I will start off this blog by saying that I don’t know much about music, but have a passionate relationship with it none the less. My parents did not equip me with the basics of musical knowledge, purely because they don’t seem to be that bothered with it. My sister is equally satisfied with music that is good for little more than background noise. This makes me the only family member who spends considerable amounts of time listening to/reading about/thinking about/buying/discovering music.
I am also the only person in our family who had the desire to learn to play an instrument. So far I haven’t necessarily succeeded, but that’s not the point. I finished basic musical training aged 7 and went on to learn to play the ukulele, because I was too little to hold a normal sized guitar. I was pretty good at playing the ukulele, but after a year my teacher announced that that was the end of it, there was no year two for the tiny guitar. So I went on to play the piano. My parents were supportive and knew someone who was selling their piano and got it for me. It was a big brown beast of a thing, but it did its job perfectly. I enjoyed my classes with a nice lady with a man’s name (I can’t remember her actual name, but I do remember having to explain to people that she was indeed a woman). After 2 years of ploughing on and clearly not getting any better at it, my teacher announced that perhaps it was better for me to quit learning to play the piano. She said ‘I’m really enjoying your company, and if you choose to continue I wouldn’t expect any more of you. But if you’re still doing this with the hope of excelling in piano playing... well then I suggest you quit’. So in order to save my parents the money they invested, I gave up. We kept the piano for some casual fun, but pretty soon it was clear that I wasn’t going to be playing anymore or to anyone’s delight. I kept quiet about wanting to do anything with music for a while. Then in my early teenage years I piped up again, saying I wanted to learn to play the electric guitar. We borrowed a guitar from a friend of a relative and I started my quest to become a rock star. The guitar now stands in my room in England and every so many months I get the urge to teach myself again, only to be heavily disappointed.
While I plink-a-plonked through several instruments my environment started offering me music I had not encountered before, knew nothing about and was absolutely gobsmacked by. My teachers at school finally taught me the much needed musical basics. Explanations to why some bands are as revolutionary as they are, etc. I got myself a record player and a small vinyl collection. I bought some Pink Floyd and Beatles and listened to everything that people recommended to me.
Slowly but surely I made sure music turned from something that was just there, in the background or on the radio, to something that meant the world to me.
It sounds like something logical, something everyone goes through at some stage in their life. But I have to remind myself and perhaps the reader that this is not true. In my family music never played much of a role, it just filled the space in the background, set a relaxing mood. It wasn’t ever very important. So not everyone goes through the trouble of discovering the world of music.
The reason I write this is because the meaning of music has become very clear to me in the past few months. I am not someone who cries easily, something has to really grab me by my inner core and shake me. I’ve got to tease out tears at the saddest, most depressing of times. The last few months have not been easy and a lot of tears were waiting to get out, but couldn’t. Only certain songs would make me weep like there’s no stopping me. The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ ‘Don’t Forget Me’, Belle and Sebastian’s ‘Get me away from here I’m dying’ and Peter Doherty’s ‘For Lovers’ get me there every single time. The latter was sung to me recently through the phone.
I went to see Peter Doherty at the Brighton Dome on March 19. He played his set and I enjoyed it thoroughly and it was very intense and touching. I had gone on my own because my friends lacked the funds or will to join me. The last song of his set was ‘Albion’. It’s a beautiful poetic song about England. It’s a song I listened to endlessly in the last few years of my high school experience. Knowing that all I wanted was to move to England and all the tireless work was for that one goal; to reach the country which had such beautiful poetry written about it.
So sitting there, on my own, in a theatre in Brighton, listening to the live performance of that song; I wept. I had reached my goal, I had done it on my own and here I was and it felt as though for the first time it was acknowledged.
I’m aware that there is a very negative attitude towards Mr. Doherty in the UK. I am not sure why this is. I was introduced to Peter Doherty by a friend of mine who sent me some of his acoustic songs and telling me how moving the character of Peter Doherty was. He then tried to make me listen to some of his ‘tougher’ work, but the damage had been done; I was endeared to Pete. So my experience of all of his music and interviews was one of a lost soul, a poet with no specific direction in this world; a sweet and kind person who just walked down the wrong road, yet making beautiful music all the way. I was aware that he got some negative press for his drug abuse and short stints in prison, but I figured that his lovely side was the better known version.
This was proven 100% wrong when I moved to England and found out how much absolute hatred there is for this man. I am still clueless to why this is, other than the fact he has been misrepresented in the press.
The gig didn’t last as long as I had expected, so afterwards I visited my friends in the pub to normalize. They were all rather jolly and completely hypnotized by a game of giant Jenga that they had joined. The pub closed not long after I had entered it and my friends announced they were going to head on to the next pub. I excused myself from the party and walked home with one of my housemates. I talked about how amazing the gig had been and how happy it had made me. Once we reached our house, I checked my phone to find a missed call and a text message from my friends saying ‘Pete Doherty is with us in the pub’. I couldn’t believe it. I asked my housemate if she’d be alright if I left, she ushered me out and I ran down our road. Hauling down the first taxi to come my way and asking the driver to drive me as near to the city centre as possible for £5. In the meantime my friends kept calling me to make me listen to the songs Pete had started singing by now. At one point Peter started singing ‘For Lovers’ and I was crying and singing along, at which point I heard Pete’s voice saying ‘don’t cry, just sing along!’. Up until that moment I had figured that he was singing songs on a little stage or something, but I had never thought my friends were so close to him that their phone was in his line of hearing.
My taxi driver was very excited for me and dropped me off in front of the pub, for just £5, even though I owed him a lot more. I walked into the tiny pub, only to find my friends sitting on a sofa with Pete who was singing one of his lovely songs. I sat down at the only empty chair in the pub, right on the end of the table. Not long after Pete got rid of his guitar and my friend patted on the sofa between her and Peter and said ‘go on Sophie, sit here!’ Pete looked at me, patted on the sofa and said ‘yes Sophie, why don’t you come sit here?’ And so I did. I had to try my hardest to remain calm and composed and not break down into a sobbing mess. We had a nice chat about his Brighton gig and how he hadn’t enjoyed it much, about my trousers, my origins, my course at university and about Brighton.
He then pointed in a general direction and mumbled something about managers and smoking and walked off, never to return to the pub again.
I had tried so hard not to be completely overwhelmed and hit by his music and presence that it wasn’t until I was back at home and alone in my bed that the tears finally started flowing. All my beliefs about Peter Doherty had been confirmed. He was shy, kind and well-spoken. I now, more than ever before, am clueless as to where the nasty remarks about him come from.
A lot can be said for an open mind. When I scroll through my music library I find Duffy and David Bowie, Marilyn Manson and Miles Davis and everything in between. Coming from a background of no musical knowledge means I also started off with no musical prejudice. So after my musical journey and my adventures in the world of meeting musical heroes, I am left knowing enough about music not to embarrass myself in conversation, yet too little to hold up pretence I know anything at all.
Notification- Read this first!
Sunday, 5 April 2009
Sunday, 18 January 2009
18. Radio
You might not have noticed the new notice on this page, but I’ve been doing a weekly radio show for a couple of months now, with my friend and housemate Catherine.
I’ve always loved radio as a medium. For many years my life has been synced to radio shows. I would get up with a breakfast show by Giel Beelen on the Dutch public radio station for youngsters, 3fm. It was a fast paced, funny and edgy show. Perfect for a teenager that needs all the help she can get to wake up in the morning. Every morning the same items would feature at the same time. Making it easy for me to know which item signified I had to get up and which item should make me realise that I was definitely too late for school.
Coming home after school meant lunch or coffee with my mom if I was home early enough. This would always be accompanied by the ‘tijd voor twee’ show on Dutch public radio 2, the station for the middle aged people of the country who wanted to listen to the nice music of today and the great music of the past. Basically the station all mums listen to. The man hosting ‘tijd voor twee’ (which means ‘time for two’ a show between 12 and 2 o’clock that infinitely plays on the ‘2’ theme by for instance rewarding people who come second in a competition, rather than first) is called Frits Spits and the sound of his voice makes me feel at home instantly. He’s a very professional and kind man with a nice relaxing voice. I think my mum’s been listening to his show since it started, which means he’s been present in our household ever since I was a little girl.
After ‘tijd voor twee’, lunch would be finished and it would be time for my homework. Homework would be accompanied by Ruud de Wild and two co-hosts who did a bit of a happy go lucky, silly show. It was a bit of a shambles and it had pointless features like ‘you can’t be related to..., can you?’ an item in which someone with the same surname as a celebrity would be picked from the phonebook and asked the question whether they are related. The answer usually being ‘not that I am aware of’.
Sunday morning breakfast would have the imminent soundtrack of ‘de sandwich’ a two hour show that had it’s first hour before a particular show and then its second hour after, producing a so-called ‘audio sandwich’. This show is all about peculiar poems from the olden days and music that nobody has ever heard before. The man hosting it was intriguing and had an ability to make you suddenly realise he was speaking and capture your full attention for short periods of time.
Since 1998 Radio 2 (the Dutch radio 2) has been broadcasting the top 2000, to prepare for the millennium change. Every year this is a non-stop chart for the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve and is accompanied by personal stories of the people who voted. Every year this top is almost identical with Bohemian Rhapsody topping it for the first few years and a Dutch song called ‘Avond’ by Boudewijn de Groot for the last three or four years.
In the last few years before graduation, my anglophilia grew evermore, leaving me more in touch with British news, culture and media than my own. I started downloading podcasts from British radio shows and make a point to fall asleep with the sound of English voices sending me off to sleep. My favourite podcast being the Russell Brand show on BBC 6 Music and later BBC Radio 2, which I listened to religiously.
All of these shows have 2 things in common; 1. they all caused controversy and 2. I listened live to all of the controversial broadcasts.
The controversies range from small uproars to international scandals.
De Sandwich caused a bit of a stir when it stopped being a sandwich and overtook the middle hour. The audio sandwich had just become an audio loaf of bread. I was personally not that bothered, as I hadn’t enjoyed the show featured in between. And also, by the time this happened I was waking up too late to catch the show on Sunday mornings anyway.
Tijd voor twee was part of controversy when host Frits Spits after several years of Bohemian Rhapsody topping the top 2000 campaigned for listeners to vote differently. The Queen fanclub sent in a lot of angry emails and managed to get a lot of publicity saying it was unfair to deliberately knock Queen off the top of the list. The year Spits campaigned for the change saw Queen at the top for one last year, then Boudewijn de Groot managed to get the number one spot. Again, I wasn’t that fussed as I wasn’t there to hear the top 10 songs on New Year’s Eve at midnight.
Giel Beelen hasn’t ever not caused controversy. In his early career he got media attention for calling a prostitute and asking her to perform oral sex on him live on air. This show aired somewhere in the dead of night on public radio and because probably hardly anyone had heard the broadcast, 3fm kept the DJ on. A couple of years later they even saw him fit for daytime radio. But after listing ‘Mein Kampf’ as his favourite book in an interview, the 3fm bosses thought it’d be best if he packed up and left. However, a couple of years later they asked him back and gave him the most popular slot; their weekday breakfast slot. In this breakfast show he called any celebrity and asked them heated questions about what they were doing in their lives. He took every drug under the sun under guidance of experts to broadcast its effects live on air. And in one of the last shows I listened to, he got a woman to hand over her placenta, got a professional chef to prepare it and ate it live on air. As you can imagine it was the talk of the town that week. I remember not being too pleased with the idea when I was just drifting out of the dream world into reality.
Ruud de Wild’s show ‘ruuddewild.nl’ caused controversy when in 2002 it was the set for the murder of right wing politician Pim Fortuyn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pim_Fortuyn). Ruud de Wild had just interviewed the eccentric front man of political party LPF and walked him to his car where he would hand him a gift. This was all still part of the broadcast when all of a sudden two gunshots could be heard and de Wild’s voice repeating Fortuyn’s name. I remember listening and not knowing whether this was some sick joke or actually happening. It didn’t take long for me to realise that something horrible had happened. Fortuyn died before an ambulance even arrived and his murderer (Volkert van de Graaf) was sentenced to 18 years prison. What I had been listening to whilst doing some French homework was the first Dutch political assassination since the 17th century. Obviously this caused uproar and turned the whole country upside down for years to come. I don’t think the country has recovered from this shock to this day.
And then there’s the Russell Brand scandal. Compared to the controversies of the shows I’ve listed above, I’d say this one belongs with the ‘rigging the top 2000’ type scandal. After waking up to a man off his face on drugs or eating a placenta (all on public, tax financed, prime time radio), the slightly cheeky words that stated a fact ‘he fucked your granddaughter’ at 10.30pm on a Saturday really didn’t shock me. But this is a subject everyone and their mum has had an opinion about and has published that opinion, so I won’t say any more about it.
It is things like these that make radio an interesting medium. It’s something you turn on in the background and don’t need to focus on. It makes the fact you’re home alone, or even just alone in a room less of a deal. But then suddenly something happens that will make you prick your ears and the next day you will realise that thousands of people were listening to the exact same thing. You will read the stories of how horrible and how dreadful something is and you think ‘I was there when it happened! I heard that live!’ It creates a public consciousness, a feeling of ‘we’re all doing the same thing together, we’re not that different after all, we’re part of something’. I don’t think any other medium has that ability.
Having said that, our radio show creates a very tiny social consciousness, as we are broadcasting from a university radio station. We probably have 10 listeners at our best days. But it is a lot of fun to do.
Our first show was short of a disaster. We came into the studio very unprepared and had completely forgotten everything that we were told about the technical side of broadcasting. On top of that all that could have gone wrong, went wrong. None of the CD players worked, the iPod hub would not play and the internet connection was so poor that it was nearly impossible to play songs from the computer.
A girl who happened to listen, who also did a show on URF (University Radio Falmer) rushed in to tell us about the broken CD players, but she couldn’t help us otherwise. We stumbled through the show like the amateurs we were/are with all the bad stuff being thrown at us. But week after week we progressed and prepared and struggled through. A tiny disaster was present each week. If we weren’t being plagued by illness, we’d be locked out of the studio or have no access to the radio email account which meant we’d have no interaction with our loyal listeners. For one show I even had to travel up to the studio on my own because Catherine was suffering from a mad hangover. A hangover she had caught together with me the night before, so I wasn’t too peachy either. I still went and together with a bottle of sunny delight managed to fill up 2 hours of radio without a co-host.
All of this didn’t stop a DJ from a popular London based DJ collective to contact us and request we’d do interviews with her and a couple of her musician friends.
The show is getting better each week and after a healthy Christmas break we’re ready to start broadcasting and produce fun radio. So if you have nothing to do on Sunday’s between 5 and 7 pm, then tune in to www.urfonline.com and listen to our show. Who knows, you might be witness to something revolutionary that will have the planet talking for weeks.
Sunday, 19 October 2008
17. Food
I did not make a list of resolution at the beginning of this year. It would’ve been a list of clichés; start working out, do better in school, etc. Number one on people’s list of resolutions is losing weight. All the clever people who have written a book about dieting release them at the end of the year and are soon to be millionaires. Then three months later people start releasing books about how useless dieting is, just in time for all the quitters to let out a sigh of relief.
But this year it’s different. This year it is not just people individually who decided to go on a diet; this year a nation is fighting obesity. It is impossible to escape the campaign that is all over the British Isles. “Stop people getting fat” is what every single TV director must’ve told directors who came knocking to ask if they needed anything for their company. And they all obeyed. Jamie Oliver eats to stay alive, anorexic patients and heavily obese people swap diets, diet experts tell us the truth about our food, people with freaky eating habits get cured, Gordon gets us to cook along and to pretend we’re saying a naughty word when the word starting with F is Food, actually!
‘Eat to stay alive’, what does that title even mean? Does it mean Jamie only wants us to eat things in order to stay alive, not for the pleasure of it? Surely he doesn’t want us to stop enjoying food or we’ll never visit his ex-convict run restaurants again. The show turned out to be about how the wrong diet and consequently being obese is going to kill you. About ten obese people were confronted with their yearly dose of poo and how it only filled a small box. Then they wheeled out the yearly faeces of an Ethiopian tribesman which filled an entire paddling pool. When everyone was a bit grossed out by all the shit in the studio, Jamie managed to gross people out even more. He got dear old Gunther the German anatomist in to show us how people who died of constipation looked like from the inside. It didn’t look too pretty. But that might also have been due to the fact that we were staring at a slice of plasticised, filled guts.
And besides that; who in these days, in this part of the world, dies from constipation? Surely by the time going to the toilet has been hurting for a long period of time, you go to the doctor and it’s quite a simple procedure from there?
But it has worked. All these shows where celebrity chefs try to take on the world for a healthier diet have made awareness levels go through the roof.
I personally notice this with every single meal I cook. I try to see my cooking skills through the eyes of Jamie Oliver or, if it’s something complicated, Gordon Ramsay. My mind is at rest when I am making a delicious, yet simple and healthy pasta. You can see me smile to myself as I secretly think ‘Jamie wouldn’t have anything on me for this’. When I’m making something complicated I can picture Gordon Ramsay pick apart my meal with a fork and look at it with disgust. I am then quite nervous until I’ve tasted the food myself. If I am satisfied I turn the picture of a disgusted Gordon into one where he goes ‘well you run a bad business, but the food is amazing!’ When I am not satisfied I just think ‘well at least it isn’t fishcakes, Gordon hasn’t ever liked someone else’s fishcakes. However when the things I am preparing consist of chips, breaded scampi and garlic bread, well then my mind is racing for excuses. I cannot enjoy the food until I’ve come up with a proper justification for my diet of the day, just in case a celebrity chef will bust down the door and question me. ‘Oh I wouldn’t normally eat this, but there’s nothing else in the house and I’ve eaten very healthily all week, plus I’ve ran out of money so I can’t buy anything healthier!’ And then I expect the celebrity chef to go ‘ah well, everyone’s allowed a slip up sometimes’.
Now I’m not even that focussed on health. I don’t do any sports and I will eat food if it is within my visionary field. Yet my love for cooking shows has made me judge all of my foods with their standards. I think perhaps the celebrity chefs are hoping that everyone in the UK has this quirky habit, but I very much doubt it.
But this year it’s different. This year it is not just people individually who decided to go on a diet; this year a nation is fighting obesity. It is impossible to escape the campaign that is all over the British Isles. “Stop people getting fat” is what every single TV director must’ve told directors who came knocking to ask if they needed anything for their company. And they all obeyed. Jamie Oliver eats to stay alive, anorexic patients and heavily obese people swap diets, diet experts tell us the truth about our food, people with freaky eating habits get cured, Gordon gets us to cook along and to pretend we’re saying a naughty word when the word starting with F is Food, actually!
‘Eat to stay alive’, what does that title even mean? Does it mean Jamie only wants us to eat things in order to stay alive, not for the pleasure of it? Surely he doesn’t want us to stop enjoying food or we’ll never visit his ex-convict run restaurants again. The show turned out to be about how the wrong diet and consequently being obese is going to kill you. About ten obese people were confronted with their yearly dose of poo and how it only filled a small box. Then they wheeled out the yearly faeces of an Ethiopian tribesman which filled an entire paddling pool. When everyone was a bit grossed out by all the shit in the studio, Jamie managed to gross people out even more. He got dear old Gunther the German anatomist in to show us how people who died of constipation looked like from the inside. It didn’t look too pretty. But that might also have been due to the fact that we were staring at a slice of plasticised, filled guts.
And besides that; who in these days, in this part of the world, dies from constipation? Surely by the time going to the toilet has been hurting for a long period of time, you go to the doctor and it’s quite a simple procedure from there?
But it has worked. All these shows where celebrity chefs try to take on the world for a healthier diet have made awareness levels go through the roof.
I personally notice this with every single meal I cook. I try to see my cooking skills through the eyes of Jamie Oliver or, if it’s something complicated, Gordon Ramsay. My mind is at rest when I am making a delicious, yet simple and healthy pasta. You can see me smile to myself as I secretly think ‘Jamie wouldn’t have anything on me for this’. When I’m making something complicated I can picture Gordon Ramsay pick apart my meal with a fork and look at it with disgust. I am then quite nervous until I’ve tasted the food myself. If I am satisfied I turn the picture of a disgusted Gordon into one where he goes ‘well you run a bad business, but the food is amazing!’ When I am not satisfied I just think ‘well at least it isn’t fishcakes, Gordon hasn’t ever liked someone else’s fishcakes. However when the things I am preparing consist of chips, breaded scampi and garlic bread, well then my mind is racing for excuses. I cannot enjoy the food until I’ve come up with a proper justification for my diet of the day, just in case a celebrity chef will bust down the door and question me. ‘Oh I wouldn’t normally eat this, but there’s nothing else in the house and I’ve eaten very healthily all week, plus I’ve ran out of money so I can’t buy anything healthier!’ And then I expect the celebrity chef to go ‘ah well, everyone’s allowed a slip up sometimes’.
Now I’m not even that focussed on health. I don’t do any sports and I will eat food if it is within my visionary field. Yet my love for cooking shows has made me judge all of my foods with their standards. I think perhaps the celebrity chefs are hoping that everyone in the UK has this quirky habit, but I very much doubt it.
Thursday, 19 June 2008
16. Freak Show!
Recently a new show has started on Channel 4 called ‘the world’s... and me’. In this show Mark Dolan visits some of the world’s freaks. The world’s tallest woman, largest animals, shortest and hairiest man have so far been on his show. And yes, these are the people who’d travel the world in a circus some hundred years ago. So Dolan is not the first to show us these abnormal people, as he says in the introduction to his show ‘the freak show is age old’. Dolan contemplates that this form of entertainment should be dead in the 21st century.
I suppose the freak show isn’t dead, unfortunately, but it has changed. Perhaps the internet still holds the old ‘look at the freak’ formula, but all other media have changed the format. Freak shows changed into respectful documentaries where the makers are genuinely interested in the person’s life and are respectful towards them. Louis Theroux is a prime example of a documentary maker who shows us abnormalities in human society, but let’s the subject explain and show it themselves. He describes the process of filming and the progress in the relationship with the people he is filming. And not once does he patronize or incriminate them.
Mark Dolan aspires to be the next Theroux. He’s even attempted the same haircut and glasses and his structural approach is similar to Louis Theroux’ documentaries. The major difference between Theroux and Dolan is the fact that Mark Dolan is offensive and patronizing. Perhaps the freak show was dead, but Dolan’s revived it.
I’m not saying I would be good at making a documentary about abnormal people, because I’d get too involved and slightly obsessed. After watching a Discovery Channel documentary about a conjoined twin with 4 limbs and 2 heads, for instance, I ended up not being able to think about anything else for about 3 months. Every moment of solitude I’d wonder about their physical and emotional problems. How did their limbs cooperate? Learning to walk must’ve been very difficult when each controls a single leg. And an itch on one arm would be scratched by the other, but how would they know? And when someone else scratches your itch, it’s never quite as satisfying as scratching it yourself. So that must be frustrating for them. Or perhaps it’s different when the other person is part of you in a very literal way. Like I said, I obsess too much.
But I cringed throughout Dolan’s entire documentary. An hour of Mark Dolan pointing out the painfully obvious; ‘Hey you’re really tall! I mean I am tall, but you! You’re practically a giant!’, ‘Must be hard, finding a boyfriend’, ‘You need very large clothes’, ‘Some men get off on giants like you, but they’re obviously perverts’.
There were several moments I expected the woman to turn around and punch him. For instance when he peered over her cubicle door while she was trying on some new clothes. Or when at a party he asked her if there was anyone she fancied there. When she responded there was nobody she liked, Dolan practically told her she couldn’t be picky.
I was very relieved to see the world’s smallest man stand up for himself. He clearly disliked Mark Dolan and did what I hoped for, by just walking away from Dolan and his ridiculous questions (‘Why do you think you’re this small’ being one of them). However, Dolan managed to do something that made me shout at the television. I don’t normally shout at inanimate objects when I’m alone in a room, but when Mark Dolan grabbed the 19 year old by the waist and pulled him on his lap, I couldn’t contain myself. Especially since he had started of the documentary with telling everyone how he was going to try his hardest to treat these people as adults rather than children. He’d now gotten me to pull my hair in front of my face in shame for the human race. Who had let this man make these shows? Who commissioned this ignorant idiot?
To calm myself down I watched an episode of ‘How to look good naked?’ And the show was relaxingly the opposite of Dolan’s nightmarish documentary. Women who at first glance don’t look like the prettiest of ladies get transformed into catwalk models with confidence the size of a skyscraper. Fashion stylist Gok Wan gets the best out of these middle-aged women and when they’re reminded at the end of the show of the person they were when they started their make-over, they blush and are a bit embarrassed by how ridiculous they were to think they were ugly.
And then I figured it out. Why doesn’t Gok Wan take over Dolan’s show? He could give the world’s tallest woman a confidence boost. Tell her things like ‘you might be really tall, but that just means there’s more of that gorgeous body of yours to look at!’ or ‘Girlfriend, with this dress people won’t even notice your height, all they’ll be thinking about is how to get your phone number!’ He could flirt with the shortest man, tell him ‘you might only come up to my knee, but you have a personality that makes up for it. You might as well be 7 feet tall with that charisma!’
I think I should definitely pitch this idea to Channel 4.
P.S: Public Exposure has received over 1,000 page views! Thank you to all of you who read it!
I suppose the freak show isn’t dead, unfortunately, but it has changed. Perhaps the internet still holds the old ‘look at the freak’ formula, but all other media have changed the format. Freak shows changed into respectful documentaries where the makers are genuinely interested in the person’s life and are respectful towards them. Louis Theroux is a prime example of a documentary maker who shows us abnormalities in human society, but let’s the subject explain and show it themselves. He describes the process of filming and the progress in the relationship with the people he is filming. And not once does he patronize or incriminate them.
Mark Dolan aspires to be the next Theroux. He’s even attempted the same haircut and glasses and his structural approach is similar to Louis Theroux’ documentaries. The major difference between Theroux and Dolan is the fact that Mark Dolan is offensive and patronizing. Perhaps the freak show was dead, but Dolan’s revived it.
I’m not saying I would be good at making a documentary about abnormal people, because I’d get too involved and slightly obsessed. After watching a Discovery Channel documentary about a conjoined twin with 4 limbs and 2 heads, for instance, I ended up not being able to think about anything else for about 3 months. Every moment of solitude I’d wonder about their physical and emotional problems. How did their limbs cooperate? Learning to walk must’ve been very difficult when each controls a single leg. And an itch on one arm would be scratched by the other, but how would they know? And when someone else scratches your itch, it’s never quite as satisfying as scratching it yourself. So that must be frustrating for them. Or perhaps it’s different when the other person is part of you in a very literal way. Like I said, I obsess too much.
But I cringed throughout Dolan’s entire documentary. An hour of Mark Dolan pointing out the painfully obvious; ‘Hey you’re really tall! I mean I am tall, but you! You’re practically a giant!’, ‘Must be hard, finding a boyfriend’, ‘You need very large clothes’, ‘Some men get off on giants like you, but they’re obviously perverts’.
There were several moments I expected the woman to turn around and punch him. For instance when he peered over her cubicle door while she was trying on some new clothes. Or when at a party he asked her if there was anyone she fancied there. When she responded there was nobody she liked, Dolan practically told her she couldn’t be picky.
I was very relieved to see the world’s smallest man stand up for himself. He clearly disliked Mark Dolan and did what I hoped for, by just walking away from Dolan and his ridiculous questions (‘Why do you think you’re this small’ being one of them). However, Dolan managed to do something that made me shout at the television. I don’t normally shout at inanimate objects when I’m alone in a room, but when Mark Dolan grabbed the 19 year old by the waist and pulled him on his lap, I couldn’t contain myself. Especially since he had started of the documentary with telling everyone how he was going to try his hardest to treat these people as adults rather than children. He’d now gotten me to pull my hair in front of my face in shame for the human race. Who had let this man make these shows? Who commissioned this ignorant idiot?
To calm myself down I watched an episode of ‘How to look good naked?’ And the show was relaxingly the opposite of Dolan’s nightmarish documentary. Women who at first glance don’t look like the prettiest of ladies get transformed into catwalk models with confidence the size of a skyscraper. Fashion stylist Gok Wan gets the best out of these middle-aged women and when they’re reminded at the end of the show of the person they were when they started their make-over, they blush and are a bit embarrassed by how ridiculous they were to think they were ugly.
And then I figured it out. Why doesn’t Gok Wan take over Dolan’s show? He could give the world’s tallest woman a confidence boost. Tell her things like ‘you might be really tall, but that just means there’s more of that gorgeous body of yours to look at!’ or ‘Girlfriend, with this dress people won’t even notice your height, all they’ll be thinking about is how to get your phone number!’ He could flirt with the shortest man, tell him ‘you might only come up to my knee, but you have a personality that makes up for it. You might as well be 7 feet tall with that charisma!’
I think I should definitely pitch this idea to Channel 4.
P.S: Public Exposure has received over 1,000 page views! Thank you to all of you who read it!
Monday, 5 May 2008
15. Beachy Brighton
This week it’s been sunny and summery and for the first time I understand the appeal of the beach. I used to be puzzled as to why people would list the beach as their favourite place I didn’t think the beach was more relaxing than, for instance, a park. When I moved to Brighton I didn’t think its coastal location had to be considered when making up a list of pros and cons. But now I realise the beach is quite great. It’s a place to just sit down and let your senses do the work.
Observing people on the beach as though they’re a biological phenomenon confused me. The sun is out for a day and suddenly masses of people track down to the beach and just sit facing the sea. This weekend, me and Catherine have been two of those people who go to the beach and just sit. And after 10 minutes of sitting down we got some entertainment thrown in our laps. A group of four middle aged Americans wandered past us; two men and two women. All of them stared intently at the ground. One of the women loudly said ‘I can’t find the coyote!’ This puzzled Catherine and me, but then one of the men told her with vast determination ‘Don’t worry, we’ll find a coyote, I don’t know how, but we will find one!’ and after a few paces, the other man picked up something off the ground, what seemed to be a shell, and happily exclaimed ‘I found one!’
We were baffled by this exchange. Did these people think shells were coyotes? Did that mean that they referred to the canine creatures back at home as ‘shells’? Did they not realise coyotes were mammals and think they lived in shells? We’ll probably never find out.
After a little while, out of something similar to boredom, but not quite, we started writing a song. The subject was the fact that whenever you leave anything, especially food or drinks, outside for a second, people say ‘oh don’t eat that! Someone probably pissed on that!’ So our song was about this mystery person who lurks in the shadows, ready to wee in your drinks. And although we spent three hours on it, the beach made it feel as though it wasn’t a waste of time at all.
However, I still don’t see the appeal of sailing and sea-trade. I don’t understand odes to the sea and if I hear the sentence ‘the sea is a rough mistress’ I just roll my eyes and sigh. The whole deal of being at sea and getting wet all the time seems like a tedious drag to me.
It might be because the sea glimmers with absence in my growing up. Until now I never lived near the coast, my parents aren’t particularly fond of the beach and above all; I can’t swim. That’s probably caused my complete emotional disconnection with large masses of water.
But the sea’s conjoined twin, the beach, has turned into a nice friend of mine. And suddenly Brighton has another pro on its list.
Observing people on the beach as though they’re a biological phenomenon confused me. The sun is out for a day and suddenly masses of people track down to the beach and just sit facing the sea. This weekend, me and Catherine have been two of those people who go to the beach and just sit. And after 10 minutes of sitting down we got some entertainment thrown in our laps. A group of four middle aged Americans wandered past us; two men and two women. All of them stared intently at the ground. One of the women loudly said ‘I can’t find the coyote!’ This puzzled Catherine and me, but then one of the men told her with vast determination ‘Don’t worry, we’ll find a coyote, I don’t know how, but we will find one!’ and after a few paces, the other man picked up something off the ground, what seemed to be a shell, and happily exclaimed ‘I found one!’
We were baffled by this exchange. Did these people think shells were coyotes? Did that mean that they referred to the canine creatures back at home as ‘shells’? Did they not realise coyotes were mammals and think they lived in shells? We’ll probably never find out.
After a little while, out of something similar to boredom, but not quite, we started writing a song. The subject was the fact that whenever you leave anything, especially food or drinks, outside for a second, people say ‘oh don’t eat that! Someone probably pissed on that!’ So our song was about this mystery person who lurks in the shadows, ready to wee in your drinks. And although we spent three hours on it, the beach made it feel as though it wasn’t a waste of time at all.
However, I still don’t see the appeal of sailing and sea-trade. I don’t understand odes to the sea and if I hear the sentence ‘the sea is a rough mistress’ I just roll my eyes and sigh. The whole deal of being at sea and getting wet all the time seems like a tedious drag to me.
It might be because the sea glimmers with absence in my growing up. Until now I never lived near the coast, my parents aren’t particularly fond of the beach and above all; I can’t swim. That’s probably caused my complete emotional disconnection with large masses of water.
But the sea’s conjoined twin, the beach, has turned into a nice friend of mine. And suddenly Brighton has another pro on its list.
Friday, 18 April 2008
14. Decent Dancing
My parents are learning how to ballroom dance. Their original reason for this was that their 25th wedding anniversary is approaching and they wanted to do an opening dance. But the longer this is going on, the more it becomes clear that this has been a wish of my mother’s since forever and this anniversary was an occasion my dad couldn’t weasel himself out of.
They invited me to come watch their dance class, an invite I very much accepted.
The look of the place is a bit dubious. Obviously it’s difficult to create a lot of atmosphere when working with an empty space like a dance floor, but I don’t know if the semi-kitsch decorations made it any better. Rotan chairs are placed around the tables which are scattered in every corner where there is no dancing going on. Sat on the chairs is a certain type of people that I never see outside of occasions like this. The women are fierce, short haired housewives. The men are sulky husbands with tucked in shirts. They have a look in their eyes that shows determination to get it right. Their wives obviously dragged them into this and therefore they have created a way to make it fun for themselves as well as their wives. They treat the dance as a competition where they need to get it all right, lead their wives and be the best.
The women are focussed to get it right as well, but they seem more pleased by the fact the man they love is taking the lead and sweeping them off their feet.
The teacher is a man who’d stereotypically be a ringmaster in a circus. Short and stubby as he is, in a red jacket and sporting a powerful moustache. His voice is friendly and jolly, a bit like the dances he is talking about. The names he gives the different dance moves are a bit bizarre and always a mixture of Dutch and English that doesn’t quite work.
My parents look intently at their feet and glance nervously at each other and occasionally me, while they learn new steps of the tango, cha cha cha, quickstep and the English waltz. I can see how my dad, who’s never been a rhythm king, tries his very best to get the steps right. My mom does the same, but at the same time I see how she’s trying to force my dad to lead. Whenever my dad messes up, he guiltily grins at my mom, who laughs and rolls her eyes at him. When my mom forgets a step, she laughs and shakes her head and looks annoyed at my dad, who continues dancing because he can’t remember the steps if he doesn’t finish the routine.
In the break my dad pretends to fit the stereotype of the ‘forced-to-dance man’, while my mom makes protesting noises and claims he does enjoy it. And my mom is clearly right, which my dad admits in the end.
They bicker and argue a bit during the dancing, but during the English waltz, which they both remember the steps to, I see how they look at each other. I melt a bit inside when I see that after 25 years of marriage, my parents still give each other that look of radiant love while they dance their way through life.
They invited me to come watch their dance class, an invite I very much accepted.
The look of the place is a bit dubious. Obviously it’s difficult to create a lot of atmosphere when working with an empty space like a dance floor, but I don’t know if the semi-kitsch decorations made it any better. Rotan chairs are placed around the tables which are scattered in every corner where there is no dancing going on. Sat on the chairs is a certain type of people that I never see outside of occasions like this. The women are fierce, short haired housewives. The men are sulky husbands with tucked in shirts. They have a look in their eyes that shows determination to get it right. Their wives obviously dragged them into this and therefore they have created a way to make it fun for themselves as well as their wives. They treat the dance as a competition where they need to get it all right, lead their wives and be the best.
The women are focussed to get it right as well, but they seem more pleased by the fact the man they love is taking the lead and sweeping them off their feet.
The teacher is a man who’d stereotypically be a ringmaster in a circus. Short and stubby as he is, in a red jacket and sporting a powerful moustache. His voice is friendly and jolly, a bit like the dances he is talking about. The names he gives the different dance moves are a bit bizarre and always a mixture of Dutch and English that doesn’t quite work.
My parents look intently at their feet and glance nervously at each other and occasionally me, while they learn new steps of the tango, cha cha cha, quickstep and the English waltz. I can see how my dad, who’s never been a rhythm king, tries his very best to get the steps right. My mom does the same, but at the same time I see how she’s trying to force my dad to lead. Whenever my dad messes up, he guiltily grins at my mom, who laughs and rolls her eyes at him. When my mom forgets a step, she laughs and shakes her head and looks annoyed at my dad, who continues dancing because he can’t remember the steps if he doesn’t finish the routine.
In the break my dad pretends to fit the stereotype of the ‘forced-to-dance man’, while my mom makes protesting noises and claims he does enjoy it. And my mom is clearly right, which my dad admits in the end.
They bicker and argue a bit during the dancing, but during the English waltz, which they both remember the steps to, I see how they look at each other. I melt a bit inside when I see that after 25 years of marriage, my parents still give each other that look of radiant love while they dance their way through life.
Tuesday, 25 March 2008
13. Looking for a new Home
For the past few weeks three of my friends and I have tried to find a house for next year.
We attended an informative talk before the list of available houses was released. The talk was mainly about how to make sure you'd end up with the house of your (modest) dreams. The overall message was that there was no reason to panic and that getting the first house you viewed was not the best thing to do in most cases.
The next day we heard several of our friends had placed deposits for the first house they viewed.
We went to see two houses on that first day.
In the first house a girl with a thick accent that none of us could really place showed us around. ‘This is the living room’ she said, opening a door to a space about the size of a closet in which a TV and a small couch had been stuffed together with some boxes. There was no place for any of us to stand in it. ‘We used it in the first year, but after that we just used it as a storage room.’It was clear that the size of the room meant it had been a storage room before they moved in as well.
The next house was shown to us by a guy named Morgan. He had long greasy hair and wore an old white T-shirt and some jeans. He was very kind and answered all of our questions before we even asked them. He showed us around all of the rooms and it was clear that he lived with three girls. His room was the smallest and darkest of them all. In his room there was a bed, closet, computer and the desk was fully taken up by neatly arranged world of warcraft type figurines. Morgan didn’t seem bothered with the dark hole he was living in. He managed to be positive about it.
Morgan ended up being the nicest person to show us a house. After his house we were shown around by a welsh boy who didn’t speak much besides the necessary ‘this is the bathroom’ type sentences. It made the whole experience a bit awkward. This boy also lived with three other girls.
We received a call from a landlady who asked us if we wanted to view a pink four bedroom house, situated next to a pub. Of course we wanted to view it. We went over and made the mistake we made with every single house we viewed so far; underestimating the length of the road the house was on. After walking for a good half hour we arrived at the end of the road. We had forgotten the number of the house and tried to call the landlady, but she wasn’t picking up. Eventually we saw someone walk out of a pink house close to a pub so we guessed that'd be the place. We were less than 5 minutes late, yet the lady said ‘I was just about to leave’. We apologized politely. She ushered us into the first room. She wore a long puffed up beige coat and had an artificial type of yellowish blonde hair. Her long nailed hands were clutched around the keys to the house at all times. ‘So what are you girls looking for, or are you just looking around?’ she asked. We mumbled that we were just looking around. ‘THAT’S how you’ll LOSE what you’re looking for’ she exclaimed triumphantly ‘All the good houses will be gone by tomorrow, believe me I’ve been doing this for fifteen years!’ At that moment I should’ve been alarmed, she was playing on the panic students felt when faced with choosing a future home for the first time in their lives.
But as she said, she’d been doing this for fifteen years and had gathered some skill at it. And we are students who have to choose a home for the first time in our lives. So we nodded, clearly intimidated by this housing business veteran. We followed her through the rest of the house. She kept dropping comments that made me feel very uneasy. ‘I swear the boy who lives in this room used to be a mole in his previous life’ she said when entering the basement room. The room didn’t receive much light due to it being in the basement and the guy had his curtains closed. The fact he wasn’t at home made the closed curtains not really that strange. At least I wouldn’t classify that type of behaviour specifically ‘mole-like’. ‘Please try to look through the filth in the kitchen’ she said, pointing to a single portion of washing up that was neatly placed next to the sink. ‘I will reprimand them; this is not what I expect good tenants to leave their kitchen like.’ I nearly told the lady our kitchen back home was much worse than this, but realised that would’ve meant all chances of getting the house would be gone.
When we had seen the entire house and the lady had answered all of our questions, we were left in the kitchen feeling intimidated and confused. ‘So how does this house compare to the other houses you’ve seen so far?’ she asked, staring us straight in the eyes. ‘It’s much larger’ we all agreed. ‘So what is keeping you from taking it?’ she said. I honestly confessed that we basically had no clue what we were doing and had no specific reasons why not the get the house. We told her we needed to discuss the house with our friend (Jess hadn’t managed to come to the viewing with us). The landlady told me to take pictures so we could show our friend. I did so. In the meantime the lady said ‘I will get rid of this house, I always do, I just want it to happen quickly because I’m sick of visiting it.’
Walking out of the house we all felt as though we had found our house. It was a bit above our budget, but it was the nicest house we’d seen so far and the landlady kept pointing out how everything was brand new.
‘Well that house was lovely’ someone said; agreeing noises all over. ‘Good view’ another mentioned; again we all concurred. It was silent for a while. Then I carefully dropped ‘the landlady was a bit weird, wasn’t she?’ A relieved ‘YES!’ came from the other two. That opened the floodgates and within a minute we were all doing impressions of the wicked witch of the pink house. We painted horror scenarios where the evil hag moved into a cupboard and watched our every move. Emilie confessed she’d been too scared to ask if she could use the toilet. We all said she’d probably have made us take the house if we wanted to make use of its facilities.
We decided against the pink house next to the pub. After all the lady had said herself that the landlord was more important than the house, and in this case that meant we wanted nothing to do with the house or the lady anymore.
So far we haven’t managed to find a house yet. But the informative talk is like a mantra to me when I start feeling panicky about the housing situation. ‘There are enough houses to go round, just take your time.’ I am convinced that in the end we will end up not just with a house, but with our home.
We attended an informative talk before the list of available houses was released. The talk was mainly about how to make sure you'd end up with the house of your (modest) dreams. The overall message was that there was no reason to panic and that getting the first house you viewed was not the best thing to do in most cases.
The next day we heard several of our friends had placed deposits for the first house they viewed.
We went to see two houses on that first day.
In the first house a girl with a thick accent that none of us could really place showed us around. ‘This is the living room’ she said, opening a door to a space about the size of a closet in which a TV and a small couch had been stuffed together with some boxes. There was no place for any of us to stand in it. ‘We used it in the first year, but after that we just used it as a storage room.’It was clear that the size of the room meant it had been a storage room before they moved in as well.
The next house was shown to us by a guy named Morgan. He had long greasy hair and wore an old white T-shirt and some jeans. He was very kind and answered all of our questions before we even asked them. He showed us around all of the rooms and it was clear that he lived with three girls. His room was the smallest and darkest of them all. In his room there was a bed, closet, computer and the desk was fully taken up by neatly arranged world of warcraft type figurines. Morgan didn’t seem bothered with the dark hole he was living in. He managed to be positive about it.
Morgan ended up being the nicest person to show us a house. After his house we were shown around by a welsh boy who didn’t speak much besides the necessary ‘this is the bathroom’ type sentences. It made the whole experience a bit awkward. This boy also lived with three other girls.
We received a call from a landlady who asked us if we wanted to view a pink four bedroom house, situated next to a pub. Of course we wanted to view it. We went over and made the mistake we made with every single house we viewed so far; underestimating the length of the road the house was on. After walking for a good half hour we arrived at the end of the road. We had forgotten the number of the house and tried to call the landlady, but she wasn’t picking up. Eventually we saw someone walk out of a pink house close to a pub so we guessed that'd be the place. We were less than 5 minutes late, yet the lady said ‘I was just about to leave’. We apologized politely. She ushered us into the first room. She wore a long puffed up beige coat and had an artificial type of yellowish blonde hair. Her long nailed hands were clutched around the keys to the house at all times. ‘So what are you girls looking for, or are you just looking around?’ she asked. We mumbled that we were just looking around. ‘THAT’S how you’ll LOSE what you’re looking for’ she exclaimed triumphantly ‘All the good houses will be gone by tomorrow, believe me I’ve been doing this for fifteen years!’ At that moment I should’ve been alarmed, she was playing on the panic students felt when faced with choosing a future home for the first time in their lives.
But as she said, she’d been doing this for fifteen years and had gathered some skill at it. And we are students who have to choose a home for the first time in our lives. So we nodded, clearly intimidated by this housing business veteran. We followed her through the rest of the house. She kept dropping comments that made me feel very uneasy. ‘I swear the boy who lives in this room used to be a mole in his previous life’ she said when entering the basement room. The room didn’t receive much light due to it being in the basement and the guy had his curtains closed. The fact he wasn’t at home made the closed curtains not really that strange. At least I wouldn’t classify that type of behaviour specifically ‘mole-like’. ‘Please try to look through the filth in the kitchen’ she said, pointing to a single portion of washing up that was neatly placed next to the sink. ‘I will reprimand them; this is not what I expect good tenants to leave their kitchen like.’ I nearly told the lady our kitchen back home was much worse than this, but realised that would’ve meant all chances of getting the house would be gone.
When we had seen the entire house and the lady had answered all of our questions, we were left in the kitchen feeling intimidated and confused. ‘So how does this house compare to the other houses you’ve seen so far?’ she asked, staring us straight in the eyes. ‘It’s much larger’ we all agreed. ‘So what is keeping you from taking it?’ she said. I honestly confessed that we basically had no clue what we were doing and had no specific reasons why not the get the house. We told her we needed to discuss the house with our friend (Jess hadn’t managed to come to the viewing with us). The landlady told me to take pictures so we could show our friend. I did so. In the meantime the lady said ‘I will get rid of this house, I always do, I just want it to happen quickly because I’m sick of visiting it.’
Walking out of the house we all felt as though we had found our house. It was a bit above our budget, but it was the nicest house we’d seen so far and the landlady kept pointing out how everything was brand new.
‘Well that house was lovely’ someone said; agreeing noises all over. ‘Good view’ another mentioned; again we all concurred. It was silent for a while. Then I carefully dropped ‘the landlady was a bit weird, wasn’t she?’ A relieved ‘YES!’ came from the other two. That opened the floodgates and within a minute we were all doing impressions of the wicked witch of the pink house. We painted horror scenarios where the evil hag moved into a cupboard and watched our every move. Emilie confessed she’d been too scared to ask if she could use the toilet. We all said she’d probably have made us take the house if we wanted to make use of its facilities.
We decided against the pink house next to the pub. After all the lady had said herself that the landlord was more important than the house, and in this case that meant we wanted nothing to do with the house or the lady anymore.
So far we haven’t managed to find a house yet. But the informative talk is like a mantra to me when I start feeling panicky about the housing situation. ‘There are enough houses to go round, just take your time.’ I am convinced that in the end we will end up not just with a house, but with our home.
Monday, 3 March 2008
Update!
Public Exposure has hit its 500 viewers mark! And to celebrate that and make sure more people get to read PE, it has now 2 extra sites! You can find the blog on both LiveJournal and Myspace from now on.
Add them to your friends and always be updated with the latest entry!
http://www.myspace.com/public_exposure
http://public_exposure.livejournal.com/
And stay tuned for this months entry!
Love,
Danau
Add them to your friends and always be updated with the latest entry!
http://www.myspace.com/public_exposure
http://public_exposure.livejournal.com/
And stay tuned for this months entry!
Love,
Danau
Wednesday, 6 February 2008
12. Siblings
I have one sister called Eva. She’s a month less than four years older than me. As far as siblings goes, that’s it for me. And to be honest I doubt there’ll ever be another one, unless life takes a turn into a parallel universe.
Unlike many siblings, my sister and I have always been very close. To a point where it might’ve been creepy. We are exceptions to each others rules in many ways. For instance where I love being the centre of attention, the moment Eva is in the room I step out of the spotlight to make sure Eva can feed in her need to suck up attention. A need that is tenfold greater than mine (imagine that!). And when Eva and I are both home, she’ll be the one taking care of most things and making me food and the like. Where she’d normally probably stay in bed, she’ll now get out of it, because she knows my laziness is tenfold larger than hers.
My sister was the first born grandchild on both sides of the family, which must’ve meant lots of attention from everyone. Uncles and aunts who’d never had a niece or nephew were in admiration of this little girl, grandparents were defined for the first time by my sister; before her birth they had merely been parents, now they were grand. So she wasn’t just an only child, she was everyone’s only child. And after four years the announcement of my being was made. And had I known my sister the way I do now, I would’ve expected her to be one of those who despise the next child to enter the family and draw away attention. But she didn’t. She stood at my little bed for ages apparently, just looking at me and handing me my first ever toy.
And so life continued, both of us bumbling along, growing up. We hardly ever argued and if we did it never resulted in anything drastic. My sister would be mean and manipulate me into doing things I didn’t really want to do, so she could benefit from it. Or she’d tell me stories that were just slightly too scary and tease me about being scared. But I wouldn’t run to my parents because I lived in perpetual admiration for my older sister. In my turn I’d have one single defence; violence. I’d bite Eva whenever she did something I didn’t like, or just if I felt like it. Then she’d cry and I’d start crying and she’d call our mother and I’d widen my big blue eyes from beneath my white fringe and softly sob ‘but I didn’t do it on purpose’ , which wouldn’t be entirely true, but would always work. No one can resist that face.
Overall Eva was my big idol. She was always one stage of growing up ahead of me. When I went to school for the first time at age 4 she was already 8 years old and would take her friends to come and see me at school and then behave all mature around me, just to show off. In my turn I’d run to her in the playground to show my friends I had an older sister who didn’t mind hanging out with her younger sister, because I was cool enough for that. I wasn’t really cool enough though, but I didn’t realise that. For instance she’d try to make me say silly things in front of her friends. There’s the hilarious anecdote where she asks me to say ‘July’ and I say ‘luly’ because I was unable to pronounce the letter J and ‘lul’ is a dirty word meaning ‘cock’ in Dutch. I was blissfully unaware of this speech impediment and couldn’t figure out what the fun was in the word July. That was the basis for our school relationship for as long as we both went to primary school.
But when it was just the two of us together, or just our family, our relationship would change. We would have the most amounts of fun and at a very early stage we’d have most fun talking. Where in front of friends she’d embarrass me about being unable to speak properly, when there was no one around we’d have most fun with our linguistic talent. We’d make up stories and songs and laugh our heads off.
Not too long ago my auntie told us that we were the strangest children she had ever met. Instead of saying we’d like things; we’d say ‘oh it was fantabulous!’, she’d never heard a 6 year old say that.
And to this day, we still find ourselves having most fun when we go into our language overdrive. And because we’ve done this for a little less than 15 years together, we’re perfectly adapted. I remember some time ago when we both exclaimed at exactly the same time ‘what?! But that’s ethically irresponsible!’ We throw sentences back and forth and it’s a competition to end up with the most grammatically correct and vocabulary expanding sentence without losing credibility.
And it’s not because we’re so posh and well educated. It’s not a hobby we’ve developed from our high horses and show off with. It’s simply our thing because it’s one of the only things we’re good at.
I know there are siblings who do races together and competitions. There are those who compare who the strongest one or who the better looking one is. But these things have never applied to Eva and I. We have never been the sporty types and looks have never mattered that much to us. And although I have a developed liking for fashion and make-up now, it is not to look better than others, it’s a personal love.
So all these regular things in which siblings are always competing and comparing, we don’t, simply because we’d both lose just as much. Language is our competition. And the upside to it is that all words we say are very well understood on the other end. So if I say something to my sister that sounds like a grove insult to anyone else, Eva will know I am referring to something previously said and discussed and have just summarised it in a short and ready to digest way.
But we’ve both taken our competition to the biggest challenge yet. We’ve both moved abroad. The question is whether we will need to struggle harder to keep up with our regular standards because of the amount of English we hear around us every day, or if the lack of using Dutch means we build up a reserve that will make our language battle even stronger.
Or maybe, just maybe, we will conquer English as our new battlefield.
Unlike many siblings, my sister and I have always been very close. To a point where it might’ve been creepy. We are exceptions to each others rules in many ways. For instance where I love being the centre of attention, the moment Eva is in the room I step out of the spotlight to make sure Eva can feed in her need to suck up attention. A need that is tenfold greater than mine (imagine that!). And when Eva and I are both home, she’ll be the one taking care of most things and making me food and the like. Where she’d normally probably stay in bed, she’ll now get out of it, because she knows my laziness is tenfold larger than hers.
My sister was the first born grandchild on both sides of the family, which must’ve meant lots of attention from everyone. Uncles and aunts who’d never had a niece or nephew were in admiration of this little girl, grandparents were defined for the first time by my sister; before her birth they had merely been parents, now they were grand. So she wasn’t just an only child, she was everyone’s only child. And after four years the announcement of my being was made. And had I known my sister the way I do now, I would’ve expected her to be one of those who despise the next child to enter the family and draw away attention. But she didn’t. She stood at my little bed for ages apparently, just looking at me and handing me my first ever toy.
And so life continued, both of us bumbling along, growing up. We hardly ever argued and if we did it never resulted in anything drastic. My sister would be mean and manipulate me into doing things I didn’t really want to do, so she could benefit from it. Or she’d tell me stories that were just slightly too scary and tease me about being scared. But I wouldn’t run to my parents because I lived in perpetual admiration for my older sister. In my turn I’d have one single defence; violence. I’d bite Eva whenever she did something I didn’t like, or just if I felt like it. Then she’d cry and I’d start crying and she’d call our mother and I’d widen my big blue eyes from beneath my white fringe and softly sob ‘but I didn’t do it on purpose’ , which wouldn’t be entirely true, but would always work. No one can resist that face.
Overall Eva was my big idol. She was always one stage of growing up ahead of me. When I went to school for the first time at age 4 she was already 8 years old and would take her friends to come and see me at school and then behave all mature around me, just to show off. In my turn I’d run to her in the playground to show my friends I had an older sister who didn’t mind hanging out with her younger sister, because I was cool enough for that. I wasn’t really cool enough though, but I didn’t realise that. For instance she’d try to make me say silly things in front of her friends. There’s the hilarious anecdote where she asks me to say ‘July’ and I say ‘luly’ because I was unable to pronounce the letter J and ‘lul’ is a dirty word meaning ‘cock’ in Dutch. I was blissfully unaware of this speech impediment and couldn’t figure out what the fun was in the word July. That was the basis for our school relationship for as long as we both went to primary school.
But when it was just the two of us together, or just our family, our relationship would change. We would have the most amounts of fun and at a very early stage we’d have most fun talking. Where in front of friends she’d embarrass me about being unable to speak properly, when there was no one around we’d have most fun with our linguistic talent. We’d make up stories and songs and laugh our heads off.
Not too long ago my auntie told us that we were the strangest children she had ever met. Instead of saying we’d like things; we’d say ‘oh it was fantabulous!’, she’d never heard a 6 year old say that.
And to this day, we still find ourselves having most fun when we go into our language overdrive. And because we’ve done this for a little less than 15 years together, we’re perfectly adapted. I remember some time ago when we both exclaimed at exactly the same time ‘what?! But that’s ethically irresponsible!’ We throw sentences back and forth and it’s a competition to end up with the most grammatically correct and vocabulary expanding sentence without losing credibility.
And it’s not because we’re so posh and well educated. It’s not a hobby we’ve developed from our high horses and show off with. It’s simply our thing because it’s one of the only things we’re good at.
I know there are siblings who do races together and competitions. There are those who compare who the strongest one or who the better looking one is. But these things have never applied to Eva and I. We have never been the sporty types and looks have never mattered that much to us. And although I have a developed liking for fashion and make-up now, it is not to look better than others, it’s a personal love.
So all these regular things in which siblings are always competing and comparing, we don’t, simply because we’d both lose just as much. Language is our competition. And the upside to it is that all words we say are very well understood on the other end. So if I say something to my sister that sounds like a grove insult to anyone else, Eva will know I am referring to something previously said and discussed and have just summarised it in a short and ready to digest way.
But we’ve both taken our competition to the biggest challenge yet. We’ve both moved abroad. The question is whether we will need to struggle harder to keep up with our regular standards because of the amount of English we hear around us every day, or if the lack of using Dutch means we build up a reserve that will make our language battle even stronger.
Or maybe, just maybe, we will conquer English as our new battlefield.
Wednesday, 2 January 2008
11. the Merry Holiday
The best time of winter has passed again. Those few days in which the cold adds to the atmosphere and is actually preferred over sun are once again left behind us. Christmas; the feast of light, birth of Christ, the time Father Christmas visits or whatever it is you celebrate on the 25th and 26th of December.
Not too long ago I read in the paper that the Dutch spend least money on Christmas of all countries that celebrate it.
Now of course that statistic goes very well with the idea of the Dutch always keeping an eye on their money. However, this is not at all the reason we spend so little on Christmas. The reason is that we don’t usually buy gifts for Christmas. We have St. Nicolas day on the 5th of December. We give gifts on that day. So obviously we only get some nice food for Christmas, which won’t ever add up to the staggering prices for playstation 3’s and new stereo sets.
Unfortunately I was not in the Netherlands during our national holiday. I was sat at home in England, alone. I had an essay deadline the next day and it wasn’t until later in the evening that I realised I was missing out on my favourite festive day. Feeling utterly sorry for myself I told everyone who did or didn’t want to listen how sad I was. Most people responded in a way I’d probably respond myself ‘oh that sucks, happy Dutch Christmas day or something’. Because what are you supposed to do when someone misses out on a national holiday that you only slightly understand yourself?
Jess, the girl who lives next door to me, responded the best by making me St. Nicolas decorations and giving me her advent calendar chocolate. That was so incredibly sweet that it made me warm inside and gave me renewed motivation to finish my essay.
Five days later I set foot in my home country, the Netherlands. All St Nicolas decorations had been replaced by Christmas ones. It’s been a hype for the last five years to celebrate Christmas the way they do in Hollywood films. Unfortunately you can’t really create a tradition from scratch, so Christmas has become a holiday where everyone is a bit insecure about whether they’re celebrating it the right way. People make turkey and other American or English inspired dishes. They buy presents for Christmas, tell their children about Father Christmas, even though no kid will believe in him. After all Father Christmas is just someone on the telly and St Nicolas is a real person, at least in their minds.
Because I had missed out on St Nicolas, my family decided to give gifts on Christmas day. Now this is not a unique phenomenon in my family. Ever since my sister and I were told St Nicolas is all a big lie, we’ve been just giving each other gifts without pretending an old fellow on a white horse dropped it through the imaginary chimney. However my family has never been good with deadlines. We’re that family which is always late for everything. And St. Nicolas is no exception. On the 4th we ask each other ‘did you manage to get all of your presents?’ And nine out of ten times the answer is a guilty ‘no...’ So we postpone the deadline and do the whole gift routine at Christmas. We pretend that this course of action is justified by saying ‘we do things the Danish way this year’. My mother is half Danish and in Denmark Christmas is very important. The only moments we acknowledge our Danish ancestry is when the Danish do something nice that we don’t do in the Netherlands. Except for my mother, who is proudly half Danish whenever you ask her.
This year Christmas was Danish yet again; gifts underneath the Christmas tree, Danish Christmas dinner and Danish Christmas decorations (most of them gifts from relatives). And every year the typical crispy roast is the number one conversation topic during dinner. Every year there are all these things that should be different, roast longer, more salt, different meat. And no matter how often we determine that it should’ve roasted shorter, my parents don’t fail to bring it up at least ten times more often during the eating of aforementioned dish.
This year I had brought home Christmas crackers on my mother’s request. Christmas crackers are something we only see in films. So when the crackers entered our home, something surreal became real. And moments like that are always a bit magical, especially when they happen with Christmas.
But the crackers are part of Hollywood Christmas and with them I stepped in the trap of creating a tradition from scratch. The crackers tradition wasn’t understood to its fullest by my family. Everyone expected confetti to blow out of the crackers; instead we got the traditional hat, joke and useless gift. My half British friend and cracker fan Wendy had already explained to me that this was what was inside of crackers, but I was still surprised. The jokes in the crackers were nearly all puns, but puns are very language determined and therefore I had to explain them all to my family. You shouldn’t ever explain a joke, but explaining a bad pun is probably the worst thing in language.
My sister and I had a joke quarrel over the papers hats, as the purple ones were clearly the best.
We also didn’t understand the order in which things should go for Christmas. The right order is unwrapping your Christmas presents in the morning, so you get to play with your presents the entire day.
We didn’t follow this order. We had the St. Nicolas evening tradition in the back of our minds and saved the presents until after Christmas dinner. But as it goes with this family tradition; we always underestimate the time it takes to prepare it. So we ended up having a heavy meal at about 9 o’clock in the evening, which meant it finished at about 11.30. After which the dog needed to be walked and tea needed to be made. After all of this each member of my family was exhausted and with that mindset we came to the moment where we got to open our presents. Now each and every one of the presents was lovely, but at midnight with a stomach full of roast and caramel potatoes it is very difficult to express how happy you are with gifts. So all of us dozily accepted the presents and within minutes my sister announced that she wanted to sleep. We all gratefully followed.
The next day is called second Christmas day in the Netherlands and it is a suitable name as the day holds the same expectations as the one before it. Except that on the second day of Christmas we visit my mother’s family. My grandparents have 5 children, whom produced 10 grandchildren. So all these people; my grandparents, their children and their partners (obviously my uncles and aunts) and us grandchildren, come together and have more Danish food. We sit at the table all day, drink beer and aquavit (a very strong spirit) and eat fish, eggs and meatballs. Then there is coffee. All of this lasts up to 7 hours. Seven hours of food and alcohol. With the brilliant rule that if someone says ‘skål’ (meaning ‘cheers’ in Danish) everyone in the room has to drink. We all abuse this rule to its fullest.
This year the youngest grandchild present was 14 years old, yet we were all directed to the separate ‘children’s table’. On this table we found nothing but glasses intended for water. Within a couple of minutes we had all complained and gotten ourselves the right to drink alcohol. After all, we might be grandchildren, but we’re not quite innocent enough to suffice with water.
And after catching up with my family for seven hours and exchanging the necessary gossip about family members I go home content.
And then Christmas is over. Just like that 48 hours of festive spirit have run out. And what is it that made those 48 hours special? As an atheist I don’t celebrate the birth of Christ, I am happy the days become lighter but it’s not something I celebrate for two days and I’ve never believed in Father Christmas. But just because those two days are called Christmas and everyone stops the routine of day to day life because of it, it makes those days special. Just because on those days my family truly longs to be together and is satisfied in that longing, just because of that, I love Christmas.
I wish all readers of Public Exposure a very happy and bright 2008.
Not too long ago I read in the paper that the Dutch spend least money on Christmas of all countries that celebrate it.
Now of course that statistic goes very well with the idea of the Dutch always keeping an eye on their money. However, this is not at all the reason we spend so little on Christmas. The reason is that we don’t usually buy gifts for Christmas. We have St. Nicolas day on the 5th of December. We give gifts on that day. So obviously we only get some nice food for Christmas, which won’t ever add up to the staggering prices for playstation 3’s and new stereo sets.
Unfortunately I was not in the Netherlands during our national holiday. I was sat at home in England, alone. I had an essay deadline the next day and it wasn’t until later in the evening that I realised I was missing out on my favourite festive day. Feeling utterly sorry for myself I told everyone who did or didn’t want to listen how sad I was. Most people responded in a way I’d probably respond myself ‘oh that sucks, happy Dutch Christmas day or something’. Because what are you supposed to do when someone misses out on a national holiday that you only slightly understand yourself?
Jess, the girl who lives next door to me, responded the best by making me St. Nicolas decorations and giving me her advent calendar chocolate. That was so incredibly sweet that it made me warm inside and gave me renewed motivation to finish my essay.
Five days later I set foot in my home country, the Netherlands. All St Nicolas decorations had been replaced by Christmas ones. It’s been a hype for the last five years to celebrate Christmas the way they do in Hollywood films. Unfortunately you can’t really create a tradition from scratch, so Christmas has become a holiday where everyone is a bit insecure about whether they’re celebrating it the right way. People make turkey and other American or English inspired dishes. They buy presents for Christmas, tell their children about Father Christmas, even though no kid will believe in him. After all Father Christmas is just someone on the telly and St Nicolas is a real person, at least in their minds.
Because I had missed out on St Nicolas, my family decided to give gifts on Christmas day. Now this is not a unique phenomenon in my family. Ever since my sister and I were told St Nicolas is all a big lie, we’ve been just giving each other gifts without pretending an old fellow on a white horse dropped it through the imaginary chimney. However my family has never been good with deadlines. We’re that family which is always late for everything. And St. Nicolas is no exception. On the 4th we ask each other ‘did you manage to get all of your presents?’ And nine out of ten times the answer is a guilty ‘no...’ So we postpone the deadline and do the whole gift routine at Christmas. We pretend that this course of action is justified by saying ‘we do things the Danish way this year’. My mother is half Danish and in Denmark Christmas is very important. The only moments we acknowledge our Danish ancestry is when the Danish do something nice that we don’t do in the Netherlands. Except for my mother, who is proudly half Danish whenever you ask her.
This year Christmas was Danish yet again; gifts underneath the Christmas tree, Danish Christmas dinner and Danish Christmas decorations (most of them gifts from relatives). And every year the typical crispy roast is the number one conversation topic during dinner. Every year there are all these things that should be different, roast longer, more salt, different meat. And no matter how often we determine that it should’ve roasted shorter, my parents don’t fail to bring it up at least ten times more often during the eating of aforementioned dish.
This year I had brought home Christmas crackers on my mother’s request. Christmas crackers are something we only see in films. So when the crackers entered our home, something surreal became real. And moments like that are always a bit magical, especially when they happen with Christmas.
But the crackers are part of Hollywood Christmas and with them I stepped in the trap of creating a tradition from scratch. The crackers tradition wasn’t understood to its fullest by my family. Everyone expected confetti to blow out of the crackers; instead we got the traditional hat, joke and useless gift. My half British friend and cracker fan Wendy had already explained to me that this was what was inside of crackers, but I was still surprised. The jokes in the crackers were nearly all puns, but puns are very language determined and therefore I had to explain them all to my family. You shouldn’t ever explain a joke, but explaining a bad pun is probably the worst thing in language.
My sister and I had a joke quarrel over the papers hats, as the purple ones were clearly the best.
We also didn’t understand the order in which things should go for Christmas. The right order is unwrapping your Christmas presents in the morning, so you get to play with your presents the entire day.
We didn’t follow this order. We had the St. Nicolas evening tradition in the back of our minds and saved the presents until after Christmas dinner. But as it goes with this family tradition; we always underestimate the time it takes to prepare it. So we ended up having a heavy meal at about 9 o’clock in the evening, which meant it finished at about 11.30. After which the dog needed to be walked and tea needed to be made. After all of this each member of my family was exhausted and with that mindset we came to the moment where we got to open our presents. Now each and every one of the presents was lovely, but at midnight with a stomach full of roast and caramel potatoes it is very difficult to express how happy you are with gifts. So all of us dozily accepted the presents and within minutes my sister announced that she wanted to sleep. We all gratefully followed.
The next day is called second Christmas day in the Netherlands and it is a suitable name as the day holds the same expectations as the one before it. Except that on the second day of Christmas we visit my mother’s family. My grandparents have 5 children, whom produced 10 grandchildren. So all these people; my grandparents, their children and their partners (obviously my uncles and aunts) and us grandchildren, come together and have more Danish food. We sit at the table all day, drink beer and aquavit (a very strong spirit) and eat fish, eggs and meatballs. Then there is coffee. All of this lasts up to 7 hours. Seven hours of food and alcohol. With the brilliant rule that if someone says ‘skål’ (meaning ‘cheers’ in Danish) everyone in the room has to drink. We all abuse this rule to its fullest.
This year the youngest grandchild present was 14 years old, yet we were all directed to the separate ‘children’s table’. On this table we found nothing but glasses intended for water. Within a couple of minutes we had all complained and gotten ourselves the right to drink alcohol. After all, we might be grandchildren, but we’re not quite innocent enough to suffice with water.
And after catching up with my family for seven hours and exchanging the necessary gossip about family members I go home content.
And then Christmas is over. Just like that 48 hours of festive spirit have run out. And what is it that made those 48 hours special? As an atheist I don’t celebrate the birth of Christ, I am happy the days become lighter but it’s not something I celebrate for two days and I’ve never believed in Father Christmas. But just because those two days are called Christmas and everyone stops the routine of day to day life because of it, it makes those days special. Just because on those days my family truly longs to be together and is satisfied in that longing, just because of that, I love Christmas.
I wish all readers of Public Exposure a very happy and bright 2008.
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