Self-Confidence « Writing Privacy

Posts Tagged 'Self-Confidence'

Confidential

Published January 21, 2012 Literature , research , Writing 2 Comments
Tags: Alphaville, Andrew Marvell, Facebook, Literature, Poetry, Privacy, Secrecy, Self-Confidence, Sir Thomas Fairfax, Solitude

How much can you put yourself into the mind of another individual? It’s not a trick question: though I ask it a lot, I seem to do it a lot too.

My work on Marvell and Private Lives took up most of 2011, and it’s been a wonderful introspective process because the way I’ve symbiotically linked our biographies together has given me license to think as deeply and darkly as I please.

But now, just as I come to wrap this up, there’s something quite subtle which doesn’t add up.

Marvell almost always strikes the reader as the shy, demure sort. Occasionally women are abruptly visible, but otherwise they are teasingly distant, obscured, or absent. He weaves threads of complicated desire behind fastastical themes and layers of honeycombed language.

But perhaps that’s just his writing. After all, his publishing history is thin, and there’s little sign that Marvell placed a great deal of value on the majority of his own poems. Perhaps he’s even embarrassed by them. Why would that be?

Continue reading ‘Confidential’

Shadow Seasons: An Epilogue, 2011

Published January 9, 2012 Geneva , Leicester , Literature , Music 4 Comments
Tags: Geneva, Identity, Music, Privacy, Psychology, Self-Confidence, Seventeenth Century, Sleepthief, Solitude

Dedicated to the few who messaged on New Year’s Eve.

2011 was a story I don’t know how to tell. It’s a year that had so many structural positives, countered by surface negatives. Perhaps it’s best defined by what others have said.

Shadows

In the early summer, I was ‘strange’, ‘sick’ and ‘damaged goods’. Thanks. In the mid-summer, I was an expletive abomination. Consequently, in the late summer, I was branded a defeatist.

Victimisation does arise sometimes. Not because it is wanted – if there’s a brand of people who don’t want to be happy, this author is not one of them – but because it’s a way of dealing with the various angles of attack and the after-effects that cannot be disguised.

Continue reading ‘Shadow Seasons: An Epilogue, 2011′

The Invisible Self

Published December 2, 2011 Edinburgh , Literature 3 Comments
Tags: Edinburgh, Friendship, Poetry, Privacy, Psychology, Secrecy, Self-Confidence, Self-Discipline

As a child, I remember keeping two football posters for any length of time. One was Chris Waddle at Sheffield Wednesday, the other was Gary Speed at Leeds.

Sad times. I lament saying that when encountering the headline ‘Gary Speed found dead’, I knew what the cause would be.

Removing the football side of this story, there was a universally liked and respected individual (which is a real challenge in football), with talent, good looks, a wonderful family. Everyone spoke highly of him, admired his energy, and said how happy he always seemed.

A life, alas, defined by its too-perfect happiness. It’s not a new phenomenon to believe that the happiest people are often the most unstable, and there’s sociological suggestions that the happiest states have the highest suicide rates.

Perfect happiness is a symptom. It’s the perfect mask to the secret invisible self. Continue reading ‘The Invisible Self’

All-Important Questions

Published November 20, 2011 Literature , research 1 Comment
Tags: Andrew Marvell, Literature, Poetry, Privacy, Psychology, Self-Confidence, Seventeenth Century

Every so often, we hit those defining moments where we ask ourselves the all-important questions. What has made us who we are? Why do we do what we do? Why do we live the way we live? What do we value most in life?

And it’s hard, because to approach such questions risks revealing many difficult answers, or things that we never want to contemplate. I’ve been drawn to revisit a favourite post of mine again, which describes how things that we pretend are complicated are often remarkably simple. And so, with that in mind, I ask myself why I do what I do, and if it reflects the person I am and want to be.

Continue reading ‘All-Important Questions’

Facing a Challenge

Published September 17, 2011 research 4 Comments
Tags: Andrew Marvell, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Ekphrasis, Friendship, Psychology, Self-Confidence

This was not what I had anticipated publishing next, but it comes with the hope that the spectrum of ideas here will be filtered to avoid writing at length wherever possible. Let’s call it an attempt at empowerment.

Points in Time

David Tennant: Doctor Who - The Waters of Mars (2009)

The sci-fi talk about ‘fixed points in time’ is something that has really caught my attention before. Without the ability to turn back time, it’s left for us to acknowledge our life-defining moments (if we choose to do so).

Last week, while waiting for a Metro at Newcastle Central Station, a member of Nexus staff approached with a questionnaire about personal safety. Had I noticed police officers or Metro staff on the premises? Had I witnessed any antisocial behaviour? Did I know about the CCTV coverage and the alarm system? All so bittersweet, because a prank-attack 12 years ago at that very station was a life-defining moment. A chain of mental problems far outgrew the incident and haunted me for a long time – to the disbelief of most who knew me and to myself as well.

Continue reading ‘Facing a Challenge’

‘To His Coy Mistress’? To Her Coy Master

Published July 18, 2011 Literature , research 1 Comment
Tags: Alcohol, Andrew Marvell, Autobiography, English Civil War, John Donne, Literature, Nigel Smith, Oscar Wilde, Poetry, Privacy, Psychology, Secrecy, Self-Confidence

This last week, so spoilt by social activity, the guards slipped and I revealed far too much. Now I must deal with the inner consequences of opening my mouth and letting fingers run too liberally across the keyboard. There are two ways this can go: either rein it back in and keep up pretences, or try to absolve it from the system. Wherever this takes me, then…

Parallel Lines

About 18 months ago, I joked that one of the most irrevocable traces of Andrew Marvell’s life was still rather unfamiliar to me. Now, I daresay, that has changed. In fact, ‘exalting the muse’ might be a useful description. The parallels only ever seem to run deeper…

"With great admiration, and in friendship, and thinking of the next Marvellians"

What most reviews of Nigel Smith’s new Andrew Marvell biography have not addressed is his controversial method of using the poems as evidence in chronological areas of best-fit. It’s brave and highly worthwhile, and a point worth raising because personal engagement with the poet and his troubled private reflections necessarily tempt us into handling evidence differently.

But how differently? Continue reading ‘‘To His Coy Mistress’? To Her Coy Master’

Family and Personal Influences

Published July 16, 2011 research 3 Comments
Tags: Graduation, Self-Confidence, Self-Discipline, Universities

Keeping a low profile.

At Royal Holloway yesterday I unwittingly intercepted both the arrival of a summer school contingent and the proud aftermath of a graduation ceremony. It was a poignant combination since it was summer school work that ‘prevented’ me from attending my own BA graduation.

Scuttling through in casual wear felt both embarrassing and alienating, much as the thought of graduating did. Summer school work actually proved a perfect excuse not to go.

I believe in reward for effort. It’s a very basic but effective principle, and one that in teaching or mentoring roles I have always tried to impart to my charges. If you go the extra mile, you want that dedication to have meaning and result. Sadly, in recent years, it’s a belief I’ve been losing faith in.

Proud graduates. Proud families. I’ve never been to a formal event that celebrated milestones. Continue reading ‘Family and Personal Influences’

Music: Between Minds, Between Friends

Published June 26, 2011 Music , research 3 Comments
Tags: Alphaville, Erasure, Facebook, Libera, Music, Privacy, Self-Confidence, Sleepthief

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.

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’

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

Published May 29, 2011 Knightmare , Literature 1 Comment
Tags: Knightmare, Literature, Poetry, Privacy, Psychology, Public Sphere, Secrecy, Self-Confidence, Speech-Acts, Thomas Wyatt

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

Published May 19, 2011 Leicester , Literature , research 5 Comments
Tags: Andrew Marvell, Christina Rossetti, Conscience, Literature, Poetry, Privacy, Psychology, Radio, Santa Cruz, Self-Confidence, Solitude

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.

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’

	KaM on Confidential
	KaM on Shadow Seasons: An Epilogue,…
	KaM on Shadow Seasons: An Epilogue,…
	KaM on Ugly Business
	Samantha on Confidential

Writing Privacy

Posts Tagged 'Self-Confidence'

Confidential