Hey there, just writing to announce that issue 4 of The Bite Magazine is out now. This season’s issue includes articles on plagiarism in the design industry, more of the latest images and outfits straight from the catwalk, and gadget and music reviews written by me… and then tweaked and / or re-written by somebody else. Seems they didn’t think me capable of taking my pieces away and re-writing them myself! If only they’d asked, as opposed to telling me things had been altered (on only one article, mind you, they said nothing about editing all of my other pieces as well!) just as the magazine went public.
As you can tell I’m not that happy about the whole thing, but I suppose it’s better than having none of my writing published at all. It’s bad enough that my last poem to be published in an anthology got printed with a typo that changed the whole meaning of that particular line, but in my eyes this is even worse. I just wish they could have thought of me highly enough to be able to make edits to my own writing myself.
Either way, I’m not going to boycott The Bite, and I still encourage anyone interested to carry on downloading and reading it anyway, because it has given me a tiny platform for my writing over the past six months. Just be sure to take my articles in this issue with a pinch of salt, because you never know, that line you’re reading might not even be my own…
BBC Television's first official ident, the "Bats' Wings", 1953-1960.
Hello! Here, as promised, is the second part to my Ode To Analogue series, this time a poem to commemorate this important, however sad, moment in TV history. If you’ve already read part one, or if you’re just as much an expert (obsessive) on British TV history as I am, the following poem may not perhaps be that cryptic. See how many references you can pick out (take a look at the picture above, and you’ll see I’ve done the first one for you).
Apologies for the post arriving slightly later than originally planned; my boyfriend broke up with me just days after the previous post (though it was nothing to do with the post, of course!), so I’ve been reeling from that and have been slow in catching up with everything else. But, as I’ve been half-heartedly telling myself up to fifty times a day, the show must go on. And it will “go on” more naturally, eventually. Not yet, nowhere near any time soon, but one day.
But back to the poem. I decided to break with tradition just this once, and post one of my most recent of poems, what with it correlating so closely to current events. My next posted poem will be an old one again, the next thing I wrote after “Miwaku No Nihon”.
Ironically, the first week of the switchover also marked the closure and absolute end of the COI (Central Office of Information), the people who since 1946 have given us our most famous (and in some cases, most frightening) Public Information Films. Our country really knows how to show our gratitude to our traditions and national treasures, don’t we?
But anyway, I’ll stop talking about such things, and leave you with my poem and your memories, before I cross the line and become the TV equivalent of a train spotter or a “bus wobbly”. I’d happily post many more related stories, were it not for that possibility. So here is “Ode To Analogue”, my tribute to TV nostalgia. Hope you enjoy it!
Ode To Analogue
By Rachel Jones
Start-Up
On bats’ wings and on lightning bolts,
You flew as far as you could,
Giving the gift of vision
All over the monochrome land
Your voice was once rich and regal,
Archaic in the nicest sense
But who would have thought
That with every glimpse of the clocks
The beeps and pips and ticks and tocks
Were counting down the hours to your death
The globe and its mirrors were once your playground,
But the conflict deep inside you
Swam in the success from the city in the south,
Brought back stories, grey and silver, from the north
Were you proud to be a patchwork king?
Because you certainly knew more than anyone else
That all the puzzle pieces of the polychrome land
Were beautifully different for a reason
So many images recorded in my brain,
Video nasties and the germs of childhood fears
Old machinery has more heart than the new
But still you’re sinking deep into your pool
Of cumbersome plastic blocks and tangled, slicing tape
All that you find when you take apart my mind
Is the static and the brain-dead breakdowns
And you know I’m the last of an out-of-focus age
Before the windows on the world were myriad and mammoth,
Before the world in the windows began to shrink
They’re turning you down,
They’re switching you off,
And dying beside you is another part of me,
The spoilt and lazy child of me,
Too familiar with rainy days
But now I’m seeking clean, fresh air,
Ignoring the satellites, spying from space,
But I’ll always remember, never forget
The old machinery inside us still works
“I’m going to tell you how it’s going to be,
With Scotch’s lifetime guarantee
Tape what you want both night and day
And re-record, not fade away,
Re-record, not fade away,
Re-record, not fadeaway…”
Scotch Skeleton advertisements, 1985.
Test Card F, one of the most iconic images on British television in the analogue age, first seen in 1967.
At the time of writing, there is less than a week to go until the digital switchover begins, the end of which will result in the old analogue signal in Britain being switched off forever. For most of the country’s population, this will have little or no effect at all. The vast majority of us have had Freeview, Sky, or Virgin Media to name just a few, already for several years now, so the switchover will largely pass as silently as two decrepit old ships in the night. But for the tiniest of minorities, the switchover will mean much, much more than simply getting a new box to connect to your existing television and tuning in the new signal. For some of us, the experience is deeper, more sorrowful, and (cue the melodrama) as heartbreaking as a final farewell between two lovers.
I have been blessed with a father who, born at the end of the Second World War, is mature enough to remember television itself as the minority, something that very few people had access to, and when they did, it only provided programming for no more than a few measly hours a day. My father can remember when radio was king, when there was only one channel, the BBC Television Service, when an upstart named Independent Television threatened to steal away the limelight like an attention-seeking younger sibling, when BBC2 came along, when colour first appeared, and he has been around for every single breakthrough that has ever happened since. My dear father is almost as mature as television itself; just as he’s had the moments that have defined his life, so has television. And after all of that, my father doesn’t even particularly like watching TV.
There are websites dedicated to the history of television, that will go on preserving the images and nuances of TV yesteryear long after the switchover has passed, but to get to the real heart of old TV, you have to turn to the elder relatives for the truly personal stories of television’s formative years. And it’s this that marks the difference between people’s experiences with analogue in the past, and people’s current experiences with digital today.
Television of the past was something with much more influence, precisely because there were never any more than four channels to choose from. Fewer channels meant bigger audiences, and a bigger impact on society. Just take a look at some of the most iconic and much-loved moments on British television, and most of them would have aired long before the dawning of digital. It also speaks volumes about the “quality” of British programming in the present.
As a child of the nineties, I probably watched more television when we only had BBC1, BBC2, ITV, and Channel 4, as opposed to now with the many hundreds of stations we have with Sky. That’s not to say I don’t watch huge amounts of television today, because ashamedly I do, but the amount I watched on terrestrial channels as a child was always a greater number, and with a more profound influence on my life. There was a time when television was a bonding experience – sitting around with the whole family, talking about the previous night’s drama, variety, or comedy at work, because everyone would have seen it. The Queen’s coronation, for goodness sake. Today, television is often degraded to just a thing, a tool for viewing things on, or just like, the internet. The greater and more slick the technology, the less heart we attach to such things, the less nostalgia and warmth we are likely to possess when remembering them in the future.
Yes, there was the hassle of moving the aerial here and there, trying to get the best possible signal with the least possible interference. And yes, there were the horror stories, of video players chewing up and tangling the tape inside the video cassette beyond repair, but the hard work and hassle we put into these machines and gadgets earned them heart, I’m sure. With everything done for us today with very little time and effort, there’s no emotional bond. And another thing, I say like a fuddy-duddy who’s remembered something else to say, long after the argument’s fizzled out, and another thing, my video players and cassettes still work perfectly, thank you very much. Heck, we even still own the first video my mother ever bought, a collection of music videos by her favourite band, Elvis Costello And The Attractions, bought from a HMV in 1986. And even that still works with no problems.
Idents in particular were a big influence on my formative years. I’ve always been more of a visual learner, and so it’s no surprise that some of the longest-remembered images in my mind are of the idents shown on British television from my babyhood to childhood. The BBC globes, long may they rest in peace, the COW and Virtual World in particular spinning triumphantly, at a time that must have seemed like they’d keep on spinning forever. The first generation of Lambie-Nairn 2s, arty and elegant in their viridian splendour, the oh-so British designs of LWT and Thames Television, and the hyperactive coloured blocks that created a number 4, always, whenever I caught it, just before the horse racing presented by John McCririck, who used to terrify me as a child (and still does, to a certain extent). Other visual nightmares included the COW globe version of the BBC Video ident, the urgency and seriousness of the music creating a truly petrifying atmosphere, before finally allowing me to sit back and enjoy The Clangers. And let us not forget the excitement of Children’s BBC and Children’s ITV, and the anticipation of kids TV time when waking up so early that the Open University hadn’t even ended yet. All of this simple magic is completely lost on today’s children.
But these are only my memories to go by. Anyone born before or up until the early nineties will have their own memories, fond ones I’m sure, of analogue television and a life before a digital reign. Even I’ve only scratched the surface of my own. Of course the privileges we have today, of twenty-four hour television, Sky +, High Definition and everything else, are very much appreciated, and there are many people out there who have gone so far, they’d almost certainly never survive should such treats disappear. All that is asked for, at least from me, is a little nod to the era that came before. To look back on what once made analogue television so great and so important, and hopefully I’ve done at least a tiny part of that in my writing. Sadly, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the switchover occurs with absolutely nothing in the TV listings paying homage to such a golden age. Just because analogue television is a redundant technology, does not mean it should be forgotten and never spoken of again.
In a perfect world I’d get everyone who still owned a video player and cassettes somewhere up in their attics, to spare an afternoon, set up the equipment for the first time in years, and see what’s on those tapes. Tapes used to record things off the TV in the eighties and nineties are often treasure chests of images, be they from one linear broadcast, or random, fractured collages – programmes, adverts, and continuity only expected to be seen as they happened, and only still existing now because they were there when the machine started recording. Once, their greatest threat was of being taped over by something else. Now the threat is of being discarded, destroyed, and forgotten, and most people have already delivered that fate.
And even if you can’t be bothered to do all of that, at least be grateful that we wouldn’t be here at all without the analogue TV we started off with, all the way back in 1936. Be grateful as you pay your license fee, that the company that money goes to were the ones who propelled us into a world with TV in the first place (and of course Marconi-EMI and John Logie-Baird). Feel free to feel cheated that ITV is no longer as special and personal as it was with regional franchises, but be grateful that our four original channels, no matter what your opinion of them, are still here after all these years, proof that there are things that not even the digital age has yet to kill off. For those of us who can and will continue to remember, we’ll be watching TV for the rest of our lives with a digital brain, but at the same time, with an analogue heart.
Next Week: My very own Ode To Analogue poem, written to commemorate this bittersweet moment in TV history.
Greetings my lovelies. Time for another poem, nyah? Well here it is, the next poem in my “chronology” as an evolving writer, and probably my second most well-known. Written sometime in the late spring of 2008, not very long after my penning of the famous “Mitsukai”, “Miwaku No Nihon” was on the one hand a continuation of my expressed love for Japan through poetry, but also something of a departure and growth. Rather than just write about the mysticism and magic of Visual Kei, this time I branched out further with something more to say.
As with many western fans of Japanese music, the language barrier can sometimes be unbreakable. I’m lucky that many of my favourite Japanese artists have easily-found translations of their lyrics scattered around the internet, but even then it’s not always quite the same. Ever since falling in love with J-Rock, J-Pop, and Visual Kei, I longed to be able to properly learn that beautiful language that is Japanese. I didn’t just want to understand what my treasured singers were singing, I wanted to dream that one day I really could travel to Japan, converse with people, survive and thrive and live.
Needless to say, my knowledge of the language grows no further than learning the odd bit of new vocabulary every now and then, and there’s only so far you can teach yourself with a book. Japanese is one of the few languages I’d give my left arm to learn, with proper teachers and other students to bounce off of, and one that I believe, because of my strong desire, that I’d actually enjoy and therefore be certain to improve at. Having practically failed at French and Spanish at secondary school, and having a bilingual boyfriend, only makes my penniless dreams all the more desperate and strong.
“Miwaku No Nihon”, roughly translated as “Fascination With Japan” clearly documents those desires. And as my boyfriend and I feasted on sushi at a Japanese restaurant in Hampstead on Valentine’s Day last week, I knew deep down that even today there are the constant little reminders, that my love for the country I’ve never seen will hardly diminish any time soon. Maybe one day I will get the chances, to visit and to speak. Maybe one day, “when I’m a famous writer”… Only time will tell for now.
Miwaku No Nihon
By Rachel Jones
Konnichiwa! Watashi no namae wa Rae desu. Hajimemashite!
I want to go
To Tokyo,
Where the buildings pierce the sky,
Put on my very spotlight,
By glittering neon signs
Learning a new language,
Exploring the unknown,
Feeling my way through forests of words
Grammatical tangles
Of twigs tugging at my torso,
Vocabulary blossoming,
Euphoric foreign language
Streaming from my mouth…
Kioku Miwaku Tsuioku
Lost in the city,
The glittering neon signs,
Signs and symbols I cannot read,
Coded messages I cannot understand
Some moment, some day,
The incoherence will shed away
But impatiently I stare with emerald envy eyes
At the smiling English boy on the bus
Writing strings of Katakana
Across the frosted windows
Sora Kakera Kyomu
Some moment, some day,
The incoherence will shed away…
Hey guys, just writing to say that issue 3 of The BiteMagazine is out now! The winter 2012 issue, the first on which I have worked as a writer, is free and available to download. Inside the fashion and beauty magazine you’ll find articles covering the newly-opened Westfield Stratford Shopping Centre, the Karen Millen eyewear range at Specsavers (a celebration, rather than degradation, of spectacles that will certainly please fellow loud-and-proud glasses wearers like myself), catwalk collections, and much more, including music reviews by none other than yours truly!
If you’re into fashion and beauty, you won’t go wrong by downloading a free magazine like The Bite. It’s a surreal experience, being a person who clothes-wise is firmly placed in the realm of gothic and alternative, writing for a magazine that focuses on more mainstream music, fashion, and other designer things, but one that I’m thoroughly enjoying nonetheless. By downloading, reading, and spreading the word of The Bite to any like-minded friends, you’ll be doing a great favour not just for me, but for all of the other writers, photographers, stylists, etc, who are working for this new publication. So go on, be stylish and read The Bite.
It’s increasingly hard to keep up this blog without the urgency of floods of readers and fans. But either way, I’m back again at last, determined to fit in one more post before the old year is out. In the gap between Christmas and New Year, which I still personally and technically regard as the Christmas period, what better time than to post a poem with a loosely related title! “Mitsukai”, Japanese for “angel”, has nothing lyric-wise to do with the holiday, but hopefully it will be heavenly and magical enough to not matter.
To date this is probably my most famous poem (at least amongst the few who are aware of my work), not least because it’s been published in two poetry anthologies, and is often a staple of my performances at open mic nights. I’m proud of all my poems, but this was the first one I truly felt to have publishing potential… and the potential to be remembered and returned to again and again. And you know what? Those familiar with it often do.
I won’t go too much into the background of this poem; on the surface it is largely a fantasy story-like piece anyway. All I will say is that, written sometime in the spring of 2008, it was still in places inspired by that Visual Kei obsession, even if it isn’t as obvious here as in the others before it. Come to think of it, I can still remember being in the family car, and later at a bus stop, thinking up lines for this very poem. And that normality of town and city life is very much embedded within the piece, just as much as the fantasy. As you would expect from the title, I also find it to be one of my most spiritual of poems. My stepmother once interpreted it as a poem about death. In this instance, I will neither agree nor disagree. I will leave it to every individual reader to come up with their own interpretation.
PS, If you want a copy of the poem, it was published for the second time this summer, in the anthology Life Is Too Short, Look For Silver Linings, published by A-Muse Magazine. It made a perfect Christmas present for some of my relatives!
Mitsukai By Rachel Jones
“Cheer up”, said the Mitsukai,
The Mitsukai with the thousand eyes
He covered me with vines
Forest vines that entangle and intertwine,
Tying my skinny frame to his,
Crushing ribcage and mixing skin,
Until we were neither man nor woman
One in a faded grey million
Our single, deformed body
Danced up into the sky,
Waltzing through mists
Of enchating prose and foreign tongue
And looking back down
At the city below,
I wondered why I saw myself,
Myself before I had a twin,
Still sitting on the roof of a stranger’s car,
Wishing us
A wonderful new life
The new EP “Five” by Japanese singer-songwriter Ayumi Hamasaki
Any year that Ayumi Hamasaki does not release a record will be a very dull year. It has become quite usual and expected that Japan’s most successful and influential female singer-songwriter releases an album merely a year after the last, ensuring that boredom amongst fans never has time to settle in. The second EP of her thirteen-year career, Five, was released on the 31st August, just eight months after her last album, Love Songs. The one thing you cannot call Miss Hamasaki is lazy.
With every recent release, there have been the sceptics who wonder when the thirty-three year old will reach her sell-by date, and whether each new record will signal the beginning of that process. Thankfully, Five is not that record. Opening with “Progress”, stern strings and a twinkling piano lead us into a false sense of security; such instrumentation has become a bit of a regular occurrence since the singles of last year’s album, as has the slow, epic way in which Hamasaki sings in the first two minutes. But then comes the unexpected twist. Admittedly, there are many songs of Hamasaki’s that have suddenly and without warning changed tempo, instruments, genre, or melody, but every time a new one comes out, it still has the power to shock and surprise. Beyond the two-minute mark, “Progress” is a loud and speeding rock song, one that can only be given justice when zooming down a long and deserted road. And as for the lyrics, the aspect of Hamasaki’s artistry that is the most admired and inspirational for her fans, they’re certainly proving that Ayumi still has a lot to say.
“I was fighting in that time, and in that place / I wonder if all my deeds have chosen the way I am now? / I wonder if it’s because I want to be forgiven / That I try to forgive the past I could not face, left behind, and looked away from…“
Translated from Japanese.
Second track “Another Song” is the second duet Hamasaki has made with Japanese R’n'B singer Naoya Urata, the first one of which, “Dream On”, she wrote and produced for him last year. Ayumi Hamasaki isn’t really a duet-person at all; for the majority of her career she’s confined such an act to TV appearances on occasions such as Christmas and New Year, so it’s surprising that she’s recorded three in the past twelve months, two of which are on this EP. “Another Song” is a smooth and relaxing jam that even by Ayumi’s lyrical standards, does not require the listener to think too hard. In fact the lyrics, telling the tale of lost love and the end of a romance, seem almost dumbed-down compared to the others, and it’s hard to tell if that’s simply the R’n'B influence seeping through and leaving its mark.
Third song “Why…”, a duet with male South Korean singer Juno, is a much more impressive effort. It’s a touching pop rock ballad with sweet and delicate verses, and emotional, heartstring-tugging choruses. It’s also a lament to a lost love, but unlike “Another Song”, the lyrics are packed with the unique and thought-provoking admissions of the narrator’s flaws and mistakes that make Hamasaki’s songs so interesting. Her vocals are much more confident and dominant than in the former, as well.
The fourth track, “Beloved”, is also a ballad, but one which adopts the tried and tested formula of ethereal piano and elegant string orchestra, and later on, non-threatening electric guitars. The safe instrumentation would be disappointing coming from anyone else, but is redeemed by the pure and honest emotion with which Hamasaki sings. The romantically epic climax is expected, but just as expected, yet more impressive, is the unrelenting truthfulness in Hamasaki’s lyrics – that even in her musical celebrations of love, she never lets the idealistic heart go one step over the world-weary head.
“My dear, how do you see me, how do I look in your eyes? / My dear, I want you alone to tell me the truth, and scold me when I am wrong…
My dear, I know that actually / You aren’t so strong, either / And I know that I can do nothing for you / But I’m always embracing your heart.”
Translated from Japanese.
By this point in the record, the heart-racing energy and urgency of “Progress” seems a long way away after the one mellow track and two ballads, so the expectations for the fifth and final track are extremely high. In fact, “Brilliante” not only moves the EP to a completely different mood, away from any traces of romance, but it is also, quite frankly, the best song saved until last. It is one of those extremely rare occasions when the music is neither composed by Hamasaki herself or another Japanese composer, but by a western musician, in this case, the British Timothy Wellard. And what a triumph this song is.
Using Middle Eastern instruments and perpetual operatic backing vocals that can only be described as sounding demonic, this song is sensual and erotic, spiritual and other-worldly, chilling and disturbing, all rolled into one, and the music video is equally nightmarish. As Hamasaki sings her bitter lyrics of disillusionment with individuals and with people as a collective, she goes from sounding like a sultry temptress to a desperate, frightened, and hopeless being.
“I’ve decided that this is my last time to write, / Thinking of you / I won’t tell you the reason / This is the biggest present from me…
There is no energy left / To be able to cry or shout / A human is entirely / Caught in nothingness, isn’t he?“
Translated from Japanese.
This is the reason why Ayumi Hamasaki has such power in Asia – her music spans countless genres, keeps us guessing, makes us think, and makes us experience memories and emotions we never knew we had. Nearly every one of her records has moments as glorious as this, and it’s this song alone that is enough evidence that if there’ll ever be a moment where she “reaches her sell-by date”, Hamasaki’s reign still has a long way to go before that happens. There is no-one as mainstream in the western world as she is in Asia, that comes anywhere close to being as creative and thought-provoking, eclectic, diverse, and moving. Most westerners, force-fed dull and diluted pop, R’n'B, and indie marketed as something revolutionary, have no idea what they’re missing.
By March 2008, my love for Visual Kei androgynes had far from diminished. It was the 90s Visual Kei band Lareine that inspired me to write my next poem, “Kawaii Hybrid” (“Kawaii” is Japanese for “cute”). That and a random, slightly immature, one-off conversation with a friend that culminated in the conclusion that to be a guy cross dressing as a girl will always be more colourful, imaginative, and fun (think of how much more interesting women’s clothes are in comparison to most men’s clothes), than a girl cross dressing as a guy. Hence the “she” in my poem, turning into a king, only to then dress femininely once more.
At university a poetry tutor once suggested changes to the poem, in terms of changing lines or getting rid of them altogether, which unfortunately stripped away the entire meaning of the poem when done so. Given that “Kawaii Hybrid” had already by then existed for nearly three years, I was extremely reluctant to change anything about it, for reasons I have already discussed in blogs showcasing even older poems – that to do so would be to deny the way I once wrote and thought, however unpolished, inexperienced, and unstructured I may have been. In the end, I changed the poem for the tutor and for the university assignment of which it was part of, but for my own personal collection, future performances, and for this blog, the poem is to be as unchanged as it was when I first wrote it, message and meaning still in tact.
Kawaii Hybrid
By Rachel Jones
I wish…
She could transform,
Burn the rulebook,
Burn the silks, the pretty little things
She’s stiched to so elegantly,
So full of grace and beauty
I wish…
She could transform
Into a brave and fearless King,
The flames that burn the rulebook,
Fruits and flowers fragrance
Soaking into the silks,
The pretty little things
That the King stitches himself to
So elegantly,
So full of grace and beauty
She transforms
Into the brave and fearless King
The King transforms
Into feminine Angel disguises
The rulebook destroyed,
In the land I long to see,
Visual,
She stitches himself
He stitches herself
To elegant grace and beauty
Beyond my wildest wishes
Hello everybody, just writing to announce that in the past few weeks the website www.a-musemag.com has published a poetry anthology, and two of my poems, “Mitsukai” and “Synesthesia” have been included! My many thanks go to Zara M and everybody else at A-Muse Magazine for letting me be included in the publication. You can buy a copy of the anthology Life Is Too Short, Look For Silver Linings by Various Poets from the A-Muse Magazine website, and here is the link:
My deepest apologies for having neglected this blog for a very long time; university work and uni-induced poetry writer’s block caused the need to take a break. But now I am back with another poem from the past, the next in the chronology of my growth as a writer and as a person.
There isn’t really much to say about “Yume” (Japanese for “dream”), other than the fact that it was inspired partly by a real-life dream I had one night, and partly by my love for the growing amount of Visual Kei music I was starting to discover and devour. Written in late 2007, I see this poem as part of a duo with previous one I posted, in the sense that the colourful and scatty nature of ”Boy / Girl” seemed to spill over into “Yume”. As with many of my early poems, I in no way see this (or indeed probably my next scheduled post) as one of my best, but to deny it a place on my blog would be to deny that a part of my old self ever existed.
Yume
By Rachel Jones
Glued to the screen,
My vision blurred,
I caress your face,
Your image on the glass
You’re running too fast
And I’m falling behind
Just a drop of blood
On the golden horizon
You’re slipping away
Like my Dripping Blood Crown
A bloodshot eye
Reflected in cracked mirrors
We fight, we grasp,
But never in my reach
Until the day I catch up with you,
The day you rest
For the first and last time
From a bouquet of white roses
Unveiling a face, the rising of the sun
Muted,
You dream of flight through indigo skies
“Be careful what you wish for”
Rings and screeches in my ears,
Chokes and suffocates in my throat
I’m trapped in a white room,
Rewind to the start
Flying becomes falling,
Roses veil, the setting of the sun,
Resurrection replaces rest,
Red stains fade in the distance
Rewind to the start
And I’ll try again to catch you
Before we rest in slow motion slumber
For the first and last time
