Marie Phillips's Blog, page 3

For the last few months, I have been working with the composer...

For the last few months, I have been working with the composer and performer Anne La Berge, developing the text for her new piece Assail. The subject of Assail is sexual assault and the difficulties we meet when we try to talk about it. From the very start of our research, it became apparent that there was no agreement on what constitutes an assault, or what exactly a rape is, over and above the physical facts of it. The voices of the victims / survivors are seldom heard clearly, the motivations of the perpetrators baffle us: is rape about sex or about power, and if the latter, why does it take this sexualised form? As we catalogued academic research and personal stories, incluing our own experiences of having been assaulted, we came to understand that these incidents are both varied and one, are experienced differently but share commonality. As the piece began to take form, Anne wrote a narrative of a sexual assault, which I rewrote in six different emotional registers: fear, shame, sorrow, confusion, disgust and rage. At the first rehearsal last week I watched and listened as each register was interpreted by Anne’s ensemble MAZE (pictured above) using guided musical improvisation, augmented by prerecorded sounds and images sporadically displayed on iPads. Through this organised chaos, Anne’s lone female voice relays fragments of the story / stories we created, the missing words speaking as loud as those we hear, telling of the impossibility of a complete narrative, of total understanding. Assail will premiere at the Bimhuis, Amsterdam on June 2nd at 8.30pm, with a touring version to follow. We hope also to create an interactive online version.

(Un)happy - an (up)date

Moving overseas is hard. That seems to be the lesson of my
last post. Since writing it I have been inundated with messages from friends
and family, offering sympathy and, notably from fellow expats, recognition.
Writing the post was cathartic and in many ways I am now feeling better, which
renders me rather sheepish when people check in with me to make sure I’m doing
OK. But there is something about owning my unhappiness which means that it
doesn’t bother me so much. I don’t feel obliged to put in so much effort to try
to drive it away. I am homesick and that makes me unhappy, that’s still true.
That doesn’t mean that I am not also, often, happy. One friend said that for
her, happiness and unhappiness were a yin and yang, both always present, rather
than an either / or. Another pointed out that the French word for happiness,
bonheur, literally means ‘good hour’. Clearly the French do not believe in
happiness as a lasting state, but as a transient moment of joy. Up until
recently I was making the mistake of thinking that my unhappiness cancelled out
my happiness, and vice versa. Since writing my post, I’ve been more willing to
welcome both into my life like a pair of cats who come and go as they please.
My unhappiness does not make me burn any more. It’s a reminder to be kind to
myself, to reconnect with the people who make me feel better, to take pleasure
in the things I like about being here, or, at worst, just to rest and wait it
out. As for my happiness, I appreciate every moment of it, knowing that it
doesn’t need to be more than a 'good hour’ to bring value to my life. Things
are good enough for now. In the longer term, I would like them to be better.
But I’m content to be unhappy some of the time, as, indeed, I always will be.

Unhappy

Lately I have not been writing. I haven’t been working on any fiction and I haven’t been pitching articles to The Pool and I haven’t even really been sending anything longer than a text message to anyone. I thought that I didn’t have anything to say. Anything I did try to say came out distorted. Today I realised that I do have something to say but I haven’t wanted to say it even to myself. I am unhappy. I am not depressed. I am not unwell. I’m just unhappy. I’ve been living in Amsterdam for three years now and I desperately miss my family and my friends and all the different ways I used to feel at home. I have a wonderful boyfriend here and being with him brings me a sense of transcendent joy and peace that I have never experienced in any other context but that I can most closely describe as being like lying in the sun somewhere completely silent in the heart of nature where you have no other calls on your attention whatsoever. It’s been hard for me to figure out how I could feel that much joy and peace and still be so unhappy, but I have finally had to concede that it is how I feel, and so it must be possible to feel that way. My boyfriend is here and so I am here, and for various reasons our living situation is not one we can change right now, and leaving him behind is a sacrifice I am not prepared to make. So I have been sucked into a terrible maw of loneliness and exile that I have been trying so hard to fix, and I haven’t fixed it and it is at the centre of every feeling that I have, and the effort of not saying it is so overwhelming that it has been preventing me from saying anything else at all. I am unhappy, I am so unhappy that I am burning with it and I think that for a while I am going to have to stop fighting it and just experience it, because it is where I am right now. I’m unhappy, and that is all I have to say.

Hey there blog! Long time no see. That’s what happens when you’re busy learning Dutch. Speaking of...

Hey there blog! Long time no see. That’s what happens when you’re busy learning Dutch. Speaking of learning Dutch, my latest for The Pool is on that very subject…

Another one for The Pool: on being a bad loser (guilty as charged).

Another one for The Pool: on being a bad loser (guilty as charged).

I just found this piece I wrote on Europe for the Observer online back in 2004. Reading back on it,...

I just found this piece I wrote on Europe for the Observer online back in 2004. Reading back on it, I am struck by two things: I know far less about Europe now than I did then, and I care much more. Bearing in mind that this piece is all about how uninformed I felt about Europe, this says a worrying amount about how i approach politics these days. (For the record, I am staunchly In.)

PS Does anybody remember who Marco was?

Please don’t make me agree with Joan Collins and Robert Kilroy-Silk

Marie Phillips wants to know why the EU stubbornly refuses to let itself be understood like other self-respecting big issues.

Wednesday 7 July 2004
Observer.co.uk

I have a confession to make. I don’t
understand Europe. It’s not for want of trying. I am, after all, a
journalist. I read newspapers and news web-sites and I watch television
current affairs programmes. I even used to work on television current
affairs programmes. Not only that, but I have written about Europe
before - and I did some quite specific research for that, which means
that I can recite all twenty-five member states of the EU (including
Lithuania). And I know what the five economic tests are for joining the
Euro. And yet, somehow, in all of that time, I appear to have picked up
exactly no useful knowledge, no meaningful understanding, and no insight
into Europe at all.

This isn’t really good enough. I demand to have
an opinion on Europe! I know my exact place in the political spectrum
(inconsistent, left-leaning liberal, shades of bleeding heart, abiding
suspicion of New Labour, everything you would expect from The Observer)
and am able to formulate instant opinions on anything from foundation
hospitals to the law on smacking with barely any need to check the facts
at all. In Clerkenwell gastropubs frequented by fellow media types with
hair statements rather than cuts, I can pontificate at length on Iraq,
the Middle East or whether Marco should have been evicted, and I know
that both my feet are on steady pinko ground. But should the topic of
Europe come up, I go very quiet indeed.

But the topic of Europe
never does come up. Occasionally, someone will come back from holiday
and mention how much easier it is to shop in Italy now that you don’t
have to calculate everything in millions of lira and get your change in
sweets, but that’s about it. I don’t think I have heard anybody of my
acquaintance even mention the EU constitution once, and that was on the
front page of the newspapers for days, or at least I think it was, but I
was busy turning straight over to something I felt secure enough to get
really, really angry about. Maybe, then, it isn’t just me; maybe nobody
else understands Europe either.

So why the Euro-blank? For a
start, Europe as a concept is just too big. The political structure of
Europe is immense, not just in terms of the member states, but the whole
apparatus of EU power and its remit. I can’t get my head around what
all the different elected and unelected administrations of the EU do,
how they function and interact, and in the end I just give up trying.
And without this understanding, I can’t make any comparisons with our
existing political system or reach any conclusions as to how the two
should work together.

Similarly, to get any sense of the impact
of the EU and the euro on the economy, you have to begin by
understanding the full complexity of how the economy works, which I’m
afraid, with my Maths GCSE way back in the distant past, is simply
beyond me. And maybe I am underestimating the British public, but my
guess is that if I can’t figure it out, probably most of them can’t
either.

My other problem with Europe is that my responses to
political issues tend to be emotionally driven, based on a sense of what
I feel is right and wrong. It’s hard to feel anything about Europe;
it’s like trying to hug a building. Europe is more like an intellectual
problem I need to solve, and since I can’t solve it, I don’t know what
to think. Again, I don’t think I’m alone in this, given that the
different political parties have tended to galvanise support for their
respective stances on Europe by tacking their policies onto more emotive
issues: William Hague’s doomed, sentimental Keep the Pound campaign, or
UKIP’s recent scaremongering about immigration. As for Labour, rather
than appeal to our heads by arguing the case for Europe, they just make
mileage out of the repugnance of the opposition, which almost works.
Since I can’t bring myself to align with Robert “we owe the Arabs
nothing” Kilroy-Silk, or that noted political behemoth Joan Collins, I
think I must by default be in favour of a closer Europe, but without the
facts to back it up, I can’t maintain the opinion.

One of these
days I’m going to be asked to vote in a referendum on Europe. Assuming
that I even understand the question, it’s going to be a tricky one. It’s
hard to vote in favour of a change that you can’t fathom, against the
status quo that you’re familiar with. So unless the parties drop the
posturing and just explain the issues clearly, I might find myself
voting no, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of the country went
with me. And then what will we miss out on? If you know, please share it
with me.

Still Barred

I have just completely the first draft of my story for the Still Barred anthology, a book of stories by different authors, inspired by the Still… Barred list from the Half Moon pub in Herne Hill, and published by Unbound.

I am tackling JASON - probably the least promising name on the list, unless you know that I got my heart broken by a Jason in 1999. This Jason is not based on that Jason but I can’t deny a sliver of emotional motivation all the same. I am pretty pleased with my story and I would love for you to get the chance to read it.

The way it works with Unbound is that you need to pledge ahead of time for the book, either simply for an e-book or paperback copy, or for a book plus exclusive merchandise (a Still Barred beermat [He’s Back & Fat on one side, Snuck Back in on Sunday on reverse] for example, or a One Armed Kieth [sic] Memorial Glass Tankard). Once the book reaches its target, it will be published; if it doesn’t, no charge to you, and no book. Pretty simple.

You can find out more about the book and the other contributors, and pledge to buy a copy here. I’m hoping that you are intrigued enough to pledge, not least because I, too, want to read about Mickey Two Suits, Staring Pervert, The Ginger Drunk Twat Called Angus, and all the rest.