words that might have meaning ?

I’ve been told it’s an illness.

All I know is I know it can kill.

A poison in the veins,

Corrupting the brain;

A knock-on effect that drains you of joy.

Because how could I feel joy

When I have to watch you crumble?

Someone I relied on,

Someone I loved – no love

Descending further into a black hole.

A hole you feel you can’t clamber out of

Because although I promised to cling and pull you out,

I didn’t – no I did

I just couldn’t carry on.

Watching the days get darker and you become further away.

Out of reach,

Out of touch.

Your grasp on reality seeping slowly away

Like the liquid in the bottle as it tips whilst we battle,

When we used to have a bond, we thought could never be broken.

Even though you were broken,

And now I am broken.  

And I can’t bring myself to place the blame

Because illness is nobody’s fault,

But I’ve spent years believing,

And I’ve spent years hoping

That one day you’ll finally choose me.

But I don’t even know,

Yes, I am a girl,

Yes, I am a woman?

Yes, I am a lady.

Yeah right...

   Ok not ladylike.

True, I go out a lot,

True, I can drink a lot,

True, I may go overboard,

True but,

   that’s the tequila shots.

Why did you assume that?

Why can’t that be a reason?

Why can’t you please stop?

Why though?

   Don’t you understand no?

No, I don't want to go there.

No, I don't want to do this.

No, I won't tell anyone.

No officer,

Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel written by Ray Bradbury, first published in 1953. It is about a fireman, Guy Montag, whose job is to incinerate and destroy books, rather than what we know a fireman to be, a hero who saves people’s lives. 451 is the temperature in Fahrenheit ‘at which book-paper catches fire and burns’. In the novel it is the view of the state is that books are dangerous and can corrupt the minds of people. Montag meets Clarisse McClellan, a seventeen-year-old who acts as a catalyst in Montag’s perception and opinion on how the masses are monitored and controlled. In 2007, over fifty years after the novels first release, it won the Pulitzer Prize, Special Citation.

 Bradbury was criticized on multiple occasions for the language and portrayal of specific events within the book, for example the burning of the Bible. He responded by saying the message in his novel was for to society to go the opposite way than what had been in the story. The theme of hegemony is so obvious it is almost obnoxious. But as Antonio Gramsci mentions, this possessing of power is down to ‘the combination of force and consent.’ It is because the majority of the characters in the novel are unaware of this overbearing dominance and almost transparent propaganda and ideologies put in front of them.

Private Peaceful,

                When I turned over your first page I did not know of the tenderness, love and warmth I would feel from the tale printed on your pages. Nor did I foresee the heartache you would cause me.

 At 11 years old I had no understanding of real feelings. Real, consuming, haunting feelings. You told me, even before I opened you up, that you would give me insight into innocence and love, courage and cowardice; I had no idea just how true this was.

 You have caused me to question all of life’s givens. You have caused me to question the very fabric of who you are. Why can people not be with the one’s they are truly in love with all the time? Why are people afraid of what they don’t understand? Why must we do things we cannot bear to do? Why is life so unfair?

 A decade later I still cherish the lessons you taught me, the ways of war, and discrimination and hate. All the while, intertwining the cruelties of real life into a love story. Love; a thing back then I could not possibly fathom. Not true love. But now I know. I know of love for my friends, love for my family, and love for a lover. I know of love for a book.

 As the clock ticked down from the first page to last, I knew I would never feel the same. I still look back at my naivety then and now I have picked you up a decade later maybe my reading will be different, or maybe it will be the same. The same tenderness, love and warmth; the same heartache.

 Thank you for everything you have done for me.

 I will not leave it so long next time.

 Yours,

 The traditional portrait has been a predominant style of art work throughout history. John Randall Bratby subverts the conventional style used for hundreds of years, and creates a more abstract perception of a person, in this case, Dr Alfred Leslie Rowse; a decorated author and historian from Cornwall, who died in 1997. Bratby was a particularly versatile artist, primarily famous for painting scenes of normal, dull domestic life. The founder of kitchen sink realism was born in 1928 in Wimbledon, London and attended both Kingston College of Art and the Royal College of Art; he finished his studies in 1954.

 Bratby uses oil paint on canvas to depict the impression of Dr Rowse. The way in which the artist leaves in noticeable block lines around the outline of the face could be seen as almost childlike, perhaps it is just a specifically matter-of-fact way to characterize the doctor.  Critic, John Berger said, ‘Seeing comes before words.’ With this painting and in most of Bratby’s work, it seems to be the things which are left in that is of optical importance. The physical texture of the painting is of some profoundness due to the impasto technique which he adopts in this piece, peaks of paint are left on the canvas to construct an extra layer of depth; this could be an intention of only the composition of the painting or could be of some significance of Bratby’s thoughts on the doctor.

‘Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’ is one of the poems from Lyrical Ballads, a collection by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. When first released there was anticipated controversy surrounding the new style in which some works were presented; this was actually addressed by Wordsworth in Preface to Lyrical Ballads. In this particular poem, the imagery, language and tone are peaceful and soothing throughout, and I would agree in thinking it has shaped poetic style over the past two centuries.

Wordsworth writes in blank verse, which was new for poetry, thus making it rhythmic and fluid from start to finish. In his preface, he mentions how he wants to bring poetry to a wider audience, ‘…describe them, throughout, as far as was possible in a selection of language really used by men.’ Before this poetry tended to be more accessible to a certain calibre of person and this was usually the properly educated – an obsolete group of people who could understand both the complex language and the intricate structures within the text. 

There is no doubt that the Netflix series ‘Black Mirror’ has caused quite a stir within the past few months, and I was intrigued as to what all the commotion was about; nothing could prepare me for season one, episode one.

To fill you in, it’s a series which shows different stories from a kind of alternative world; however, the events which take place in each episode are more than able to happen in real life. In this opening chapter, a British princess is kidnapped, and to ensure her safe return the Prime Minister is instructed to have sexual relations with a pig. That’s it in a nutshell. To really understand you should probably watch yourself.

The thing is, although it is very entertaining and interesting, it bodes the question, ‘is it acceptable?’ It could be seen as pretty dangerous to put ideas like this straight into the heads of people who may have a problem with some of the very real things in the programme, for example the government or the royal family. Plato points out how rhetoric is superior to writing, so here we have actors constructing and showing how an individual could wreak havoc within those in power.

With regard to the state, Plato makes clear that art should do good, and he makes it equally clear that art can lie. The creators of Black Mirror can not possibly monitor who is viewing their series, and what state of mind they have. Creating even more of a rift between the people and the power is pretty treacherous ground.