(no subject)

[anotherusedpage]

Right. It's just another whinge. Next week, I'll say something interesting on here, I promise. I hope. But for now...

I'm deeply, deeply sick of having to be profound. I'm sick of having to think so damn hard about everything. I'm sick of analysing literature and being forced to angst over the nature of art and what makes something literature and politics and the human condition and the meaning of life. It's making everything so depressing.
We did this whole thing a while back about language as a trap, a way of controlling the way you think, and the fact that there's nothing you can say that isn't socially conditioned. And now I'm finding it really hard to get out of that way of thinking. Which is just amusing, because yeah, the language of that seminar has trapped me into its way of thinking thus proving its own point, and... you see what I mean about wanting to escape from the damn profoundness.

This week I'm doing distopias. A little bit of Orwell's theory of language, some Aldous Huxley, and Angela Carter, and Magaret Atwood (which I've only just registered I don't have a copy of in Oxford). And... yeah, again, people can't escape from the worlds they've created for themselves, and huxley and orwell at least seem to imply that escapism is only more of the same... by making us THINK we can escape, it stops us from really escaping.

And I don't even know what it is I want to escape from. On one level, it's just the damn essay that's due in in... ten hours, six of which really ought to be used for sleeping. On another level... yeah, I'm still angsting about death and the general pointless nature of life, which I kinda thought I was over, but both RL and literature keep bringing up again.

I'm trapped in this fucking search for meaning which I know isn't there, so I don't even know why I'm looking for it. Partly on compulsion - I have to look, or else what's the point? Partly because I'm being told to - 'You will discover profound things in literature by nine o clock tomorrow morning, or ELSE!' And ok so I chose to be told so, because usually I like it, usually I feel like I'm getting somewhere, even though I know there's no 'there' to get, but currently... it's like running on a treadmill. Which is set too fast and has no off switch, with a load of people watching and laughing and mocking. Ok, so the watching and laughing and mocking part I know for a fact is all in my head. Cos everyone else is too busy running their own treadmill to watch and laugh and mock.

And there's only a week left til easter. Just one week. Just gotta get this one damn essay done, and it's all downhill from here.

And then I will read pointless, amusing fic and slash, and Terry Pratchett, and Harry Potter, and mebbe some of my mother's 'bad' detective and scifi novels, all which I'm currently having the urge to ram down my tutor's throat - 'It's worth just as much to mankind as any fucking bastard proper literature, damn you, and no I don't want to discuss why or even how. Because that's not the fucking point!'

Comments

[funnynamehere.livejournal.com]

OK, well, your first mistake was going to Oxford. I do history at Sheffield - do you know how much history I *actually* read? Granted, I like the subject and read it for pleasure but actual, on-topic history I read very little of.

Secondly, read either of Dave Gorman's books. They're brilliant and very, well, relaxing - you don't have to think.

Thirdly, get a telly and watch "Footballers Wives".

x

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

Telly! Wanna telly! Wanna shut my brain off in front of a telly!

[herringprincess.livejournal.com]

find a telly!!! pah, i was trying to give away my telly in oxford last year (too huuuuge to cart around), but didnt know you. does your college have a bookable tv room? have you joined the phoenix?(mind you, most of the films there are a bit thinky too). at least you're doing g&s which is, lets face it....oh id better not sound like im insulting it ;-) i'll have most of my lj f-list on my back.

[uberwald.livejournal.com]

I think you have to leaven the high culture with a smattering of the populist, otherwise the diet is too rich. So yes, go and watch some trash telly or read a whodunnit to clear your head, I heartily recommend it.

To those who over-analyse, I always quote Oscar in the intro to Dorian Gray: 'All art is quite useless.' Yes, it might shock, or have political significance or radically alter our perceptions of blah blah yada yada, but if the picture doesn't look nice or you can't finish the book because the prose is so turgid and is basically No Fun then it ain't Art, if you ask me.

(the distopias probably don't help either. Here's hoping you get set some comedies next)