window, a lamp, a settee and a bottle.  This was a good way of filling in two pages.  Also I don't have to write anything clever or personal about it.  It's just a collection of things spread over two pages.

25rd - 26th

So a wedding would symbolize an attempt a permanence?  Of settling down and being a real justified human being ready to fulfil her or his biological imperative.  Does this mean that I should get married?  Would I really want all that attention?  Does anyone want that sort of attention?

I went to a wedding this weekend in Buxton, it lasted 3 days so from Friday to Sunday.  It was interesting to watch this act of attempting a form of permanence.  Also that a wedding could last 3 days.   

It made me wonder again about permanence, or the attempt to settle.  Perhaps I am possibly meant to be alone.  I spend many of my days and evenings alone.  Either doing data entry in the day or design work at night.  I am sociable at weekends.  This makes people mistake me for being sociable.  Perhaps the idea of relationships for me are an alien concept.  At least not a relationship that is sustainable.  Is it ethical for me to even be in a relationship?

I've just realized that these questions are not so well timed.  I am writing from the perspective of the day I am posting this rather than the dates I am referring too in which the wedding took place.  At this point there was still hope.

Question:  Where is hope?  

Answer:  I'll show you next time.