Tracey Thorn, specifically, being interviewed:
I had a great holiday in Mykonos with a recently divorced girlfriend. We looked across the sea to the little island of Delos, and not a cloud appeared for a week, and the men at the hotel were all gay, so it was perfect, not a care in the world.
That made me think: where would a gay man in similar situation go? Somewhere full of straight men? Hmmm. Like where? Vatican? (HOHOHO SEE WHAT I DID THERE)
The Lady GaGa video (two more people feel about it the way I do!) is just one of the many inventive ways in which thirtysomethingness continues to be catching up with me.
I swear I haven’t planned to become one of those people who mutter sentences starting with “those yoof of today”. Who get irritated by loud music playing at fashion retailers. And then they get irritated by the fact that all t-shirts seem to have juvenile prints on them (really? there are girls who would go for a bloke wearing a t-shirt saying “FUCKING GENIUS” with 12 pictures of various positions underneath? or a t-shirt saying “I RECYCLE GIRLS”?). And then as they walk home they see two teenagers in very lowly pulled pants — starting below their buttocks more or less — and they roll their eyes and go “jesus, what in the Alexander McQueen HELL are they wearing”.
Nevertheless, that’s exactly what I have become.
I listen to the Music Of Today and roll my eyes thinking “this has been done before, and so much better as well”. I realise it’s irrelevant, because pop music has never been about originality, and that it has never been aimed at thirty-somethings, but I can’t help it: it HAS been done before, and it HAS been done better. Which is why I can’t possibly enjoy Lady GaGa the way most of her uber-loyal disciples do. And because I hate stupidity in lyrics, I can’t possibly chart Ke$ha. Or Black Eyed Peas.
Then I look at my vinyl collection. And that’s even before I look at my CD collection. After carefully removing all the CDs I will never play again from the shelves and sticking them in a box (because I can’t possibly make myself throw them away) I ended up with 700+ CDs. I paid very good money for a lot of them. Almost none of them are worth that money anymore. Yet an iTunes download of the same music sometimes costs more than the CDs with thick, nicely printed booklets. Physicality of the object, thus, became a con rather than pro, and I can’t help but think those yoof of today are voluntarily getting screwed. (Except of course they have the last laugh, because they don’t REALLY pay for downloads.) Which doesn’t change the fact that it is me who has invested shitloads of money into CDs which right now aren’t really that much more than a waste of space.
The current H&M collection features jeans shirts, jeans jackets and jeans tops, last seen in the 1980s. I don’t only remember 1980s, I also remember the shame with which we laughed at the pictures only a few years later. What would make that stuff fashionable again? Oh yes — the yoof of today, who don’t yet realise the embarrassment they will feel next year when looking at the pictures they take today.
Movies made today? A very large part of them is either visual extravaganza without a plot whatsoever or badly acted remakes of movies made 30 years ago whose only fault is the fact that it’s impossible to add product placement to them. The remaining few are, perhaps, good — but the time it takes to separate the dross from the amazing? Who has that time in the age of information when you need to get a live feed of your neighbour’s cat’s bowl contents?
Those yoof of today get served shit on a golden platter. And they, ultimately, are the winners, because both them and me are force-fed the same excuse for entertainment, but I am a bitter old queen mumbling about “the Old Days used to be so much better you know” while they actually enjoy themselves.
I have just spent 9 minutes and 30 seconds of my life watching Lady GaGa’s “Telephone” video. See it below.
I have then gone to Popjustice forums to see what the people were thinking, and predictably enough I saw fans tripping over themselves to express their excitement. Amazing! Great! Ambitious! Nudity! Fabulousness! “The most amazing video I have ever seen!”
It does make me both feel and sound old, but… it isn’t. Nudity? Why not check out Mylene Farmer’s “Beyond My Control”, made in 1991. Violence and fast cars? Madonna’s “What It Feels Like For A Girl”. Colours and sixties styling? “Beautiful Stranger”. Dance scenes in prison? “Chicago” the musical did those waaaay better. Lesbian overtones? Very exciting to see, but really, L Word did those in a way less offensive way. (Not offensive as in “two girls kiss SHOCKER”, offensive as in male-fantasy-about-lesbians way.)
I made the mistake of posting my opinion and, unsurprisingly, got flamed for that. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but really? This passes for groundbreaking, amazing and incredible these days?
I feel ancient.
Yes, I know drinking is not the most obvious subject on this blog. But in our quest for readership satisfaction we are ready to touch upon the most controversial of the most controversial [That will be enough - Ed.]
My tattoo artist said to me the other day that he thought Germans and Poles wouldn’t get along simply for the reason that they had different drinking habits. Germans, he said, love to drink beer until they fall under the table. Poles, he said, like to drink vodka until they throw up under the table. Those two were simply incompatible, he said. Also, the ways we get drunk are different; Germans sing horrible songs and grab waitresses’ backs, Poles fight over politics and religion and get really angry and depressed afterwards (and during). And when I say Poles fight, I don’t mean they are having a heated discussion. I mean that broken bottles are used.
This would explain why I never really got along with Poles either. I hate vodka. I can take it when mixed with juice or coke, but I could never join the (indeed) traditional shot shooting sessions. Mostly, may I explain, traditional among either groups of sweaty males bonding over their somewhat non-intellectual jobs or teenagers bonding over the fact they have a bottle of strong liquor at hand. Nevertheless, my mom, who belongs to neither of those groups, tends to serve vodka in glasses with meals as well, and to add insult to injury, she serves it warm. Beats me as to why she considers that acceptable, but I simply don’t join in.
My own drinking habits mostly involve dry red wine, rarely beer. And I am a choosy beer drinker, I don’t like what normally passes for “biertje” in Amsterdam; ideally I’ll have a Guinness, or one of those double-fermentation beers that could knock down a horse, but Heineken and Grolsch leave me completely uninterested. Also, generally I tend to drink very little nowadays, unless I am on holiday in Poland, interestingly, where I go to such extremes as having TWO AND A HALF BEER ON ONE EVENING or my mom’s Drink (it’s what it is called) consisting of grapefruit juice and warm vodka. (Much more acceptable with increasing quantities of juice.)
I am not sure which culture this makes me fit with, to be honest. I don’t feel that close to Germans or Poles, or Dutch. I like the idea, romantic as it is, of Irish people getting drunk on Guinness and singing “Danny Boy” and “Carrickfergus” while crying for the glorious past, but as I have never witnessed nor join such ceremony, I do not know how pleasant I would find it to be actually executed. (Also, I don’t know a single word of “Carrickfergus” other than the title.) Which nations like nothing best than dry red wine? Zee French? Do zee French actually ever get drunk at public places, and if yes, what lands under the table, are they jolly or sad drinkers and do Mylene Farmer songs get sung during the process?
More research is needed, but as it is 8:40AM at the moment you must forgive me for not commencing with it immediately.
I haven’t quite finished fiddling with this theme yet, but that could take a while and I thought I’d activate it before I actually get too bored with it to ever show it in public… 
Not all is yet finished — I am in particular aware of problems with short pages and photograph captions — if you see something reeeeeally awkward please let me know in the comments.
Also, I promise to try and write something that isn’t my chart, my chart awards or an apology for not posting my chart…
Yesterday I was talking to a friend about my 30 day challenge and I mentioned that a part of it is not drinking coffee. Then I admitted drinking lots of green tea. “Aha!” he exclaimed. “So you basically still get 5 cups of coffee a day!”
My initial reaction was to produce a chart that said an espresso has 100 mg of caffeine, while a cup of green tea has 15, but then I thought, really, this is like the time when I was vegetarian. I haven’t eaten any meat for three years or thereabouts, but at any party there would always be one of those people who would point at my leather boots and exclaim “Aha! You are not really saving animals! Is this leather I see!” I could then explain how leather is really a by-product from cows getting killed for their meat, but really… what’s the point?
There is ALWAYS more that I could be doing. I could be running a mile before breakfast. But then, I could run two miles before breakfast. I go to the gym four or five times a week, but I could go six. And I could also spend more time on my Dutch. And on drawing. And writing. And making music. And I could give up green tea, of course. But is there really a point where I should be heading to avoid hearing my friend exclaim triumphantly “Aha! You own a leather wallet! So you do hate animals after all!”?
That old slogan that goes “it is not the destination that matters but the journey”? It’s kinda true. Because being fit isn’t about going towards some goal (what would that be, winning the olympics?) and then wiping sweat off your brow and going “aaah, now I can relax with pizza and beer”. (Unless of course you are Kevin Federline.) I am not trying to make my friends envy me, or to stop using any caffeine whatsoever, or to single-handedly save the planet. All I am trying to do is succeed in my small tiny little easypeasy 30 day challenge. And even if I fail on one of those days, I still succeeded 29 times.
So people are talking to me about my 30 day challenge. Some are impressed. Some are pissed off. Some are condescending. Some are laughing about it.
The most familiar reaction is actually irritation: “It’s easy for you.” Or: “Well, I would do that too, but I have children/I live in a small town/I don’t have time/I don’t know how to do that.” When I start to explain how to do that, the person dismisses me with a quick “oh nooo, I really don’t think it’s my thing”. Then they grab a donut.
(True story: I had a flatmate who was trying to lose weight. He would approach it like this: breakfast — a few grapes; lunch — a few grapes; dinner: a big cake since he was so good all day. That was years ago. Apparently, though, he is still doing it — a friend told me they went to a party together and ex-flatmate was going on about his healthy lifestyle while consuming an entire bag of crisps.)
I know all about excuses, because I was a king of excuses for 29 years. I couldn’t work out because: it was tiring, time-consuming, I didn’t know how to do it, everybody would stare at me, I didn’t like people who went to the gym, I didn’t have time, didn’t know any gyms nearby, didn’t want to look like a bodybuilder, and — above all — my weight gain was simply a result of old age, I told myself, eating my pizza with side salad, because I was a healthy eater after all.
Original motivation for me to start working out was of two kinds: 1. it was either that, or buying new wardrobe in larger sizes — I couldn’t fit into any of my pants anymore except for one size 34 pair that was threatening to burst any moment; and 2. my boss, who told me he worked out five times a week, which I found a scary, unnatural and… exciting idea. Is it POSSIBLE to work out five times a week? I wondered. Doesn’t that KILL people? But my boss looked very much alive.
That was three years ago. My motivation changed. First, I wanted to lose weight. Then I wanted to gain strength (let’s face it, you don’t become a huge bodybuilder unless you use steroids and work waaaaaay harder than 99.9% people going to gyms do… but a nice muscular figure has NEVER gone out of fashion, and it’s so handy to be able to lift your own luggage). Then I just fell in love with the lifestyle, with lifting, sweating and relaxing at the sauna afterwards and the pleasant ache and feeling I did well.
Food-wise? Protein shakes and meat form a large part of my diet. People who complain about how disgusting protein shakes are, obviously never had one, or not since the Nineties. The new brands are cheap and taste like melted ice cream, which is very much up my alley, I love ice cream.
So why do I need to do the 30 day challenge? First of all, there’s focus; it’s easy to tell yourself “yars, yars, I am eating healthy, so there’s no harm in another glass of wine” or “yars, I had a leg workout today, so there’s no harm in having a huge bowl of spaghetti for dinner”. It’s okay if you do that once or twice a week, but if you do it everyday, you are quite unlikely to become ripped. Second of all, I like to prove to myself that I can do it. And third, I lost over 1.5 kg fat within the first 9 days. Unlike people on stupid diets consisting of grapes, ice cubes and “bowel relaxing tea”, I didn’t lose water or muscle tissue. I lost fat. And suddenly, 9 days later, I went from “you’re not fat, darling, just a bit… rounded here and there” to having a nice, flat stomach. Beat that.
It is okay if people laugh about it. It is okay if people roll their eyes and mutter something about insanity. It is okay if people say “I wish I had your determination” while munching on a donut with double glazing. It is okay when they say “I wish I knew how to do it… BUT DON’T TELL ME”. Because it’s not about them. It’s not even about boyfriend (although I suspect he might enjoy the end result). It’s not about anyone else. It’s about me. My motivation is me. Sure, pictures of ripped men that I put on my fridge, mobile and computer wallpaper help in a way — they help me stay in focus when I have impure thoughts about pizza — but at the end, I am my own motivation. And if you don’t have that kind of motivation, you’re doing something wrong.
I have written about this before and knowing me I will write about it again because I always recycle certain themes, ones that never go out of style, ones that are the new black every season. This is one of those themes.
A certain friend of mine has been hunting for a certain job for two years. Then she got it. And then it didn’t complete her. Perhaps the boss isn’t as nice as could/should have been, perhaps there’s too much paperwork, perhaps the cafeteria doesn’t offer enough of a choice for lunch. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that she is now thinking about changing her job again, because maybe that one will complete her.
Out of all the advice I have been given at the Magical Training Course this is perhaps the hardest to apply to one’s life: do not place your happiness in the future. So what you are too fat but dieting/miserable at work but sending out CVs/pregnant and with horrible back pains but will give birth in three months. Just enjoy the now. Enjoy what you have, and not what you believe you will have someday in the future. Don’t look at your apartment and think “it will look so much better with new kitchen cupboards”. (Erm, that’s me. Guilty as charged.) Look at it and think “It looks so beautiful even without kitchen cupboards”.
I am struggling a lot with the concept that you don’t have to achieve in order to be happy. It’s a bit like induction cooking, which is microwaves applied to an aluminum pan; there’s no actual heat coming out of anywhere, but food gets hot. The same concept of happiness tells you not to want things and then be happy when you get them; but instead to be happy with what you have and STOP wanting better things. One side of my brain tells me: “Well, Richard Branson wouldn’t get far with that approach”. The other asks: “Are you sure Richard Branson is happier than you?”
I have spent years and years of my life wanting to be a musician. Yearning to release records, to play live, to have fans, to live off music, to write and produce for others, to be able to express my creativity and get applause for it. There was a brief period when it looked like that was about to happen — when Technologic had their one minor hit. I was on MTV, Viva, on the radio, in the (very few) magazines. I had a DJ residency at a nightclub. Yet what made me happiest was actually the music that I played as a DJ — it was the time of electro, and every other dance record was exactly the kind of music I loved the best. And then we didn’t get signed, the fad has passed, the second Technologic single got 10% airplay the first received and that was about it.
That was the time when I wanted to be famous, most of all, and I got a bit of a taste. I had to talk to people I wouldn’t normally shake a stick at, and I had to sit next to them, smile and pretend to be excited and fascinated when they used words such as “corporate”, “sponsorship” and “tobacco companies”. (I hate fucking tobacco companies.) A friend of mine suddenly changed from, well, a friend into a person who introduces me to his boyfriend as “this is Ray, and we’re going to make a record together, and he’s famous, right Ray?”. I have been driven up the wall by playing for a crowd of hipsters who spent the whole evening working on perfecting their bored expressions. (You know the kind, the “go on, impress me” crowd.) And it didn’t make me happy.
Perhaps, I thought, I will become happier when the record comes out. Perhaps that will complete me.
It never came out eventually. We self-released it through iTunes last year. It got some blog coverage (all of it praise, which was nice) but sold shit all. It didn’t make us famous and/or rich. And it didn’t make us happy.
Last week I had a reflection: I am 80% happy 80% of the time. Even though my book remains unwritten, my discography mostly unreleased, my apartment hasn’t got kitchen cupboards yet, my abs remain a two-pack rather than a six-pack and people don’t gasp in recognition when they meet me on the street or hear my name. There are moments when I am 100% happy — sometimes involving my boyfriend, sometimes involving yoga, sometimes music, sometimes nothing else but me, a DVD and a glass of wine. There are more or less no moments when I am 100% unhappy — there’s always enough good sides to make up at least partly for the bad sides. I am healthy, fit, I have a place to live and food to eat, and really, if you have all those, you haven’t got many reasons to complain.
Is that it? I ask myself sometimes.
I have no clue what the correct answer is.
Sometimes I think that I shouldn’t be satisfied with 80% happiness for 80% of the time. That perhaps I would achieve 90% happiness for 90% of the time if I completed a book and had it released. Or if Technologic recorded a new album. Or if I had kitchen cupboards, a garden, sauna, swimming pool and room for a pony.
And then I hit myself on the head with a spoon and tell myself to stop being ridiculous.
It has occurred to me on the Saturday night, when me and boyfriend were watching “The Women” — he declared it a really bad movie, and I had to agree — dialogues were strained, characters — cliches and some of the storylines frankly unrealistic, but I loved it to pieces nevertheless and got tense in anticipation before every unrealistic twist of the plot: I am such a stereotypical girl.
I felt the same pang of girl power last night while watching “Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married” and getting very excited about Gus, the gorgeous (gorgeous!) but evil man, breaking Lucy’s heart again and again, by Megan being such a bitch, by Meredia’s ill mother and by Simon being a bloody bastard — yes, I must be a girl, I thought. Then I went to bed with Glamour and decided to try and steal my new style from Agyness Deyn.
Those are moments when I am really really happy that I am gay. I do not need to adjust my behaviour to avoid rumours. I do not need to tone down my movie/reading/clothing choices to satisfy my girlfriend or the other blokes. The effeminate man stereotype works perfectly in my favour — yes I am a girly boy. So what? I’m allowed to be one. I am expected to be one.
And there is also the side of me that enjoys listening to Slayer, wearing leather pants, boots and khaki uniforms (not like THAT — I am not a fetishist, I just think they look good), grunting at the gym while lifting heavy weights, obsessing about motorbikes, doing very manly geeky stuff with my computer and, oh, let me just say that I am very happy about my genitals being what they are, and I do not feel the need to own a vajayjay. It’s great fun being a bloke, and some of macho man stereotypes are actually partly or largely true in my case.
A lot of people are confused by this — how can I be reading Glamour and Muscle & Fitness (and not just for the photographs)? Why do I look like a soldier on Monday and like a drag queen sans make-up (and with a beard) on Tuesday? Is that legal? But I am both those people, and everything in between. Sometimes I wake up feeling burly and rough. (Don’t laugh.) Sometimes I wake up feeling tender and feminine. (I said, don’t laugh.) Sometimes there is nothing more exciting than finding out what Lindsay Lohan or Brangelina are up to. And sometimes there is nothing more exciting than being hot, sweaty, half-naked and fiddling with my bicycle.
If only I was brave enough to wear flowery dresses.
