You can now find me here:  http://collageheaven.tumblr.com
I have decided to concentrate exclusively on my collage work.
Please keep in touch!

Anna x

New Collage

Here is a new collage that will again be the cover of the new TODAY from through europe, it will be published very soon.

Would love to know what people think, as usual.

Burial

A new collage, featured in the new Through Europe publication TODAY, published under Creative Commons. What do you think? 

Crystal Galaxy

A new collage I made on Sunday... I used some images from Whores at my Door, my new favourite Tumblr.

click image to enlarge

Rats!

I have been doing some collages, some of which were in a little exhibition last week. One of which you can see here in this free publication. The writing is amazing, so download this free pdf now!

I will scan and upload the ones from the exhibition when they come back to me. Hope you like!

Girlfriend in a Coma

Karen is 17 years old in 1979 when she suddenly falls into a deep coma. The night before, she gives her boyfriend a letter, telling him to only open it if something happens to her. In the letter, she talks of her fear of the future, her terror at what the world will become, from what she has seen in her dreams.

It is hard to write a review of this book without dropping huge spoilers, and as I always hope that some people will read the books that I review, I had better not!

So maybe I can talk about the world in 1997, and after, which the second part of the book covers. Within 18 years from 1979 when Karen goes to sleep, the world changes drastically. Perhaps more drastically than any other short period of time before that, in terms of consequential changes and irreversibility.

People spend all day in a virtual realm of computers and television. There is very little in the way of real ‘free time’, by which I mean really talking to someone, really experiencing something. People work more than ever, to buy what? There are hundreds of time-saving appliances and conveniences, but where does all the time we save actually go?

These are all questions raised in a very probing and innocent way in the book, with a real sense of shock and dismay at the way things have turned out. It is to Coupland’s credit that the questions that he raises are never infused with a sense of injustice, that people were promised a bright and beautiful future and the universe failed to live up to it. It is always the fault of the people, which of course is the truth. It is no one’s fault but ours that things are a terrible mess. We’ve poisoned everything; ourselves, everything around us. Coupland’s solution to the problem of our collective stupidity is beautiful and poetic and impossible, but ultimately very simple. In short, (but the long version is much better) to wake up and stop being idiots and take responsibility. In short.

This is a very wonderful book and everything it examines (14 years ago) is relevant now, but infinitely more urgent. On a day of strikes in the UK when people are standing up for something, it feels appropriate to recommend a book like this.

The Philosopher and the Wolf

Photo copyright Ryan McGinley

The wolf ran alongside him, flowing along perfectly, and the man, lumbering and sweating next to him began to understand that the believed supremacy of human beings was all a strange fiction that we tell ourselves. How can we say that we are better than animals? When our running is stumbling and awkward, and the wolf’s is full of grace and beauty… That is the broad question that Mark Rowlands seeks to answer in The Philosopher and the Wolf, what is our basis for thinking we are superior?

As well as a funny and engrossing memoir of his time spent with a wolf that he raised, which you should read if you like animals, I think you should also read it if you like to ask questions and have your foundations shaken.

Rowlands makes an interesting case against his perception of the arrogance and sheer stupidity/(at times) evil of human beings. He starts simply. He divides the human character into ape and wolf.

The ape is who we are descended from. Apparently our brain development occurred from a complex social structure within apes, as well as the possibility in that structure of lies and deceit. He uses an example of a group of apes walking along a track, and one ape catches sight of a branch of ripe fruit that none of the other apes have spotted. She sits down on the path and pretends to groom herself, while the others walk past, so she can have the fruit to herself. So what we have there is a demonstration of forward thinking: The other apes will want this fruit, so that is predicting the feelings and desires of others. Deceit is demonstrated in the act of pretending and hiding for a selfish purpose. From this and other examples, the point is made that our entire species, all of our civilization, is built upon lies. This is what allowed our brains to develop to the extent they are at now.

This might sound very depressing, he also says that without that, we would not have literature, music, art, etc.

The other element is that of the wolf. The wolf, in nature and in our own selves, represents everything that the ape is not. Joy, loyalty, honesty, love.

I am not going to lie, at times it was a very gruelling read, as it forces you to explore things that you would rather, in your heart of hearts, leave untouched. But ultimately it makes you want to be kinder and more human, which is a great deal different to all the books out there that promise to make you happier, richer and more magnetic. Some of the most difficult reading are in the chapters where the author outlines the many examples of human cruelty and evil. You might think of calculated evil here as the real example of human capacity for destruction, but, and I agree with this, what is worse is evil by proxy, or unacknowledged evil. He gives the example of the famous Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures, which is very clearly outlined here, if you don’t know about it already. And it forced me to ask myself, would I do it? Would I electrocute someone for no reason? Even if someone wearing a uniform told me to? Even if it was just three months after the trial of Adolf Eichmann?

No, I sincerely believe I would not, and by saying that, I am not marking myself out as special or some kind of distributor of morality, but that is why I think books like this and others are important, because after reading them and opening some doors in your mind, you start to become the kind of person who would not, ever.

A wolf, in other words.

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters/ Seymour ~ An Introduction

There are certain books that I can steam through, creasing the spine and rolling through the pages, and these books can affect me deeply. But there are certain books that I feel the need to unpick slowly, every single sentence needs to be individually held. This was how I felt with Seymour ~ An Introduction, the second story in this book. I think I learned so much more about Salinger from this book than from The Catcher in the Rye. This story needs to be read slowly, I think, not only for the purpose of savouring it, but just so each page gets a lot of attention. Kind of like when you become obsessed with one song and listen to it about 30 times in a day, that’s the kind of attention I mean, where you learn all the words and know the starting riff. Where you realise the complexity of a perfect 3 minute song that appears so simple. This is all because what we have here is a very tuneful tale. It is all about poetry, really, with many simple but breathtaking examples of what it means to be an innate poet. It is written by Seymour’s younger brother Buddy, some ten years after Seymour’s suicide (see A Perfect Day for Bananafish, in For Esme ~ With Love and Squalor, one of the most faultless short stories ever written).

There are just such tremblingly lucid observations about Seymour. It’s so difficult to put into words how I felt when I read them. I guess I just sighed inwardly at how luminous they were but also how clean and infinitely recognisable. One demonstration of Seymour’s poetic-ness is a story from their childhood that Buddy retells, when they are allowed to come and see the very end of a party their parents are giving, at which there are about 60 guests. Seymour and Buddy watch all the guests and Seymour offers to get everyone their coats back as they leave, which have been thrown all over the apartment. Despite not seeing anyone arrive, Seymour then proceeds to find everyone their coat and doesn't make a single error, just from looking at each person in turn.

Or there is the example of a letter from Seymour to Buddy, ostensibly to comment on one of his stories, where he tells Buddy that he recently wrote a letter in which he found that he sounded like Buddy and…

‘It occurred to me that if things were switched around and you were writing a letter that sounded like me you’d be bothered… One of the few things in the world, aside from the world itself, that sadden me every day is an awareness that you get upset if Boo Boo or Walt tells you you’re saying something that sounds like me. You sort of take it as an accusation of piracy, a little slam at your individuality. Is it so bad that we sometimes sound like each other? The membrane is so thin between us. Is it so important for us to keep in mind which is whose?’

I think that wonderfully illustrates the turbulently complex relationship between siblings. A tangled, heavy concoction of awe, resentment, admiration, jealousy, respect, suspicion… the list could go on. I remember when my sister was first starting to become friends with my friends and I was really shocked by my feelings, which were totally unexpected. I expected to feel jealous of her, that she was taking away my friends, but instead I was jealous of my friends getting to know my sister, because she was My Sister and I didn’t want to share her. Weird eh?

Does anyone know of where I can get/read any of his other stories? I fear I may have read everything I can find now. Any help would be much appreciated!

One Day

by David Nicholls

A good read about two very flawed people that sees them on the same day every year for eighteen years, while the author spins a ‘will they, won’t they’ web that draws you in. Once in a while I will read a book that's hugely popular, like this one, just to know what it's like, it's not as if my taste is particularly snobby or high-brow, it's just I don't seem to naturally go for the bestsellers...Although with this one I think the cover is a bit off-putting, it reminds me of an easyjet advert.

Anyway, Dexter and Emma are an ‘everyman’ and ‘everywoman’ for Generation X, who came to adulthood in the late eighties/early nineties.

I’m not sure if anyone has examined this one particular stand of the book, so I will try.

The most interesting thing about the book, I thought, was a buzzing undercurrent of political engagement and then, increasingly, disassociation.

Emma, the more politically engaged one of the main characters is described, in the late eighties as the book begins as ‘always boycotting something’, she goes to demos and reads difficult Russian and Scandinavian plays. She wants to be a writer (secretly) and ‘to change not the whole world, but the world around her, in a small way’. Her most exciting moment was ‘being struck by police baton’ in the poll-tax riots. The only thing is, it’s more about appearances than actual action, with Emma. It’s like this with most people, of course, we can’t all be Che Guevara, but it’s a very fine line from ranting on about everything that is in fashion, to thoughtfully living your life and trying to apply certain ideas to your reality. (I haven’t figured out where this line is myself, I know, so I am trying to not be shockingly hypocritical.)

What follows, is, in my mind, a perfect illustration of the state of Great Britain, in particular, and the political imagination of its people.

Emma moves to London, has to get a crappy job, which she stays at for two years out of fear, or ennui, becoming increasingly desperate and frustrated. Sound familiar? (I found myself becoming irritated, on Emma’s behalf, by it being hard for her ‘in the current economic climate’!)

Dexter, the other lead character, meanwhile has a decadent few years travelling and ‘teaching English’, roaming through Thailand, Italy etc etc.

The brassy glamour and excess of the nineties is vividly realised by David Nicolls and  is described by Dexter as ‘a huge relief from the gulag of the late eighties’, where people can finally ‘have fun’ and let off some steam, be young and free and careless.

However, it is with hindsight that we have now realised that these manic, pill-popping, boom years laid the foundations for what came to pass in the last two or three years, the recent financial breakdowns. The sagging of the grinning face of capitalism.  The nineties were the years of the slow extrication of the importance of politics from the minds of the British people.

There is a very telling argument that Dexter and Emma have towards the end of the book, in 2002, just after the 1million strong march against the Iraq war. Their opposing opinions are, I believe, representative of the two main bodies of thought on this abstract word: ‘politics’, which has lost almost all of its meaning.

Emma begins by bemoaning the fact that there was no opposition to the Iraq war after that large rally, surprised at the fact that the students are not more engaged/enraged. Dexter sighs inwardly and gets defensive, saying he has no interest in politics, that no-one cares, that it’s ‘over’. Emma tells him that ‘politics is people’, then Dexter reminds her that the fact that she isn’t doing anything, means that she doesn’t care, and maybe no else does either.

I really think that this was so relevant before these last three months. But now, suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, a whole new generation of students and young people has become radicalised. The new wave?

The monumental changes in Tunisia, and hopefully Egypt have given us a glimmer of hope that huge things are possible with action.

Maybe the kind of argument that falls between Dexter and Emma won’t be possible in popular fiction, won’t even be conceivable in reality, in the future. Maybe.

Never Let Me Go

*spoiler alert *

You can’t go two steps without bumping into a devotee of this book. I understand everything the devotees say — that the book is a meditation on the slow burn of friendship and love and the steadfastness of humanity… yawn. I understand that it’s meant to be a demonstration of people’s ability to get used to any sort of situation if they think it’s inevitable, plodding on indefinitely. The book’s subject of cloning and organ donation is rendered very plausible and I think Ishiguro did a great job there, but while the story is being told through the central character’s (Kathy) tunnel-visioned, uninformed narration, I would have liked to know more about the social implications of this alternate reality.

The characters are quietly resigned to their fate as farmed organ donors (free range).

But isn’t that sad? I want to read books about people that fight, people that shout in the streets, not people that shrug their shoulders and sigh.

I think some people will say, though, that this is the reason why the book is so tragic, ‘the heartbreaking acceptance of a sad fate’ and all.

But, I think that that is exactly the kind of thinking that epitomizes the state of mind of so many people, myself included sometimes, which seems to me incredibly negative. To not leave any room for rebellion (a dirty word in today’s times), resistance or indeed any strong emotion? I think that is much more heartbreaking than a colourless submission. Fighting and losing is to me more tragic than accepting and losing. The only part of the book with any extreme feeling was when Ruth confesses to Kathy and Tommy that she had kept them apart for many years, and Kathy breaks down in tears, but then it’s all back to ‘…we didn’t talk about it much afterwards…’ Gah!

I understand though, that in the long run if your future is mapped out for you so exactly then why should you protest? It is better for you if you get used to the idea, but I just didn’t feel like their futures were that inevitable (even though they were taught to think that way almost from birth), I felt that it was just too unbelievable that nobody in the book had any seed of wanting things to be different.

Well, I guess in the end I feel cheated when I can’t care about the characters. Maybe it’s because by trying to make them so hyper-realistic, Ishiguro actually ends up with characters that are strangely unreal, oddly cold.

Have a read of the book, it is well written and you do want to finish it (for better or worse!), would love to know what people think of it…