With this week’s reading ‘The Age of the Essay’ by Paul Graham explores the power of essays and trying our ideas out in prose to thoroughly work out our thought processes… I thought I’d give it a go.

Recently, with the strong media focus on planes, guns, bombs and terrorism… I got to thinking, is there really more danger in the world now, or am I simply more aware of it?

I could’ve sworn two years ago that I had close to no fears. Sure, the normal things like spiders, sharks and snakes… and sometimes the dark would scare me. But, I never thought too much about planes falling out of the sky, or terrorist groups plotting and carrying out global-scale horror.

So, as I lie awake in bed with these thoughts running through my head, I imagine myself caught up in one of these incidents. I have recently applied for an exchange program, and despite studying and travelling abroad being at the top of my bucket list, I can’t help but get stuck wondering about the global atrocities occurring today. I get mixed up in my dreams about whether I even want to travel anymore. I imagine myself in a plane being thrown around the sky, jolting up and down and my body banging against the chair. I look around at the other faces around me. Fear is all I can see in every direction.

Two years ago I travelled around Spain on about seven different planes. And, yet then I never thought about terrorism, dodgy airlines or worried about travelling to far and distant places. This made me reflect: Is the current world really more dangerous and busy than it was when I was growing up, or is it the fact that I am now more aware that I have these fears?

I could have sworn that there is more going on globally with civil and global wars than there was fifteen or twenty years ago. But, after bringing this topic up around many different friends, I figured, maybe it is my close-knit relationship with my phone, Facebook and Internet, that I now am aware of what is going on in the world.

Studying within in the media industry, I’ve come to the conclusion that perhaps news reports and those who supply and write them propagate fear in society.

Take a look at the Vietnam war for example. Just one month ago, I returned from a few weeks in Vietnam. We started in the capital in the North, Ha Noi, whose culture base is still very much rooted in Eastern tradition. We then travelled South through beautiful places such as the Ninh Binh province, Halong Bay, Hoi An and finally Ho Chi Minh. In Ho Chi Minh, we visited the War Museum which has documents, testaments and photographs from during the Vietnam War.

There we saw the events which dramatically changed the perception of ‘war’ throughout the world. War was never publicised or televised until the Vietnam war. And, until then, people in society viewed war as a heroic event, one which people would simply attend. This concept changed as people witnessed the events second hand from behind the cameras of journalists, photographers and soldiers.

So after much thinking, I’ve realised that the world is what it is, and that publishing and recording events simply makes it more real to us. And, when we either seek or come across this strong, constantly reiterated concept available to us through the Media, we can develop fears associated with this content. In fact, not we can, but we do.

I’ve been called a lot of things.  When I was little, adults would look down at me, the nervous, pint-sized ‘ginger’… as they would titter.  The fiery mess of auburn ringlets clumsily planted upon my head, calling out to the world ‘I’m here’ often gave the impression I was a million times as bold and self-assured as my three-year old self actually was. Upon being discovered, I would shift my shy but curious eyes to the ground, accidently allowing the curls which hung over my forehead to bounce around like miniature springs, once again drawing unwanted attention – well, at least I hid my freckles that way.

It wasn’t just the giggling sixteen-sixties, conventional mothers with their blonde bob-cut daughters dressed in Mary-janes and frilly polka-dot dresses constantly walking just two steps in front of me each day who helped draw a dark and omitting line between their seemingly perfect, straight, rosy world and I. It was certainly obvious to me early on that I was different from the looks of awe from tourists who begged for a photo with the ‘red’ three year old who stood timidly, arms clawing her mother’s leg, preparing herself for the familiar, unsettling flash of panic which shot out of those black boxes people held out within an inch of their prey – never mind the Australian wildlife surrounding them or the koalas patiently perched in that eucalyptus tree over there!

The one thing that constantly challenged the strength of my back-bone, my tenacity and my innocent, childish and completely non-judgemental view of the world, were the epithets given to my appearance, ‘oi ranga, oi!’  A nick-name introduced to our wonderfully technological, however, sometimes computer-hearted society by a television show that created a cruel name to attach to yet another minority in society.  The famous, hilarious one-liners which hissed off countless lips for just months before they went viral… or rather… the rest of the world caught on that ‘ranga’ was a completely appropriate and politically correct term for a person with red hair.  After all, who told off antagonists of Prime Minister Julia Gillard for calling her a ‘ranga’ and indirectly likening her to an orang-utan?  Despite living in a place which professed ‘all-cultures-in-one’, growing up I somehow permanently felt a quarrelling in my heart between the responsible colloquy of my family with the senseless, offensive chatter of my school peers, politicians and strangers.

My mother would always tell me how lucky I was; that I was incredibly different – that people were just jealous of my hair colour.
‘Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you, darling’.  A mockery of hypocrisy, as she had been blessed with normal blonde hair and so had not experienced such ridicule as I had.  After years of copping the brunt of every derogatory name in the book, and then the internet, I came to accept things the way they were.  I realised as I grew up the power of difference.  The fact that I could be noticed amongst the sea of murky blonde and brown, despite my relentless attempts to blend into it naturally.  It was only every now and then that I would be reminded that I shared the same hair colour as the devil, and that I was not only different, but, not accepted by the community that I had been born into.  A community that stood still and flagrantly silent when one of their own would be casually bullied by others for not conforming to a normality dictated by the boring; called ‘ugly’ or mocked by the aphorism of being the school ‘camp-fire’ whilst people gathered to warm up from cold Melbourne winters.

But, who was the real hypocrite here?  Was I building a court-case for public ostracism based on a few not-so-well-thought-out and childish comments and name-calling?  Maybe it was because I was always used to being different that I always felt compelled to draw attention to that.  I was convinced I was
growing up Red in Beige – that I had to die my hair in order to hide who I truly was for a month at maximum until the re-growth shot aggressively through my scalp reminding me I could never escape the fiery, titian card I had been dealt.  But, really, I was just growing up red.  It didn’t matter what or who surrounded me.  The fact was that I had red hair and after realising that no matter what I did it was with me for life, I accepted it.  Furthermore, once I stopped rebelling against myself, I realised that having red hair can have its benefits – I was now rebelling against the world, and I didn’t blend in, but, nor was I supposed to.

This week, we looked at the concept of a beginning, middle and end in terms of online networks and traditional media forms such as books.  When we look at a book, we know intuitively that we begin reading on the very first page, top to bottom, left to right.  This is the way the Western world has been brought up.  And, yet we can look at this concept in foreign countries and still see a symmetry between us all.  We all believe there is a place to start and a place to end, and that they happen in this order.  Whether the book is read back to front, right to left, we have a sense of how it is read embedded in the society in which we live, learn and play.

In saying this, all cultures have a similar thought process on books.  Yes, they are there to be read.  And secondly, there is an order in which to read them.

My question from the symposium is: can we say the same for modern media forms such as blogs?

Our lecturer Adrian tended to say that no, you cannot put the same restrictions you would on how you would read a book on how you would read a blogs.

Even though one can support this notion by explaining that the interweb and blogs can be made to reflect hypertexts, which draw information from many different sources, and form a network of pathways to information.  That essentially, blogs cannot be measured with a beginning, middle and end because they are non-linear.

But, if we look around, the world is really only starting to change the format of what we see in technology platforms now.  Up until 2013 – 14 we could still look at the average webpage, blog and social media form and see at least a beginning and an end.  It is with new interfaces and the integration of tablets and more tangible technological platforms, that this sense of linearity has been challenged and is changing.

To whom it may concern,

In response to your advertisement in this year’s sixth edition of ‘Folly’, Australia’s ‘number one magazine for teenage girls’, is my application for the position that has been …well… left unoccupied by some trick of faith or, even worse, by the presence of requited love (that romanticized, rose-coloured illusion which we advertisers love to implant in the minds of young, hopeful, socially awkward teenage girls, exploiting their insecurities but boosting profit margins. The ‘So you like him, here’s 3 easy steps to get him!’ that is guaranteed to ensure sales are top notch.)

Let me now outline my extensive resume. To begin, my eligible knowledge of an expansive array of prodigious dwellings, which are, more often than not, disguised by tattered and dilapidated coverings and facades. Places that illustrate all the more, my eligibility to this position, as no prospective ghost can live on without being heavily influenced by the undercurrent of impermanence.

The rooms which many of us girls could call own second home…or rather, thanks to the prominance of mirrors that have been erratically plastered onto spare, cold, concrete space, own first home. The acidic, citrus scent, which calls out to our two-dimensional generation to come forth, to congregate, to check that we are still, in fact, imperfect and inadequate. Looking into those mirrors, which hold a muggy beige sticky mask smudged onto them, a mixture of half of a decade’s many foundations (which are four shades darker than our skin), because, every one needs a bronze face: a ‘happy’ face to present to the world. And then, after we have made sure that our hair is still the wrong colour, that our lips still need plumping and following being shocked at two meagre salty sweat patches below each armpit which are presenting themselves like a disease on our new Chanel ‘chemise’, we delicately click our heels along the sullied peach tiles into a lonely metre-wide cubicle.

The door closes revealing a score of jagged contours from the etching of metal hair-pins and pens of names and numbers now gone and long disconnected. Reminders of the absence of any ephemeral glimpse of either truth or heaven.

In addition, I must state that whilst out in the field, adding to my practical qualifications, I have sat in many different circles (spheres are far too three dimensional for this position!) Furthermore, each, all sharing the same intention of discussion – whether it be the obsession with camouflaging themselves in a pixelated, concentrated coloured fantasy inside a screen, their natural pheromones with falsified scents or with masks of lipsticks and eye shadows, in case Mr X realised it was really me…her! I have sat on warm, uneven asphalt and listened to gossip entirely based around ‘her dress’, ‘that frizz’, ‘that beep’. And I, too, have devoured this mouth-watering treat: the chance to label someone else, ha! To tell them who they should be, after all, there is no such thing as natural identity.

Society implores us not to be a participant but an interested observer to the narrative that is who we are destined to become right before our eyes.

I have eaten the most tasteless sushi in all of Sydney, the seaweed like rough, brittle sandpaper caressing, or should I say exfoliating my mouth, encasing what is cleverly advertised as lean chicken but that is neither lean nor chicken. I have shared a mouthful of ‘melancholy bitters’, realistic gloom and tragedy with swarms of rumour-hungry despondent.

In powerful, money-hungry conversations with ‘vacant-eyed’ members of the haut monde, my own monotonous, shallow ghost apprentice has had practice in performing flawless confidence in tête-à-tête regarding fuel prices and shares. Because, we all know that money conveys power, which goes hand in hand with success, which subsequently embraces happiness. A shallow happiness, which has lead to countless suicides and manic depression, but happiness all the same, as fleeting as it may have been.

I suspect you might agree that in today’s world that distant happiness of which the old guys speak, remains an elusive and abstract notion.

My whole life has told me so much about the deep, jejune, plunging shallowness of this very letter and this whole eternity in a world masked by adherent, branded cling wrap which traps us and holds us back from that looming happiness which features in the smiles and beauty in so many films, myths, advertisements and… other forms of media which I best not discuss here…

Although I do sometimes catch my fingers running free along the coffee-stained ivory keys of my father’s cob-web covered grand piano, and my vocal chords vibrating with a radiant hum, I pull myself away, knowing that this job, this opportunity to tick off the greatest achievement of my banal life is more important to me than a passion… than a dream… inspiration to find whatever those ‘lovers’ are dreaming about.

In closure, I wish to express my deepest longing for this job, and assure that, if I am to prove successful in this application that I will be most satisfied in any position you so wish to kindly offer me. And, that my efforts will be to forever support the galvanisation of generations to come with phantasms of happiness; depriving them of selfhood with gloomy, fallacious schemes. But, please keep in mind, that being by nature, I am still, but a mere apprentice.

For, only You death can set my spirit free forever…

… that is, if I don’t experience faith or requited love first.