“Everyone” is an artist..”

So no matter how many times I may have nodded emphatically during reading no logo, how many back issues I have of adbusters in boxes on my shelves, how loud I protest at the starbucks “epidemic” (spreading through the city like some highly contagious incurable disease) And the mcdonalds plague (food that’s unbelievably bad for you, served by people who aren’t only low paid, but who aren’t allowed to join unions? Can you say.. evil?!!!).

No matter how much my friends and I will smugly assert that public transport is more ethical than having a car (like any of us could afford to have a car or find a place to park it in this city anyways??)  and I buy my coffee and organic vegetables fair-trade whenever I can and…blah blah blah blah blah blah

 

I am still at heart a…. (excuse my language those who are faint of heart) capitalist. (I can hear my socialist grandparents turning in their graves) In

America

, where I was born and raised, its quite difficult to be any other way. You are taught from a very early age that stuff is good, more stuff is better. When I was little, there were regular fights between me and the boys across the street, over who had more toys, better toys, newer toys.

 

My mum had given birth to me just as her biological clock was winding down. She had struggled so hard to have a child. Sometimes I think she was so delighted at the mere existence of me, that she couldn’t help but spoil me a little and then.. .a little more than little. By age twelve I was already very clear on the concept that credit cards were great because you got to really pay later. My father was constantly working, he made more money than his parents did combined. When he had some time on the weekend he bought me pretty much whatever I asked for. The word “no “ is not one I remember hearing from him.

 

At age seventeen I moved to

London

, I was still on an allowance as my parents didn’t want me to work while I was studying. Meanwhile the majority of students in the postgraduate course I was on were scraping by on student loans, having no idea how and when they would pay tuition fees (and yet always seemed to have the money for another round at our local..). If I did end up going shopping on the weekend, afterwards I felt a little embarrassed. If I bought two new tops I would wear the first to college, waiting months before wearing the second.

 

Fresh out of college I got my first job. I had never lived on so little money. Shopping was out of the question. There was often a toss up between going out or eating. (Eating was generally a distant second.) The bookstore I worked at then was rarely busy. We mostly had books on design, but there was the odd title about branding and related sociological matters. You weren’t supposed to read when you were working, but of course I did. I got bored of looking at the pictures in the expensive coffee table books we sold. I was very curious about these books on branding and globalisation.

 

 I began to educate myself about the imbalance between the western world and the rest of the world.  I began to understand how very wrong it all was. I know how naïve that sounds, but for me it was enlightening. I started to delight a lot less in the idea of retail therapy. I started to think a great deal more about where these products I was buying were coming from, and the processes it took to bring them here.

 

 

Now I buy my clothes from the highstreet (translation for the yanks: big brands) less and less and less. Of course the hip boutiques in my area are still overpricing their product, and yes the clothes came into being the same way the ones at the gap did, but buying second hand rhymes too nicely with recycling for me, and I love that. Its also far more fabulous buying something that no one else has. The fact that the money goes towards supporting a small business is just icing on the cake.

 

But then my neighbourhood makes living this way fairly easy.  At present there are no big brand stores or chains in the immediate area. I am closer to a small health food shop than a super market (and there is an open air produce market once a week). All of the clothing stores nearby are boutique or vintage. None of the restaurants are part of chains. It actually takes more effort for me to support big businesses than small ones. …But all of this is about to change…………………….

 

For the past year a new development has been edging its way forward. The very idea of its existence caused great controversy from the start. Half of what was the famous spitalfields market (then housing small local businesses) was sold off to form ..(DUN DUN DUUUUNNNN!…) a shopping centre. Oh hell I’m American I’ll even use that word… A MALL!!!! A MALL at the perimeter of an area that thrives on alternative culture and feigns anti-establishment with every over caffeinated breath. 

 

However, on the other side of this building site lies the financial district. City professionals who fear crossing the invisible borders that divide their chain pubs and wine bars from the multimedia drinking dens on the other side. I’m sure those suits would be quite keen to have a shopping centre they could dash into at their lunch breaks. Can you hear me sneering?

 

I have hated the idea of this development as soon as it began. I have signed petitions against its planning permission and have stared at it darkly as it came closer to being completed. And then a couple weeks ago the shop signs began appearing. The first one facing the street looked familiar. Gingerly I walked up closer to it. I recognized the logo and let out a small inaudible gasp. It just happened to be my favourite patisserie in soho.

 

I was first confused by this as I never thought they could be a chain, then elated at the idea of the perfect french confections that would be quick jaunt from my door, then embarrassed at this very elation.. I have complained about how this MALL will destroy the area to anyone who will listen. Anxiously I began mentally back pedalling.  I could still be against this MALL. I would just make an exception for Patisserie Valerie. After all they’re French, they’re authentic, they’re…. NOT starbucks!!! But as for the rest of this horrible destruction of the REAL historical market, that was there before this evil palace of consumerism. I have no time for it…

 

Today when I passed the development in the morning, I smiled at my soon to be favourite local patisserie, and on a facing window I noticed another new sign…BENEFIT . For those that don’t know, benefit is only the cutest most politically friendly (and marketing saavy) make-up brand, formed by a sharp set of forward thinking women in

San Francisco

. A sizable percentage of all of their profits go to Aids and Breast cancer charities, they don’t test on animals, and I adore their products. A Benefit store in my own neighbourhood! Next to my favourite patisserie!! and all in my own…local…MALL…

 

Oh god..

 

Excuse me…. I’ve got to go read No Logo again.

just having one of those days………….

for instant empathy with yours truly, click on the picture .

and if that leaves you piqued but not quite satisfied, you can check out this rainy day playlist.

http://webjay.org/by/Mochachild/issummeroveralready3f___arainydaymix

when did everyone around me couple off ? ? ?

o.k. maybe not evvvvveryone. There are a small handful of people I know who are single but mainly because they have literally just stepped out of five and seven year relationships. And yes its true that my gay boy friends still hold strong to their bachelor status. And then there are those who claim to be single but are so seriously serial (monogamist) that they are still constantly with a partner (even if it is only for the weekend) but those are just the exceptions that prove the rule…

One by one my crew have drifted into meaningful relationships, never to be bachelors again. All of the questions of those bastions of commitment: living together, buying a place, children (and even marriage for the more traditional folk J) suddenly poke their way into conversations more often. I do still talk to my friends about current events, culture and literature but trading facts about the process of house buying and mortgages is now common chatter as well. An inevitable factor in all this is that I am creeping closer to thirty, while most I know are already there.

So yes there aren’t so many drunken drug fuelled nights, not quite so many bar crawls, a total

disappearance of one night stands, and a growing curiosity about that most exotic of concepts (to the not financially saavy)…..savings

But why am I thinking about all of this now? Yesterday I tried to plan a hypothetical trip to visit someone I hadn’t seen in a while. I wanted to visit a single friend, so I didn’t have to contend with visiting a partner as well ( not that I don’t adore all of my friends’ partners, its just that its a different kind of visit with a couple). After quite a long time of flipping through my mental rolodex I could only come up with three people. Two had come out of serious relationships this year and I wondered if they might still be pining a little. The third is married but has managed to keep her lifestyle pretty independent.

After considering this option a bit further

I remembered she had emailed me only a month ago to tell me she was ….

pregnant.

Probably not the best time for her to take up bar crawling again …

Its not that I havn’t gone through loads of periods, when almost everyone around me was a couple. But the difference now is that the couples I am surrounded by have been the same couples for the past few years. They are the older, finally found each other, planning a future together- variety. And who am I to talk? I’m in a long term relationship. I’m buying a flat this year. I no longer enjoy being in crowded places unless it’s a gig, or a party with a lot of people I know. I don’t feel the need to go to the illegal bar, after the afterhours, after the after party. I like to stay in from time to time (for those who know me very well, this is huge). I still adore eating out but I’ve grown to like cooking at home too.

The last time I felt myself beginning to act like a grown up I panicked, and got a job bartending at a nightclub.

The first few months were like one long party. I picked up old habits of drinking until morning, then staying out to get breakfast in a nearby café. I worked 3- 4 nights a week and felt like I was constantly going out. At least once a week the dj’s played music I liked so much, that I’d dance behind the bar. I had always been the girl who wanted to keep going, who couldn’t stay in, who had to meet new people, go new places, stay to the end.

After a year of being paid to do just that, I discovered it wasn’t me anymore.

For years I had fought against the idea of a full time day job because I was scared of turning into a drone.  Now I have my desk, I want an office, I can cope with getting up in the morning and I get a lot out of my weekends. My office is anything but conventional.

I work hard but play my music as loud as I want, and take personal calls without any concern. Of course I still miss going out on Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday nights. I still think they’re better nights to go out.

There is a part of me that clutches at the cliff of my crazed past, worried that everything will be less entertaining now. The other side of me just shrugs, and explains that where I’m at now is actually a pretty good place.

DISCLAIMER (the part i say to save my a** from offending anyone): any likeness this may bare to real facts and real people is entirely coincidental….

brandon jones’s diary…

Not your typical gay boy singleton

He fancies men

But prefers the company of lesbians

Refuses to consider suitors taller than him

Not keen on courtship rites

He doesn’t LIKE dating

His biological inclinations to mating

Are slighted by his way of living

Chatting someone up just ain’t his cup of tea

Provoking unwanted bouts of celibacy

But then one day

Washing his hands in a sink in the gents

He raised his head, only to be met

By a pair of sultry eyes, elegantly framed

(well he would say that really, as his glasses

were the same make and style as his adversary)

but could it really be??

That this smile was broadening

Ever so invitingly?

Not willing to let this one get away

After quickly drying his hands

He flirted fiercely with his prey

And though the strangers face

Was definitely forthcoming

Rudely, he kept interrupting

Now its worth mentioning

Earlier that evening

my friend Had ingested his fair share

Of …chemical refreshment

So who was this vision

Of masculine perfection ?

Another man he couldn’t have

…his own reflection

stumbling back to the bar

he blurted out the story

I didn’t know whether to laugh

Or whether to say “sorry”

And though the potential for ridicule was ripe

I restrained myself, saying only

“ I didn’t know you were your type…”

Ahh the identity politics of labelling . As a teenager I spent days, weeks, and months pondering over the subject.  In recent years however, I find myself becoming more and more desensitized to the way people label me. I’ve reached a point where I let people define me however they like (as long as it isn’t offensive). And even then one finds that another will define you by what you’re not rather than what you are.

with regards to my sexual identity, I have no problems with labels. Even some of the less desirable ones amuse me. 

In queer theory and gay activist writings there is often the mention of “heterosexual privilege”.  All you heteros, did you know you were privileged?! The crux of this theory is that straight people take a lot of things for granted. For example a straight couple holding hands walking down the street is unlikely to be jumped on and jeered at unless they are an interracial couple. Make it a couple of men or women holding hands and even in city centres one never knows who will come out of the woodwork to make comment.

 

In my years of being out  I have had every comment imaginable screamed, shouted, and hissed in every language imaginable, in cities, suburbs, by men, women, boys, girls, of all races and creeds. 99.9 percent of the time when I have been shouted at, my offence has  been holding hands with a woman or walking the streets with someone who physically fits the stereotype of being lesbian. You do get numb to it, But sometimes it still throws you. For me when I do get  angry, I now feel it on a much shallower level . I carry it with me less and less. Call me a dyke, fine,  F**k it, I am one right?

 

When I started to make films, I felt very strongly that I had a responsibility to make films with well drawn gay characters. I was a part of this hungry niche audience, eagerly watching even the most appalling cinema just for a glimpse of themselves on screen. Of ten films I’ve made, five feature lesbian characters and/or lesbian relationships. This began with an agenda to tell MY stories, and then was simply related to the world that I was moving in. Its not so much that I wanted to tell “gay stories” it’s just that the people in my stories happened to be gay.

 

A couple days ago one of the artists I work with asked to see one/some of my films..Sharing/disclosing your creative work to a new person is always a bit rattling.  After late night deliberating over what to lend to him (this would be the basis of his judgement of me as a creative after all) I decided to lend him my show reel. Unfortunately in my case my show reel doubles as a kind of cinematic coming out. Yesterday I was braced for his opinion, but  he didn’t mention my reel at all. I assumed he didn’t get round to seeing it. And then right at the end of the day he approached me.

 

I was prepared for a lot of things. For him to say nothing at all, for him to make a half hearted compliment about a shot or line of dialogue, maybe even for him to be really impressed? But I was completely unprepared for what he DID say to me

 

“Do you think that gay cinema is undersubscribed?”

 

 Um…….

 

……………….WHAT …?! 

 

After seeing 10 minutes of clips from four very different films, the only thing he came away with was the fact that I was a “gay filmmaker” making “gay films”. Now this is a fairly worldly guy, so I was utterly thrown. He carried on, relating my work to gay “politics”. Suddenly I was transformed from filmmaker to activist.

For those that haven’t seen my work the  themes i obsess over are

1.relationships
2. "The city"
3. the magic in the mundane

The characters in my work are long past "coming out".  Shouldn’t the sexuality of the characters be incidental? … like… straight characters…?
a good story is meant to be universal for everyone… isn’t it? ? ?
Why is it that as soon as you introduce any level of minority to a story it becomes as story about that minority before anything else? I’ve had to grow up “translating” stories about people who don’t look, act or love like me to be relevant to myself. Is it really so hard for the majority to do that?

In a weird way having this unwanted feedback was really helpful. I know what people like me and my friends think. But I’m fairly out of touch with mindsets ouside of that. (What? people who don’t believe in immigration, gay marriage and abortion??!!! who are they??)  at the end of the day i do want my work to reach past the "distraction" of being "different".

But even if i my stories read as more universal if i traded  some of my girls (characters) for boys…I’m not prepared to make that sacrifice.

right, a "london gives jessica advice"- moment is when the city speaks. I define this as a moment when someone not directly related to you (out goes the window: friends, lovers, family, co-workers) unknowingly says something that is directly relevant to where you are in your life. I’m clearly obsessed with these moments as i made a short film based on them and am always open to one coming.

for the purpose of the blog everytime i write about these moments i will title the entry "london gives sara advice"… for obvious reasons. so with that rambly preamble of context out of the way, let me regale you with my latest encounter of urban magical realism…

i am allegedly a filmmaker.

the reason i use the word allegedly (much to my peers’ chagrin) is that i have not actually made a film in two - three years (i say two to three as i’m not quite sure, which makes me think its probably three…whatever). its very hard to define yourself as something when you aren’t actually doing it. but in my defense its not as if i haven’t tried. in that period there have been failed opportunities at tv pilots, feature film scripts, short film proposals,

screenwriting classes, well received screenings of previously made films and most randomly, a published feature article in an indie film magazine (which got a mention in the guardian thank you very much). but more importantly there haven’t been any produced-sweated over-and screened films.

all this was about to change four months ago, when a friend sent me a very intriguing call for artists. i was so inspired by the brief that i spent all my waking spare hours on a proposal. even after the proposal was submitted i was so passionate about my idea that i kept pushing production on the film further.

then i hit an obstacle of sorts. after spending hundreds of pounds   on kit to expand my little aging powerbook into a home editing power station, i began to hit numerous technical glitches. my frustration eagerly devoured my enthusiasm and soon the project was, for all practical purposes on the virtual cutting room floor (without even being cut yet) . no matter how hard those around me tried to keep me motivated i was unmoved.

until saturday night…

question of the blog: why is the advice that affects most deeply often from the most external and random of sources???

saturday, on a whim i met up with one of the artists from work. i remembered him saying he would be in a bar near my area on the weekend. I decided I may as well take his invitation seriouly for once.

For hours him, me and the cinematographer he was "interviewing" had a passionate debate about film and the industry that creates it. He ended up spouting a big theory about how he didn’t believe in talent, why some people never make it and, never have a chance to. but the thing that stuck in my head most from his monologue was the following

"most people don’t push hard enough to do what they want to do. they end up starting in something they are merely proficient at, and thats what they end up doing. after that.. they’re gone…that will be who they are for years if not the rest of their life"

its not the shiniest pearl of wisdom sure, but it shook me up hard. now all i can think about is finishing this project. and i’ve realised if i don’t do it by the end of the year it will never happen. and i believe that. and i want to fight for it.

so why did it take someone i didn’t know that well to make me take it so seriously?

well done london, even after being knocked down

  , you still find ways to give me advice. the "city" (as an entity, as in ALL cities) is a truly fantastical place.

last night i stayed up  past my bed time to watch a talk show. i’m not talking tricia, jerry or oprah here. It was a news format talk show.  The presenter was a young british asian muslim, her panel had a range of experiences and opinions about being young and muslim and her audience were vocal and well spoken as well.

here’s my issue: in light of our concern/panic/resiliance over the attacks, the failed attacks, the possible attacks why are programmes like this (read: open discussions within/from the muslim community ) so few and far between? i have been glued to news of every medium trying to keep track of what is going on

most of what i see covers intelligence procedures, very quick vox pops from a handful of asians, and endless revisiting of both the explosions and the suicide bombers. isn’t it equally relevant to have decent press coverage on how british asian muslims are feeling? i don’t mean sound bites but full length prime time features? don’t we further polarise ourselves by focusing only on how tragic the last attack was and when the next one will be? I know that there are loads of people like me who are taking a deeper interest in the muslim community in our country to understand where this is coming from.

i do think its great that so many in this city are strong in not falling to easy prejudices. but it frustrates me that attitudes of ignorance are slowly spiralling out of control. i’m not talking your outright racists. they are easier to write off. i’m talking about the number of references i’ve heard not just in the news, but from intelligent friends and who either:

admit that they are less comfortable around people in traditional muslim dress

or

make angry comments about the nature of islam

I know it is human nature to distrust that you do not know, especially in a state of panic. but more than ever i think it is important that all of us in this city pull together and get beyond that anxiousness for all of us. the anti-terrorism laws about to come in effect have some highly subjective phrasing. i can’t find two people who translate "incite terror" in the same way. this is worrying to me.

a friends blog posted the following picture. i’m posting it here as well as it really sums up everything that is going on right now. thanks for listening…

click on the thumbnail below