IT’S MY BIIIRRRTHDDAAAAAAYYYY
Look what I got from @_Cabble in my twitter feed this morning:
GIRL BONER
For the love of fucking ridiculous outfits
I went out last night and this is what I wore. (Don’t ask me why my head’s at that funny angle. Maybe it always looks like that and I just haven’t noticed until now.) I saw the playsuit on River Island’s website about a week ago and it subsequently appeared in visions on a daily basis until I bought it on Thursday. If you’re able to imagine such a thing, it’s even brighter in real life. It makes my pupils dilate and my heartbeat quicken. I have fallen head-over-heels in love with it.
When I was teenager I was always poncing round Macclesfield in daft outfits, sourced largely from Scope on Mill Street or Glastonbury, where I would spend all my savings on one huge weekend of shopping. Nylon granny dresses and tutus and sequined ties and shit. Our ‘smart casual’ 6th Form dress code was a daily exercise in rule-bending. I just fucking loved ridiculous 70s outfits. Getting dressed was exciting.
Then when I hit 19 I started to get fat and the magic disappeared. Clothes were chosen based on their structural qualities rather than the fabulous factor. I got thin again when I was 23 but it was pretty short-lived, until last year when I discovered my beloved running. Now my wardrobe is returning to its natural state of MENTAL ROCK STAR NONSENSE and it feels brilliant.
Shows I have missed recently because I am entering the (hopefully) final stages of uni-related meltdown:
Audience (Ontoenderenderndrend Goed)
The Table (something to do with puppets)
Lovesong (dancing about bereavement - looked lovely)
42nd Street (everyone said it was mint)
PLS SEND HALP
Edit, 23.25: You can scratch Lovesong off that list. I got so pissed off with everything when I posted it at breakfast time that I said FUCK YOU THE MAN and got on a train after my lecture. Despite their excellent programming, I’m beginning to develop a grudge against the Lyric Hammersmith. I mean, if you’re going to make a big thing about moving your listed theatre, brick by brick, at least make sure there isn’t brass shit or fucking coppicing in every bloody sightline.
I think I may be a bit bad-tempered still.
Lovesong was worth the trip down though, and the late night. It was your standard barren-couple-grow-old-together stuff, but was very nicely done. Kind of gentle. It was a gentle play. Which is probably a good thing. What was that 50s film that heralded the ‘teenage revolution’ and made people rip up theatre seats? If I’d seen anything like that I might well be RAMPAGING atm. As it stands, I’m on a train, getting a bit sleepy. See that? THEATRE = GOOD FOR SOCIETY. We’re all saved.
“You are live at the Arts Council’s annual conference. Please do not swear.”
A few weeks ago my mate Hannah asked me if I’d like to be one of nine arts-types live-blogging ACE’s annual conference in Manchester next month. It’s all officially-sanctioned and everything. I’m even getting a night in a hotel and my train fare reimbursed.
I finally managed to stop laughing hysterically at all the possible worst-case scenarios in accepting such a responsibility at about 10 o’clock this morning, just in time for the launch of the live-blog mini-site thingy. It’s here: http://sotablog.artscouncil.org.uk/
If you want a real piss-your-pants belly laugh, click on “Who’s Who?” at the top and compare my biog to everyone else’s. WHAT CAN POSSIBLY GO WRONG?
Birthdays and pictures
I’m getting to that stage where birthdays aren’t quite the celebration they once were. If I’m entirely honest, the big 3-0 is pretty terrifying, and I’m trying to pretend that my ovaries are in some kind of Walt Disney-esque state of suspended animation, complete with bunny rabbits and singing flowers and dwarves and shit. But, I have a birthday approaching. Thankfully, it still starts with a 2. And I have relatives asking what I would like as a gift.
Things I would like as gifts: a guaranteed first-class degree when I graduate, clear skin, enough money that I never have to work again, to be able to run a marathon in 2.5 hours, lifelong happiness for myself and my loved ones, a LibDem government that sticks to its manifesto, death to Rupert Murdoch.
My auntie’s pretty great and everything, but I really needed to ask her for something that will be easy to post from Bournemouth. I’m considerate like that.
So, with a new intention to expand my visual art horizons, I asked twitter for some arty book suggestions, which then developed into some pretty great suggestions for work to investigate further. Here are some of the best:
Gregory Crewdson
Like abandoned Desperate Housewives sets strewn with dead people. AMAZING.
Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle
IT’S THE POMPIDOU CENTRE’S WATER BIT FROM WHEN I WAS LITTLE. One of my first family holidays involved a couple of days in Paris when I was 2. I went mental for the sculptures at the Pompidou Centre (I always did have a well developed aesthetic sense) but only realised they were the artists the other day. I even went to Paris with mates in 2008 and I made my friend Clare walk about a gazillion miles because I wanted to see “the weird shit in the water”.
Paula Rego
Some of her stuff looks quite like Lucian Freud’s, with the big brushstrokes and even bigger thighs, but I quite like how ugly she makes all her subjects.
I actually asked Ellan for a book about Andy Warhol though, because Andrew Graham Dixon waved his hands around EXTRA LOADS when talking about the Campbell’s Soup prints on Art of America recently and I think Andrew Graham Dixon is mega-sexy.
Thanks to @ellie_meg, @AlexanderKelly, @notmetaltax, @ClaudetteDoom, @andybolton, @xkylet, and @probablydrunk.
On education
Remember this?
It’s the post I wrote back in April when the Arts Council announced their new NPO organisations and the company I work for wasn’t included. At the time I was energised by all the bad news, and simultaneously really pissed off with uni. Every assessment felt like pointless crap and I just wanted to be out of Leicester and living an adult life again.
My uni course is sold on its practicalities; the field trip to Amsterdam, the festival of lectures, the industry placements. It’s a fantastic course for those who want to gain hands-on experience and make real contacts in the arts. I came to it in 2009 frustrated as hell that I couldn’t get a job with more responsibility than my existing theatre admin post. This degree was going to be a step towards a glittering career in producing.
Then it turns out I popped this enormous boner for the theory stuff. The essays that had my coursemates wailing WTF IS THE ACTUAL POINT and how they’re not spending three and a half grand a year to learn what MATTHEW FUCKING ARNOLD THINKS were the ones that had me reading all hours because it’s all just so massively, amazingly, incredibly FASCINATING. With hindsight, I think that part of the reason why I hated second year so much was because it was all so industry-based. To me, perhaps because I’d worked for a few years already and was doing a part-time arts job, it all felt like being forced to study common sense. And wtf, exactly, is the actual point in that?
Before the second year, I’d been all set to save up my uni scholarship money to do a post-grad course and pursue a career as an academic. I loved the theatre, and I loved the experimental arts scene and wanted to find my place within it, but learning was what got my heart racing. I could do real-life research into the way people react physically to artistic works! Like, strap them into a chair and measure their breathing and shit! ACTUALLY AMAZING.
Then last year I completely frittered away the couple of grand I’d saved on train fares, theatre tickets, and drink. Hooray for idiocy! I was adamant that I wanted to be in London. London London London. It’s where theatre lives, innit? There are very many good universities in London, and very many interesting postgrad courses, but none of them made me want to do yet another year (one of the last in my 20s) with no fucking money.
Now, entering my final few months in Leicester, I’m writing this dope as fuck essay about Theodor Adorno for my music module, my dissertation’s starting to flesh itself out with some Kant, and last term’s essay on museums was about how Michel Foucault understood the creation of truth. THE CREATION OF TRUTH. If you don’t get a bit sex-dizzy just from that phrase ALONE then you should basically stop reading my blog because I don’t want your type round here.
(Foucault holding a pair of over-sized imaginary testicles.)
Every time I’ve picked up a book over the Christmas holiday I’ve ended up thinking about an MA course that I found and dismissed over a year ago. Cultural and Critical Theory (Aesthetics pathway) at the University of Brighton. Brighton’s waaaaaaaay cool. Turns out I’ve walked past the Faculty of Arts building a fair few times when I’ve visited in the past. But it’s not London, so it got crossed off the list. Except it’s the right fucking course. It’s the perfect fucking course. I applied for it two days ago. Yesterday I did some sums, and I reckon I can pull it off financially too. And I spent a lot of time on Google Street View. ALL THE CAMERA ANGLES ARE SUNNY.
I’m so excited I can barely sleep. :D
(Just have to get accepted now. And tell my parents. Soz Mum and Dad if you’re reading his before I come to visit in a couple of weeks. Also, I’ll probs be needing that money from Grandpa now.)
CASEY AFFLECK IN THE BATH KLAXON
There you go. Don’t say I never do anything for you.
I just watched THE BEST FILM. Even if Casey Affleck wasn’t naked in the bath during an early scene, it still would’ve been THE BEST. It’s called Lonesome Jim and did I mention Casey Affleck is NAKED IN THE BATH IN IT.
I’ve had LoveFilm for ages now. It may’ve even been a New Year’s resolution a couple of years ago. At the moment I’m going through a phase where it all feels like a chore. I feel a bit Kanye. Like, as soon I send discs back new ones appear and I’m all like “Oh man, already?! Now imma have to take responsibility for all this entertainment.” They sit on my bedroom floor until the direct debit goes out, and that usually spurs me on. I’m only like Kanye in some respects.
This time they’ve sent me Norwegian Wood (yawnsville) and Casey Affleck in the bath, which is genuinely the greatest film I have watched ALL YEAR. He’s this no-hoper bastard who goes back to live with his parents because he’s fucked everything up, and Liv Tyler’s in it and I DON’T HATE HER, which I think might be because she hasn’t blow-dried her hair, but also might be because theses days I hate Zooey Deschanel double. But also, Casey Affleck is in the bath and that, dear readers, is all you need to know.
2011: art, running, love, twitter
I’ve just looked through the photos on my camera to remind myself of everything that’s happened this year. Turns out it was 60% dying my hair, 20% baking, and 20% looking at very blurry sunsets whilst on public transport. Gaddafi? Who’s the fuck’s that?
In reality, 2011 has been just as eventful for me as it has been for military dictators. It was a year of two halves, with January to July spent in quite the most spectacularly rubbish relationship I have ever endured (which is saying something indeed) and the following six months largely taken up joyfully skipping through life sans any care in the whole wide world. I have been so wonderfully selfish, dear readers. I recommend it to you all.
In health news, my Dad had a pulmonary embolism which frightened the fucking life out of me, but which we have all silently vowed never to mention again. It was a year ago that I finally received by diagnosis of IBS (of the ‘just get used to it’ variety), rather than the three-headed cancerous parasite my mother had convinced herself was living in my guts. The initial relief has been tempered by a mildly pissed off sense of unfairness which has settled over every mealtime, but that’s generally what I’m like anyway.
In vanity news, I AM A MOTHERFUCKING RUNNER NOW. Except I’m injured at the moment and can’t go out. But when I’m not injured I DO MOTHERFUCKING RUNNING LIKE A MOTHERFUCKING RUNNER! It’s so so so very brilliant, and it makes me feel amazing and it makes me fit into Meg-shaped clothes as opposed to the ones I have to buy for the mutant hippo lady that inhabits my life from time to time. And I dyed my hair blonde! Like Gwen Stefani! Actual Gwen Stefani blonde! It only took 2 rounds of dye-stripper, 3 rounds of bleach, and a semi-perm purple toner. IT WAS LIKE I WAS BORN TO BE THIS WAY.
In education news, I’m still getting one, although it won’t be long before I’m done. The next few months are actually going to be really very horrible and stressful and skint and frightening, but if I make my Christmas gin last I should be fine. I’ve calculated that I have about 20,000 words to write in four and a half months. Although it was on the telly a couple of days ago that Hitler took France in, like, 6 weeks, and he wasn’t even a woman.
In career-type news, I’ve been falling out of love with the theatre and falling in love with visual art, although that’s all basically irrelevant because if you read the papers you’ll know that all 2012 graduates are destined for a life eating old tyres in a secure compound just outside Hull. My only hope is to turn us into an installation and charge a few quid to visit the viewing platform.
And finally, to my one true love. My first, my last, my everything. Dost thou smell as sweet as a summer’s day by any other name etc etc. Dear, beautiful, radiant Twitter. Again I am given cause to wonder how I ever lived through a day without your tender embrace. We have been together three whole years now and the sex is still incredible. Don’t ever leave. IF YOU LEAVE I WILL CUT MYSELF AND LEAVE YOUR BOSS AN ANSWERPHONE MESSAGE ABOUT THAT TIME IN THE RESOURCES CUPBOARD
PS: In 2012 I am going to learn to FUCKING ROLLER SKATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!!!!1!!1
Yorkshire Sculpture Park today. I’ve wanted to go since about 1887. It’s a bit rubbish that the weather is so important to outdoor stuff really, innit? I wanted to click my fingers and have it all go snowy, and then mega-blue desert skies, and then those stormy clouds that get shafts of light breaking them up. Today was just kind white cloud and drizzle, but the best stuff was in the indoor galleries anyway. I fell BIG TIME for the Rachel Goodyear exhibition. Actually bought a book of her stuff, which is MENTAL. The Jaume Plensa stuff was good too. There was one room with a bunch of gongs we could hit and they all had sexy-sexy bible verses on them, and this image is from some glowy-hangy dudes with neuroses and anxieties printed across their faces. He looks like he’s got big old droopy tits, but those are actually knees. I’m not very good at subtle art. I either want people bandaging dead crows to their faces (Rachel Goodyear) or people with ‘AMNESIA’ stamped across both eyelids (Plensa).
I’m getting more and more into visual art though, which is corresponding with a growing boredom of performance. It might well be my ‘new thing’.
Allen Ginsberg was staying at Mick’s place in London once, and I spent an evening listening to the old gasbag pontificating on everything. It was the period when Ginsberg sat around playing a concertina badly and making ommm sounds, pretending he was oblivious to his socialite surroundings.
I’ve been reading Keith Richards’ autobiography on and off for months. It’s getting to the good bit now. The Anita Pallenberg, elegantly wasted period. I hate that he’s been so Americanised for the book. “Panties” and “off of it” and shit like that. Every so often some biting cynicism appears though. I feel a bit like Keith Richards is a wayward uncle. My Dad has made sure that he, and Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison, have been important figures introduced to my general education at an early age.
On not being arsed
I’ve seen a couple of shows this last week, and a few others in recently, that I’ve not been bothered to write about. It’s not that I’ve had nothing to say - it’s NEVER that - but priorities seem to be shifting. I think it’s maybe because I’m sooooo bored of being a student now. Whenever I’m not writing an essay I just want to be listening to The Archers or buggering about on the internet. I feel so much less driven than before. Or maybe I’m just focusing my energies more into breaking through the 5k barrier with my running, and getting shot of all these cheese butties that have clung to my thighs in recent years.
I’m also a contrary little madam. I’ve been lucky that quite a few people have started to read this blog over the last year or two, but with readers comes a sense of obligation, and I sometimes have to remind myself that the whole point in writing a blog instead of reviewing formally is that I can do what I like.
So, with that in mind, here is a picture showing the print on a nice dress I bought recently, and the boots that my mother FINALLY bequeathed to me after about 15 years of coveting. These things have been known to fill me with almost as much joy as a good lighting design.
What I did on my holidays*
*overnight stay in Newcastle*
A couple of months ago, when I was staring down the barrel of six weeks of weekend overtime, I booked myself a trip to Newcastle. I’d never been there before, the new Sound & Fury show was touring, and it seemed more exciting than a trip to bloody Coventry.
Because I’m mega-poor, I stayed in a guest house which was quite securely wrapped in police tape while I was out in the theatre, so I feel like I had an authentic experience. I love the anonymity of cities, and making your way around them after dark. There’s something really liberating about being able to just say “Fuck it, I’m off somewhere new” and filling an old water bottle with wine for the journey.
The show I saw, Going Dark, was ace too. It was all about an astronomer who was losing his sight, but parts of it were performed in total darkness, and the tech stuff was perfect. There was a cool bit where the guy was talking about how the sun was formed and he made this ball of tissue paper into a big orange light in his fist. And there’s was a shaving bit right near where I was sitting. I go for beardy men and have never seen a man shave close-up before. It was kinda exhilarating. If he’d accidentally cut his throat and spun round spewing it everywhere, I’d have been covered.
This morning I went to Baltic to see the Turner Prize exhibition. It’s mental innit, contemporary art? I don’t understand how a judgement can be made about work that is made in such completely different media. I mean, it’s like asking “What’s better? The feeling of contentment one experiences after a good roast dinner or… this springer spaniel?” In one room, you’ve got some bollocks sugar paper and powder paint thing, and in the next; a video of a tower block. WHO JUDGES THIS AND WHERE ARE THE ASSESSMENT GUIDELINES? For the record, I liked the video stuff by Hilary Lloyd best, because one of the pieces was rude and another had nice lights in it. Maybe that’s how they do it. Brian Sewell sips his tea and then writes “I like the one by Hilary Lloyd that made me think of lubed-up knobs” on his voting slip.
A whole bunch of artists have been asked to design posters for the Olympics. I don’t have the words to describe how utterly fucked off I am with the Olympics. Needless to say, a lot of the images in the BBC gallery (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15577818 - posting this from gadgetphone so you’ll have to do without a proper link) are bollocks.
Really quite taken with this one from Rachel Whiteread though. It pleases me. I think it’s the couldn’t-give-a-fuck-attitude with which she deconstructs the rings. A coffee stain across this country’s infrastructure etc etc…
I’m off to Newcastle tomorrow, where I will make similar informed and insightful comments about the Turner Prize exhibition. It’s all part of my big plan to get into Andrew Graham-Dixon’s pants.
Petition to make micro-scooters compulsory for all curtain calls in UK theatres
We, the undersigned, support the introduction of legislation to ensure micro-scooters are used in every theatrical curtain call across Britain, whether commercial or subsidised, and regardless of venue or type of staging.
We see two main benefits from introducing such a law. Firstly, as proved in the case of Matilda the Musical, a choreographed micro-scooter curtain call is a fitting end to a hilarious and uplifting trip to the theatre, and can help stem the flow of any embrassing tears of joy that one may suffer during the penultimate scene in which Matilda goes to live with Miss Honey. If these tears do not cease before house lights go up, one may be forced to hide one’s face while pretending to sneeze in order to dab at the eyes with a tissue.
Secondly, a production that (unlike Matilda the Musical) is below par or tedious in any respect, could be saved in its final moments, leading to an increase in ticket sales and therefore bolstering the British economy through VAT and auxiliary spending as the general public vote with their feet for ‘the micro-scooter promise’.
Furthermore, early projections indicate that over 150 new jobs will be created, largely in health and safety, again making an important contribution to the welfare of British citizens.
Yours,
Megan Vaughan.
PS: I saw a version of The Resistable Rise Of Arturo Ui this week too, and can safely say that World War II would NEVER HAVE HAPPENED if micro-scooters had been utilised by Brecht in an early version.
