Posts Tagged 'Privacy'



Music: Between Minds, Between Friends

A difficult anniversary is approaching, which has made me think a lot about personal relationships. Thus, I turned, as many have seen recently, to the virtues of music: as a companion, as a friend, and as a saviour.

The Ambient Man

It’s not easy out there. I’m sure many people join me in feeling that we are always fighting battles: some of our own making and some that aren’t; some that we deserve and some that we don’t. And part of that, from my side, is the life I have set for myself, and what it has done to me. “Damaged goods”, as the expression came recently. I should feel ashamed for living. What’s a man to do?

I’ve witnessed friends working together this week in perfect synchronicity. I’ve witnessed so many personal relationships thriving. And yet, as usual, while I’m glad to be on the periphery of anything positive, I’m so used to solitude (and occasionally negativity) on a daily basis that I’ve always had to find other coping mechanisms.

Music has long been that foil. That is not to say, of course, that there aren’t the best of friends out there, but working in isolation so long requires something that is always there, always tolerant, and always constant.

Music, oddly, cannot know me, and yet knows me better than anyone. When it speaks to me, sometimes I listen, sometimes I more than listen, and sometimes I unwittingly ignore. It cannot judge me or fall out with me. It’s a relationship I need, and cannot do without.

[Mobile users: a lot of videos under the cut] Continue reading ‘Music: Between Minds, Between Friends’

Privacy and Parliamentary Privilege

Parliament in 1647

This recent period has been plagued with privacy issues, the biggest of which, no doubt, has been the issue of super-injunctions.

While it has been good from a ‘subject branding’ perspective to have been asked about this, to be blunt, I simply couldn’t have cared less. About the surface matter, at least. Footballers and their deviance is nothing new. Nor does it matter to the outside world other than as hot gossip. So little of the intrusiveness of private lives gleefully splayed across front pages can be claimed to have significant public interest.

More interesting is the legal implications when thousands of people have denounced privacy laws by flouting collectively. Continue reading ‘Privacy and Parliamentary Privilege’

“Finders Keepers, holder Seekers hidden Secrets”: Writing in Cryptics

Finders Keepers, Knightmare S7

Most of us are guilty of this at some point: writing in cryptics. Why do we do it? Why express ourselves in terms that are not meant to be understood? Is it, perhaps, a deep subconscious desire to be public with our privacy? Is it more about reaching out, or being reached out to?

Aside from studying a poet forever burying his truth beneath layers of perplexity (if we are ever meant to find it at all), what interests me is the human tendency to overcomplicate problems, either out of shame, embarrassment or in trying to rescue some moral dignity.

Scenario: person A is in a relationship but goes to spend the day with person B, whom they have always had an attraction to. Person A ends the day feeling sheepish, unsettled and awkward, and explains it off as ‘it’s complicated’. It’s not complicated at all, but a collection of guilt and other unpleasant sensations that determines a distinctly defensive response. The majority of us will tie situations in knots to avoid a palpably and unescapably naked truth.

Continue reading ‘“Finders Keepers, holder Seekers hidden Secrets”: Writing in Cryptics’

Brands of Solitude: Poets and their Nature

The highlight of this year has been participating in recordings for The Poetry Show on KUSP Radio, Santa Cruz. This post is indebted to a discussion of Andrew Marvell’s ‘The Garden’ and Christina Rossetti’s ‘In the Willow Shade’ for our fourth installment which aired on 8th May, the best to date.

The Poetry Show, KUSP / Radio Santa Cruz, California

We all enjoy solitude at points in our lives. Privacy is not just a right, one might argue, but a human requirement. We all enjoy that little realm when the door is shut firmly behind us and we can lapse into self-sufficiency.

The fundamental problem is how to draw the right balance. Managing solitude can be vital to our psychological wellbeing. It is difficult to maintain relationships that have little contact, and even harder to develop new ones. We live in times where it is easy to get lost and forgotten if we do not project ourselves publicly. It is rare that people will come looking for us.

Continue reading ‘Brands of Solitude: Poets and their Nature’

The Broken Image

How Doctor Who brings to light one of Andrew Marvell’s most touching moments...

Doctor Who: The Curse of Black Spot #1

There is little more pleasing than the perfect image. There is also real gratification in constructing an image. Over recent months, however, I have come to understand the terrible beauty and power that comes with an image that is broken.

Continue reading ‘The Broken Image’

A Vote of No: Social Media and Sacrifices

Regular users of social media networks will no doubt have noticed – if their friends lists are anything like mine – that politics is again becoming a very public sport. I raised some concerns last year about the extent to which social networking sites were turning into moral and ideological crusades when elections came along. Yesterday, a referendum was held on whether to adopt the ‘Alternative Vote’ system, and the same tactics were out in force again.

Continue reading ‘A Vote of No: Social Media and Sacrifices’

Poetry and Appearing on KUSP, Santa Cruz

This post embraces loneliness by celebrating togetherness. The conduit is that indefinable, elusive, and enigmatic craft of poetry.

95% loneliness: Poetry

The falling leaf poem, the first in e.e. cummings’ collection 95 poems, inspired the strongest definition of poetry I’ve ever been able to come up with: ‘95% loneliness’. It’s impossibly inadequate, of course. It says nothing of genre, form, or even of certainty; it just vividly suggests something about authorship. For me, it stands the test of time.

Poetry is an enigma that delves beyond certainty. It doesn’t write itself, and whatever brings it about evokes just as many harrowing questions as that which appears on the page.

Continue reading ‘Poetry and Appearing on KUSP, Santa Cruz’

The Second Anniversary: A Song For No-One

A happy second anniversary to RoyalArbor, or Writing Privacy as it became. There is plenty that could commemorate this, but there was only one winner. First, it’s time to take stock for a moment.

A Space for No-One?

I think a lot about what goes here. Writing privacy demands it. It’s an oxymoron of sorts: to write privacy is to publicize it. Andrew Marvell not only withheld his works from publication, but he also privately considered the role of the writer in the new public sphere of the seventeenth century. That someone capable of such lyric majesty was so determined not to share it gives a permanent awareness to what should be allowed to escape into public space.

As such, this place never needed to be about me. It has needed to be about pieces of research that tell a good story; about events or developments that have some form of interest extending beyond me; and about privacy as a wider interest. The reason I left my old space behind was because it had become for no-one but myself.

We all live intricate and complicated lives. Continue reading ‘The Second Anniversary: A Song For No-One’

Solitariness: A Sweet Side-Note

Rory guards the Pandorica

I’ll be thy Champion to defend
Thy person from all these dangers and harms;
No Army’s so sure as a real friend,
Nor castle defends like a lover’s arms.
But if I can’t daunt ‘em,
By valour and might
Your face shall enchant ‘em,
For beauty can fight.
There’s no armour can men free
From the naked pow’r of such beauties as thee.

Alexander Brome, from To his Mistres affrighted in the wars (1661)

I recently thought a little about what modern interpretations of Shakespeare can offer. What, then, of accidental crossovers – when something from early-modern literature leaps out as being particularly well-suited to a new moment?

People ask (and I often ask myself) why I am fascinated by literature of the English Civil War but so little other war literature. I’ve found three main reasons, for which the above completes the triad.

Continue reading ‘Solitariness: A Sweet Side-Note’

Primary School: In Happiness and Sorrow

"Art indeed is long, but life is short"

I would deal with items in chronological order, were it not that sometimes special circumstances deserve special attention.

Last summer, I enjoyed the rare fortune of a primary school reunion, fifteen years after leaving. Of the ten who returned to share the evening, most I had not seen since the age of eleven. It was a remarkable quantum leap – an act of re- self-fashioning – and an evening that has left a profound effect on me ever since. And yet it is with sorrow and tragedy that this memory is graced here.

Continue reading ‘Primary School: In Happiness and Sorrow’

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