Where I come from 6: It makes me wonder

Would you be surprised, Freddie, if this were my last letter to you about Led Zeppelin? Relieved perhaps? After exactly two minutes, the song ain't nowhere near over.

I'm quite sure I could say something relevant with regards to “it's whispered that soon if we all call the tune / Then the piper will lead us to reason”. And though I'm not so sure I could make something of the “bustle in your hedgerow” and the “spring clean for the May queen”, I don't think I have to. If I stood any chance of opening up an insight towards philosophy, this is where it should happen:

“Ooh... it makes me wonder.”

You probably know that in one of Plato's later dialogues, Socrates says that all philosophy originates in wonder. And though I would love to give Charlie the benefit of the doubt, he didn't seem to question anything. He wasn't baffled, surprised or taken aback by anything. Nothing made him wonder – because he kept piling up fairy tales and far fetched explanations instead. His attitude is the exact opposite of wonder, of not understanding and not knowing a way out of it.

I hope I've showed that it does happen in the first two minutes of Stairway to Heaven. Plant has touched on the pragmatic and the semantic theory of language and finds himself not able to ignore the musical aspect of language. And that makes him wonder.

He doesn't articulate “it makes me wonder what language is”, he doesn't say “it makes me wonder about language” - but that doesn't take away that admits he doesn't have a clue, doesn't know, isn't sure – and wonders. Unlike the lady who knows all that glitters is gold; unlike Charlie, who is convinced that God spoke to him when he was in prison and that Jesus joined the Hells Angels in Essex soon afterwards.

And in case you're still wondering what I did those six years in uni: I learned to focus on a text and suspend judgement; to admit that I don't understand something, that I don't know what's going on, without covering it up and without turning away from it either. By not waffling my way out of every tight spot, I try to give a wide berth, try to allow something relevant to reveal itself.

Deborah

Where I come from 5: Dead end routes

Dear Freddie,

More than a month ago, I poked at the first words of Stairway to Heaven and found that the opening paragraph told me a lot less than it seemed to do at first glance, and definitions of the words wouldn't help me reveal what has kept this song alive for over half a century. I was left wondering about the line “with a word she can get what she came for”. This line seemed to favour a pragmatic approach to words over a semantic one, focussing on the relation between signs and their effects rather than the relation between signs and the things to which they refer. Interestingly, the second verse continues where the first left off.

There's a sign on the wall, but she wants to be sure

'Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings.

In a tree by the brook, there's a songbird who sings,

Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven.

This paragraph is crowded with language-related words: sign, words, meanings, songbird, sings, thoughts.

A sign on the wall

To avoid going down the mystical route, I will not elaborate on the biblical origin of the expression “sign on the wall” (Daniel 5, in case you've given up on our quest for philosophy). Instead, I will focus on the words that are so significant throughout these lyrics.

Is it an unconditional statement that there is a sign on the wall, or are these words part of a construction that started in the previous paragraph? The latter interpretation says that the lady knows that, when she gets to heaven, there will be a sign on the wall. In her book In the houses of the Holy: Led Zeppelin and the power of rock music, Susan Fast is surprised that Plant begins a new stanza of poetry with this phrase, despite the fact that the instrumental part continues with the fourth phrase of the music. “In other words, the text seems to begin anew but the music does not.”(Oxford University Press US, 2001, p. 61) To me, this is a clear sign that Plant doesn't start a new sentence.

Either way, whether there's a sign to tell her the directions when she is buying the stairway to heaven, or whether she knows that there will be a sign on the wall when she gets to there – after having been certain about so many falsehoods, she is unsure now, despite the sign. Why? Because “you know, sometimes words have two meanings”.

According to the semantic theory, words are signs referring to designata (e.g. meaning, definition or objects to which words refer). Traditionally, 'sign' and 'meaning' are two words that go together like neighbouring jigsaw puzzle pieces – mentioning the one is asking for the other. It's no surprise they show up together in this song.

This is the first time in the song that the lady is not sure about something. Though I'm supposed to know sometimes words have several meanings, personally, I find it incredibly difficult to grasp how exactly a sign can even have one meaning. Does the word 'tree' have something in common with a plane tree in Hyde Park? Do they resemble each other? Or is the link quite random, a convention? But then why can't we simply replace it with the Dutch word 'boom'? Buy some space on the front page of the Metro to let everyone know that from now on we will only refer to trees with the word 'boom' and abandon the word 'tree' completely. Do you think it would be a smooth transition? I expect that no root-killer will be strong enough to exterminate the word 'tree'.

It's just as mind boggling as the question what connects the spoken word 'tree' to the written version. In what way are they the same? And when two people say the word 'tree', what is it that connects the first sound to the second?

You may think the last question is obvious, because “they sound the same”. But what is that sameness? How can we recognize two sounds as the same word, even when one is pronounced with a lovely Dutch “trrrr” and the other with a west-London twang?

“The written and the spoken word have the same meaning”, you say? But again: what is 'meaning' and in what way is it 'the same'?

Especially when a word is supposed to refer to a mental concept or idea, it completely eludes me what is going on. What are concepts, ideas, definitions, other than the words themselves? What is 'the semantic theory', without the words that are supposedly 'used' to 'express' it? Talking about the semantic theory doesn't clarify anything about words.

A songbird who sings

But I digress. Back to the song. For now, all I know is that the lady finds it problematic to pinpoint definitions of words. The next phrase doesn't seem to have much to do with the beginning of the story: “In a tree by the brook (what brook) is a songbird who sings...”

But as I noticed earlier, this line contains two language-related words, so it's not completely out of the blue: songbird and sings. While 'sign' and 'meaning' brought me to the semantic theory of language, this phrase points in a different direction: language as music. I don't have a definition or logically sound theory ready to explain what this entails – but if I did, that would defeat the whole point, don't you think? It would close the route Plant pointed out even before I embarked on it, and it would send me right back to the theoretical, unmusical way of thinking ABOUT language, rather than allowing musical language to happen.

Which is exactly what's happening in Stairway to Heaven. Not only because it's a musical masterpiece. But perhaps you remember how in my previous letter, it emerged that Plant isn't consciously choosing words because of their definition, but accepts them as they come – as they are given.

Perhaps you think I'm reading a bit too much into “there's a songbird who sings”?

I don't. The next line says it all: “Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven.”

I won't go on about the fact that, grammatically, it could be a line that the bird is singing, because that would be rather silly.

What this line says is that we don't choose our own words; they are given to us. And sometimes, all of our words are mis-given. All that glitters is gold. The routes of thinking that we are forced down by words such as 'sign' and 'meaning' might be erroneous, dead end trails. No matter how many people have tread them happily and without noticing throughout the ages.

Read the next installment:

Where I come from 6: It makes me wonder 

Where I come from 4: Words that pay the bills

There's a lady who's sure
All that glitters is gold
And she’s buying a stairway to heaven
When she gets there, she knows,
If the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for
Ooh, ooh, and she’s buying a stairway to heaven

Dear Freddie,

The words came to Robert Plant while he stood and listened to the other Led Zeppelin members who were trying to compose Stairway to Heaven – this contrast between how the music and the lyrics came about is relevant, by the way.

The first words that came to Plant still open the song and describe a woman in the third person. Plant calls her a lady, which means she's not just any woman, but a woman of superior social position. She is certain about something: namely that all that glitters is gold. This conviction makes this lady seem like a bit of a fool: everybody knows all that glitters is NOT gold! Even water, a slug or a fresh dog turd can glitter in the sun shine. (I wonder whether the social status of this woman has anything to do with the way she perceives valuable things.)

While the lady is sure about this falsehood, my first uncertainty crops up. What is the grammatical status of the next line, “and she's buying a stairway to heaven”? Is she sure that she's 'buying' this interesting stairway (just like she is sure about all glittery things being gold) or does Plant say that she's actually buying it?
Putting it like that brings forward another aspect of the word buying. When one teenager tells another how she lied to her parents about her nocturnal whereabouts so that she could stay out longer, it’s not unusual for the other party to ask: “Did they buy it?” to which the answer usually is: “Hell yeah, they bought every word of it!” When you buy a lie, it means you've fallen for it, you believe it. The lady, who is sure that all that comes across as valuable actually is valuable, is buying a “stairway to heaven”. She’s falling for this trickery too.

Only now, it occurs to me that Plant doesn’t describe what this woman looks like, nor what she does; he purely describes what we usually call her ‘mental state’. She is sure about something, she’s buying trickery, and in the next line she knows something. What does she know? That when she gets to heaven – whatever that may be – she can get what she came for with a word if the stores are all closed.

The first question I would like to ask is: what about if the stores are opened? But that would be a silly thing to ask. First of all: I don’t know what heaven is, nor whether there ARE shops there. What’s more: Plant doesn’t claim either that heaven exists, nor that there are shops there. Plant is only telling me, from a distance, that this lady ‘knows’ something. There’s no point in pretending to believe that there are shops in a place called heaven in order to investigate the imaginary opening hours, especially not when I don’t even know what they’re supposed to sell. For now, this line is a dead end street.

The second question I could ask is: what does ‘to know’ entail? During my first year of philosophy, I learned that knowledge is ‘justified, true belief’. This definition can lead to quite a lot of interesting debates – but I shouldn’t allow those distractions to lead me away from the lyrics. Plant says she knows that, WHEN she gets there, she can get what she came for. Even if Plant subscribes the aforementioned definition of knowledge, it’s not logically impossible that this woman knows she can get what she came for if she gets there, but also knows she’ll never get there because the place doesn’t exist. Plant doesn’t claim nor deny the existence of heaven and its local shops. Trying to determine which definition of ‘to know’ he had in mind would merely distract from the song – the more so because Plant didn’t cunningly compose the text, picking words because of their definitions. We don’t choose words because of their definitions – they just roll out of our mouth or fingers, present themselves. It often feels as if I don’t have much to do with which words I utter at all.

What I’m trying to do is trace the way the words presented themselves to Plant, in order to catch a glimpse of where they come from, what made them come forward, and hopefully learn something about my relationship with these words.

Now, the last thing I’d like to mention about this first paragraph is that – although I don’t know what she’s after – the woman knows she can get it with a word. She sees words as an economic currency with which she can pay, even when the stores are closed. This line has fascinated me ever since I first heard it, though I don’t know why exactly yet. It’s not a deep insight: of course words are a currency. Every toddler knows he has to say “please” if he want a sweet, and with the years we learn that other words can get us other things. (e.g. “you look lovely today”, “I’m so stressed!” or “your food smells delicious. What is it?”). It doesn’t matter what the words mean; we use them to get a specific reaction in return. Hopefully, the rest of the lyrics will make things more clear.

Best, Deborah


Read the next installment here:
Where I come from 5: Dead end routes


Or read the first posts in this series:

Where I come from 1: Pub Talk Philosophy

Where I come from 3: The Words, the Wonderful Words

Dear Freddie,

I think John Paul Jones, the Led Zeppelin bassist, describes the origin of Stairway to Heaven very poetically: “Page and Plant would come back from the Welsh mountains with the guitar intro and verse. I literally heard it in front of a roaring fire in a country manor house.”

The story goes that the song was conceived in Bron-Yr-Aur, an 18th century cottage in South Snowdonia. It was the year 1970 and guitarist Jimmy Page was trying to join together a number of acoustic and electric sections. Page remembers how he was instructions the rest of the band while Robert Plant, the lead singer, was leaning against the wall, listening and writing. “And all of a sudden he got up and started singing in, along with another run-through, and he must have had 80% of the words there.”

It all adds to the myth that Plant described what came over him as “my hand was writing out the words, 'There's a lady who’s sure, all that glitters is gold, and she's buying a stairway to heaven'. I just sat there and looked at them and almost leapt out of my seat.”

No doubt this origin story helped the song to its legendary status. But if I want to be able to take the song seriously, the image of Page and Plant returning from the Welsh mountains like Zarathustra, bringing Stairway to Heaven to the people... well.... it just makes me laugh. I can’t learn anything while being overwhelmed with pathetic, mystical obscurity.

It seems like quite a challenge to avoid being dazzled like that when a song is called “Stairway to Heaven”. What on earth is heaven? I don’t believe there’s a place above the clouds where good folks go when they die to sit by champagne fountains for the rest of eternity. Nor do I think interpreting the word ‘heaven’ as that imaginary place will help me understand the song.

I know that ‘buying a stairway into heaven’ is a standing expression for being generous only in order to achieve salvation. But come on, I don’t know what salvation is either. So rather than pretend I know what Plant means, I should accept that I don’t know what he’s trying to say. Instead, I will have to stick to the words in the song and look for clues that might tell me more.

The title alone tells me heaven is a destination. When looking closely at these three words, I notice that Plant doesn’t tell me whether this destination can be reached, has been reached or even exists. I don’t know whether it’s a place I should try to reach, or that I should try to postpone finding it. For now, I only know Plant mentions that there is a stairway that leads towards heaven, whatever it is. So, all I know is that, from where Plant was standing, he’d have to ascend or descend in order to get there. No more and no less.

Next time, I’ll try to find out more by looking closely at the first lyrics.

Yours,

Deborah

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Read the next installment here:
Where I come from 4: Words that pay


Or read the previous posts in this series:

Where I come from 1: Pub Talk Philosophy and Where I come from 2: MA in Pedantry.

Where I come from 2: MA in Pedantry

Oh Freddie, what have I got myself into? Why did I have to put the first installment of my attempt to let philosophy emerge on my blog? It has been a pain in the arse ever since I uploaded it, knowing that, now that it was public, I could not back out of it again. I felt the urge to write and upload numerous other stories, but wouldn’t allow myself to follow up the first installment of my English attempt at philosophy with the review of a cocktail bar. So I actually started exploring other platforms to post my writings. Why was I trying to avoid getting on with it and writing installment number two? I’m afraid that right now, even trying to find an answer to that question would be avoidance behaviour, but hopefully it will become clear on the way.

Charlie was right about one thing: academic performance is irrelevant.

Charlie’s ideologies reminded me of the last story in Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted, but when I asked him whether he’d heard of Palahniuk, he said he found reading extremely difficult and wasn’t well read. Now, as a writer, I would say that a writer who doesn’t read shows lack of interest in his own trade and since he doesn’t know what his competitors are doing he probably won’t be able to match them.

Philosophy, however, is not a trade, and though a philosopher is not immune to ‘petty’ issues such as competition, a real philosopher won’t just indulge in intellectual contests and win, but rather experience that he is compelled to do so and wonder why it is that he cannot resist.

Now, universities are full of people who show off their mental capacities without thinking, always have been. Especially Philosophy MA’s & PhD’s are a breeding ground for top notch brain wrestlers. But Charlie was right: having read a vast amount of philosophical works, knowing everything there is to know about Schleiermacher, Hegel and Gadamer and being able to refute the works of Kant, Descartes and Plato doesn’t make them philosophers.

I can’t tell you what philosophy is, Freddie, nor what makes a philosopher. But I can tell you that academic high performance isn’t it. All those academics who, despite their success, never wrote or said a relevant word are not philosophers. I honestly can’t see why and how anyone could stick the same tag on them and the people whose work they study: Socrates, Plato, Descartes, Heidegger.

Again, I can’t tell you what philosophy is, but I’ve got a suspicion it’s something that takes place in the words of those philosophers. And every time I listen to Stairway to Heaven, I can’t help but think it happens there too. But if I fail to show you what happens in that song, I won’t know whether that is because

a) I am not sensitive enough to see something taking place in an English text

b) Nothing philosophical takes place in Led Zeppelin’s words

c) I’m rubbish at pointing out to you what’s taking place

d) You aren’t sensitive enough to see it.

Scientifically speaking it’s a useless experiment. That being said, let’s shut up and listen to the song.

Deborah

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Continue readingWhere I come from 3: The Words, The Wonderful Word.

Or go back and read Where I come from 1: Pub Talk Philosophy.

Where I come from 1: Pub Talk Philosophy

Dear Freddie,

The first time we talked about philosophy, we had a big fat fight. We’d been together for over a year, and so far I’d managed to escape serious conversations that had anything to do with philosophy. I’d told you from the start that I had left Holland in order to get away from philosophy and that I’d chosen Great Britain because, as far as I knew, the language didn’t allow any fallbacks. That was fine with you because you didn’t enjoy talking about matters that were beyond your capacity to change and put to good use anyway – aka philosophical conversations did your nut in.

But a couple of weeks ago, you introduced me to Charlie at the Portobello Gold. “Charlie’s writing a book,” you said. It turned out to be a book about how God spoke to Charlie when he was in prison, about how he saw Jesus when he got out, about Americans coming to London to look for Jesus, who would be ‘amongst Angels on Earth’, and about two skinned bears that were found in the snow in London in the winter of 1983 without any blood or foot prints in the vicinity. I was being playfully cynical, asking questions such as “are you sure those voices you heard had nothing to do with the brain injury you just mentioned?” , “and you think Jesus dumped those bears there?”, “oh, now I get it, you think Jesus is Bigfoot!”

When you told me, later that night, that Charlie used to be the head of the Essex Chapter of the Hells Angels, I said I felt like an idiot for being so cheeky towards possibly one of England’s most dangerous men.

"But at the same time, I know I would have felt just as foolish if I would have agreed with him. I mean, come on, it was a big load of bollocks.”

"It wasn’t all nonsense,” you said, “I think his philosophy was quite interesting.”

And that’s how it started. I said as far as I could tell his book in the making was very interesting, but not philosophical. You demanded a definition of philosophy.

“I can’t give you one, but I can assure you I didn’t spend six years in university studying pub talk and the ramblings of a retired Hells Angel with a brain injury. Thank you very much.”

“Very impressive, you spent six years in university studying something and you can’t even tell me what. At least Charlie’s trying to improve the world.”

“Yes, he is trying to make the world a better place, but that doesn’t make him a philosopher. So are you, but you’re an aerospace engineer. If anything, the fact that he’s trying to manipulate the world shows that he’s NOT a philosopher.”

“Well, then tell me what a philosopher does.”

I tried to explain that philosophers try to find words or truths that they can’t deny, and wonder why. But, as was to be expected, I failed to make you understand. I argued that I couldn’t show you what it’s like to discover a philosophical necessity in a language that wasn’t my mother tongue – because it’s all about finding nuances of words as they come naturally - not artificially (the way I learned it at school). When speaking English, I get it wrong all the time. Without making myself incomprehensible, I disobey the rules of British English all the time, in ways that are actually impossible for a native like yourself. You couldn’t make my mistakes, even if you tried.

That’s because you’re hardwired with the language, whilst I am not. I said I was hardwired with a language that was possibly more suitable for the deeper insights as well. But by neglecting Dutch, I was turning myself away from all that. So I didn’t want to talk about it.

You didn’t take my inability – interpreted as unwillingness – to explain what philosophy is well. We had a serious argument the other day, and you brought it up again. You called me a philosopher for being argumentative, for arguing for the sake of arguing – which I was, but that doesn’t make me a philosopher.

“Bloody philosophy,” you said, “it’s a waste of time. Doesn’t have a point.”

“It is,” I said, “it is useless. But that doesn’t make everything that’s useless philosophical.”

“I only said that to wind you up. It’s not useless.”

“NOW you’re winding me up. It bloody is.”

“I’ve asked a girl at Phoebe’s party for a definition of philosophy, and she agreed with me. And she was pretty smart too.”

“Was she English?”

“That’s beside the point. But yes, she was English, and she was doing a degree in Philosophy.”

“If some clever bird wants to do a degree in pub talk, that’s fine with me. Though personally, I think that art is much more enjoyable with a pint in a local. Without having to write an essay about it afterwards.”

But I love you and I don’t want you to think that I’m being selfish and just don’t want to share my background with you. So I promised to give it a go: I’ll attempt to write something that might give you a glimpse of what I’ve been doing in university for six years. I can’t promise I’ll manage. I never had any guarantee ‘philosophy would happen’ while I was in uni either. And even if, for a moment, I think my text opens up an insight, I can’t promise you’ll be capable of seeing it. I can’t do that for you. But I’ll do my best to show you that philosophy is taking place in Stairway to Heaven. If it is.

Deborah

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Continue readingWhere I come from 2: MA in Pedantry.

@ Sharon: I am interesting too!

When I got back from the hospital (hurrah, I've got no cartilage damage, just lax joints) a girl in a green 'save Africa' jacket approached me. Under her arm she had a writing board on which she probably wanted to write my name down, in case I would decide to support the project. I was very cheerful, so I beamed a happy smile back at her, even though I was pretty there's not much I can do for Africa right now. I need all my money to save myself.
She asked what I had been up to, where I was going and whether I had a job.
'No, I can't, I'm an international student and I don't have a national insurance number yet.'
She asked where I was from, where I went to uni, what course I was on, and eventually how old I was. Twenty-four.
'Really?' she said. She looked genuinely surprised. Apparently the save-Africa-project is for people younger people only. 'You look very young, do you know that? Do a lot of people say that to you?'
'A couple,' I replied. 'But usually they are boys.'
'Well, there you have it, a compliment from another girl.' We laughed and talked about some general stuff. The type of thing you could read on someone's facebook profile, mainly. And then, without mentioning Africa, she wished me good luck, we shook hands and I proceeded home.

Peculiar, I thought at first. A very curious conversation. But then again, we do this a lot on the internet, so why not in real life? I don't hold back on profiling myself on linkedin, facebook, flickr, gmail, twitter, and I even try to integrate the whole lot of them with twitfeed and friendfeed, so why would I not have a little friendly chat with a random stranger in London?

Fit for infertility

Oh my atheist void, this is so depressing.
I’ve just had three novels aborted – mind you, this is always an emotional experience for a girl – because they were lousy, and there’s a fourth unborn but dead outline rotting in my Dutch womb. Right now, I really don’t feel like I’ll ever be able to give birth to a healthy baby book.
Melissa Brown’s flight is probably the most viable of the four. But really, I don’t want to be stuck with the aftermath of rape for the rest of the year.

So what’s wrong with the other pieces? In all honesty, I just don’t give a crap about a single one of the main characters.
And the plots… well, they lack every form of excitement. Where’s the ethical conflict, the bribery, adultery, slander and perjury? What happened to true aggression, domestic violence, hate crimes, cruelty to animals and happy slapping? Of course there’s no spirituality and no magic – I can’t do that stuff – but couldn’t I’ve given it some colour with disturbing dreams or a drug-induced experience?
My characters miss out on all romance, hardly have any sex and I don’t even think they ever have a laugh, because they simply are not witty. (What do you think, can a character only be as smart as the author?)

It seems like none of the good things in life get through to my creative womb. I have never been this scared of infertility.

Fabrica d'Amor (synopsis)

Fabrica d'Amor is a psychological novel about a thirteen year old runaway in the rough squat scene of London.

Characters:

• Maggie Marshall: 13 year old girl with ginger curls and freckles. She's left-handed. She's an only child and lives alone with her mother, Ellen Marshall, in Highgate, North London. Lately, they've got a lot of fights about the clothing Maggie wants to wear, about Ellen being overprotective and about Maggie's wish to become a vegetarian. She just started secondary school and doesn't like her new classmates at all. She's feeling very lonely until she meets Chris. Her name will be changed to Maggot when she moves to Fabrica d'Amor.
• Ellen Marshall: 34 year old single mother, grew up in Holland. She moved to London when she 20, soon after her father, who had made a small fortune with his business, died. At the time she was expecting Maggie. Maggie's father didn't want to follow her, because he thought Ellen had something to do with her own father's sudden death. Her speech is never communication. She speaks because the words force her to utter them, and she cannot resist, even though it would be wiser not to speak. I'm trying to show a different view of language. Occasions when she speaks are:
1. she's telling Maggie a bedtime story, Maggie falls asleep and doesn't reply;
2. she's getting drunk on her own and talking to herself. Meanwhile Maggie is listening in;
3. she writes letters that are never sent, to Maggie's father and her own father, both of whom were already dead when she was writing.
• Chris: 17 year old leader of a group of squatters who live in what he calls 'Fabrica d'Amor', a deserted factory in West London. He is skinny, boisterous, outgoing and adventurous. He wears retro clothing and likes David Bowie.
• The apostles: Chris lives with twelve other squatters, eleven boys and one girl called Justine. They consider themselves siblings and believe in an extreme communistic ideology. They think people that have sex should not live together, because such a relation would distort equality. Hence, Justine is 'one of the boys'.

The Father: seedy old man who sits in a corner of the squat without ever saying or doing anything. Chris and the apostles call him “Father”. Everyone has greatest respect for him.

Rough outline:

Preface

As a bedtime story, Ellen tells Maggie about her own parents. Her father was a Canadian who came to Holland with the Allies in World War II. Her mother was Dutch but died while giving birth. He stayed in Holland because he loved the country and prospered there. He has always worked hard and died on the job in an unfortunate accident. But he loved his job, and Ellen thinks he wouldn't have wanted to die under any other circumstances. The message of the story is: know what you want and what you're good at, go for it and you'll be successful.

Chapter 1

After another fight with her mother, Maggie runs away from home and is very upset. On the Tube she sits next to Chris, whom she doesn't know yet. He sees she's almost crying and offers her an earphone of his I-pod. He plays David Bowie's 'rock and roll suicide' for her, and she feels like he understand her. She doesn't have a plan and he has a friendly face, so when he gets of the Tube she goes with him.

She tells him she ran away from home, he tells her he lives in a squat. Talking to this friendly stranger has cheered her up a lot and she asks if she can see his place. He introduces Maggie to the first member of his gang, Justine. Maggie smokes her first cigarette. When she sees that Justine wears two different gloves, a silk one and a leather one, she loves it, and says how much she loves it, Justine offers to swaps the leather one for one of Maggie's knitted purple TopShop-gloves.

“We're sisters now,” Justine remarks after the ritual. Maggie asks if she can stay. Chris says she can, but she will have to chip in.

Chapter 2

10 PM the next evening. Maggie has returned home and is aiting in her bedroom for Chris to whistle from outside. She has stolen the little safe in which Ellen keeps her credit card and most valuable pieces of jewellery. She has also descended to the basement to look through the clothing her mother used to wear in the eighties but never threw away, and has taken a naff leather jacket and a silk scarf that matches with Justine's glove.

Chris is more than three hours late. Maggie doubts whether she's really welcome, whether she actually wants to go, at one point she even thinks she's already heard Chris whistle at half nine and just ignored him. She keeps repeating details of her meeting with Chris and Justine and the fight she has with her mother.

Meanwhile Maggie is listening to Ellen, who is in the living room, getting drunk on her own and talking to herself. Though her thoughts become more and more incoherent in the course of the evening, it becomes clearer and clearer that she and Maggie's father had plans to get married before Ellen's father died, and that she was very dissatisfied with the fact that her father, though he was very rich, didn't want to pay for the marriage or help out with the education of his future granddaughter.

Chapter 3

At 1 AM Chris finally throws a pebble against her window. She climbs down immediately. Together they stroll down to Highgate Cemetery, break in, find a snug place between two overgrown tombstones, smoke weed and sleep until the break of dawn. Maggie hides her ginger curls under a knitted army hat Chris gave her so that she won't be recognised in case she has gone missing already, and she's wearing her mother's old leather jacket. They take the first Tube, have an extraordinary breakfast in a hotel with her mother's credit card and go back to Fabrica d'Amor.

Chapter 4

It's still very early and Chris wakes the other squatters like an army officer. Maggie meets the other apostles. Pete doesn't like her name and decides that they have to change it to Maggot (that Pete bullies Maggie is a reference to the New Testament: Pete doesn't accept Mary Magdalene. That she has to give up her name is a reference to Mariken van Nieumeghen).

After the ritual of renaming, Chris takes her by the hand and leads her to an old man who just sits on a chair and says nothing. Maggot realises he's been there all along, probably even the first time she visited Fabrica d'Amor She just hadn't noticed him. Chris says: “Father, this is our new sister, Maggot. Maggot, this is your Father now.” and kneels in front of him. Maggot does the same. The old man doesn't react.

Then they discuss how they can use the credit card as efficiently as possible before it is blocked. They decide it's best if Maggot doesn't leave the building, since people will be looking for the missing thirteen year old.

Chapter 5

Maggot and Justine are wearing the jewellery they found in the safe, but nobody shows any interest in the letters Ellen has hidden in there. Maggot keeps them in the pocket of her jeans, but has not read them yet.

The first two shifts of the gang leave to a camping store where they buy a generator, so they can produce electricity, and a lot of camping equipment. When the first shift comes home with all this, the second shift has already moved on to the next shop with the credit card and the third shift leaves to meet them there. Everyone who comes in kneels for the Father and presents him their new possessions. He says nothing, just sits and stares.

Throughout the day Maggot watches the loot grow and starts to feel guilty. Meanwhile different members of the crew try to explain their interpretation of communism. At eight Chris comes home on a very loud moped with a large number of pizza boxes. While they eat, one of the apostles takes the moped and the credit card to buy several bottles of cider and vodka at the corner shop.

Chapter 6

They climb up the roof and smoke hash. It's freezing so they can watch the stars, and talk about star signs. One by one they get too cold and move inside, where they drink the rest of the vodka. Justine is one of the last ones to come down. In the dark, she stumbles to the couch. There's someone sleeping on it. Justine opens his trousers and starts to give him a blowjob. Suddenly she stops and says: “Oh my, for a moment I thought you were Pete!”, to which Pete responds with: “Who did you think I was, bitch?”

Justine runs off crying. Now Maggot is the only female in the group. Chris is really aggravated and wakes everyone. In vain, he tries to find out who was having an affair with Justine (for such a thing was not done in their community. Sex was something that was only to be performed with people from the outside world, not with your brothers and sisters. Pete says they should never have admitted a woman to their group.

Chapter 7

Justine has left the Fabrica d'Amor in great chaos. Everyone is still drunk and shouting and worrying what Justine is going to do. Because she broke a basic rule, nobody trusts her any more. She might even turn them in to the police.

Maggot collects her belongings, she still feels like they are hers, despite the squatters’ communistic talk, and retreats to the roof. Then she starts reading her mother's letters. In an unsent letter to Maggie's father, she reads that Maggie's father didn't want to have anything to do with the inheritance after the sudden death of Ellen's father. Ellen pleads that it is not blood money, but money she and her daughter need and deserve. There are tear-stains on one of the letters, and the direction the ink is smooched makes Maggot realise Ellen is left-handed too. Of course she knew this already, but now it makes her realise how much she resembles her mother.

Later letters imply that Maggie's father committed suicide shortly after the accident that killed Ellen's father. The last letter is quite a recent one, addressed to both dead men, and states that Ellen doesn't regret a single thing she did. The letters are not a literal confession, but Maggot realises her mother has killed her own father for the inheritance.

Chapter 8

While Maggot watches the sun rise over the city she realises she has no idea what she wants in life, and what she's good at. She doesn't want to be her mother's little Maggie and she doesn't want to be Maggot. She wants it all to end. But when she walks to the edge of the roof and peers down, she sees the dead body of the Father on the pavement beneath her. She's startled and of course she doesn't jump after him. Then she sees a whole lot of police cars heading her direction. She hurries down and quietly wakes up Chris. Together they leave and from the corner shop they see Justine get out of one of the police cars and point at the factory. She looks at Chris and realises she just wants to be with him, no matter where and how they live. He looks back at her and says: 'thanks, Margaret.'

The Baptist Christmas dinner

You were right not to go to the Baptist Christmas dinner, Andrada. I've got that allergic reaction you warned me about and now I can tell from experience: the soul is a terribly hard place to scratch when you don't have one.

It started out all right, the food was nice and I had great company (attracted by the price: two pounds for a proper dinner did the trick for many godless internationals). But after the main course, before dessert, there was the inevitable sermon. A girl on a chair started shouting at us that, on our way back to campus, we might get hit by bus.
“After you die,” she yelled, “God will put you in a dark room and say that he wants to watch a video with you. You'll think that's pretty cool, watching a film with God, but as soon as the tape starts, you realise it's your life you're watching. Everything you've done, said and thought is in there. And after you've seen it all, God will say all your friends and your family are at the door and they are going to watch this film with you too. Now you'll think: wait a minute, they're not supposed to know all that about me! I don't want them to see I did and thought all that!”
You can call me an exhibitionist, but I wouldn't mind at all. I actually thought it's a shame I don't believe in God, who could be My Personal Memoir Writer. Here I am, spending all my time and energy trying to make a spot-on summary of my life, trying to capture exactly what I'm all about, while the Christians have got their own personal documentary maker, who follows them around everywhere they go and tapes all their witty or endearingly silly thoughts.
Sure, I might feel uncomfortable about them seeing certain scenes and finding out about certain thoughts or feelings. But if my folks are to see a complete film about life, there's not a single fragment I would want to leave out. I wouldn't want them to think I did not do all that – hell no, they might think I'm boring or have not lived at all! I'm proud of my life, of every aspect of it, even though at times it can be rough and cheesy, filthy and uncomfortable, too sentimental and too inconsiderate. I have lived through it all, and I expect my spectators to do the same.
While I was pondering upon this, the girl screamed on about God sacrificing his only son for us and the fact that Christmas is all about giving presents.
“And the gift we are giving you tonight, is this: that tape can be erased!”
Oh no, I thought, don't erase it, please! And I begged my body to reject the poisonous gift I had stuffed down my throat on the spot. Oh, how I would have rejoiced in some proper projectile vomiting! It would have been the most appropriate and welcome throw up I've ever performed, easily beating all those times I got rid of superfluous alcohol in my system and the occasional fit of bulimia. But no such luck, the spiritual type-ex was down there.
I found some consolation in a glass of cider afterwards (no, they wouldn't serve alcohol for two pounds only): there was no tape to erase in the first place. But still, the Baptist Christmas dinner was the most tasteless food I've ever had, and I'm disgusted with myself for having eaten it. You were right, Andrada.

Chicklitter

Dear Andrada,

If there's one domestic device I despise, it's the vacuum cleaner. The way it forces me to arch my back, the horrid howl and the greed with which it collects lost jewellery – I try to avoid it at any occasion. But today I had to, for the first time since I've moved to Britain. Even twice, because all my fingers seemed to have turned to thumbs overnight.
“A well-organised life is a great achievement,” my mother used to say. I do believe her, though I'm not the type of woman that likes to spend her time on housekeeping. I just can't get my head around the futility of cleaning. It always seems like such a waste of time, effort and talent to wipe bread crumbs from the kitchen sink, when you know they'll be back within a couple of hours: I could be reading and writing!
This morning I dropped my Elvis-glass in the kitchen. From amidst the splinters, his young face stared at me and I could swear he suddenly had this melancholic look about him. It was a twopence tumbler, really, but I loved it for its cheapability and when I moved to Britain I shipped it with the greatest care. Now this cheesy symbol of my student's life lay shattered in my new kitchen. I cried a little. But that was not enough to lull the ghost of an aborted symbol. As soon as I put the hated vacuum cleaner – filled with Elvis-splinters – back in the corner, my cupboard shook until a plate slipped out.
Until that moment I had not realised that the shattered glass was just as figurative as it had been before I dropped it. I had left my home country, my friends and family. Did I really believe I could hold on to the life-style this glass represented? Oh no! Of course I had left that too behind in Holland. The last traces of my former life just had to make way for something new: something British. But still something cheap, I'm afraid.



This is the sort of event that inspires me to write. While I was doing the necessary bit of cleaning, tatters of thought shaped themselves into a story. Narratives always present themselves when I'm not in the opportunity to jot them down (cleaning, jogging, falling asleep, socializing). Inspiration is quite similar to star-gazing, really: most stars you can only see from the corner of your eye. (We've got several sorts of receptor cells. The centre of the retina is dominated by cones, the ones that enable us to see colours. The rods only tell us whether there is light or not, and their threshold for passing this information to the brain happens to be a lot lower than the threshold for the cones. Therefore, the sky seems much starrier when we're not focussing on it.) The best stories I've written are recycled thoughts, processed elements of my daily life. As personal as autobiography, but without the boring bits. For a good piece of fiction, self-revelation is required. In fact, collecting splinters from a broken glass inspired me to write the tale of the bold bachelorette, the opening scene of my latest novel, Chicklitter.

Even though she was in great debt because of the leaded light she smashed, the bold bachelorette still sang along with Edith Piaf and meant every word of it.
“Non, je ne regrette rien, rien de rien!” Her voice was clear and great of volume, and made her bosom rise with every phrase. Art is alive, she thought, and it slowly dies if we don't feed it with admiration. It's a shame to save my voice for St. Matthew's Passion. What use is it to know I can sing, when nobody ever enjoys it? And how can we say a picture is beautiful, when it is locked away in a vault? Art should be a part of our daily life and each work should receive its deserved adoration, just like we deserve dinner every day.
And she did adore the leaded light, indeed, that night - before she threw a vodka bottle through it.

You may have noticed that I'm fond of poetic figures of speech. Rhythm is one of these; I read my writings aloud until it sounds perfect. Of course I'm not alone in that; I don't know if you do it too, but if you don't, I can only advise you to give it a try.
Anyhow, I hope my preference for alliteration and assonance is more characteristic for my work. When I manage to introduce some rhyme to a text, I feel like the chunk of communication turns into proper literature. And I like to believe not every author aims for this. (Which is why in Chicklitter I refer to my main character as the bold bachelorette rather than actually naming her.) Another poetic feature of my work is the unusually large amount of awkward imagery. I can hardly ever stop myself from thinking up mad metaphors, and though I strike out most of them to make my text readable, I'm afraid they're still quite prominent. For example, when the bold bachelorette has broken into a church to get drunk with her under age lover, she climbs the pulpit and starts speaking in a preachy tone:

“Don't you just love the Catholics? Yes, they are religious pigs, like the Muslims and the Jews and all the rest of them, but at least they've got good taste. Just look at this woodwork, it's carved so elegantly! Every functional bit is covered in decorations: every inch of it just breathes beauty! And awe... Behold that lovely lovely leaded light! The colours of the stained glass are so... amazing! Look at that cloak Maria's wearing: with the street lights behind it, it gleams like Negro skin in a bright green spotlight!”


The bold bachelorette is far from perfect: she's a burglar and a blasphemer, a racist and a pederast and like I announced in the first sentence, she's will break the beloved leading light. This too marks my work. I emphasize all flaws in my main character, without estranging the reader from her. When eventually the main character does show one good quality, it will be so much more important, thanks to the contrast. The heroine of Chicklitter eventually takes full accountability for the damage she did:

“Alas, I should have known better,” the bold bachelorette moaned to the police officer. “I should never have started dating someone five years younger than me. I should have picked someone my own age, who would have taken me to a club, like ordinary people. But instead I had to break into a church and get pissed in both the British and the American sense, which is not a good cocktail, if you know what I mean.”


And this brings me to the last aspect of my voice as an author, dear Andrada, an aspect that actually counts for you as much as it does for me. In the last line of the novel I emphasize the difference between the meaning of one word (pissed) in British and in American. This is the result of my external approach of the English language. Because English is not our primary language, we have to go looking for words all the time, we're in the constant habit of paying extra attention to our word choice, whereas natives can go lazy and pick the first word that comes to mind automatically. For example, If I call the shattered glass splinters instead of pieces, and if I say someone looks forlorn rather than miserable, that's because these words have their origin in Dutch, my mother tongue. I deliberately choose these words over others because they are closer to me. But I do not wish to erase the distance: I treasure it! Writing in a second language stimulates our awareness, sensitivity and creativity – which shows in our texts through the well-considered choice of words.

To recap: my stories are based on my own experiences – and they usually present themselves when it's least convenient. For turning my prose into literature I rely on poetic figures of speech, such as rhythm, rhyme, alliteration and assonance. My metaphors are often disturbing, as are my main characters. I've got a taste for anti-heroes, though nobody's completely imperfect (twisted as it may sound, to excel in taboos is still a form of excellence). And last but not least, I think the fact that English is not my mother tongue will always show in my writing.

Anyway, I would love to hear your thoughts on your voice as a writer. Do you think, for example, that you've got a different voice in Romanian than in English?

Best wishes,

Deborah

Mantrapped

Dear Arian,

You may have noticed that this post carries the same title as the book by Fay Weldon that I've been reading last week. If you haven't, this entry might be a disappointment (or a relief?), for it will not deal with men trapping me. Instead, it's a tiny review.

At first, I couldn't find the book at Border's, because it wasn't in the fiction department, but on a shelf with autobiographies. One can read it as a self-help-book in creative writing too, which is what I did at first. But perhaps Fay's own view on what she's doing is even more appropriate: she's writing in a new genre: the reality novel. “Reality TV is real life lived out in a fictional context (the House): the reality novel threads the life through the fiction. Have my fiction, have me.” (p. 20)
In short, it's a pastiche of fiction, autobiography and some advice on how to write. That's a dreadful description, though. It doesn't sound coherent at all, while the book actually is one clear, consistent piece of writing. What is it, then, that binds all these different aspects so firmly together? I think the uniformity of this book springs from one central theme: identity.

Characters keep creeping into her story. She can't deny them access, it seems, even though she realizes that it tends to get confusing when she introduces too many of them at the same time. “Characters are meant to be introduced slowly, one by one, so readers can get used to them. You are meant to be kind to your readers, not defy them.”(p. 86) To help out her readers she recaps once in a while and prints their names in bold. However, when she tries to pin her characters down like this, they defy the authority of the GSWITS (the Great Script Writer In The Sky, p. 78). Some of them swap souls, while it's not even clear what a soul is. Others change their names or are married to someone without having a common language to communicate. And what exactly is the relationship between actual husbands and children, and the ones we meet in the autobiographical patches? The way I see it, the core of the book is Fay wondering: “who am I?”
Apparently, that's what readers demand these days. “Self-revelation is required. Too often readers cry out for bread and are given stones: writers fail them, fob them off with thrillers, good guys on the political left, the bad guys on the right. Or chick lit, first-person tales in the present tense leavened by wisecracks, feeble emotions if nifty enough plots.” (p. 18)

Without knowing it, Fay puts her finger on the spot when it comes to my attempt to write fiction in English. I've been warned a thousand times (at least!) that I will not be able to master the English language sufficiently in order to say exactly what I mean. “You will never understand proverbs and the British cultural aspects that natives have picked up during their childhood,” people keep telling me. But if they don't believe in me (they think I'm not smart enough!) I don't see any reason why I should believe them. Sure, it's a challenge, but I'm confident that I can manage – so I give them the cold shoulder.
But Fay draws my attention to something else, something deeper. As an author, I can communicate directly with innumerable readers. But why should they spend their valuable time on me and not on any random writer? What have I got to offer them, that nobody else can furnish them with? Nothing but my humble self. If I'm lucky, they'll want a piece of me. And perhaps Oudemans was right, when he broached that this unique intricacy, preceded and shaped by my mother tongue, can only be expressed properly in the language it springs from.

Dubiously yours,

Deborah

Stranger than fiction

Oi Arian!

Brilliant! Courses didn't take off just yet, but already I've met the protagonist of both elaborate novel concepts I've thought up the last couple of years. I had no idea these were one and the same character at different ages, until my classmate Andrada and I ran into him at the Arts Centre. His name's Freddie, and he grew up in London the tough way. He's a nineteen year old fresher in aerospace engineering, who grafted his arse off for a year to get his family out of financial trouble. We had lunch together while watching a duck race at the park in front of the Lecture Centre, and exchanged phone numbers when he had to leave for his induction. That night I invited him for a kitchen party, but he was already back in Central London, where he lives with his dad. The three of us met again Saturday night, to have one drink at the Hub and one at Loco's. We were running short of dosh, so when Andrada went home early because she had to pick up her luggage the next day, we left campus to find cheaper booze. In vain, but that didn't matter in the least.
We spent the whole night walking and talking, and though we were as sober as Putin after half a bottle of Russian White Gold, we climbed a tree and called each other a Cool Cucumber. On a though branch we looked each other in the eye and knew not what to say. I'd swear those children's voices in my head were so loud that he could hear them sing out of my ears: “Deborah and Freddie, sitting in a tree...” (But no, we didn't.) And eventually we ended up in my kitchen Sunday morning, contemplating veggie Sunday roast while he was doing my dishes. (But really, we didn't.)

I could hardly believe it. The more he told me about his life, the more I recognized my main characters, from the fact that he's planning to squat an abandoned building in the neighbourhood (working title: "Fabrica d'Amor") to the detail that he used to roam the streets at night with his little brother when he was only eleven years old (working title: "the night that shook the earth"). He's a good boy, though. He's seen a lot of shit, and been through things worse than I can imagine, but he wouldn't kill a mosquito (“the worst that could happen is that you get an itchy bump”). Moreover, he's saved money to go to college and climb upward in society, so that eventually he can buy an orphanage and a farm to take care of the helpless. One needs ideals to live up to, right?
Honestly, he made no attempt whatsoever to take advantage of me, and I didn't think he would. There's just one thing about him, that keeps me thinking of Moenen and his inflamed eye. He's got this weird twitch – not a very regular one, I believe I've seen it twice in all these hours I spent with him – and it frightens the wit out of me. Completely unexpected, his face folds deftly in an aggressive grimace, and slides back into a to a shy though friendly smile after only a second. I don't think I was able to hide my fright, but we talked over it as if it didn't happen. It made my hair stand on end, and I find myself fascinated, captivated by this mysterious trifle. It reminds me of Alex' quirk, albeit the violent rather than the vulnerable version. Could it be the aftermath of too much weed in the early youth? Or is it something darker, a nature undeniably sinister, no matter how many herbicides and kind ideals applied?

As you can see, I've found myself a little research project. So how's your novel working out?

Take care!

Deborah

Blunt Blokes

Hi Benjamin,

What's up?
Beside the lack of proper meat substitutes in the supermarkets, there's one British issue I'm definitely not accustomed to yet: the guys. Up here they are incredibly... straightforward.
For example, I was dancing Monday night when a British boy came up to me to offer me a drink. I asked for a Smirnoff Ice, because you know it hasn't been spiked since it comes in a closed bottle. While we walked to the bar together, he asked me my name, which course I was in and... my age. Teasingly, I replied it was not a polite thing to ask a lady, but I told him I was twenty four anyway. He faced the bar for a while, and then turned back to me: “I'm sorry, I don't have enough money. Would you like anything else?”
“Oh, sure,” I said sympathizingly. “Just pick something you can afford.”
He exchanged some words with the girl at the bar and then said to me: “I'm sorry, I haven't got anything left. I spent it all.”
I couldn't help but think that he was cancelling the offer because I exceeded his own age with six years. Yes, the youth are though when it comes to age. Yesterday morning, a sober chap even called me a milf. To my face! It was a joke, which I provoked by listening in on a 'private conversation' (“Are you into milfs?” “What are we talking about milfs for, while there's all these freshers to fuck?”), but still. Unbelievable! Thanks for educating me, darling. If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have known what it meant and would have been unable to respond appropriately. Anyway, this lad did look genuinely sorry, so I said it was okay and went back to the dance floor.
However, on my way down the stairs I ran into Kayne, who offered me a drink too. We had met a week earlier (“Do you know the wrestler? No? Do you know the Old Testament, Kayne and Abel? Yes, that's my name.”) and I thought he was good company, so we returned to the bar. I was waiting for him to order our drinks when someone tapped me on the shoulder. There he was, the British eighteen year old, with my Smirnoff Ice. Apparently he had borrowed money from his friends to get me the drink I had asked for. I had to refuse it, though, because I don't trust drinks that are already opened. Plus there was Kayne, whom I pointed out to him with an apologizing smile.
Okay, perhaps this chap wasn't even that bad. But certainly, in all other cases, British blokes are so blunt!
Generally, they have a little chat, before they literally state that they are hitting on me. Just like that. And I'm supposed to either accept their offer or decline it, and then that's it. The first time this happened to me, I just laughed for I thought he was joking. But he insisted I would explicitly turn him down. Second time: same story. And the third time, last night, was even worse.
The DJ at the Academy's wasn't doing a very good job. Somehow people didn't feel like dancing unless they were really pissed, which, obviously, I was not. By eleven I was on my way to the ladies for the third time out of sheer boredom, when a familiar face greeted me.
“Hi!” I yelled, “How are you?”
“Fine. I thought you said you'd text me!”
“I did? Oh, I'm sorry, I can't recall...”
“That's all right. To be honest, I don't remember your name.”
“Same here. I'm Deborah. And you were...?”
To protect the wasted without wasting my narrative, I'll call this young fellow C.
“Are you going to freshers fayre tomorrow?” I informed.
“Definitely!” C said.
“And are you planning on joining any clubs? Do you play any sports?”
“Just drinking,” he said, and lifted his glass. It was a lame joke, but I tried to make the best of it.
“At least you'll train this muscle,” I said, pointing at his lower arm. I shouldn't have – it was just as childish as his joke, and gave him the opportunity to sink even deeper.
“I don't jerk off that much!”
I laughed halfheartedly and looked around to express my boredom.
“So, what are you planning to do tonight?” he asked.
“You mean right now? I think I'll go back to dance,” I said. He didn't look like he cared to join me. “There's not much else to do, is there?”
“Well, we could go back to my place.”
“Hah hah, very funny.”
“We could, you know...” C insisted.
“Yeah right, it was worth a try.”
“But you're not coming?”
It was only at this point that I realized he actually thought he stood a chance.
“No.”
After I turned him down, C felt no need whatsoever to keep up appearance and pretend I was an interesting person to exchange information with.
I suppose it's honest and quite respectful toward women, for no female has to endure unwanted attention. But I miss the innocence in their flirting. It takes the fun out of getting to know new people and the casual banter, when it's this explicit what outcomes they are aiming at. And the worst part is: as soon as I'm exposed as not interested in those results, I'll be disposed of. Denying all goals but one makes me feel offside; everyone knows that even in a football game you need at least two to keep it interesting, right?

Deborah

My poor ears!

mom, dad, tell me, what should I do? Nobody's wearing ear plugs around here, and I already have trouble understanding them in the noisy clubs 'cause they're not speaking my mother tongue, but I just got home from the pyjama party at The Academy, which is the disco on campus, and my ears are ringing like a fire alarm...
I've got some ear plugs with me, do you urge me to wear them next time I'm going out? Even if it would lessen my social contacts? You would, right? I'm only asking you, because I really feel like I should and I really regret I didn't this time. Perhaps most people around here don't even hear these dying cells any more... shit! I hope at least some of the noise is just tiredness!

Please tell me to wear ear plugs every time I'll mention a club from now on! Please! I'll try to get hold of a pretty pair, like Holly Golightly wears in Breakfast in Tiffany's.

love, Deborah

(F)arewell

18 august 2008, thursday night

Dear Benjamin,

I believe it was Socrates who said one could never really leave his home town, for you cannot leave behind what you have incorporated. Wherever you travel, what troubles you will be your inevitable luggage. At least, Seneca attributes this wisdom to the Great Philosopher in one of his letters to Lucillius.
I like to think this is why I don't miss you and everything else I've abandoned - I finished my thesis on Benjamin's philosophy regarding translation yesterday at 3 AM and moved to London in the afternoon. Perhaps I didn't really leave everything my former life was about - family, friends, philosophy. But you know just as well as I that I just didn't get round to missing any of this. Who has time to think of the past while sweating the Ceilidh and meeting future friends from Russia, India, Mauritius, Kazakhstan and China? We both know I might not get round to missing you at all.

All this I could have thought up in the Netherlands, and actually I think I did. What surprises me is that, despite my resignation over being bereaved of everything familiar, I was very agitated when I found myself unable to access the internet. Not because I wanted to keep in touch with anyone in specific, not because there was some very important document I had to download. It's just that I had been chatting at the middle of the North Sea, but I could not check my freakin' e-mail from my own home with an actual wire between my neat netbook and the soddin' socket!

However, if I had enough time to be annoyed by the lack of internet, don't you agree I should also have reflected on the emptiness of my new life, without all the important f-words? Well, that's why this blog is dedicated to you, the most prominent person of the daily life I left behind, even though I can't post it yet.
After all, what is life without an f? That's right, such a life is a lie.

Love, Deborah

In the beginning Debbie wrote a letter...

Leiden, February 2008

Dear Sir/Madam,

When I read the description of the MA in Creative Writing on your website, I immediately decided to apply, because I recognized the education that would match perfectly with my personal learning aims.
In this letter I shall explain why I feel like my life, so far, has led up to this MA at Brunel University.

My wish to become a writer has been a leading theme throughout my life. From the moment I could read, I felt a strong desire to produce the thing that gave me greatest pleasure, a good book. Ever since, I have been writing stories, articles, poems and diaries. As a student at the Stedelijk Gymnasium Leiden (an institution for pre-university education that includes the study of Latin and Greek), I was a reporter for both the school paper (Socius) and the parental newsletter (Pro Parentibus).
I decided to study Philosophy at Leiden University, with a view to place my stories in a context of truthfulness. Moreover, I aspired to attain profound knowledge and proficiency in contemplating human existence, in order to introduce multiple layers of meaning, and thus enhance the significance of my narratives. When I completed my undergraduate degree in 2006, I had developed skills such as analytical, creative and out-of-the-box thinking as well.
In addition to Philosophy, I took several courses in Literature Studies. Also, I completed the minor programme in Journalism & New Media at Leiden University, to further practice my writing.
I wrote a large number of articles on various themes for Thauma, the periodical published by the Faculty of Philosophy with a printing run of 500 copies. In 2003, I was chosen as the editor-in-chief of Thauma, and, as a MA student in Philosophy of a Specific Discipline (European Languages and Cultures), I still occupy this position with great enthusiasm. I also published in other media, for example an article on racing psychology and mental training for racing drivers, in the magazine Auto Motor & Sport, and an account of my personal experience as a participant of the Dutch National ThinkTank, in the newsletter that is sent to all students and staff members of Leiden University.
Thanks to my internship at the editorial department of literary publishing house Prometheus/Bert Bakker, I got well acquainted with the Dutch publishing industry. During this internship, I reviewed and edited manuscripts, checked translations and wrote blurbs. I also introduced author Th.C.W. Oudemans, one of my professors at Leiden University at that time, to the publisher, which resulted in the printing of Echte Filosofie (“True Philosophy”, ISBN: 978-90-351-3122-4). After my internship, Prometheus/Bert Bakker hired me as an editor for a year, to work on this book and other projects.
In 2007, I participated in the Dutch National ThinkTank (Nationale Denktank), an annual volunteer project. With 21 other highly gifted MA and PhD students, I investigated the Dutch educational system and came up with 12 inventive improvements. Because of my creative input and writing skills, I was asked to write the report with four other participants. The report, Succes op School! (this title is ambivalent in Dutch, and means “Good Luck at School!” as well as “Succes for Educational Institutions”, ISBN: 978-90-787-570 2-3), has a printing run of 1000 copies and is available as a PDF free of charge at the website www.nationale-denktank.nl.
All this professional writing does not mean I have not been creating fiction. On the contrary, I have brought forth many Dutch short stories over the past years, and I won several writing competitions, for example Write Now! 2005 at The Hague. Most of my Dutch tales are published under my pseudonym, *** at my website http://www.schemering.nl/ (my section attracts approximately 500 visitors and 2500 page views per month, search engines excluded). Some stories have also been published elsewhere, for example at the website of literary magazine OpSpraak (www.opspraak.net) and in Het Leidsch Dagblad, a local newspaper.

Because I wish to refine and develop my creative writing skills further, I have been looking for an academic MA programme in this field. For example, I wish to learn how to compose a novel or novella, to raise an idea so that it will be fit to sustain a full-length novel, to manage fictional time, to develop characters, to produce catchy dialogues, to write towards a good plot or denouement, to develop a style that fits the products of my pen, and last but not least, how to prepare a submission package and make a living as a writer. The Dutch universities are for want of a programme that meets with these wishes.

Recently, I have experimented with writing fiction in English, and was delighted at the experience. I think writing in a second language is an enormous inducement for creativity and originality. Leading examples of this are Vladimir Nabokov, Khaled Hosseini and Agotha Kristof, and I humbly hope to tread in their footsteps. Therefore, I intend to explore my capacities as a writer of English fiction at a British university.

The full-time MA programme presented in your Postgraduate Prospectus and on your website is very appealing to me, because I can fully identify with your career-oriented vision of unfolding creative talent. I also choose to apply to Brunel University because the curriculum seems intense and challenging.
In writing communities, I have experienced it to be very rewarding to discuss work-in-progress with peers, and I expect the academic context of your university to take this to a higher level.
My expectations of the Theories of Practice module are very high, for I think studying contemporary literary theory is the breeding ground creativity needs in order to flourish.
The unique industry module, I believe, will add greatly to my experiences with the Dutch publishing industry. I am looking forward to both the taught course and the two-week work placement, because I am very eager to get to know the thriving literary scene of London.
Furthermore, I am very enthusiastic about the dissertation. I think it will be an enlightening experience to work on a major prose project, especially one-to-one with an experienced creative writing teacher like Rose Atfield, a great novelist such as Fay Weldon, Celia Brayfield or Sarah Penny, a poet like David Fulton or any other member of your impressive staff.

I very much look forward to having the opportunity to develop and refine my creative writing skills further at Brunel University. Please do not hesitate to contact me at *** for more information or to arrange for an interview.

Sincerely yours,


Deborah Klaassen