Only Skin Deep?

Image has been on my mind a lot lately.

If I'm honest, image is on my mind a lot, full stop. If I'm not fretting that my straighteners don't work in humid weather (grrrrr), I'm probably staring agonisingly at my wardrobe / make-up bag, wondering why nothing I own makes me look how I want to.

Actually, I'm even multi-tasking whilst I write this - touching up my roots with my favourite Superdrug blonde - the one that looks like banana-flavour penicillin when you mix it.

I was watching the lovely Ms. Cherry Healey on BBC3 the other day; Cherry's Body Dilemmas (and doesn't she look good in a corset?). I was fascinated by it. I don't suppose this is the place to go into my own particular quirks and insecurities, but I'm a mess of them. For all that the UK media is obsessed with our bodies and how we use and see them, it's actually quite unusual to see this level of frankness and diversity on mainstream telly.

The way we talk about our bodies is warped. It's all extremes and almost never rational. From the HateMail's Liz Jones and her anorexic obsessions to the constant railing against celebrities' wobbly bits and how fatties are eating the NHS out of house and home. The sad truth is that we just can't bear the sight of ourselves.

But what is most refreshing is to see someone who is thin, successful, beautiful, etc., facing up to her own self-consciousness with others without judgement. I admit it challenged my assumption that gorgeous people both know how they look and judge others harshly. I was particularly inspired by the beautiful, and stunningly dressed, Kirsty Lou and her blog. Whilst I cower in high street changing rooms sobbing over size labels, she makes her own clothes and refuses be conformed into someone else's body.

I was struck by her admission that she's suffered because of how she looks. It resonated with me. I've had people cross the street in London to tell me I should diet; they've taunted me from cars in Oxford at 7am and in the back streets of Edinburgh late at night. Friends have called me fat in public and looked astonished when I was upset by it. I even find myself justifying my weight to doctors who don't believe I exercise. I desperately want to take my feminista deconstruction kit to conformist body-shape standards but the truth is that all this just really bloody well hurts and it's too personal to try.

But in the mean time, brava Cherry, Kirsty et. al. for honesty without sentimentality or falsehoods. If telly makes a difference, this is what it looks like. And an honourable mention to Hadley Freeman of the Guardian for this piece which I heartily "hear, hear"-ed earlier this month.

It happens that today is also the fourth anniversary of the death of Sophie Lancaster, a young woman who was killed for her looks. I remember being devastated by the story when I first heard it, as I am by any form of hate crime. The senselessness of the loss of life - not just hers, but also the life her boyfriend and family had known with her in it. S.O.P.H.I.E. (Stamp Out Prejudice, Hatred and Intolerance Everywhere), the foundation her mother founded, is doing great things to teach children that image isn't everything. I wanted to share the video they released today, as further food for thought. We all judge people harshly for how they look; this is a stark reminder of what that culture of judgement does to the world we live in.

Originally posted on RowleyPolyBird

The Safest of All Occupations

I was browsing the wonderful xkcd on 'random' today and I came across this:

I thought I'd double check and, as expected, the number of results for blogging accidents is now 17,100 but I have done diligent research and can confirm that this is because bloggers love xkcd and can't help referencing it at every opportunity. This is a relief, because I don't think I can be bothered to work out the %age increase represented by 17,098. It's a lot.*

Just to reassure myself further I ran a quick check on "died in a theology accident":

That's a relief!

So this confirms my plan for the rest of the evening:

1. Finish this blog post,
2. Continue researching the theology of John's Gospel,
3. Knit myself a hat,
4. Sleep

Sleep, I admit, is the most perilous of these tasks but on a quick, informal risk-benefit analysis the chances of me having some kind of Hulk episode tomorrow if I don't sleep are higher than the chances of me dying in my sleep tonight. I'm knocking on wood as I type this, of course, just in case...

*I know it would be easy to do the maths but I'm leaving it to the first smart-arse who decides to comment on this. Because, basically, I don't like maths. 

Originally posted on RowleyPolyBird

Knitting for C4WS Homeless Project

A challenge to all knitters: How many items of warm clothing can we give to homeless people in London this winter?

C4WS Homeless Project - opens its doors every year from December to March to offer shelter, food and company to up to fifteen homeless guests every night (67 during the last winter). Our guests are of all ages, genders and backgrounds and last year, of the guests that actively engaged with the C4WS Welfare Worker, 96% were assisted in securing accommodation, returning home or moving in with friends.

This year we are asking for donations from an army of generous knitters. Some volunteers during the time we've been open have knitted warm clothing for our guests. This makes a real difference to them, because not only are they able to keep warm during the bitterly cold daytime (when we cannot open our doors), but they know someone has cared enough to give them a personal gift.

If you are able, we would ask you to knit an item of clothing (anything from socks to a sweater) but please bear in mind the following guidelines:

1) Please use fibres that can be treated roughly and washed in a normal cycle.
2) The guests of C4WS are very diverse, so please use neutral colours and styles.

Once you have made your item, please contact me through this blog for the address to send them on to.

We would ask you to please cover the cost of postage.

If there is anything left over at the end of the scheme, we intend to sell it to raise further funds for C4WS - nothing will be wasted.

Originally posted on RowleyPolyBird

Vincent, The Doctor and Me

The Starry Night (June 1889). Oil on canvas.

This week's Doctor Who fascinated me. Vincent van Gogh has always intrigued me, of course, because his legacy has always been as much to do with his mental health as it has his work.

And I loved that this formed a pivotal plot-point; that there was never a possibility of watering down his deep depressions.

For a start, it has made me want to read more about him both as a man and an artist. I assume a lot of research went into his speeches, and that is wonderful. I found myself looking at paintings that I had never thought to consider before.

I may have a degree that (nominally) included some art history, but I was all about the imagery - politics is everything in my art-brain. I love hearing people talk about art, though, and about how it is achieved. I read Noes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale a couple of years ago, and loved the way he talks about his artist's use of colour. The protagonist is a female artist who suffers from bi-polar disorder (also, somewhat erroneously, known as 'manic depression'). Her art is abstract, the sort of thing that I once dismissed as "stuff a four-year-old could paint" when I visited the Guggenheim in Bilbao.

Then I read Patrick Gale's description of colour, and how it is achieved, and began to think differently. Look at the sky. If you're like me, and don't really have a brain for painting, it's usually blue, pink or grey. I had never seen the green underneath the blue, or the purple in the grey. Colour was flat, except in variegated yarn...

And then, last February, my friend Clinton took me to see Rothko at the Tate Modern in London. I was totally indulging him, I thought; maintaining that I 'don't understand' modern art and can't respond to the abstract. But I was blown away by the sheer size and scale of the work, and the gorgeous depth. I won't pretend that I understand what happened in my mind when I looked at it, but there were some canvasses that I was so captured by that I couldn't take my eyes off them. I remember this one, in particular;

Black on Maroon (1959), Oil on Canvas

I can't tell you what it was about it that I loved. I remember saying to Clinton that it evoked a sense of the trinity in me. Something about the infinite colours appearing as just three; the way in which it is one construction in which three elements are apparent but the whole spectrum is present. It was complicated, and somehow moving.

I don't know anything about Mark Rothko, not really, except that he was active in the 1950s and painted abstract canvasses. So only as much as I have already told you! But that painting made me feel like I knew something of his mind. It's daft, of course, to claim to know the mind of one you can't ever meet, so I imagine that what I felt was something more innate, more inherently human. Not a unique sensation that can only be imparted by the work of one individual, but a shared sense of wonder and then of sadness. Not sadness in the depression sense; that is something very different in my mind. No, this was a melancholy sense that things will never be complete. A knowledge that I will never know the mind that created the image before me, nor the true complexity of the process by which it was borne out. It was a philosophical sadness, that the true nature of the universe cannot be revealed in this lifetime.

All of this came flooding back to me when I considered the scenes in the Musée d'Orsay. That way in which we respond to art so instinctively. We formulate complex ideas on the outworkings of someone else's imagination, and we form them in seconds, although we can never truly know the mind of the artist.

And I agree with the assessment of the writers; that van Gogh did not betray his illness through his work. I don't feel darkness when I look at his work; even the later paintings like The Starry Night, which are full of dark colour, don't make me feel sad or empty. The focus is an overlooked beauty. The beauty of a truly starry night when the wonders of creation are revealed. There is no way to look at The Starry Night and see only darkness. Indeed, one is more likely to see only light.

But this ability to see beauty, and experience joy, does not diminish the capacity of the brain to harm. Just as the body has its mechanisms for keeping us stable (the process GCSE students call 'homeostasis'), so does the brain. Just as the other organs in our bodies can go wrong, so the brain can go wrong; and it can have a real impact on your emotional stability.

I feel like it's a risk for me to admit to this, but I expect a lot of other people felt the same; I really identified with the pure fear that was in the character of Vincent when he thought he was going to lose Amy and the Doctor. I have been scared at what might happen if my friends leave, or change, or both. I have told people I can't cope without them, and I have thrown myself face-down on my bed and wept at the thought that they might not come back. But that has not prevented me, like our fictionalised Vincent, from sometimes managing to take a deep breath and carry on. Like another great man presented this series, Winston Churchill, I "Keep Buggering On" when the world and my emotions want me to stop. 

Now, I will never produce the wonderful art that van Gogh, Tchaikovsky, Sylvia Plath or Virginia Wolf created from their depressions. But I hope I can learn to at least understand and try to explain my own mind, such as it is. I hope, with God's help, I can channel all that bad stuff into something good. At the very least, I have promised myself that I will do my bit to challenge the stigma of mental illness. Because, damnit, poor mental health doesn't have to be validated or explained by genius. Just as there are people on the autistic spectrum who are not savant and there are deaf people who cannot craft a symphony like Beethoven, so there are people with depression who are not creative in that way. 

So it is thanks to people like van Gogh and Virginia Woolf that I can expect people to have some understanding of what it is like to live in this brain and this illness of mine. It won't be clear to everyone - maybe you wonder what sort of pretentious garbage this all is, anyway? - but I can identify myself in them and remember that you do not have to be healthy to make a difference in this world, as long as you have hope.

"Now I think I know what you tried to say to me,

How you suffered for your sanity,

How you tried to set them free.

They would not listen, they're not listening still;

perhaps they never will."

Originally posted on RowleyPolyBird

Columbia Beret

I've just cast on the Columbia Beret (here it is on Ravelry). Very excited about having a lovely winter beret. Yum.

Sadly, my history with knit hats is not good; I keep losing them! I lost my Hannah in Manos silk blend (though think I have enough yarn to do a new one when I can bear it!) in T.K. Maxx at New St in Birmingham last November.

Then I lost my first Grace on the Victoria line between Pimlico and Euston in June as soon as I finished it; I  didn't even get a photo of it finished. Sob.

I just hope that somewhere they are being worn and keeping people warm. That's all a knitter needs.

Originally posted on RowleyPolyBird