I have spent the weekend at charlie’s. It’s her birthdayon the tenth, but I’d guess they wanted to celebrate before the new term started. Part of me is still getting used to c being a teacher – for one thing, aren’t teachers meant to be older than I am? Its still quite weird, but on the other hand I just know Charlie is a born teacher if ever there was one.

It was a great party. As well as Charlie and her family, it was great to see Jodie and hollie, two old friends from MMU. I was rather surprised there weren’t more people from university there, actually, but oh well. As I said, it was fancy dress, and I was pleased to see some people went to a lot of effort with there costumes. There was one person, for example, who had made a robot costume with working lights and personal sound system which plugged into an mp3 player. As for myself, I am still yet to figure out a way of keeping my bunny ears on my head.

The party itself was a great success. It started at the jonses, then at midnight we all decamped to a barn for a rave (sanctioned by the owner of said barn). The ravesite itself was upstairs, so I was relieved I had paced myself. In the end, I was out to about half three, listening to the live awesome music of ‘Laffin’, a band Hugh plays sax for. Then, it was high time I turned in,

I don’t think I would have missed this party for the world, and I was glad I went. For one thing, it was just what I needed – I do like a good party, ad it feels like months since my last one. Also, Charlie has been and is one hell of a good friend, and I’d have felt awful if I had missed it (well, that’s my excuse, anyway…)

Still no sign of that hat or the badge on it. It must be around here somewhere.

Not much has happened these last few days – they are notable only for their distinct lack of sunshine. Right now I’m just moping around the house, but at least tomorrow I have a party to go to. Fancy dress – the best sort.

Elsewhere in the world, however, things are more interesting. Barrack Obama last night delivered the speech of his life; the fact that it was delivered to coincide with the anniversary of Dr. King’s ‘I Have a dream’ speech was not lost on many. Question is, can that dream truly be coming to fruition? I still get the impression that many people in America will not vote for black people. interestingly, some people on the right are saying that to vote for obama would simply and shallowly salve national guilt for slavery. Yet, while this might indeed be partially true, it suggests that if any black person were to come to power, he or she would always face such criticism and the subsequent lack of credibility. This leads to a catch 22-type situation (without the B52s) where no black person can be elected without such criticism, yet if so then the words ”all men are created equal” are meaningless. On the other hand, if obama is elected, people will say ‘it’s just because he’s black, not because of his policies.’ After all, voting for someone because they are black is just as discriminatory as voting for someone because they are white. The guy can’t win.

America now stands at a cross roads. The question is not can it leave race out of politics, but how can we tell if it has?

I hereby announce my candidacy for the oval office. Yes, I am running for president. What america needs is a no-nonsense cripple at its helm. I pledge free beer and to ban larger. Don’t believe me, just click here

I cannot recall ever being so attached to something so small. I have lost my hat – when I got home from university, I put it down in the conservatory and itt promptly disappeared. That, in itself, wouldn’t matter, for I have plenty of hats, but the thing is I had fixed something to this particular hat. Just up from it’s brim, there’s a small, metallic badge. Ironically, I put it there so I wouldn’t loose it. Its pink, in the shape of mickey mouse, and is one of a pair me and charlotte got in eurodisney. She, of course, has the blue twin, and as a result this badge is very precious to me.

I’m sure it will turn up somewhere – nobody would throw away such a thing. It’s just irritating.

Call me a spoil sport if you must, but as I was watching the Olympic closing ceremony yesterday, I couldn’t help but feel ashamed. I wasn’t ashamed of team GB’s performance, which many are calling the best for a century; nor was I ashamed of the fact that London will host the next Olympics. I was ashamed of the bumbling, shallying image of Boris Johnson walking up to take the Olympic flag.

That image disturbed me. Why should this country be represented by him? Why should our capital be represented by that joke of a man? That relic of the old boy’s network? That complete fool. His election was a joke – he was elected because the people of London thought it would be a laugh to elect that figure of fun.

Yes, they were fed up with Livingston. But it was Livingston and Blair who won them the Olympics in the first place. By rights it was Livingston who should have been waving that flag last night, not that overgrown turd. This gets my goat, but what gets me even more is the fact that CaMoron will probably be prime minister in 2012, and that little piece of shit will probably take credit. Britain is a booming, prosperous society, but next election – if the polls are anything to go by – we’re going to throw it all down the drain. The more wealthy people become, the more likely they are to vote Tory, thinking that the Tories are more likely to save their money but forgetting how narrow minded/, inept and selfish conservatism innately is.

I read a review of a book called ‘Cameron on Cameron’ in the Sunday times yesterday. Would you believe that toadying fuctard still has the audacity to pretend that brown is the one obsessed with spin. The book itself sounded like a repellent tract of ego-boosting: the reviewer dismisses it at one stage as cynical propaganda.. the book itself contains such absurdities as ”[to CaMoron] It looks like you are two breastplated sportsmen, battling it out…you look like you enjoy playing with him as though you were a cat and he [brown] was a mouse’. Here, the author pretends to describe PMQs, but obviously hasn’t watched one, or does not understand what’s going on. Brown OWNS CaMoron, and is the only intelligent choice next year, but the people of this country are apparently too stupid to see that.

That’s why that cretin Boris Johnson got to wave that flag; and that’s why I’m ashamed.

What a difference a week makes. The guy who I was having difficulty getting on with a week or so ago has turned out to be not that bad. In fact, I think it was mostly my fault that we weren’t getting on – I was taking most of what he was saying out of context, and he was getting royally pissed off. Yet we seem to have sorted most things out; we even agreed to meet up sometime for a pint or two. I think I’d like that very much, and it’s long overdue. If we can organise it – and I see no reason why we couldn’t – it would be like a crip meeting, as I have two or three other folk with cp in mind whom I’d like to invite.

The prospect of such a meeting excites me, not just because I like nights out. I relish the chance to go out and meet fellow crips – there are few disabled folk at university, so there’s naturally a chance my views in that area have stagnated. Plus the prospect of this night out feeds my optimism about friendship. It would be a chance to exchange ideas, to actually get to know people I have never physically met. There’s nothing like alcohol for cementing friendships..

I would like to draw your attention to this article, by tom Shakespeare, on hate crime. I have been reticent about calling crime involving disabled people ‘hate crime’, as, as the professor correctly point out, there are always going to be other factors involved. Its not as simple as blind hate.

I do not feel I have anything particular to complain about. Life, for me, is pretty good – I have two supportive parents, two great brothers, and more friends than I can count. The only thing I’m particularly worried about is my thesis, but that’s generally of another order to the subject of this entry.

I think I’m content with life, all in all. There is, however, a school of thought within the disabled community which says that disabled people are subjugated and oppressed, and that we are well within our rights to rail against this oppression. They cite, for instance, the carer/client relationship as innately coded within a power structure – that when one is bathed, dressed, washed and toileted by someone, the person being cared for is always going to be under the power of, and in effect subservient to, the carer. If we further generalise this principle, it follows that we crips are always going to be second class citizens.

I have a problem with this. it isn’t as if I don’t agree with it – they certainly have a point – but I see it as a part of life which one should allow to fade into the background. I have better things to worry about than whether the manner in which I need to live my life is encoded with oppression. If you need to be fed, why worry about it? And anyway, this power structure is not always the case: I have been fed, on many occasions, by people whom I consider my close friends; I have asked one or two to help me bathe a few times. No doubt they would be bemused at the notion that there was some kind of power involved. I would guess they, like me, think that it’s just something that needs to be done. Moreover, I was reading an article in the business supplement of the Sunday times about this guy who works as a trader in goldman-sach’s as a trader, who uses one of his fellow traders as a kind of work-time PA. again there is no evidence of this power-structure in their relationship its just something that needs to be done.

I guess it could go to the other extreme. Some people seem to think that the term ‘personal assistant’ means ‘slave’ and that they deserve to have someone at their beck and call 24/7. although I admit I may have, at university, been guilty of pestering people like jen, Charlie and ash a little more than I should have, I tried to respect their private time, and understood that if they said ‘no’, that meant ‘no’. Yet I get the impression some crips can be over-reliant on their staff, in effect demanding a slave. To me, that constitutes an abuse of one’s rights.

Back to my main point, though: there is an argument which says that it should be our right to complain; that

” Blacks and Latinos are encouraged to form communities and discuss the [insert minority group here] Experience. Abuse and incest survivors are rightly lauded for their bravery. People with eating disorders are told they can find support here.

Disabled folks? Not so much. While we’re appreciated as a quaint novelty, we’re in the steerage with the cutters and the kohl-snorting emo children when it comes to expressing angst or anger. And if we persist, well, it won’t be long before the cries of ”Being disabled, you’re doing it wrong!” ring out, along with accusations of whining, pity-whoring, and delusion.” source

We could detail the means by which we are repressed. Wee could detail the perceived humiliations and the indignities we ‘suffer’. But I fail to see the point, as all it would lead to is a particularly bleak, pessimistic outlook on life. I tried it once: I paid special attention to all the things which made me different, all the means by which we are allegedly oppressed. All it did was make me miserable, and annoy my parents. I suspect it even put people off me. In short, it got me nowhere but a depressed pessimistic stupor.

Such points of view are counterproductive and self fulfilling. It was also cyclical, and I didn’t really break that cycle until the berlin trip with south Cheshire college. It is far better to focus on how alike we all are than how different we are. I guess this is why I dislike the idea that disabled people have a community, for if we are a subset of people, then we are somehow different. This leads back into feelings of ostracisation and persecution. Yes, we are a community as expressed through the ways in which we articulate our lives, but as soon as that articulation becomes one of persecution and negativity, we risk losing the thing which unites us to wider humanity.

This is very pleasant. I’m just waiting for breakfast. Both my brothers are home, and Luke and Yan are cooking breakfast for us; Mark was just playing some Bach on the piano, which, although I’m in the mood for something more upbeat, was very nice indeed. What’s more I have much to look forward to, ranging from tonight’s turkey pie to charlottes party a week next Saturday. It may be rather grey outside, but at the moment it’s very hard to be miserable.

As a rule I dislike having enemies. I try to remain optimistic about humanity, and prefer to believe that everyone is a potential friend, and that all grievances can be settled. I try to get along with everyone I meet, and I suspect – or hope – most of my friends would confirm this. my friends mean a lot to me: I’ve mentioned a few of the closest here, but there are many more people of whom I am fond, and would hate to anger.

Yet there seems to be this one guy with whom I just cannot get on. I’ve never physically met him, but we talk on msn. He seems to misunderstand everything I say, make the most stupid of statements and resorts to insults when I try to correct him. I frankly find it impossible to debate with him on any adult level. I know what I’m talking about, but he talks down to me.

I know what you’re thinking: ‘just leave it matt, he isn’t worth it’. But this man’s arrogance gets to me. Ricardio once told me ‘everyone should have an enemy – it’s healthy’, yet I dislike the concept that no relationship is irredeemable. Unfortunately, it appears this particular relationship is (at the moment, at least).

What is it about me, razors and dad? My dad just gave me a shave – at home, I don’t shave as often as at uni, but we’re eating out tonight so I thought I’d better have one. I’ve noticed that I get more tense when my dad shaves me. When the home help ladies do it at university, I am usually perfectly relaxed, but when dad does it, I tense up. My father, mind you, shaves me a lot closer than my Pas do – probably because A he’s had more practice, and B isn’t afraid of cutting me. I guess dad doesn’t have to worry about me claiming damages: he could simply stop funding my various addictions.

Today I’d just like to send you guys here to lyn’s new blog. Lyn Levett is one of the most unique people I know, and it’s good to see her blogging. We’ve been talking online for a while, and we’ve met once or twice, so I think its high time you guys (metaphorically) met her.

I was just watching some of the Olympics, and reflecting upon how stupid it was to have two of them. The Paralympics always occurs after the main event – why? I see no reason why disabled and non-disabled people can’t compete simultaneously, if not together.. and before you write to colemanballs, there is a difference.

To have events running simultaneously is fairly self-explanatory. Instead of having the Olympics and Paralympics, you just have the Olympics with extra events which disabled folk compete in. that way, in a typical day spectators might see a running race, then a wheelchair race. All points would go into the same table.

But why not go further? Why can’t we, say, have athletes in wheelchairs competing against bipeds? I have no idea of the comparative speeds, and leaving aside the possibility of a crash, I see no reason why this can’t happen. Things like archery might be more suitable, and things like gymnastics might be difficult to converge, but surely this is better than two separate events.

As for myself, I would like to see electric wheelchair racing and the-chasing-of-one-eyed-cats become an Olympic sport.

If you want evidence that my allegations against the special school system aren’t just the rantings of a cynic, just go here. At 16, these kids should be into such wonders as Harper Lee or bill Shakespeare, not being read kiddie books. If we are ever going to achieve true equality, I say again, this must stop.

August 11. this date rings a bell…is it time to have a bath? Time to feed my pet dinosaur? The day on which to be nice to grandma? The date has something to do with the colour orange and very hard sums. Oh I remember. Its mark’s birthday.

I last saw my older bro a few weeks ago in Paris when we met up for a meal with my uncle, aunt and Kat. Hopefully, I’ll see them on Wednesday, if I’ve been paying attention at mealtimes. It’ll be great to see them, as for the first time in, must be over six months, we’ll be all together as a family. I can’t wait.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARK!

Suzi digby knows absolutely nothing about music – fact!

I just tuned into the Sunday screening of ‘last choir standing’. I don’t usually watch such programmes, but I wanted to see how ‘a handbag of harmonies’ was getting on. Mrs j. sings for them, and I wanted to support them. But there was no sign of the handbags or their pink boas, so I came up here and found this article.

I’m not happy at all. As far as I can see, the handbags were the best part of the show, and digby’s comparing them to a primary school choir is a crass insult betraying a gross lack of musical knowledge on her part. She has no sense of fun, and neither it seems do the British public.

I know I shouldn’t get so protective of a choir I barely know, but nevertheless it upsets me.

Quite what Stuart the barman thought when I first walked into brandies in my bunny girl costume four years ago I know not, but I loved it. I loved the reactions people gave, the surprise people gave. It was the first time I’d worn feminine clothing ‘out’ properly, and from that moment on I was addicted.

While I love the feeling of the clothes themselves, I also love the sense of nonconformity it gives me. That frisson of excitement one gets when one causes controversy. I suppose this stems in large part from the fact that I have cp. Like the Spanish inquisition, nobody expects to see a cripple in a fairy costume or full ball gown, at least not a mail one. for me, it draws attention to my subjectivity, my uniqueness.

We are all unique, the one fact which paradoxically unites us all. But there’s something about having a disability which makes one stand out that bit more. In a way this causes a problem for how can we achieve equality if we stand out? This is why I have been critical of nonconformity based on disability in the past. Yet recently I have began to think that this is not the problem at all, but the very solution. By drawing attention to our uniqueness we draw attention to the fact that we are all unique and therefore all the same. How one does this I now think does not matter, as long as one is ‘out there’ stirring shit up, turning heads and making people talk. Some people do this by deliberately donning disability paraphernalia – harnesses, helmets etc – while others are less overtly focussed on disability in their nonconformism; others show their indeviduality by dying their hair pink. I just dress up in outlandish outfits. Unlike the sentiments I expressed here, there is no real difference between the various methods. What matters is that one is out there, having fun, expressing themselves in whichever way they like.

Now that I’m home from uni, I can watch a bit of t.v again; I was just watching tool time downstairs with dad; I haven’t seen that programme since I was ten. At the end, a very strange thing happened – I saw the Buena vista logo, with the walt Disney castle, and a warm glow came over me.

It felt a bit like I was ten again; or perhaps I remembered for a moment what it felt like to be ten. I felt the same feeling when I saw the castle again for real in Euro Disney, which is probably what triggered it. I remember going round the park with charlotte and this feeling of great warmth and security, of fun of friendship, of innocence; at the same moment I remember being a kid of eleven being pushed around Disneyland California and feeling the same thing. I’m supposed to deride that symbol as one of high capitalism. No doubt Alan F would point out the consumerist fairly right-wing values of Disney films, but I do not care. I realised tonight the power that symbol holds for me, for it will forever be synonymous with friendship and love, uniting two of the best experiences of my life.

I know this is strange coming from a guy with a degree, but I can’t seem to help it.

Perhaps the only way one can determine a culture is a culture, independent of other cultures, is by what it produces. That is to say, the only way one can differentiate between cultures is through it’s art, and the same applies to subcultures. I’ve been reading Henry Jenkins’* seminal work on fan culture as part of my research into cinephilia, and I naturally started to reflect on disability culture.

In cultural studies, as with anthropology or archaeology, a culture can be only be viewed through it’s art,, as this is what it leaves behind (and this includes religious artefacts). The only way we can know anything about, say, Neolithic man is by examining the artefacts from the ground; when we study a modern foreign culture, we similarly view it through the prism of what it produces. We can learn so much about the German psyche from watching the German TV programme Heimat, for example. (in relation to the accompanying texts, of course)

Thus, in a way we can tell a culture or subculture is there by what it produces. As Jenkins points out, fan fiction and fan art point to a thriving subculture; one which has ‘poached’ the original text and expanded it to make it something else. New ideas are being produced; new art is being made. There can be no doubt that this is culture, and that fans can be said to have a subculture.

But this got me thinking again about the old ‘us and them’ dichotomy. If fans can be said to have a culture, why can’t disabled people? I still reject the idea that disabled people are a subset of humans, and I still think that to see ourselves as systematically and maliciously discriminated against is too simplistic, but the fact remains we do generate our own art. I mean, look at the bbc ouch website, look at the band boys on wheels, look at the theatre group DV8. just as fan fiction and fan art is an articulation of a type of love, these groups are an articulation of the experience of being a person with a disability in western culture. Indeed, the same applies to this very blog – although it is not solely about my disability, in part I aim to describe the thoughts of a young man with cerebral palsy. I could, I suppose, have called it the ill-informed ramblings of a student, or ale-drinker, or cross-dresser, but there’s no escaping the fact that my cerebral palsy is a central part to my experience of life.

I suppose this constitutes a re-think on my part. Disabled people do have their own culture in that they produce cultural artefacts specific to their experience. I think this is as it should be. Yet I worry that this culture or society has become too bogged down in a politics of difference and antagonism; where people have to worry about which words they use; where people get accused of being ‘disablist’. This mindset becomes self for filling – the more we shout our heads off about how we are discriminated against, the more we will be. This is why in the past I have tried to rethink the concept of a disabled subculture, framing it only in terms of an antagonistic paradigm. However, I now see this way of thinking as blinkered and too extreme. We are a subculltuure, just as trekkies are, or any other minority. What we as a community should be doing, I think, is articulating our experiences: our thoughts, fears, likes and dislikes, just as any other human being would. We need to continue to produce those cultural artefacts: to write, to compose, to dance; we need simply to be ourselves, not a steriotyped amplification of ourselves intent on showing people how wrong or ‘disablist’ they are. Only then can we, individually and as a subculture, achieve equality.

*never to be confused with Karl or Keith

For a while now I’ve been brooding over something, unsure whether I should blog about it. A few weeks ago I was having an argument online over the contents of one of my blogs, and I put it to her that I had just as much right to comment on the subject of disability as anyone else, that the fact that I have cerebral palsy gave me as much authority as her or anyone in the subject. She said I didn’t.

I found this comment both hurtful and inane. I know I don’t get everything right, and I frequently change my mind on certain issues, but I resent the idea that some people have more authority on this subject than I do. Is there some kind of hierarchy of crippledom, now? They may have spoken to more politicised crips, and read a few books, but I grew up around disabled children; I saw, first hand, the consequences of special school, and I bloody well know what I’m talking about. I find it ironic that the two people who have in the past made such remarks to me were the products of inclusion, for it seems to me, quite frankly, that despite their rhetoric about the oppression of disabled people, they had the better deal. I might be wrong, of course…

Its official: I have too much crap. I have spent today trying to sort through it. I’m home from university, so the task I have now is to try to compress the contents of two rooms into one. I could, I suppose, leave it in the bags, but then I’d have to navigate round 3 big bags of assorted clothes and paperwork each time I enter my room. So I’m just taking a break from trying to put everything away, which isn’t going well: my shirt draw looks like a bomb has hit it. Moreover, I seem to have accumulated an extraordinary amount of girls clothes, which, although I love it, is causing me a problem. Where, exactly, does one put leotards? I must admit its getting silly.

Think I might just put the bags in the corner.

For most of my life I was only into books. As a kid as far as I was concerned literature was the truest and most direct form of artistic expression; after all, how could we express ourselves if not through words? As a child, my parents read to me and my brothers every night, and it was there that I acquired a profound love for words: their flow, their timbre, their very meaning. Indeed, there was a time when I used to deride other art forms, especially visual arts, as inefficient at conveying meaning and therefore inferior to writing.

While books will always have a special place in my heart, these last few years I am becoming increasingly aware of the other art forms. The writers’ contexts class of my third year, for example, helped me understand the power of the visual arts; going to the opera at the RNCM back in my first year opened my eyes to the power of musical theatre, as did my friendships with people like Becca Young and charlotte. And of course, I am now a confirmed cinephile. I feel that I have become more eclectic in my tastes, and would like to branch out.

Film and film theory fascinates me, as books once did, but film is nothing if not eclectic. It is a language, but not in the sense of natural language; it incorporates all other art forms, photographic, linguistic, musical; it holds sway over all of us like no other art forms, save perhaps for music. Writing my Masters’ thesis has caused me to become even more fascinated with film; how people watch it, act upon it. But it was Ricardo’s masters which caused be to become fascinated too with the other side of the screen, what goes into a performance, the very human, physical, emotional side of theatre. His adaptation of 100 years of solitude was performed in the round, making in more tangible than other art forms. How one viewed the performance was entirely dependent on where one sat, making it wholly different from what can be termed the 2d art forms, or even traditional stage theatre. Watching this performance develop over a matter of weeks made me much more interested in the performing arts: how they develop, the ideas behind them, how they relate to a wider artistic philosophy. For example, are performance reliant on the idea of the contingent, as film is according to Bazin? Barthes wrote of the photograph sometimes being possessed of punctum – the accident that wounds; Keathley develops this idea in his ‘cinephiliac moment’: can theatre be founded on something similar? On the other hand, how can something with a limited duration like a performance have an equivalent of the punctum, which in part is endowed to the photo through it’s unchanging, eternal nature? Can something which can be experienced from more than one position be punctic? I think so, because punctum is personal, but how can this be dealt with in terms of wider artistic theory? Moreover, do the audio arts music, singing, opera – have an artistic equivalent of the punctum? (I guess we all have our favourite musical phrases) How, then, are the arts related? What do they have in common? How do their differences effect their philosophy? I am highly interested in the theory behind such art forms, not just in the artistic product which expresses it.

I have also become more interested in the new forms of artistic expression are fast developing on the web: of course, there will always be the traditional art forms, but online these art forms are being used in new and exciting ways. People can now record films with web cams; they can make music simply by downloading the appropriate software. They no longer have to buy expensive cameras or musical equipment. Even the written word has changed with the invention of hypertext. While I doubt these art forms will supersede the art forms of old – people still go to the cinema, the concert or music festival, the opera, the gallery, and they still buy books – I find this new fissional art fascinating. I would be interested to see if they have started to develop accompanying theory. People like Henry Jenkins have already started to theorise web culture, but to my mind this works on the level of online anthropology rather than artistic criticism. Moreover, this new medium is still in it’s infancy, and I feel the dust is still settling, but I would nevertheless be interested to see what new art forms are being born of the democratisation of expression, and whether this is accompanied by more theoretical and scholarly work. Would that, too, be reliant on the contingent or punctic, for example?

All these ideas are swimming around my head. They excite me. New ways of expressing ones self are emerging, and with them comes new ideas. But how will this post-modern fusionalism, this revolution in expression, be squared with more traditional modes? Time to go surf.