Wrestling - a defence

"There are people that think that wrestling is an ignoble sport. Wrestling is not a sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of Suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque." - Roland Barthes

The other week, me and my housemate Matt decided to watch some wrestling. It's not something that either of us regularly do, and it's not something that I've done regularly since I was at secondary school. It's generally regarded as something a little immature to do, I guess largely because it's all overwhelmingly fake, and also because it's by and large a bit silly.

But should these be reasons to look down upon wrestling? There are plenty of other cultural forms that are both silly and fake, and yet are perceived as being more respectable and valid forms of entertainment, at least in the UK. Two of my favourite TV shows, Lost and Twin Peaks, were both at times absolutely ridiculous, and it was eventually obvious that the events of both series could not transpire in reality. Yet both were critically acclaimed, and the reaction I would get if I was to introduce myself to someone as a fan of Twin Peaks would be guaranteed to be more positive than if I was to announce myself as a follower of WWE.

Agent Cooper is felled by a chokeslam in this Falls Count Anywhere match

Watching the wrestling was as gloriously silly as I thought it would be. There is something very cathartic about watching overly muscly men with ridiculous names (Randy Orton? Dolph Ziggler? Fandango?) wearing glorious costume slapping each other silly. We especially enjoyed the dwarf dressed as a bull who managed to throw a dancing wrestler three times his size over the top rope. But was surprised me was that there was a match that I thought was actually awesome.

The match opened the show, and pitted fan-favourite Daniel Bryan against the relative newcomer Bray Wyatt. Bryan plays the perennial underdog, hard-working and technically gifted, who is constantly undermined by the wrestling powers that be for not fitting the traditional poster boy champion image. He has a large beard. Wyatt heads a sinister backwoods cult, with him stylised as the charismatic demagogue. He too has a large beard. Prior to this match, Bryan appeared to have been recruited to Wyatt's family, only to turn his back on him in spectacular fashion. This set them up for their clash. Below is a link to the promo puff to the fight:

So yes, it's very similar to the ridiculousness of the serial drama, or soap, only with a bit more poetic license for the characters. It's hard to see a cult being formed in Eastenders, though it would certainly make for more exciting story lines. The acting out of the story though is also coupled with impressive athleticism. Sure, it's not proper fighting, but it takes a lot of physical exertion in the same way that acrobatics and dancing do. I was ill last week and decided to rewatch a particularly memorable match from my teenhood on Youtube which you can view here should you be this way inclined. There's a lot of elaborate jumping off of things and into things. The violence is gloriously nonsensical, but the level of both the choreographing and improvisation has to be admired. The level of beardage isn't great, but a lot of the other hair is long.

Another thing that surprised me when me and Matt watched the wrestling was how the audience reacted to what it was watching. I've often considered the typical US wrestling fan to be quite the fool, being taken in completely by the spectacle and not recognising it as such. The audience that we witnessed was much more self-aware than that. On several occasions the audience would jeer a wrestler who was being portrayed as a good character, whilst cheering and getting behind wrestlers that were obviously intended to be bad guys. They would support whoever was embodying their character best and was engaging in the most exciting moves. This independence of thought was fascinating to observe, adding an entirely new slant to the action, and providing another element for the combatants to contend with and react to. From what I've read, the WWE have had to work their storylines around fan opinion, especially with the Internet as a platform for alternative ideas, with a great capacity for discussion.

Barthes was very interested in the workings of symbol within professional wrestling, and it is interesting to look at it as a gauge of US society. The cheering of the wrong wrestler, the establishment of the anti-hero, the true and criminal anti-hero is opposed to the workings of the ruling power that controls the stage he performs upon, could illustrate some degree of dissatisfaction with the workings of the ruling powers in society away from the performance. Indeed, the character of the criminal anti-hero is one that has grown in fascination for people significantly over the last couple of decades. You only have to look at the popularity of TV such as Dexter and video games such as Grand Theft Auto to see the magnetism that the criminal anti-hero possesses for the consumer. Contemporary trends in wrestling could be another example of this.

Alternatively, it could just be bad script-writing on the part of WWE, failing to create compelling morally good characters. In the end it doesn't really matter too much, so long as some elements of the spectacle remain exciting, because there's enjoyment to be had on many different levels with wrestling; the symbolism, the stories, the athleticism, and the violence. At the next event, the bearded cultists will be doing battle with a group of morally dubious vigilante types wearing security armour. Both groups have been characterised as bad guys. It sounds exciting, in the same way that a fight between Darth Vader and Darth Maul would be infinitely more exciting than a fight between Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. I think we'll be tuning in again.

Beards and animal masks - what's not to like?

My Fat Life

(for RDDC, perhaps)


I am well-educated
But not intelligent
I am adipose
I am indolent
I like writing
But I am infrequent
Too busy having a nice time
to have a great time

Fuck my fat life.

I used to be super fitttt
My looks were ahead of the time
People asked me for indecencies
When kisses still gave me goosebumps
I've become so familiar
With my sofa
That it's started finishing my...

"...sentences for me."

Fuck my fat life

I'll go I'll go I'm running
I'll go I'll go I'm running
With you and you and you and you and
Like a broken winged phoenix
Like a broken winged phoenix
Like a broken winged phoenix
I'll burn and burn and burn and burn and
I'll seize the day tomorrow

I'll seize the day tomorrow

Goodbye 2013

"It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment."

The above quotation is from The Great Gatsby, a book which I decided to give another go after first reading it in my first year at uni and not enjoying it. Giving it time and space to whirl around in my head, I found it a greatly enthralling experience; rich and vibrant and haunting. 2013 was a year of reflection, but also a time for pushing on from the base of reflection. Something that Gatsby and his acquaintances should have done themselves.

Here are the simple resolutions I made last time round:

1. Just keep swimming.
2. Start on that bloody breakfast eating next week.


I think I achieved these. The breakfast blog has been the primary reason that this blog has remained dormant for the last few months, with all of my writing energies being invested there. You can read that output if you have yet to do so by clicking here. I also made more of an effort to document books, films, and gigs, which has made compiling this review a much easier task than last time. It's also made re-reading my wee diary a bit more interesting.

So far, so successful. Now for the most fun bit; the lists. I didn't really make the same kind of culinary discoveries this past year, but I did continue to try listening to new music.

January: Passenger
February: Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
March: Tori Amos
April: John Grant
May: Kate Bush
June: Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard
July: Ibrahim Ferrer
August: The Magnetic Fields
September: 10cc / Goat
October: TV on the Radio
November: Iron Maiden
December: Public Service Broadcasting

A good mix of older classic artists I should have been aware of much earlier, and newer prospects with plenty of opportunities to catch live in the future. Here now are my songs of the year:


Best tracks:
1. Arcade Fire - Reflektor
2. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Jubilee Street
3. John Grant - Pale Green Ghosts
4. Pixies - Bagboy
5. Leona Lewis - One More Sleep
6. The National - I Need My Girl
7. Arctic Monkeys - Do I Wanna Know?
8. Electric Six - The New Shampoo
9. Janelle Monae - Dance Apocalyptic
10. Kanye West - I Am A God

It felt like 2013 was a year full of big exciting musical returns; David Bowie, Nick Cave, Arcade Fire, Franz Ferdinand, Queens of the Stone Age, The National; the list goes on. I was surprised to find myself most captivated though by Arctic Monkey's album, AM, having dismissed them a long time ago. It was an album where all of the praise and hype seemed to finally fall into place for me, and I now view Alex Turner with some of the regard that critics have lavished on him since their first album. No matter what big new releases came out, this was the album I was constantly coming back to.


Best films...well...to be honest these are the only new films I saw:
Rush (4.5/5)
Gravity (4.5/5)
The World's End (4/5)
Les Miserables (4/5)
Sunshine on Leith (2.5/5 or 3/5, depending on whether you're a Proclaimers fan)
Escape Plan (2)

I generally lacked the get-up-and-go to see new films last year. There were one or two that I regretted not seeing, so this is something I need to work on for 2014. 


Best gigs:
Passenger @ Concorde 2
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds @ Brighton Dome
The National @ Alexandra Palace
Franz Ferdinand @ Electric Brixton
Youngfathers @ Brighthelm Centre (Great Escape)

Hopefully this represents a nice mix of gig experiences; in genre, scale, prestige, and mood. It was a good year for gigging for me, and I even ended the year having attended more gigs than I watched films (old and new). I would like to repeat this in 2014 as well, and have already got John Grant, Youngfathers, Arcade Fire, Franz Ferdinand, and Manic Street Preachers lined up.


Best books read:
Donna Tartt - The Secret History
Nick Cave - The Death of Bunny Munro
Mervyn Peake - Titus Groan
Margaret Attwood - The Year of the Flood
Jamie Doran & Piers Bizoni - Starman

I was much better at recording the books that I read, as well as reading in general. 2013 marked the first year in a long time where I would actively seek out spare moments to read, and relish spending an hour or two after getting in from work to plough into a novel, whereas before I would be more inclined to play video games or just faff around on the Internet. The Secret History was one of the most tantalising novels I have ever read, conjuring up a world that is at once both glamorous and sickening; a car-crash that you just can't help but be transfixed by. It shares quite a bit of ground with The Great Gatsby; perhaps you could describe it as a cross between that novel and American Psycho.
Honourable mentions must also go to Edward Knight and Denny Ledger, two friends whose debut novels I also read over the course of the year. Both were greatly enjoyable, and I would recommend them fans of post-modern literature and Bukowski respectively.


Achievements:
Obviously the breakfast blog is the major thing I set out to do last year, so that is an achievement I am proud of. I also finally completed NaNoWriMo after several years of trying (more of that in a sec). Another thing was playing a part in my friends Mike and Rosie's wedding. Both the run-up and the day itself took a lot of work, but the results of which were brilliant. Overall, it was a very happy year, and I'm looking forward to more of the same.


New Year's Resolutions:
 
I want to get back to using this blog more. I think the most practical thing will be to use it, as well as to record thoughts and lyrics and poems, is to chronicle my efforts at writing my novel, Captain Iguanodon, a fantasy-sci-fi tale involving steampunk dinosaur pirates and the incoming meteor. It's going nicely thus far, and I managed to lay down over 50,000 words for it this year spurred on by NaNoWriMo. I will use the blog to lay my thoughts out from time to time, to help me keep control of where it's going. I would like to finish a first draft of the story by the end of the year at least, and hopefully using this blog will also help to create some kind of routine for me to stick to.

Myself and Claire will also travel to as many Kingstons in the UK as we can (as long as she's still up for the challenge!). There are at least 20, including the wonderfully named Kingston Bagpuize. This may be another thing to document here on the blog.

2014 feels like it's going to be a good year. 2013 served to create a strong foundation, now let's see how these seeds grow.

The Night of the Matador - draft 1

The pavement suffers the night's signature
Scrawled equal parts in haste and red,

A nocturnal incursion into the daytime

Where something had dripped, been left

Behind, from a portion of violence

Encased in leather or polystyrene,

Night's actions are some kind of theft

Leaving traces here, and there, and here
Signifying that something has been taken,

Claw marks on the doorstep,

Strands of hair on the chicken wire,

A marooned shoe, adrift in juices,

As I walk on, striding through the crimescene

Turning up the volume to drown out shadows

I am walking along the line of the punch
Traced like a sky-scarring vapour trail.
Night steals from us

All those hours and all that flesh

And I just don't know what's become of it all

And night steals that too,

Reasons and ideas and hopes and beginnings,

Night occupies these and reclaims them for itself

In the rhetoric of the bullfight,

Violent night, wholly night,

Has no qualms who it bites,

And in its cloak and with its dagger
Night reduces dreams to stains.

People I'd Most Like To Be Chart

As of 10/08/13:

1. Reece Shearsmith (up)
2. Howlin' Pelle Almqvist (up)
3. Amanda Palmer (up)
4. Nick Cave (down)
5. Alex Kapranos (down)

Here Comes Your Band

At the end of a June I got a very big surprise; out of nowhere Pixies had put out a brand new track, and more than that, it was really good!

Unmistakably them, with all of their calling cards present; soft-loud verse chorus dynamic, wailing whining lead, acerbic menace from Frank Black, simple plaintive backing vocals from Kim Deal (sadly now departed from the band). It was all there, albeit with a slightly different electronic feel to the rhythm section. I was incredibly excited, incredibly intrigued, and incredibly happy.

Pixies are definitely one of my favourite bands, and seem to be a favourite of many other bands I enjoy greatly. Considering their influence, it is a shame that they don't receive the recognition that perhaps they deserve. I consider them much more exciting than Nirvana, for example, yet Cobain et al are the ones whose name was emblazoned on all of the hooded tops at secondary school at the turn of the century. I guess for many they're a bit too out there. Quite often you don't know what to expect, their music at times delivering savage violence and esoteric lyrics. Many listeners no doubt would find these factors abrasive in different ways, and bands such as Nirvana, whilst no less artful, tended to push the limits less, singing with and about more accessible human angst, apathy, and depression.

Without Pixies, a lot of my favourite songs and bands would have probably not come to be. Here's a small selection of those things that are heavily indebted to them.

Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit

This is well documented, and there's not much more I can really add about this. For many, sentiments such as, "I found it hard, it's hard to find, oh well, whatever, never mind," will strike more of a chord than, "There was a guy, an underwater guy who controlled the sea..." The difference between a chart hit and a cult classic? The respective highest UK chart placings are as follows: 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' - no. 7. 'Monkey Gone To Heaven' - no. 60.

Kings of Leon - Charmer

This was the last thing they released before I lost all interest in them, the final single before album no. 4, 'Sex On Fire', global arena domination, MOR radio and mundanity. This is probably my favourite song by them, basically because they've just decided to rip off the Pixies, but they've made a great fist of it. Not only aping the music style, Caleb Followill has decided to emulate Black's trademark squeals AND delivers lyrics that offer a Deep South take on the obscure and precise pain that often presides in a Pixies song.

British Sea Power - Apologies to Insect Life

Another one that takes the Pixies formula and runs with it. What this one does is also find the space that exists between the instruments, where the guitars can drop out letting the song run on with the percussion, with just spiky wisps of feedback to cover its naked body. This becomes more apparent when both Pixies and BSP are playing live ('Vamos' is a great example of this) and it creates a space that allows the audience into the song more, whilst at the same time giving more weight to that soft/hard quiet/loud dynamic.

Feeder - Buck Rogers

This song was a massive part of my growing up, and made Echo Park the joint first album I bought. Here marks the application of Pixies' rock dynamic to create a track with the charts in mind. Grant Nicholas has publically described the song as a "throwaway pop song" when originally he'd "been trying to write a song that sounded like the Pixies." I'd like to think that subliminally it was the reason I went to uni in Exeter, driving me towards getting a house in Devon. Still to drink cider from a lemon though.

Electric Six - Naked Pictures (Of Your Mother)

Electric Six's Pixies influence is more subtle than the others. I think it comes across most in their song structure, though the second verse in this particular song is textbook. Frontman Dick Valentine regularly plays 'Hey' as part of his acoustic sets, and early on in E6's career, where his songwriting was most dominant, the verse-chorus-verse-chorus, quiet/loud, power chord dynamics were frequent, and there was definitely a whole lot of Pixies underneath the disco rock. They've reached out and widened their output now, but at the core of Electric Six there still lies that alt. rock nugget that owes so much to Boston's finest.

Hopefully 'Bagboy' will be joined in the future with further new material. I've been lucky enough to get a ticket to see them play at Hammersmith Apollo in November. Even without Kim Deal it's going to be gigantic.

Postmen like doctors go from house to house

"The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things. A single idea keeps stirring."

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), trans, Ralph Parker. (St. Ives: Clays Ltd, 2000), p36.

I'm currently making my way through the above book, which is proving to be a surprisingly pleasant read. Solzhenitsyn's short novel is (so far) a very human portrayal of extreme stoicism, and of defiant resourcefulness in the face of brutal authoritarianism.

The above quotation is a great reminder of how systems define the conditions of the lives within them. It immediately made think of Virginia Woolf's superb essay, A Room of One's Own, where she set out to argue that, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction;" the system which they inhabit is one that is so stacked against them that they need a space outside of it in order to be write. Systems have a knack of moulding individuals into a particular way of doing and thinking, be they political dictatorship or patriarchy, and it takes a great effort to be able to break free from this ideological domination.

You can see this at a mundane, possibly bathetic level, in how people often react to full time work. Their employment results in an incredible drain on their time and energies, leaving them to spend their free time outside of work either recovering from their physical and mental exertions or attempting to forget about them. In this respect the free time isn't free at all. The solution to this problem is to either work less, or take a great effort and break free from the mind forged manacles.

I've just stumbled across the poem 'Aubade' by Philip Larkin whilst trying to find my copy of Woolf's text, and the first stanza really encapsulates these feelings. The speaker is able to look at his life from a critical distance only at 4am, a time that belongs neither to his working hours, nor to those hours where he tries to forget about them. I think I may need to start waking up earlier, in the soundless dark, in order to get back onto the creative writing trail.

"I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify."

 Larkin, Philip. 'Aubade' (1977), in The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Twentieth Century and After, Volume F, ed. Stephen Greenblatt. (USA, 2006), p.2573.