I fell of my bike just like i always used to

I realise these posts are slowly becoming a bit personal and self-centred (it's probably why the font size has become smaller and smaller), but i am too lazy to start a new blog to separate this junk from, well, the rest of the junk....So today i went on a bike ride with my bro. I think the last time i rode my bike was a good year ago. Last summer in fact, so no wonder it hadn't felt like summer properly, until i went for a ride today.

My brother had already asked my dad to take my bike out by the time i got back to the house after my Oxfam volunteering shift, and i was quite happy to hop right on still sporting the inappropriate dress i wore into town that day. It was wonderful. There was a nice cool breeze, and no cars and just my brother shouting 'i am the supersonic' (whatever that means) peddling like crazy miles ahead of me. 

He has finally learnt to ride his bike without any stabilisers, and can't get enough of being outdoors on the two wheels. Though i am 11 years older than him, i am still 'young' enough to be just a bigger kid to my brother, and i enjoy spending these precious moments with him, where i can cling onto that dwindling childhood euphoria before it really gets too late. 

Sometimes i wonder just how long i can go on like this, before we both outgrow each other. 

Probably the most fruitful thing that came out of this bike ride was when i fell over. I was in such a intense day dream, thinking about all the good times i had on my bike, that i lost track of where i was going and my front wheel skidded of a deep set pavement. I went crashing down, but luckily on the pavement side rather than the road side- and grazed my knees and left leg pretty bad.

To my brother's surprise i lay down laughing hysterically despite the sting down my legs, and i treasured how it felt. Its been such a long time since i've had this kind of fall that i embraced it, hoping that i will get another one sooner rather than later. 

It feels good to get hurt like this. It seems that there is nothing but emotional pain with every year added on and sometimes you just want it to hurt where you can see it and where you can heal it.

I will be taking my bike out again tomorrow, and i won't look back. 

Day 11/12/13 reflections: I'm slacking, it's inevitable, but i am always inspired

There are some things that i enjoy to such an indescribable degree that i will gladly allow it to consume my daily havoc of a life, despite the fact that i should know better...

So even if i could go back a couple of weeks and get the chance to start all over, working harder, planning better, focusing my concentration, sleeping at decent hours, i would fuck it up all over again on purpose. Because anything that i would have achieved by doing all those things, would mean nothing to me in comparison to being able to follow such an incredible French Open.

Of course i would feel differently when i get older, and no longer have this unrivalled frivolity to wile away my time looking up match statistics, discussing player tactics and giggling at post-match interviews at 1am in the morning with my friends before exams. But i'm here and this is now, and i just. don't. care.

Every now and then, as a fan, you see a game of tennis which reminds you why you love hearing that ball bounce, and why that sound seems to be able to go beyond all the boundaries of perception to capture your attention time and time again, no matter what else is at stake. The Del Potro vs Federer semi-final was one of those games, and even with my unsettled post-examination head, and only being able to catch the last 2 sets, i could just about let all my worries subside me and settle down to watch the magic that occurs with a ball, a racquet, a net and just blistering desire.

There are probably only two people that i could just about stand beating Federer. Those two are Nadal and Juan Martin Del Potro.

Standing at 6 ft 6inch, Del Potro plays like his life is literally on the line, never ever giving in, he's almost like Murray in some ways, in that he is like this machine that will return every shot hit at him, except a huge difference is that Del Potro with enough honing will be miles more talented....Obviously his height gives him a major advantage, which is a big factor to why his serving motion is just so so good, and unlike some of the bigger guys, Del Potro actually moves pretty smooth on court, and just batters the ball every time it touches his racquet. With all the speed and power he is capable of generating, his passing shots are close to lightening, and i've noticed he has a gentle 'touch' at the net, which is an area that he would benefit a lot from with more practise. I have found it interesting to note, that the guys these days left lingering near the last rounds are all absolutely huge!- re: Monfils! Sam (Given-much(too much)-attention-2008) Querrey! Mario Ancic! etc.. But specifically Monfils and Del Potro are two of the most dangerous, and i was more than prepared for having to see Roger ousted by the Argentinian.

As i said, i didn't watch the first few sets, so i'm not sure what gave Potro the lead, but from seeing the last 2 (and a 1/2) all i could really decipher, is that he worked his little socks off, because he looked as tired and worn out as one could get being Juan Martin Del Potro by the time i tuned in. Federer's game isn't really the sort to grind people down physically, but certainly mentally. Just a Roger on top form is enough to put a huge mental barrier on the best players, and for a tender age of 20 years (!) Del Potro is doing such a beautiful job, and has the sort of fighting spirit that most players never adopt in their entire professional playing career. I always think that there is a very marginal line between the top 10 players and every other player, and the line is bound mainly by unrivalled mental strength....

This was evident when Del Potro so casually hit to the Federer forehand. Ok, so it is both Roger's downfall as well as his lethal weapon, but either way, you can only be very brave or very stupid to hit to that side...Del Potro is certainly the former, because if he avoided it, like so many players do just feeding to the backhand, Roger will have no mercy, especially when he is feeling good about himself, which was clear today.

One can tell when Roger Federer is a little nervous, behind that sheen of serenity there are all sorts of weird and crazy things going on up there. Up there is where the racquet battering is going on, and the only signs we see of that is when he tugs at the top right hand side of his shirt/ the left part of his shirt by his navel more often, or places a strand of hair into his sweat band a unnecessary number of times. The high is sometimes his ever so rarely heard bursts of frustration muffled by the towel he brings so quick to his face to hide the anxiety...

Just none of that today, cool as a fucking cucumber. The shots he missed he took in his stride, and the shots that were just too good, were taken with the utmost respect for his opponent. But in reply, these days, Roger adopts his 'i'm gonna serve it out motherfucker' attitude after he loses a point that shats all over his parade.

Some people see Federer's attitude as arrogant, but what they don't realise is that it is in fact genius. Why waste you energy on showing emotion? When you can use this as added fuel to up your game.

Two sets to love down. Again.

*Swoon*

How did he do it?

The beautiful thing about the fine physical specimen that is Roger Federer, is that, no one can ever really answer this question. But there are a few things today:

1. The Drop Shot- sweeeeeeeettttt as hell! I don't think Federer has ever been hitting drop shots this good for a loong time, and on clay too!- perfect. Clay is a base-line game (well duh, re: Nadal...), and this is the most perfect shot to play to an opponent who is a good few metres away from the baseline like most of the time.....However, it still needs to be executed with perfection (Murray take note): Federer is such an elegant player that all of his shots are precise, relaxed and flowing. The drop shot, even though it's basically a slicing action has to be just as relaxed and flowing to be good, pretty much. So it's no wonder Roger can do these so well. The backspin on the ball (can't remember which set/ game ><) was so good on one of the points, when Roger hit it as a inside-out forehand. The ball stopped in mid air and just dropped dead in it's tracks.

2. The inside-out forehand- Genius weapon, masterful. When it's good it's really good, and one only needs to see Roger's body take that wondrous turn to his forehand side to know with no doubt that this is going to pierce through the air and onto the line with no chance of retrieval. It was whip-like today, and i don't think i ever saw a hint of a slip. If it stays like this for the final, he will have no problems..

I have to say though, that i was a little disappointed with the Monfils vs Federer quarter-finals because i really did expect it to be so much more exciting. I have a lot of love for Monfils's drive and passion encompassed within such a young heart, and his serving motion is just plain awesome! (even though it is apparently modelled on Roddick's, but whatever). Gael is THE coolest player on the tour it has to be said, and it was a tad bit of a shame seeing him practically giving the game to Federer- but i do hope his knee gets better soon enough, because i love watching Monfils and all his heart thumping action. It was nice to hear someone call 'Come on My Son' from the stands ('My son' is Monfils translated :D)

I really have no idea WHAT to expect for the finals, but it will undoubtedly be e p i c. I can only be glad that i have been born at a time and into a world where i can observe such inspiring people.

Fuck this was meant to just go in my diary entry tonight...

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Day 6 short reflections

The picture speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Freaking 54% first serve percentage is NOT going to carry you through anywhere near the final. The shots were messy, he was allllll over the place, Tipsarevich wasn't even playing great tennis but he still managed to take a lead in the first set.

Lucky for Murray, Tips retired (what is it with these Serbians??!! RE: Djokovic) in the second set after calling a doctor on court, popping a pill, and then deciding enough was enough. The camera shot on Murray's face when Tips left the court after the game said it all. He knows it's not good enough. I hope he gets throttled by Cilic; the 20 year old Croatian player, currently ranked no 13.

6ft 6inch Cilic will bring the game, he has a tendency to get bashed around, and flopping over his long legs, but when he's focused, he is really good. Murray will be looking to swatting this fly out the way.

I am supposed to be revising for my Psychology of Addiction exam which is less than an hour away right now. This is how much i have given up on everything in my life except tennis.

Matches to look forward to today:

1. Paul henry Mathieu vs ROGER FEDERER (last match of the day) should be sweeeet.

2. Philip Kohlschrieber vs Djokovic (lets see what tricks Djokovic has up his sleeve)

3. IN PROGRESS NOW I WISH I COULD WATCH!!!!- IGOR ANDREEV VS DEL POTRO- both absolute warriors.

Tennis, where were we?

Seeing Federer drop tears like he used to drop winners at this years Australian Open was enough to put me off tennis for a good 4 months. I've since recovered, but amidst the inconveniences of, well, my degree :/ i've had to put tennis at the back seat for awhile, till now! Roland Garros is upon us- Clay Court Kingdom, for only one King. I need to pay severely for my lack of devotion and thus need to gather my thoughts on this one..

2009 aims for top players:

1. Nadal- Win Wimbledon again. This will absolutely set in gold his number one position, and his new legacy as face of tennis for the new generation. Perhaps most importantly, Nadal's aim will b

e to defend his winning position at Roland Garros. RG is HIS Tournament- it has been for four years, and if this becomes the fifth consecutive year he will have officially set a new record of five consecutive years as French Open winner (with only Borg being the runner up with four consecutive year wins).

2. Federer- HAS to try his hardest to at least GET TO THE FINAL at Wimbledon. Winning, is another thing, but if Federer can't make it to the final, he will lose a lot (probs all) of his cred not only from other players, but the majority of the tennis world. He also needs to capitalise on his good fortune of winning the Madrid Open, hope that Nadal's knees play up more, so he can bag the French.

3. Djokovich- I'm not entirely certain what's going on with Djokovic anymore, he always seems to be just swanning around, making it into tournaments, but never making any obvious 'mark of significance'. Djokovic lost to Nadal at Madrid, despite Nadal whipping out the unforced errors every few minutes..I am not impressed with Djokovic anymore, obviously this is not a nice thing for anyone to say, taking into account that i am not anywhere near the gruelling standards these guys are currently at, but still, i always accepted his arsey pretentious behaviour before, owing it to his self-righteous upbringing...? Djokovic always seems so ridiculously close to being a outstanding player, but just lets everyone down (including himself) in the process. I think we can all expect some 'drama' from him at RG in the form of some 'knee injury'.

4. Murray- There is just no getting rid of him. Obviously Murray's priority this year is to make it to make it to at least semi-final for Wimbledon. In his head, the aim is to be number 1 at the end of the year......Not happening. But he will try, he always does. The past few months have seen him improve in leaps and bounds, most notably in his fitness, his movement on court, mental strength and execution of tactics. If he wants to get anymore close to no 1, he needs to rack up all the titles he POSSIBLY CAN, and also has a ton to defend too. Murray needs to display all the potential he has, a young and promising player (has to be said, unfortunately) like himself needs to show people what he's got early, especially since there's more than enough young guns crawling up the ranks.

SO, last month's big news was Federer's win over Nadal at the Madrid Open; clay court, which has undoubtedly given Federer a HUGEEEEE psychological boost. This sort of circumstance is exactly what he needs before going into clay court season, and here's proof of that on an exclusive with CNN:

"He's won four straight times here in Paris which shows how tough he is, but if you play him the right way there will be chances, he is only human and we wait for that moment when he is not at his best; hopefully that will be this year," the Swiss said.

I am struggling to catch all the matches with revision and all, but Federer's win over Alberto Martin was a clean cut, 6-4 6-3 6-2, in just under two hours... Also looks like he has had a nice hair cut :D

Someone tie me to 200 balloons so i can fly away from this world.

Grizzly Bear / Two Weeks from Minimaxwell on Vimeo.

When doctors get sick

Life has these strange ways of reminding us that it still exists within every fragment of our bodies, and we can't ever get away with not participating in its horrible little games. 

It only takes a single, unexpected text, an hour before an examination to pull you back into reality- which so easily fails to possess weary souls:

'I need u 2 pick Ash up frm school. Dad has been admitted into QMC'

With a lack of response to calls and texts back, we can only spend the next 4 hours convincing ourselves that we never got that message. That we could still remember the Broadbent Filter Model of Attention within the half hour left of this exam, and that we can always be stronger than we feel. Nothing seems real, and the car ride home from school will inevitably be a hopeless, dewy-eyed Pokémon discussion.

Back home, one car may sit unusually complacent on the drive, so that little boys can smile at the sight of it and gush 'Dad's home'. It is difficult to understand what sort of introspections a 7 yr old may have, when 7 years have been and gone where Dads are never home before 7pm. 

When we turn around, and suggest to them that the car has never moved off the drive from morning, there is only something short of a simper and a quick glance back in the vehicle's direction as a response.

An hour or two may pass before someone puts forward the suggestion that an outing to the hospital is a very good idea after tea and biscuits. They drive, they visit, they sit, they exchange a kiss or two and then they leave. Car rides home can be nothing more than creative silence.

On arriving, we may sit out in the dusk with a face wet from silent tears, and tremble, holding the hopelessly brave, while they cry indecipherability onto the lapel of an equally affected other. 

But we can see our luck, when it is reflected on the windows in the front porch, showing the difference that lies between losing something, and being reminded of how much there is to lose.  

The patient can only be grateful for the luck that is felt through the endoscopic instruments reaching down their throats, sourcing the pain. There's a sweet familiarity to these techniques; the imaging, the precision, the countless research meetings, the computer, purging with clips of the convoluting gastrointestinal tracts. There's a pain that they get used to making a living out of in starch white coats, that they never imagine could plant itself in seemingly capable bodies. And seeing their colleagues look on, diagnose and discuss, while their own body has shown the signs of disintegration, is enough to shake them all into the reality that provides their bread and butter. The reality that they will all be in someday, lying on the white beds, breathing the white air and hoping that they will be cared for by someone as competent as themselves.

Brain Music: Four Tet

I never appreciated Kieren Hebden's work so much before, but since starting revision for Yr 1 Psychology properly, 'Pause' is the one album i have on repeat almost constantly. It's a been a while since 2001, but the record is still just pacifying 'brain music' that seems to flow as one with the neurones firing around in my confused cerebral hemispheres. Maybe it's the context of my work this week (which has been a lot to do specifically with brain areas and their functions) but i couldn't help but think of 'four tet' as 'four tête' i.e. four heads, which in reality is quite true of the brain anatomy.

The motor cortex and frontal cortex can be thought of as one since they both belong to the Frontal lobe of the brain. The sensory is part of the Parietal lobe, and the visual is part of the Temporal lobe. While the Occipital lobe constitutes the cerebellum area.

Each of these lobes have a specific function, so seem to be four separately functioning 'heads', yet they all combine so beautifully into a integrated system. Unique in their capacities, yet entirely dependent. 'Pause' by 'Four heads' is such a complete album, listening to it makes me feel so aware of this integration of all these working parts of my head, and the stimulation of motivation that fabricate themselves from physical brain matter.

'Twenty Three' specifically reminds me of CSI music, the one that they use in the sequences of 'laboratory investigation scenes' where samples are being analysed, and tested, and fingerprints are taken etc etc. The rhythm is a driving force for my brain, in a highly positive sense, which for me portrays it as less of a 'slave system' in remembering this bombardment of information, but as a strong, and fully capable organ, that i shouldn't ever be afraid of exhausting.

[When i was little, and i felt things were too tuff, i always used to imagine bits of brain falling off inside my body and tumbling into the rest of my body, and the hollow of my chest and empty belly. Now i realise it is so far from that sort of fragility! ]

Another source of joy comes from the beginning of 'Mosquitoes' where the sound resembles that of a blue whale song (You have to wait a whiel before you hear the whale,there are better ones, i haven't properly explored to find some decent sound clips). I love listening to whale and dolphin sonar communication; for the thrill of it just being so foreign to me, and how there's this whole other language i will never be able to learn, no matter what. Kieren's work on this album is both foreign and familiar, which must be why it is so entrancing. Like whale song is familiar as a language of some kind, the children making noise on the track 'Park' is familiar, but the setting of the song is in a other-worldly medium. Just as whale song will never be comprehensible to us, nor will anyone be able to understand it for what it really is, other than a form of sonar communication.

'Glue of the world' stimulates my working memory, 'Everything is alright' are the action potentials flowing through my motor neurones to my fingers that allow me to keep keep keep keep keep keep keep keep on on on on on on on on on on on on on typing typing typing typing typing typing typing typing typing typing typing typing typing..........................

...............................................................................................

...........................................and never stopping....

Video Gaming and Perceptual Processes

Game Developer's Conference 2009 is upon us.

At home, i rarely experience a personal moment that isn't soundtracked by my brother's nintendo/playstation/computer games. Off late i'm becoming increasingly concerned for him- the amount of time he spends in front of screens is ridiculous, and i'm sure there's actually a very small percentage of reality that his eyes see these days. It's exhausting even thinking about having to prise him away from his digiblip pseudo universe, and i sometimes wonder if he'll develop into what i conceive of as a normal human being. By this i don't mean that i think he is getting aggressive, or anti-social, or using games as a 'emotional vent' or all the other increasingly outlandish claims that 'psychologists' make in newspapers and TV. He's a pretty normal seven yr old, as are the majority of his classmates who are hardcore gamers.

But with this generation, growing up in an age where video games have gone past the loveably defunct graphics and thoughtless, mild mannered gaming of Atari and Sega days, turning more and more to cold, calculated, plotted shootings and murder that bend around basic ethics....something will have to give? I guess everyone wonders how this fantastic world of realistic gaming doesn't change the way kids perceive the world through a physical and communicative medium. Does it necessarily mean corruption?

This is what psychologists should really be interested in.

The past few days i've been studying perception and what it means to 'perceive'. i.e. is perception just an extension of our cognitive abilities? Or are there mechanisms that are uniquely perceptual processes. The basic idea seems to be that perception is a sort of 'slave' to higher-order processes like interpreting and understanding information and cannot be altered by how the participant 'desires' to see the world. BUT a perceptual system can be 'tuned up' to collect evidence of a particular type from the environment. A well known experiment is Blakemore and Cooper's kitty rearing study. Kitty H was grown up in an environment composed of horizontal lines, while Kitty V reared in a vertical environment. Recordings of single neurons in their brains showed that orientation-selective cells had a preferred orientation of within 45ºof the exposed orientation in the environment. The kittens eventually became blind to lines and edges in the non-preferred direction. i.e. kitty H could not perceive vertical lines…

Essentially, perceptual systems at the heart of our biological make-up are sensitive to the environment, their sole purpose is to provide us with a valid account of what there is out there- A ‘best first guess’ is what they say. The action we take upon whatever we see is then up to our cognitive systems to interpret- but this can’t be done without a initial valid account of what we are actually ‘seeing’i.e. perception should be able to communicate effectively to the cognitive system that there is a rabid dog dripping with foam at the mouth running towards us, and the decision to run or lie down silently and wait our horrible death is up to the mind’s central processing unit. Most likely we will choose the first option, and hence perception is of an essential survival value- this makes a lot of sense. But what does this have to do with gaming?

I recently came across an informative article called ‘Rage Against The Machines’, with a refreshing view of video game culture. The article discusses gaming in the perspective of a product created by humans for humans, and therefore the incomprehensibility and insecurities that people have with gaming are entirely irrational. He discusses gaming constructively, with the impacts it has on the way children learn complex social behaviours, as a developing cultural activity (the PS game Ico is apparently visually based on the works of Giorgio de Chirico) and the place of gaming amongst other leisure activities such as reading and sport which gaming has relatively little economic impact on. The article actually mentions a bit from Richard Bartle’s biting article in the Guardian attacking those who discredit the future of gaming.

“Games are mainstream. Drown, or learn to swim”

Soon there will be a society where gaming will be a vital part of developing culture. What of these people? How will they work? How do they perceive? What will they turn into? Indeed Piaget's best work on child development did include 'learning through play'. This is just 21st century play.

Perception seems most important in our modern visual culture, more than it did in generations before. It makes me wonder sometimes whether the pressure of a visual culture is big enough to significantly alter the way our perceptual system works, starting from my brother's generation.

Games such as Bioshock and Mass effect with their uber fancy graphics and painstakingly detailed character descriptions lead individuals through fantastic worlds, where noone can be trusted, yet the need to engage and make a connecion with this freakish world is vital. Bioshock for example, is set in an alternate history 1960 in an underwater world called Rapture, Jack (player) must survive attacks by mutated beings that inhabit Rapture. It's full of DNA harvesting, ex-Nazi collaborators and complex moral decisions with bloodthirsty spatterings...

Bioshock

Mass effect

In reality we look for expressions in people's faces and body language to aid us in our social interactions with other people. In video games, there is no difference (oh apart from the fact that we're dealing with aliens and mutants). The world continues to destruct itself with violence and selfishness, innocent people die everyday, and everything seems to be spiralling into a grim and compassionless future. Maybe it's the hard skin and keen eye that develops from playing games like Grand Theft Auto and Bioshock that's needed to cope. 'Survival of the fittest' taken to the extreme.....

This is the kind of thing that they should include in dull cognitive psychology books.

In line with this i’ve been listening to The Advantage self-titled nintendoesque album- basically covers a lot of video game songs…

And also: This is shit hot.

Dreams and Psychoanalysis: "A Cinematic Representation"

Magritte's Portrait of Edward James 1937

Hello, it’s Mango-has-gone-off-Monday! (well it was yesterday when i wrote this and forgot to post it)

So YESTERDAY i could make no mango smoothie because the mango had as you now know, completely gone off. Is it obvious that i’ve already stopped trying with these posts.....?

I came across this article today in the guardian on mental illness as a occupational hazard for poets. Mostly, i just enjoyed this part:

“Batty and Wardle have both 'done time' on psychiatric wards and written resonant, gutsy and humorous poems about their experience”

Here we are, blistering evidence that mental illness in the long term increases everyone’s ability to be a creative tour de force (but conditions apply) on a mission to an ultimate utter lack of creativity (suicide). I’m not going to lie, among all the sadness of this month including Goody’s cancer-hit-and-run, i have undoubtedly found it difficult to keep the frown upside down. Getting as little sleep as possible allows me to avoid the point of contact where my unconscious finds ‘expression’ in the animated and illusory world of dreams. However, the past few days, an unbearable slumber has over ridden my otherwise unfailing adamance. The outcome: Teething Nightmares.

I’ve been having repetitive dreams of being shot, and always in an act of cowardice. i.e. the shooter will ask me to hand everything over, and tell him the whereabouts of my family and all my personal details, and if i do, he will leave me alone. Inevitably, i tell him everything, and then he turns around and shoots me heartlessly. Mostly, this occurs in the first person, but the other night, i dreamt that once i was shot, i realised i was a little girl and not myself. I had unwittingly walked into someone else’s body, and now enduring their pain. Then i had to watch the little girl being placed on a foreign hospital table, spurting blood; the bullet had hit her in the stomach, yet all this while, it was me who was feeling the pain, like i had replaced her soul with my own.

Even more bizarrely, the rest of the dream continued with me switching roles between myself, the doctor and my grieving mother, like some tireless schizophrenic. A sort of "Doppelgänger effect’ from the inside out (since i don’t tend to remember whether these people looked like me, but they all definitely were me in spirit). This was the only part that i was really interested in; the various infestations of me within different characters or ‘roles’.

The point of me saying all this is: i believe that a recurring dream must be something of significance. By the by, i came across a book entitled ‘Psychoanalysis and Cinema’ the other day. Normally i wouldn’t have the will to read something like this, but felt less compelled to rebuke it when i realised it was a well disguised coffee table reading handbook to the interpretation of dreams.

On cinema:

“ If you only knew how strange it is to be there, it is not life, but it’s shadow, it is not motion, but it’s soundless spectra”

Maxim Gorky (cited in Popple 1996:97)

The book was basically trying to address the fact that dreaming as the epitome in psychoanalytic interpretation is directly comparable to the big screen, in terms of both cinema and dreaming act as a type of ‘psychical apparatus’ in learning to tell the difference between what we perceive and what we imagine. Mainly so we don’t end up like Uncle Josh:

Josh here is unable to distinguish between the film and reality. This is a crude example, really.

I think uncle Josh is hallucinating, and it has nothing to do with the fact that he may be an idiot and can’t tell he’s watching a film. It’s a matter of being in the right place at the right time to hallucinate and have someone interpret that as your inability to perceive. Uncle Josh is a kind of ‘mirror’ that unites the external picture to the internal, his emotions are manifest in the screen, similar to how i felt mine were manifest in the other people in my dream. Again, i take this to be the inability of my self to distinguish between other people’s emotions and my own...

This is ultimately ‘doubling’/ idea of establishing an ego etc, which the book references to ‘Der Student Von Prag (The Student of Prague) using the idea of a ‘double’ where in the footprints of Faust, impoverished scholar Balduin gives up his reflection to a sorcerer in exchange for wealth. Silly boy. Balduin finally drives himself to suicide where he shoots the apparition of his double ultimately killing himself. Rather like that scene from Fight Club right at the end.

Der Student Von Prag...

So ultimately, i am no longer inclined to analyse my dreams in terms of Oedipus or the individuating ego because i am not that insane yet. Freud aptly implies that dreams show that a normal capacity for hallucination persists in us all: in other words, i should go to bed at a decent hour until furthur notice..

Next psychoanalysis and film installment will probably be on Hitchcock. Just kidding! Actually it will. But maybe first on inter-group processes...

Popple, S. (1996) ‘The Diffuse Beam: Cinema and Change’, in C. Williams (ed.) Cinema; in The Beginnings and the Future, London: University of Westminster Press, 82-99

Sleeping in halves, Sleeping in wholes.

Man Ray, Solarisation 1931, © Man Ray Trust, Paris / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2008

Ok, so now that i've reflected on my first post on this blog in a rather different frame of mind, it's obvious how ridiculously melodramatic that is (and there i was, hoping not to try and make epic introductions)

I'm a melodramatic person, it has to be said. I promise to not ever put anything quite as dramatic again. 

In my defense, i'm pretty lost in my work, lost in society, and lost in my head right now. This morning, i effectively just needed to get myself from my house to university since i'd unwittingly stayed at home the night before to sort some things out. Due to my knack for cutting off with reality, i had to drive back to my house 4 times after a half a journey completion down the dual carriage way to get an item i'd forgotten and crucially needed that day. That means i forgot four things four times and made a total of 8 half journeys. Amounting to what would have been 4 full journeys up and down. It was like a part of me was not even 'with me'. 

I was half asleep. This is pretty funny, because dolphins do this anyway quite literally. The two hemisphere of their brains sleep independently, and seems to serve as some crucial survival value- quite the opposite to the connotations of being 'half asleep'. 

I covered sleep some time ago in a tutorial. I think this video should be pretty interesting; i haven't really got round to all (6?) parts of it yet.

The Ugly Love: An introduction

As a wonderfully unsophisticated blogger, i’m going to try and pull this off.

Hopefully with some relative charm.

Last night, I was a disgracebook status ‘F.R.U.S.T.R.A.T.E.D’, at having come to the realization that a big part of my ‘interest spectra’ had almost totally disintegrated. Something that used to make me want to know more, was almost indistinguishable from the other things that i vaguely show an interest in and move along from just as hastily.

I’m being contradictory for a very good reason. I have an ugly love for Psychology:

Missable.

Replaceable.

Mostly now unfathomable.

At university, it is a rather dire science, that i sometimes feel is as cold as the laboratory. Just to demonstrate my romanticism; at the beginning of first year, i thought our lab sessions consisted of a mass of white coated first years observing wired bodies studying a Kanizsa figure or inkblots through a glass observatory. If not that, then at least some pigeon and coloured bulb action, please. It is not any of those things, instead we sit like zombies in front of computer screens calculating t-tests and pressing keys according to whether we see a word or non-word.

As a result of my failure to engage myself with my course, i'm having a bit of fun with it, starting a blog and what not. It's one last try of redemption for all those people, myself included, who have the ugly love.

Mostly, the blog will just be a ‘supplement’ to the topics i cover on my psychology course that will hopefully include art, music, films, books, interesting articles i happen to come across, and anecdotes from friends and strangers alike.

Bridging the gap between academia and general intrigue has never been more riveting. Because if i don’t have the motivation to keep this blog updated, then it inevitably means i don’t have the motivation to finish my course. If i do finish it, then it would be a complete and utter waste of my time.