Dream a better dream...

The title refers to a conversation with a giant robot head floating in the sky.  If you get this reference, you are COOL.


So I think I'm finally getting okay with things.  Slowly.  And once again, life is teaching me a lesson I've learnt 20 odd times over, but always seem to forget at the important moments.  I've kinda been at a loss for what to do with myself since last May really.  Everything was so perfect, so obvious.  Sure there would be obstacles, but they could be worked around.  The actual fundamentals were sorted, and laid out, and agreed with everyone they needed agreeing with and we'd all live happily ever after.

And then it all fell apart.  And I cried, and I lost my purpose, and I had no clue what to do with myself, and I made a plan B to follow in the short term, but that's probably being abandoned now, and through all the last year, the world has taught me, once again, that the result isn't important at all, the journey is.  I thought I'd lost my dream, and so was spending all my time wondering how in the hell you get a new 'dream'.  Dreams are exactly that, they don't have to be realistic, or achievable.  It's a perfect world scenario.  And I almost had mine.  But I've realized that I was thinking about it all wrong.  I thought I had a dream.  But what I had was actually only representative of what I really wanted.  The 'dream' is something much broader, and something still completely achievable.

I just want to live my life on my rules.  Simple.  Obvious.  Kind of what everyone wants isn't it?  Sort of.  But also not.  Few people have my determination.  Anybody who's tried to live life their way, even just for one day, knows its damned hard.  In fact, the universe knows.  It spies on you.  And on those days when you are trying, it arranges something especially to mean you can't.  I don't want an office job.  I don't want to live in the UK all my life.  I don't want to settle down once Chris gets to London.  I don't want to spend every Christmas visiting 3 different sets of relatives.  I don't want to be a techie for a theatre, working on whichever project is in at the time cause it's what pays the bills.

I want to do the things I'm interested in.  I want to work for things I care about.  I want to work with my cousin Cindy at some point (see her work here).  I want to live in Rome.  And Berlin.  And New York.  And San Francisco.  Not or.  And.  I want to learn all the simple easy ways to reduce the amount of waste I send to landfills.  Where are all the reycling facilities.  How can I reuse jars.  I want to make my own clothes.  I want to have a mini labratory/workshop one day.  I want to travel.  Even when I'm 60.  I want to be the crazy uncle whose pictures you look at after I die, and see all the places I've gone and all the people I've met.  I want to meet artists, and hippies, and squatters, and boat owners and millionaires and not stand behind a podium on national television and namedrop them to show how in touch with everyone I am.  I've done some of these things.  I'm trying to do others.  Some I will never achieve.  But I'll be constantly trying, and I think that's what's important to me now.

And yes this is somewhat selfish.  How does it impact upon Chris?  THe only people I know who manage to do this don't have stable, long term relationships, because this kind of lifestyle doesn't work unless the other person is as willing to be as broke, homeless, hungry, cold, wet, stranded, proactive, mysterious, innovative, as you are.  And if you can both do it without attacking each other with the nearest instrument to hand.  But I think anyone who genuinely aims to achieve their dreams, rather than talking about it like most people do, has to be a little selfish, because everyone's dream is for them alone.  And if you're lucky you have someone to tag along for the ride.

ANd the universe has also reminded me, for the umpteenth time, to stop fighting, to stop struggling, to stop hoping and wishing and trying, and to just live, to go with the flow, to see where the journey takes me.  Because my life is serendipitious.  Everything that's worked in my life, truly worked, has been completely out of my hands, has been the product of pure chance.  I took a gap year.  I applied for one job.  And I got it.  And a scholarship to university with it.  And a job offer after I graduated.  I went to uni, I took up teching.  Coming from no experience, just an interest, after a mere 2 months, I was technical manager of a theatre.  And that led me to take charge of two shows in a 550 seat professional theatre.  And that led me to sound teching for a band at the Carling Academy in Islington.  And now, it's seemingly leading me to a touring job with a band travelling all over the world.  I found not one, but two boyfriends after I stopped looking for one, and stopped caring so much about having one.  And I wasn't looking for any of these things.  I wasn't trying to get any of them.  They fell into my lap.  They battered down my door and slapped me back and forth in the face with a wet fish and said "Here I am, take me."  I've always been extremely lucky in that sense.  As I say, serendipitious.  Though unlike a lot of people, I have the sense to know an opportunity when it arrives, and to take it and to hell with the consequences, because they will be the fallout of a decision I was happy to make.

Touring with this band, will likely be in autumn.  This means I'd have to interrupt Uni for a year, not a huge issue considering I was contemplating dropping out, bus so many people would say oooh its not the right time and oh but what about finishing the course, and oh is this what I want to do.  So what if its not?  This is something that happens once in your life.  If you don't say yes now, you won't get a second chance.  Serendipity is just as equally about knowing when to say yes, as it is the opportunities happening to you in the first place. 

This outlook is my parent's fault really.  Again, it doesn't seem like that strange an outlook when you type it down, it seems like the kind of thing everyone would do, or want.  But actually, its really rare, and really strange.  So few people are like this, and so few people have the strength to see it through.  My parents are very much a no regrets kind of people.  As am I, we have the same outlook.  Later on, with hindsight, your decision may not have turned out to be the best one, but it was always the right one.  You made it for the reasons you made it for at the time, not the reasons you look on it with in hindsight.  And at the time you were so sure, so confident.  So don't regret it, becuase it makes you who you are.  Even after all the arguements about engineering, even my parents recognise if and when this band thing comes through, take it, go for it, do it wholeheartedly and don't look back.  And in a year, if you're still there, then carry on, and to hell with uni, because your life will be extraordinary, if only for a little while.

What do you do when your dream falls apart?  Dream a better dream.


This is pretty much my outlook on life, on many levels, and I'm aware of how gay it is:

Don't know much about your life.
Don't know much about your world, but
Don't want to be alone tonight,
On this planet they call earth.

You don't know about my past, and
I don't have a future figured out.
And maybe this is going too fast.
And maybe it's not meant to last,

But what do you say to taking chances,
What do you say to jumping off the edge?
Never knowing if there's solid ground below
Or a hand to hold, or hell to pay,
What do you say,
What do you say?

I just want to start again,
And maybe you could show me how to try,
And maybe you could take me in,
Somewhere underneath your skin?

What do you say to taking chances,
What do you say to jumping off the edge?
Never knowing if there's solid ground below
Or a hand to hold, or hell to pay,
What do you say,
What do you say?

And I had my heart beaten down,
But I always come back for more, yeah.
There's nothing like love to pull you up,
When you're laying down on the floor there.
So talk to me, talk to me,
Like lovers do.
Yeah walk with me, walk with me,
Like lovers do,
Like lovers do.

What do you say to taking chances,
What do you say to jumping off the edge?
Never knowing if there's solid ground below
Or a hand to hold, or hell to pay,
What do you say,
What do you say?

Don't know much about your life
And I don't know much about your world

Celine Dion - Taking Chances

What? No card from the Queen?

So this is my 100th post, it should of course have something wise and humble and inspired in it.

Instead, I'm going to talk about shoes.  And you're going to read.  'Cause you have nothing better to do with your life.


I walk funny.  Always have done.  And don't know *how* I walk funny, I just know, and have been told repeatedly, that I do.  I remember my parents telling me to walk properly when I was 4.  "I am"  "No you're not, walk like me"  *cue confused look as I swear my parents are doing what I was just doing*  *try to copy parents*  "No you're still doing it!"

It's clearly just something I picked up funny as a baby, and is ingrained in me, and you can't swap feet with someone to see what theirs do - medical technology isn't that advanced yet.  It's not that bad.  It still works, I still move forward under my own steam, and in fact I walk a damn sight faster than most people of the world, despite being half their size.  I don't have weak ankles or some pediastric deficiency as a result, so I'm not really that bothered by this apparent quirk of my step.

Except where shoes are concerned.  And socks actually.  Whatever I do with the way I walk - I assume I put pressure where normal people don't, or I twist my feet in some way, or I step in a different path to the rest of the world - it means I wear through shoes very very quickly.  I'm not a big gay for shoes.  I only ever really have one pair of shoes.  Sometimes I have a second formal pair too, but at the moment I've lost those.  My current pair of shoes I bought 3 months ago.  They already have holes in them.  Once upon a time, I bought a very nice pair of Dolce & Gabanna shoes, they were lovely, but cost me £120 - By the end of two months ago they had fallen apart.  And I wear shoes right through till they're not shoes anymore.  It's not a case of one hole and I get new ones.  My current shoes, I bought because my old shoes had effectively turned into sandals, the holes were that big and went all the way through, both on the top, and on the undersole.  And I was walking around a rainy, wet Amsterdam in the middle of February.

So yeah, I get through shoes ludicrously quickly.  And I also get through socks ludicrously quickly.  Curiously enough though, the holes in my socks don't match up with the holes in my shoes.  I can put on a brand new pair of socks, with freshly cut toe nails, and by the end of the day they'll have 2 holes in.  Thank god for Primark.  Between this and the washing machine odd sock gremlins I have to buy at least 6 new pairs every month.

Unfortunately, I can rarely wear the £5 shoes.  a) I don't like them, and b) due to my parents genetic baking, I have a very broad toe width, combined with an extremely low ankle bone.  Formal shoes, which are generally quite rigid leather, are a bitch for me, they either press painfully at the front sides of my foot, or cut into my ankle.  And I mean cut.  Down to the bone.  I speak from experience.  Blisters if I'm lucky.  Trainers are easier, as they are generally made of fabric, especially with current fashion, but even still, there's generally 2 styles of shoe in any given shop that will actually fit my feet, and both will be hideously ugly.  Cheap shoes are made for people with standard bodies so I'm forced to buy decent shoes which tend to have a bit more variety, but cost £40 every few months, on top of the £5 worth of new socks each month. Primark make clothes for standard size people too, hence why I shop in the girl's section, except for socks.  I can be a man where socks are concerned.

The tigers come at night.

One day, I'm going to make a bed.  And this bed shall have a motor in it.  And the motor shall cause the bed to vibrate.  Kind of similar to those massage-vibrating beds you get in tacky roadside motels in the US that make the sound of pneumatic drill for 30 seconds per 25c.  Except mine will obviously be quieter, and the vibration will be only slight, and also somewhat irregular.

There is method to my madness.

I have terrible troubles sleeping.  Always have done, except before I was 3, when I slept permanently.  But since 3, I don't sleep well.  Unless I'm exhausted to the point I can't actually hold myself standing up, it takes me about 2 hours of lying in bed, rolling around and trying to get comfortable and not overheat, to shut my mind up and fall asleep.  This doesn't really change if I'm with Chris.  And in fact it's then more infuriating listening to him be asleep for 2 hours whilst I'm not.  Chris is one of those people who can fall asleep in 5 minutes just by getting into bed.  I wake up easier and much much quicker when next to Chris, but getting to sleep is unaffected.

My sleep pattern also tends to change every 2 weeks or so.  I've had every pattern imaginable  My 'standard', insofar as I can be said to have such, is go to bed 0400 - 0600, get up 1200 - 1400, and that generally suits me fine, except the world doesn't work like this.  By the time you're up and showered and breakfasted (lunchded), the call centres and shops in the UK are closing up, especially by the time you got the bus into town to go to them.  Jobs, also, do not tend to work like this, and so I spent most of my life in a state of perpetual sleep deprivation with an average 4 hours sleep a night, and then crash out at weekends.  Every once in a while, I'll sleep for 36 hours, often missing days of work as a result.  Luckily that only tends to happen once every 3-4 months, so it's not too bad, but still.  Other sleep patterns I've had include a feeling of complete draining exhaustion just to get up and get a cup of tea before going back to bed and sleeping most of the week; sleeping one day on, one day off; sleeping only every third day; multiple naps required per day, sleep only giving me energy enough for approx 3 hours of awakening; reverse sleep schedules so that I sleep 0900/1000 - 2000ish and so forth...

What's odd, is that when I need to sleep, I'm practically narcoleptic, and no activity, stimulant, or urgent need, beyond that of survival reflex and adrenaline, can keep me awake, and even so, the adrenaline will only keep me up so long as its freshly pumping through my system; 15 minutes later I'll be collapsing again.

But despite all these sleeping issues, I have never had a problem sleeping on planes, trains, or automobiles.  In fact I can do it exceptionally easy.  I am a master of the tube-sleep, never having missed my station, and being able to do it on 2 stop journeys.  In the busy rush hour where there's enough people around to keep me standing, I can even do it without needing a seat.  I can fall asleep on transportation no matter what time it is, or how tired I was previously.  It's the vibrations, they gently rock me to sleep within 30 seconds, engine hum is the way forward for my sleep issues.  And hence, I want a bed, that can imitate a slight, but partially irregular vibration with which to send me to sleep whenever I want without hours of thinking random thoughts.

I have no idea how Chris would cope with a slightly, partially irregularly vibrating bed though...

The little things you do together...

I have something I'd like to post, but it would be unfair, because a lot of it concerns Chris, and he has enough to worry about at the moment.

Though it does mean I'm repressing something, that has become unrepressed from its usual state of repressedness to the point where I'd like to rant about it, but I can't, because Chris is on finals, and thus he has the epic trump card, and whilst I know he does the same for me when I'm in similar situations, its still frustrating when certian issues arise.

Last Tuesday when there was the epic Vampy emotional badness, I really needed to be the one attended to, but he was massively stressing out and depressed about impending exams about to go very badly, and whilst we both had good reasons for being selfish, and not wanting to sacrifice our pain to take care of the other at the time, as stated, finals is a massive trump card, and so I swallowed a hell of a lot of emotion to get him through his problems, because that's what you do when you're a good boyfriend.  Some days though, you wish you weren't.

I have however, just discovered how to make a scheduled post, so I may write what I'm thinking, and set it to post in 2 weeks once his exams are over and the risk of depressing/upsetting him isn't quite so contextually fragile.

John

John is a friend.  John hurts.  John feels left out.  John's life is not where he thought it would be.  John's life took a different turn because of him.

But so did my life.  Who knows where we'd both be if he'd been different.

Dynamics

So you all know, at least by now, that I'm a rather hardcore sub.  I like it hard, I like it rough, I like it sleazy.  Half the scenarios I'm interested in or have done are the sort of things that would disgust half of you.  I am the boy your mother warned you about.  And I don't do half of what I'd like to given the opportunity.  And as my renting life shows, given the right price, I can be just about anyone's (though even renting, there are guys I say no to).

There is however a small part of me, that is top and/or dom.  A small part, but a fundamental and very enjoyed part of me.  But what most people don't know, is that whilst I will gladly be sub for a wide range of people, I am extremely picky as a top/dom.  So if I've ever done or expressed an interest in playing that role with you, you just got a free compliment.  That's not saying I'll be sub to guys uglier than I'd top.  Just that I have different tastes according to what I'm doing.  My sub tastes are rather broad, and whilst, even renting, I've never slept with anyone I did find attractive in some way, even if that was just their sparkling personality, there are guys I would kill to sub for, or even just get fucked by, that I have no interest whatsoever in screwing myself, or tieing up and spanking.

I'm a rather sadistic dom.  Not stupidly so, I still appreciate there's only so far you can push people, but I do like to hear whimpers of pain being inflicted on a boy if I've tied them up.  I think anyone who was my boyfriend, would have to be partially vers.  They can fuck me a lot, but I want to fuck them one out of every five times or so.  Jack is a wierd one, he's always fucked me, and yet, he actually makes me about 75% top; just something about him.  I've certainly never been a submissive bottom with him, always a very active and aggressive one.  Tonight I got talking to an INSANELY hot completely passive sub boy who wants me to dom him, and I'm very eager to do so with him.  He definitely passes my picky top/dom tastes.  Hell the boy's dressing up in trackies and a collar for me and loves humiliation, this is gonna be sooooo much fun.

In some ways, I guess you'd describe my top or dom tastes as rather boring.  They have to be the picture perfect young jock, athletic and defined, but not totally muscular, think Hollister Co imagery.  Or the skinny geekhot shoreditch indieboy type to a lesser extent.  And that's somewhat similar to my straight tastes.  As a straight guy, I'm also very picky, the girls I like are not the shy librarian beauty in a non-obvious way type, it's the femme fatale every man turns to look at her in a room type, more or less.  There are of  course, exceptions to this, both in straight tastes and top tastes, but those are by definition, rare.  The downside of my straight taste is I get hardly any chance to indulge it, what with being generally a submissive gay kinkboy; it's not the best chat-up line.  And whilst I can seemingly spark the interest of guys which should clearly be way out of my league (insanelyhotboy for one) in the gay world, especially as a sub - there are advantages to being small, light, aggressive, and sleazy as hell - I'm very well aware that any girl even slightly out of my league would laugh incredulously at me if I attempted to get anywhere with them, let alone the leagues the ones I'm interested in inhabit.

I'm actually completely different with girls, hardly kinky at all, the generic now socially acceptable slap-and-tickle perhaps, but nothing like what I get up to in my gay life, from either a dom or a sub perspective.  It's all straight forward and vanilla with possibly a little more courtesy for their enjoyment of the situation by virtue of being otherwise both gay and a sub.  I'd find it very hard to sub to a girl.  Only one type possibly interests me on that front, and that's the vamp goth kink girl.  Think vampire Willow from Buffy.  If a girl like that comes up to me at Crimson and wants to flog me I'll gladly follow her round on my knees, but again, thats a very high league kinda girl, and one I'm not likely to get, so I'll be happy enough to find a girl I can play with in a bed, rather than worry about finding one who will suspend me from the ceiling.

A question which I may ask my bisexual friends: the entenal query of T, or A, I fall very much on the breasts line.  Don't get me wrong, girls can have nice arses, and shown off in a skirt in summer, I'm a happy clappy straight boy, and I do have an appreciation for the J-Lo style of arse, but guys arses are generally nicer in my opinion.  Arses are everywhere, I can get them anywhere.  What I can't get on a guy, or at the very least, I really don't want, are breasts, and straight men love breasts, and I'm no exception.  But I wonder if this is a general trend amongst bi guys, or just me, and whether its affected by bi guys who are more into girls versus bi guys who are more into guys.

Excuse me whilst I go jack off about girls...

De Arte

So I checked my blog posts to see if I posted anything similar earlier but I don't think I have, apologies if I'm covering old ground though.

Also, this post is basically summed up by the following, and I believe it's an important message, in fact one of my favourite lines comes from it: "some artists try to do everything, which is impossible.  I think those people are brave."

Art is great, most people concede this on some level.  And it divides people.  In a totally great way.  By art here, I mean almost anything that can be considered art; architecture, performance, dance, sculpture, painting, installations, music, fashion; the entire world is art on some level.  I can talk a lot about wanky bullshit like composition, and concept, and form, because that's the world I exist in as a techie, and if you exist in an artistic and creative world, those words do actually have meaning.  Yes I still concede its wanky bullshit, and a lot of people (read: critics, read: failed artists) that still have a presence in the industry can really really talk some wanky bullshit using these kinds of phrases, but that doesn't mean they don't have a genuine and valid meaning in an artistic context.

A realization I came to a while ago, is that I'm a massive fan of installation art it seems.  I love the way it challenges expetations and preconceptions, of materials, of form, of structure; the way it reuses materials and gives them a completley different meaning, the way such simple, and bizarre ideas can inspire such strong and varying emotions in people. 

A few years back at SFMoMa there was an installation piece spread out over an entire floor of the building, it was largely composed of vaseline.  I had never seen vaseline used in that way.  I never would have considered using it at the basis for an installation sculpture.  And the extent of this piece was vast.  SFMoMa is not a small building, and it didn't take up one room in a gallery, it expanded over the entire floor; it forced you to move around it, to adjust to its presence, to examine the different facets and components of it as you moved between different rooms. 

Recently, the Unilever series installed a giant shipping container in the turbine hall of the Tate Modern.  Standing at the entrance, you stared into a black abyss, the darkness of which meant you couldn't fathom the depth of it.  Walking into it, you started off confident, excited and bemused, and as you knew you would eventually reach the other end, it turned to trepidation, your steps beome shallower, shorter, uncertain, you put your hands out, scared slightly of hitting the wall with your face because you can't see it coming.  And everyone coming into the container did this.  At the back its so dark, even once your eyes adjust, even me, who has pretty good night vision compared to most people, could only make out silhouettes, and when you look back towards the entrance, the giant windows at the end of the turbine hall, the dilation of your pupils in the dark light, means the entrance turns into a blinding square of light, the picture perfect light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.  All this, from letting people wander round a shipping container painted black on the inside.

A lot of people criticize modern art on the basis that its rubbish, that its pointless, that its just someone shoving a load of junk together, that they could have done that and made a mint of it.  But they didn't.  They didn't have that vision.  And they don't appreciate what an artist has done, because they don't look and see.  This point is driven home by the recent play Red, that was on at the Donmar Warehouse, and has now transferred to New York.  I saw it here in London and have tickets to see it in NYC as it has changed from a thrust 250 seater staging, to a pros arch 804 seater venue, so the techie geek in me is eager to see the shift in staging.  Red is about the works of Mark Rothko, he does those paintings of square blocks of colour within each other, rather famous, and rather infamous for people going "a child could have done that".  I've seen my fair share of Rothko showings, and all of them happen in very dim light, so dim its almost hard to make out the painting.  You're usually very close to the murals, which are massive pieces generally, so it's hard to see 'the bigger picture'.  There is one scene in Red, where the importance of this is finally driven home to the audience, many of whom are staunch Rothko fans, but had never before appreciated this point, just as I hadn't.  Rothko, in a fit of rage, finally allows the overhead strip lights to be turned on.  The venue becomes ablaze with stark white light.  And the Rothko mural on the stage breaks down.  Its presence and effect completely disappears.  It is, in fact, something a child could do, it has no meaning, and inspires no emotion, aside from the feeling of loss and regret, because 20 seconds ago, when the play was still in a dimly lit studio, it had been beautiful, it had filled the room, absorbed the actors and the audience, it was unavoidable and imposing, and now, in the everyday light of a standard gallery, it's heartbreaking to see it as barely even a few shades of Red.  If you ever get to see this play, please, please go see it, becuase I honestly can't describe this feeling accurate enough.  In a theatre full of Rothko fans, the entire audience took a collective gasp and the same moment when this occured in the play, because what Rothko in the play says is true, their spell is broken, they are fraglie, they need to be protected, and they are truly meant to be seen up close and in dim light.

Now I accept, you might not like art, you especially might not like modern art, or installation art, or rothko, you might see it as pointless.  But does that make art such a crime?  Gaga makes generic pop music sure, but she makes damned good generic pop music, the woman knows what she is doing with it, and she completely embraces it, and goes over the top, and has her costumes, and her persona, and everything about 'Lady Gaga' is art.  And what are you doing?  Sitting in your 9-5 office job, wearing a suit, waiting for a promotion, bitching about how people subscribe to her shit.  She's paying the bills, and she's doing it more successfully than you seem to be.  She's achieving her dream, and using the talents she has, and people appreciate.  And what's so wrong about that?

Art is there to be hated, to be disagreed with, to be argued with, to be bought, to be critcized, to fall in and out of society's favour, but it's there for a reason, and the fact it brings out such strong emotions in people, even negative ones, says something about its effect.  And with art being so much of life, music, film, picture, adverts and marketing, fashion, architecture, everything, anybody who says they don't care for art, or they hate it, isn't thinking about things properly.  They might hate dance and theatre, but I bet you they still have a favourite musician.