Isolation

This is the beginning of a short story that came to my mind after hearing about the great news that Gwrych Castle has been saved and no doubt inspired by the recent film of Pete's Dragon, as well as The Jungle Book for obvious reasons and the Viggo Mortensen film Captain Fantastic for less obvious reasons, plus documentaries on the Himalayas and cemented by my recent holiday in Costa Rica. Let me know what you think. I can send the rest of it to you if you feel it's worth continuing with...

Grwych Castle as I first saw it, through the trees

With each step, she cursed her parents’ final wishes. They had tried to help by spending their final days in the tower, when they realised how sick they were. But there were a few steps still to climb and she had to catch her breath on every second step. Perhaps bringing both of them together wasn't the best idea, even with the ramp she had set up. But it seemed fitting; they were hardly ever apart when they were alive and they should be the same in death. They even left her alone in the castle for days at a time while they went on their expeditions. However, the view at the top was worth it. Her father had forbidden her to ever climb the tower and, unusually for her, she hadn’t defied him. The tales her grandfather regaled her with had left an indelible impression. He deliberately told her when she was little of the dark history of the turret that reached higher than the canopy, the only one of their towers to do so. The vague memories of him, corrupted by time had only made the stories more potent. Many of the things he told her she didn’t believe, but some of the stories reeked with truth and had given her many a nightmare since. Her mother didn’t speak to her grandfather for a year after he told his only grandchild about the waterfall of blood cascading down the tower.

The breath caught in her throat again when she came out into the open, but for a different reason. The world spun around her, not from the vertigo of the sheer height she had attained, jungle life swinging through the trees had put paid to that, but from the spiralling staircase she had climbed, even at her slow pace. Leaning against the staircase roof, letting it take her weight, she took her bearings. This view she had seen before, from the tallest tree in the area, and her favourite, which grew just outside the castle walls. Even that was overshadowed by the tower, but only just as it peeped out of the trees. It was the only bit of the castle which was visible from above, as it was surrounded by vast dense rainforest. Fortunately, despite the airplanes which sporadically flew overhead, they had never been found. She had long since stopped fearing they would be discovered and now she was on her own, even less so.

Although they didn’t live in the Himalayas, the sky burial had always appealed to her parents. The vultures would have have competition where they lived though, so it would probably be a harpy eagle, monkey or jaguar, if it could make it up that high, that might do the honours instead. She dragged the white linen packages to the centre of the tower, pushed a lock of her mother’s unruly red hair, a more vibrant colour than her own diluted version, that had escaped back inside and waited until the sun went down before she left them alone. No thoughts or feelings entered her mind, no tears were shed and her body was relaxed as she sat there. Listening to the sounds of the rainforest with howler monkeys calling in the distance, watching the butterflies and hummingirds flit about the flowers occasionally tussling to have it all to themselves and watching the lizards hunt insects was a form of meditation. The fears of her complete isolation would come later, in the middle of the night when she woke up shaking under her own canopied shelter. The anxiety that had been suppressed during the long days and nights as she nursed them, only able to watch as they got sicker and sicker, would soon take over. She wasn’t used to it and barely knew what to do. So she ran and ran and ran until she reached the river and plunged in, the shock of the cold supplanting the shock of her grief. On her return, she looked up at the dark walls and considered her future by searching her past.

The castle was a ruin and only a few rooms were habitable, there were too few of them, their numbers dwindling over the years and generations, to return it to its former glory. She had always preferred to live outside anyway, with barely a roof over her head. It was miles to any other man-made structure; the pyramids they occasionally visited were deep in the jungle to the west, across the border to another country. The explorers who discovered those pyramids never found the castle hidden in the jungle, built by a Scottish family who fled their homeland after the battle of Culloden, foreseeing the loss of their heritage and proud national freedom. What possessed them to build a castle in a rainforest had been lost in the stories handed down by each generation. What was left was only a vague outline of trying to bring a bit of their old home to their new one. The local tribe were the sole people who knew they were there, but they keep their distance now, after an initial friendliness and trade of knowledge and supplies; when the building started, they never came by again. She occasionally sees them through the trees, but neither approaches the other. Although she knew she would have to when she came of age. Their actions to ensure they kept the bloodline going almost erupted into outright hostilities. Her father prevented that coming to pass.

A few days go by and the first vestiges of grief are breaking through the numbness that settled in, or she allowed to settle in, after the anxiety threatened to overwhelm her. Her sobbing wails attracted a few animals which she saw off easily and scared off a few more, which was more problematic as she was trying to catch them at the time to add to her food supplies. The future was becoming more oppressive, but the decision of what to do next seemed too large to make. It loomed over her, especially when she was trying to get to sleep. It couldn't be put off for much longer. Loneliness was not a problem, but isolation could be. Her independence worried her family at first, then they realised it was a blessing in disguise; dragging herself home after breaking her ankle in a bad fall silenced them. Dying alone was the thing that frightened her most; her parents had each other at the end, but she had no one.

So the next time she saw a tribesman, she stalked him. There was no need as she knew where their village was, but it was good practice. It was pointless all the same as he was too good of a tracker and hunter to not know she was there. But he hadn't counted on her training, handed down from generation to generation, provided by one of his ancestors no doubt. He tried to lose her a few times and at the last attempt, she let him think he'd succeeded and his complacency was his downfall. As the village appeared through the trees, a beautiful forest glade she had visited a few times in her curiosity, despite her father's warnings, she crouched down low and waited for nightfall, which always came suddenly.

Under the freedom of dark, her small figure crept past the guards and made its slow way to the chief's hut, using the various structures and other huts as cover. As expected, she was not accosted and burst in to see the chief, using surprise as her entry pass. Before anyone could grab her, her knife was at the chief's throat and the few people in the hut froze. Slowly she turned round and took them in. That was when she realised her mistake. The tribesmen she had thought she would have to fight off, before she could overpower the chief and force him to take her in; their code of honour stating that any great fighter would be welcomed into their village; were not there and in their place white people like her. The obvious leader who had until a moment ago been sitting down with the chief had startled into a standing position. A man behind him had a metal contraption with what looked like a telescope on the end; it was pointed at her and her immediate thought was she was in trouble. It wasn't what she feared, though it did look like a threatening weapon, but she was in trouble all the same. Before anyone could make a move, she barged past them, knocking what she would later learn was a camera out of the man's hands and fled.

Over the next few days, she cowered in the castle, doing the bare minimum as to upkeep, her previous forays had kept her food stocks at full capacity. All the while, she assumed she would be invaded. The defences were all set up, after extensive repairs due to lack of use. Nothing happened. The anticipation escalated her anxiety and when the invaders finally did arrive, they found her incapacitated in the middle of the castle courtyard. Anxiety turned to panic, the body she could always rely on failed her and her athletic legs had crumpled under her. A tribesman had clearly been persuaded to lead them there and when their eyes locked, they seemed to apologise. When she tried to stand to run away from them, she found that she could not move, her legs were locked in position, though her heart was pumping as if she were running a marathon. That was when the world swam in front of her eyes and when she could see again, she was being carried away. The scream that was developing in her throat got lodged and she struggled for breath. The limbs that had sealed her fate, came back to life and she flailed in the man's arms. He dropped her more in surprise than pain. There was no fight left in her, but her flight took her to her sanctuary. That was where they found her, asleep; the adrenalin that had gotten her there had caused her to crash out.

Common sense prevailed and they let her rest, only in favour of exploring the castle in wonder and complete bewilderment. The top of the tallest tower had been blocked up; she had left her parents up there and didn't look back. So there was no blundering into making a gruesome discovery. When they returned to find her waking up, they did make one blunder, cornering her in her safe haven under the canopy she had made herself. They soon learned their mistake with a few minor injuries, but when they had her pinned down, telling her to keep still, they almost let her go in shock, when she replied "I will nae give up." "You're Scottish!" The pale white of her skin may be suntanned and made less harsh over the generations, the strong Scottish blood watered down by successions of tribesmen and women, but the red of her hair was still clear to see and her accent was as broad as a true highlander.

When her mother had taken a local man to her bed, keeping him captive until she was sure she was with child, they were all astounded that he didn't immediately flee when he was freed, instead he stayed with them and became part of the family. She was the first of their family to be truly half Scottish and half tribesman. How they retained the red hair was a mystery even to them, but they were grateful for it. The accent was simpler to maintain. It was what saved her now and more importantly them. With the leader of their group on top of her and her struggling to get away, she almost missed it. But when she heard it, she suddenly stilled and peered through her hair at the man who had spoken. "Nae lassie, do not keep on so." His hair was black and his eyes blue, not the red and green of her own, but she recognised something of herself in him, beyond his accent which was softer than hers. His hand reached out for hers and she took it, letting him lift her up and into a strong hug which slowed her heart down and her racing thoughts. The anxiety about her future dissipated as with a few words and one action, she knew she was alone no more.

Music therapy

I have brought music back into my life. I realised how little music I listen to, just as part of film and TV soundtracks and on long car journeys: the only time I listen to the radio. It was a big part of one of my old jobs and it was crucial there; working at a police station can be extremely stressful. We listened to the radio, all day every day. I have a playlist full of music from that time and after the annual Cambridge Librarians conference I created a new one, which you can see on Spotify.

It's one of the three new year resolutions I made; I know, I don't usually make them, but I find myself at a transition point in my life mentally and I needed to make some changes: music via some cordless headphones, health and fitness (the first part being out of my hands and in the doctors') and writing my book, which is going slowly. However this is helping as music is a big part of my book. I toyed with the idea of at the beginning of each chapter naming a song as a thematic device, but that became too unwieldy. So, using Scott Pilgrim as inspiration; the author listed the songs he listened to when he was writing the book at the end; I have created a playlist for the book, which I will put on Spotify if it gets published.

Scott Pilgrim

Music helps me emotionally, so I don't know how I've done without it for so long. However I know why; in-ear headphones affect my balance as it changes the pressure inside my ears. Over-ear headphones are fine, but the cord gets in the way, so I needed cordless headphones. They're the best Christmas present I've had for years as they have changed my life. Listening to music over lunch has improved my mood no end, especially as I've been tipping towards depression. It's been long overdue as it is quite common with anxiety sufferers, but now I have a handle on my anxiety, it has started to manifest. The Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack has been helping. The conference was too much for 70s and 80s music to combat though. Big social occasions overwhelm me, on three fronts: mentally, physically and both together. The social anxiety of having to mingle and make conversations, alongside crowds of people putting me literally off balance due to my vestibular condition and all the noise, commotion and activity affecting my high sensitivity. So, just like with the Christmas party, mentioned in my Quiet book review post, I was grateful to have a job to focus on; because my workplace was hosting it, I helped make sure our library looked the best it could be, creating posters and plasma screen slides beforehand and displays on the day. When I felt overwhelmed, I had the excuse to pop back and check on things, plus my natural conscientiousness drove me to do that anyway! There, I could deal with fewer groups of people, showing them round. However, unlike the party, I had to focus and listen and take things in. I had to engage my brain, so I really had to manage my issues which was doubly exhausting.

After the conference, I had adrenalin overload, a consequence of the anxiety. I did pop my head in the pub afterwards, but when I cringed every time I said anything, imagining social fauxpas, I knew I had to go home. I was right, as it kicked in when I got in the door. So I had to slow things down. If I don't do anything, it could trigger a panic attack and the subsequent adrenalin comedown, both aren't pretty and make me feel awful. So keen to avoid that, I went home and listened to my wind down playlist as I call it. The One Show and Death in Paradise, cosy, good-hearted and mildly challenging TV helped too. There are few Cafe Del Mar type pieces of music as my chillout tunes need words and lyrics, otherwise I can't connect with it. Let me know your own wind down music. Books are the ultimate way to wind down for me though.

I won't include the full list of songs here as you can see, and hear, it on Spotify; I've called the playlist wind down obviously. Instead, here is some of the reasoning behind my song picks: blur as Damon Albarn's just-got-out-of-bed voice is soothing and has real meaning behind it, not the youthful exuberance of their earlier songs, excepting The Universal, but those from Think Tank; Travis, my favourite band would always make an appearance, their mellower later tracks are beautiful and Fran's lyrics and melodies speak to me like nothing else; Leftfield as I'm always lulled by their tunes; The Levellers' Elation is a song that sends me to another place; Moondance is one of my favourites of all-time and the version from the film August Rush reminds me of a great moment; Shakespear's Sister is a real nostalgia trip and Stay takes me back in time to listening to the radio on my way home from swimming, all sleepy and relaxed; Sit Down by James has some of my favourite lyrics which make me feel like I'm not alone; Vangelis is one of the best film composers and his music is so out of this world I'm not me anymore; there are songs that bring back memories from great films and TV like Disney which would always make it to any of my playlists, the dreamy The Life Aquatic, seductive performances in The Bronze on Buffy, the excellent Veronica Mars soundtrack and music from my favourite TV series Alias; Elbow's Mirrorball can send me to sleep in the best way; Into Dust by Mazzy Star is trance-like; some songs are self-explanatory just from their titles such as Moby's Down Slow, Will Young's Let It Go  and Simon and Garfunkel's The Sound of Silence, one of my favourite songs ever; some artists are just perfect for winding down to such as The Lighthouse Family's smooth tones; and finally Gotta Get Thru This was the soundtrack to my first panic attack-ridden months and was one of the things that literally got me through. I will be forever grateful to Daniel Bedingfield for bringing that song out when he did, so the acoustic version is my go-to to wind me down when nothing else will work.

There are songs I wanted to include, but were either too emotive like Sarah McLachlan, come from films or TV programmes that had too big an impact on me or were songs that remind me of a part of my life that isn't conducive to relaxation. The exception that proves the rule is the Star Trek: Voyager theme as it reminds me of early evenings when I was a kid, warm and snuggly after I'd had my bath. I hope you find some of these helpful, they mostly have a slow rhythm that mimics a relaxed heartbeat and none of them are melancholy, but hopeful and neutral.

Bonus: Here's a Travis song not on Spotify, a lovely Viennese Waltz style song all about me!

Proud to be a Geek: Inside Out review

In another life, I was a film reviewer. I started when I was at university, writing for the Anglia Ruskin student newspaper. That was fun and helped me find my voice. Then I worked for the Cambridge Film Festival; I did some reviews and interviewed the most important film director in Albania (at the time, maybe still) for the festival daily: Kujtim Çashku. That's a story in itself as the venue changed right at the last minute and I ended up interviewing him, along with his wife, his protégé and his wife in the Arts Picturehouse bar! I also got to see Pirates of the Caribbean 2 all by myself in one of the screens, which was brilliant but weird. I wrote reviews for an independent film reviewer's website, for Local Secrets and via my Flixster account. You can still read my Local Secrets reviews as they're still on the website. I have gathered them together via MultiURL. Finally I reviewed on a radio show: 209radio which became Cambridge 105; the Bums on Seats team is still going strong, headed up by Toby Miller who occasionally hosts the film quiz at Cambridge Arts Picturehouse; it's on every first Monday of the month.

Miss Potter review

As much as I love films, reviewing them made me lose the enjoyment of watching them and having to go to the cinema to see films I didn't necessarily want to see started to grate. Plus I always took it personally when people didn't like my reviews and reviewers have more power than they know: the power to influence whether someone goes to see a film or not. People can forget that film critics are people with opinions and that's all a review is, one person's opinion. That's why I try to include facts in my reviews, to make my writing less subjective, like with the Miss Potter one above. I think the final straw was Superhero Movie. I no longer go to the cinema unless it's for a film I really want to see, which is only a few times each year, rather than at least 3 times a month. I still blame Bums on Seats for getting me into Twilight, though reading the books, practically devouring them in one sitting, made me disgusted with it. But I learned a lot reviewing, especially on the radio show, and my life is more insular now as I'm not seeing films I might otherwise have passed by; the films I watch are much less broad now. The reviewing did wonders for my confidence, my writing and for my world view.

My fictional library website

My film geekery lead me to take film studies modules at university; I wrote a piece on the trend for making sequels that is as true today as it was when I wrote it. I created a website for my Librarianship degree for a fictional geeky library. It's still up and running! I called it the Abrams' Library after the creator of my favourite TV series Alias, who's done rather well for himself since and proved his geek credentials by directing both the new Star Trek films and the new Star Wars. And my Pinterest page is pretty much taken up by my love of films, TV and books.

My Pinterest page

So it takes a special film to make me want to review it, a film that really means something to me. Jersey Boys was the first in many years and Inside Out is the next film and surely won't be the last.

I must admit, I'm an out and out Disney fan and by extension a Pixar fan. I grew up with Disney; I have only just finished converting my Disney VHS collection to DVD, having received a Disney film each Christmas as a kid from one of my aunties. However this is going to be an objective review, not biased by sentiment. However Disney and Pixar have always been at the top of the animation game, really only rivalled by Studio Ghibli in terms of quality and quantity. Their output has relatively recently veered away from the princesses and fairytales, Brave being a notable exception but Merida is not your typical Disney princess. Toy Story may have started it all, through talking animals, monsters, superheroes and cars. However it was with the space saga Wall-E, a tale of two robots and with an environmental lesson as its theme, that the animation studio started to do something different. It continued with the left of field Up with an old man as its central character. But even by these standards, Inside Out is different.

The Numskulls. Credit: The Beano

When I first heard about it, I was intrigued. I loved the idea of a film which personified emotions and showed the workings of the mind. The premise of human-like creatures controlling us inside our bodies reminded me of The Numskulls, comic characters that feature in The Beano. But where The Numskulls control us physically, Inside Out concentrates on how emotions control us and how the mind works. So even if they did take The Numskulls as inspiration, though The Numskulls writers have said it bares a mere passing resemblance and suggested so in a special cartoon (shown above), they have done something completely different with the idea.

Inside Out may be a kid's film and a Disney Pixar one at that, but there is so much going on, so many references and you can take it on so many levels, I could write an essay on this film. I expect university students will write theses on it in years to come. But I won't, I just want to say why it made such an impression on me. And now it's out on DVD and I've seen it for a second time, I thought it was the right moment.

Inside Out

As with all Disney and Pixar films, Inside Out is for people of all ages, from the youngest, to the eldest. Everyone will see something different in it. But a child could watch it year on year and get something new out of it as they get older; it shows how we change as we grow up. I hope they don't do a sequel with Riley as a teenager, though the short that's on the DVD is great.

The film has a very slight plot and is essentially about how moving house affects a young girl: Riley. Inside Out shows how the five main emotions that rule her head determine her actions: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust. When Joy and Sadness are accidentally ejected from Riley's control room along with the core memories that define her personality, they go on a journey through her mind to return to save Riley from being overtaken by her fear, anger and disgust.

Imagination Land

For children, a lot of the film will go over their heads, but they'll love the vibrant colours, Bing Bong and the other characters. For older kids though, it will help them understand how emotions work, control you and how they act together. It helped me and I've done a lot of self-analysis over the years! Inside Out has been adopted by mental health experts, sufferers and charities as a way to explain mental illness. It has helped children to understand their mental problems and parents to explain to their children theirs. This is a brilliant thing. The film was created as a way for the writers to explore the changes their children were going through to become teenagers. I think it was such a hit because Americans loved it as they're used to therapy, for our less self-analytical nation it has impact, but in a more subtle way.

Inside Out is really inventive and detailed, showing you the train of thought, imagination, long-term memory and even abstract thought, excelling at showing you how memories can change, how by remembering things later in life it can colour the memory, particularly with sadness; nostalgia literally means homecoming pain or ache. Memories are really what this film is all about. What happens to our memories as we get older. The story of Bing Bong, the childhood imaginary friend is heartbreaking.

Bing Bong

I think it hit me hard thanks to my years of anxiety and I wish they had showed less of Joy and Sadness and more of the others, especially Fear. The only other way they could have improved it is by doing more of what they showed during the credits and during the stand-out scene at the dinner table, inside others' heads and not just Riley's. But the bittersweet ending is wonderful.

Basically, I urge everyone to see it and you'll probably get something different out of it to me!

To twitter or not to twitter

I've been hoping there's a way round this one, but I can't see how to get out of it seeing as though I can't complete Cam23 without it, so I've created my own personal Twitter account. I've got an addictive personality (I've recently got obsessed with Glee; I spent practically my whole day off yesterday watching it), so that's why I've been actively avoiding Twitter for so long. I'm the same about any new technology: Napster, myspace, facebook... Take mobile phones as an example; I'm still using my first phone, the Nokia 3310 which I got in 2002.

I have been using the Judge Library's Twitter account, but only to post about work information such as new books and things, that's why I haven't felt the need to make my own account. I knew it would happen, that I'd get into it too fast too soon; I started off innocently selecting people to follow, along with the obligatory ones like Stephen Fry, I added John Cusack, DisneyPixar and Peter Serafinowicz. I've just found Miranda Hart too, I adore her TV series and she's always good fun on panel shows, in interviews and as a guest on the likes of the Strictly Come Dancing backstage gossip show It Takes Two. She was awesome by the way. I'm going to stop now before I get in too deep, I've replied to a couple of tweets so I'm being obedient.

I agree with the essay about categorising and tagging as I'm against pigeonholing of any kind. I'm not even sure how useful the subject classifications are in library cataloguing to be honest, I don't use them when searching as they're so subjective, no pun intended. Although I do put them in when cataloguing of course. Therefore I agree with Shirky's comments about how biased it all is. I especially like this quote from the essay: "The essence of a book isn't the ideas it contains. The essence of a book is "book." Thinking that library catalogs exist to organize concepts confuses the container for the thing contained." Jeez, I hate the American way of spelling. To combat the limits of tagging and categorising, I've labelled this post with as many things as possible and deliberately added references to this post to make it as full as possible. I've also dutifully added more tags to my previous posts and I've just found that there is a 200 character limit; it's being pesky about it...

I've been having fun commenting on everyone's blogs. It can take the smallest of things to make me feel the urge to comment, from a picture of a Miyazaki film, to beautiful photos; all it takes is a common interest. I'm loving libgeek's Terry Pratchett titled blog, Ange's Grease-themed blog title and Helen's frequent references to popular culture (told you I'd get my own back).

All this new technology has made me long for the more innocent times when we didn't rely on all our computers and they were just for fun. Anyone remember the Commodore 64?