positivity – Stefanie Moore

Enjoy the Silence

Noises Off Experiment: Day 5

Hello! If you’ve just found me, you may need to read the last couple of posts to work out what I’m doing. If you like intrigue and are short of time, let’s just say I’m audio-fasting (thanks Rhi x)

Living in the Northern Quarter of Manchester, I have been blessed with an incredible view of the surrounding hills. The sky high rent affords me a sky high view of the brink of the shoulder of the Pennines, as it mooches off towards Scotland. The weather at the moment is hormonal, swinging from sunny spells to fierce rain and the sky is a real Rorschach most of the time. I like to think that the clouds are not the source of the problem, but its victim, pinioned to the sky, forced to obey whatever the weather throws at them (charming naivety or idiocy: you decide). Whatever, I’m a cloud champion and today they have been majestic. Great merchant ships of grey, looming into my window vision like the Deathstar, unencumbered by the literal sturm und drang which surrounds them. They were immense and well ….cloud, in myriad forms right the way to the horizon. I tried some mental word association to see what would happen. It went like this:

Kansas

Dorothy

Ruby Slippers

New Shoes

Aldo

I evidently need some mind opening alongside my audio fasting! Still, taking in the clouds made me think about the term luxury and how misleading my perception of it is. I think of luxury as a sky high apartment and a flatscreen, for example. But at least the apartment gives me the opportunity to take in this spectacular view. Granted, I could take in the clouds from somewhere less indulgent, but can I walk before I run? The view is the thing, not the rest of what living here affords.

In fact, I have re-evaluated what I consider pleasurable and luxurious this week and have realised pretty quickly that a night in front of the box hasn’t made the shortlist. Television hasn’t entered the mind-debate much for me this week, as it hasn’t been something that I have consciously missed and this is surprising. Once through the door, the TV would habitually be on, for company, for edification (no, that isn’t true), for entertainment, for whatever reason, but rarely was it genuinely watched. It was soundscape; all other reasons are pure subterfuge. If I do sit down to watch something, I’m shuffling within minutes, checking my phone or my laptop or a magazine. So my angst about losing the background sound was pre-emptive; there is no sense of deprivation, no withdrawal, just a happy change. I realise now that silence is not an absence, a challenge, a trial; its a bona fide luxury, a true one, along with a few others, such as a chair, a window and clouds …

Creativity, good wishes and epiphanies

Noises Off: Experiment Day 4

The power of the written word! Something about contextualising my frustrations in print yesterday must have done me good, for I spent the rest of the evening with the attitude of a meditative android, calmly going about the business of making aubergine parmigiana and doing the washing in an audio-free bubble, judiciously and easily avoiding eye contact with my mind (if that’s possible) for the duration. No explanation as to why it was so easy to switch off after writing, but stranger things have happened.

However, day 4 arrives and i’m frustrated at not having attained a plateau of peace. This morning, my internal radio accompanied me with a Doors medley and ‘Sometimes it Snows in April’ by Prince, both of which swelled in my brain and burst through my mouth in intermittent melody blurts, forcing me to randomly sing half lines here and there, unconnected to anything else that was going on. How odd! On the way to the train I pre-empted several conversations that I may or may not have today (update: I didn’t have any of them) and mentally tried out a few lines from each one. This may of course make me insane, but this morning I preferred to see my current state as akin to the island infested by rats that Agent Silva reminisces about in Skyfall. Mentally, I’m letting my thoughts over-run me (and sometimes it does feel like a swarm of movement and unstoppable tessellations). I’m observing this, waiting for the poison to be ministered and the hubbub to subdue. All weaker thoughts will die out till we’re down to just two giant mega thoughts who must fight to the death.

But this is a pretty nasty metaphor and inaccurate. I don’t wish to kill my brain-chatter, just find a way of disengaging. Thoughts bring creativity, good wishes, epiphanies. Frankly, thoughts are what I’m writing to you right now. And, more practically, it’s impossible to kill them off. Like creativity, good wishes and epiphanies, they are endless and spontaneous. Just not always relevant or helpful. So I’ll turn my attention to the present again. These critters have had free rein for long enough.

Outside the sky is a block of grey white, and the trees all shades of green and in between. It’s about to rain …

3 days to go.

A call for positivity

This is my promise to you, cybersphere. I, Nefny, do promise to try and be a little less cynical in my daily goings around town and will try and see the light side of life and people, again. In order to maintain this change in perspective and hopefully help my optimism blossom, I will keep an occasional series of blogs about things I love and why i love them …in no apparent order, on no apparent theme, with no apparent reason. Just things I love.

Number 1. Kurt Russell

5 words. Big. Trouble. In. Little. China. A great film, made even greater by Kurt’s willingness to send himself up. Bruce Willis would have been too knowing, van Damme and his ilk too self-believing but Russell MAKES this film. He’s a trucker, for godsake! When will action stars realise that they genre that they work in is high camp and by aiming to promote some sort of zen message (I mean you Seagal), they make themselves ridiculous? When? This is surely one of the biggest concerns that our planet currently faces!

But…Kurt. He’s just wonderful in this film, and pretty much everything else too. Point in hand – he turns up in films which I’d forgotten he was in and its always a nice surprise! Stargate anyone? Had too much of James Spader? Lets cut to a shot of Kurt to liven things up. Even my boyfriend greets him like a long lost darts partner in the pub; ‘Ah, Mr Russell, forgot you were in this’. We know there are some quality moments ahead. The fact that he topped the Onion’s underrated actor list says it all. Never won a major acting award? Who cares when you’ve got some hot wheels and are welcome at every roadhouse in the state……..

No one else would be as good in The Thing or Escape from LA. He genuinely seems to have fun in his roles. He is the thinking woman’s Patrick Swayze. All hail the Kurt!