Category: Perspective

By Serena

It is Sunday evening so I am hoping for the release of death. I know that I am being perhaps dramatic- that two nights spent putting alcohol in my body may simply be having its consequences. Nonetheless, I cannot help but think the only sensible course of action is a sudden and immediate death. Instead, I will tell housemates that I “have really bad hangxiety lol” and stay in my room, thinking about such things as What I Have Done and The Person I Am Becoming. Wonderful. It’s ridiculously indulgent: navel gazing as self-flagellation. 

It has been a rollercoaster of a weekend. Jubilant nights: eyes swimming in their sockets, seeing angels in the Jimmy’s bathroom, possessing but a Woodgate and a dream. Oh to be back there! Slurring obscenities in the smoking area, mouth agape and acrid! Shit-eating grin, doing the dance, having SO MUCH FUN. Forget academic validation, sporting success, reciprocated feelings of love- that’s the good stuff. Things do often take a turn for the worse- blacking out, being replaced by a stranger with my face and my voice and the moral compass of a Spartan. Hungover me is terrified of blacked-out me. It’s Jekyll and Hyde, and Hyde is a D1 rascal- she does not play well with others. 

Waking up brings fresh horrors. Sober, finally, I feel the weight of the day in my palm. Nasty ritual I have developed: listless, partially dressed, staring at my phone, half-baked platitudes circling my mind like that will soothe me. Nauseous, shaking slightly, breathing manually- the hangover-resistance of my youth has left me. 

First come the resolutions. What a creature I promise to be! No drinking to excess, be more mindful of others… I devise all manner of plans to become a sparkling paragon of virtue. It’s fine! I have been cast as Woman In Her Twenties. Who am I to veer off-script? I have a responsibility to the fans. The path to self-actualisation is paved with humiliation, I tell myself. This is simply growth in disguise. I’m in the bargaining stage, junkie limbo (my drug of choice being… Isla Negra?). An Augustine confessional- “Lord make me chaste, but not yet!”.  Promises to ‘be better’ like so many Hail Marys, sycophantic and hollow. My insides are necrotic but my heart is hopeful.

This optimism eventually fades, of course. The world is colder on Sundays. Christian vindication, I suppose. Sabbath, day of rest and repentance and a very Catholic kind of guilt. Mutatis mutandis, I will be delivered from sin. I know things are bad when I go all ‘New Age’, listening to Ram Dass and googling “Ayahuasca retreat UK”. Pick a god and pray, baby! It hits four PM and gets dark- there is no reprieve to be had tonight, no warm light of absolution. I realise I am the architect of my own misery. I want my mother, or some abstract concept of my mother. My teetotal housemate has just been for a run and is off to the library. I hate her with every fibre of my being. 

Tomorrow will be a new day, I am sure. Next weekend I will put on a similar performance. Is it all worth it? Hard to say. Is it worth Sisyphus getting to the top of the mountain? Seeing a big rock roll down a mountain is always pretty cool. Amen to that.

Featured Image – Toby Dossett

by Amelia Awan

It was the busiest it had been in years.
I walked up there with one of my closest friends, caked in the mist that had surrounded us since our car journey there. It made the stone circle seem slightly more magical. My friend kept pointing out water droplets, imperfect rocks, branches. They have such a good eye for this type of thing. We immediately parted once we got to the stone circle; I to reflect on prayer, my friend to do some sketching. We both knew the drill by now.

I tied my mandala on the branch of the Wishing Tree. I had made it in a rush 10 minutes before we left the house. Maybe next year I’ll have more time to make something better, something more special. I overheard somebody explaining the Wishing Tree to somebody else, and she specifically pointed me out. “That lady is tying a note on the tree,” she said. I’m so happy to be perceived as an adult.

I walked to the middle of the stone circle. Nobody shouted at me, much to my relief. My eyes alighted to the familiar sight of the fruit left in the middle of the circle as offering. I layed out orange slices in a circle around the rind, trying (and failing) to set it alight. I lit my incense, and crouched next to it for about 10 minutes, once again staring at the circles rising from it. It’s all circles, really. At the end of the day. The earth is a circle, the sun is a circle, the moon is a circle, smoke rises in a circle. Time is a circle.

Sitting next to my incense stick, I confess I did get distracted. A man said to his partner “you need to walk round the circle for good luck. I’m making my own rituals now.” He said it in jest, but I thought it was so beautiful. There were some people burning what looked like sage on the far end of the circle. Several people were there with their dogs. It’s so beautiful how everyone got something different out of it, how everyone came from a different place. I walked back to the Wishing Tree, away from my incense stick: I knew it would continue burning. As I was tying some pieces of string onto the tree, I saw a man on the other side, looking at my mandala. We caught each others eyes. We smiled at each other. I’ll never see him again.

Image Credit – Toby Dossett

By Matt Lo

Popcorn, encased in a rich and buttery history, first started popping up in the Americas thousands of years ago – but has far transcended its original purpose as a means of ceremonial decoration, now a delicious snack enjoyed by all. Sweet, salty, caramel – popcorn comes in all shapes and colors, ranging from diabolical flavors to more subtle appreciations. Throughout my life, I have eaten popcorn from far and wide, trying innovative flavors from various manufacturers, however, there has always been one that stood out against the rest: Garret’s Popcorn. 

Godfrey’s Popcorn, starting from humble beginnings, was born from a love of film, design, and flavor. Being a British soldier during the Second World War, Alfred Godfrey saw that cinema became a much-needed escape, with a particular fondness for fresh popcorn served in the picture house. Driven by a desire to create something tasty, Godfrey’s Popcorn was created; a sweet new maker who experimented with unique flavors, shocking customers. Luke Godfrey, Alfred’s grandson and the co-founder of the company, has recently opened a store in Covent Garden, reintroducing his grandfather’s techniques to a modern audience.

As you may have gathered, this article is not about the best popcorn I have tasted, but rather the second best. Last week, I mistakenly ordered a box of Godfrey’s Popcorn, thinking it to be Garret’s, the best popcorn I tasted as a kid. Ecstatic about the prospect of reaching this high again after a ten year wait, I cracked open a bag. At first, although shocked at the discovery that this popcorn was, in fact, an imposter, I was pleasantly surprised. The caramel was well balanced, perfectly savory and not too sweet, with subtle accents of vanilla and a crunch unmatched. The second bag was one filled with a Biscoff flavored delight. The choice of flavor intrigued me, yet it also left me with a bit of skepticism, fearing it may overpower the natural flavor of the corn. My doubt, however, quickly became a feeling of ecstasy as a moment of realization struck me – popcorn is the best medium for which the brilliance of Biscoff may shine. My fears instantly vanished as the two flavors danced in my mouth in a graceful pás de deux, balancing each other perfectly. The third and final bag was the one I was most excited for, a cheddar cheese flavored popcorn. As an avid cheese fan I knew instantly that I would enjoy this, yet I was not prepared for what came next. The savory cheesiness enveloped my mouth. Each bite, each crunch, left me craving more. Delivering on its signature funk, the cheddar cheese tasted authentic and of high quality, which paired beautifully with the popcorn, being a perfect vessel to deliver such deep flavors.

Although not my intended purchase, I was more than happy to receive this enormous box of popcorn, as one should be. The flavors were playful and inviting and worked brilliantly in the canvas that is corn, with enough surprise to keep taste testers on the edge of their seat. Mass-produced popcorn, being the preferred choice of many, has long overshadowed family run makers, often sacrificing quality for convenience. Commercialization of the product has led many small businesses to shut down due to rising pressure from larger companies, forcing smaller competitors to either bend the knee or leave. I hope, upon reading this, that we give more thought into the ethical concerns of our purchases, whether we are supporting a business worth our time, and if a tastier alternative is out there. The bright red logo of ‘Godfrey’s’ is sure to be a household name, being an example of dedication to craft, quality, and just a hint of luxury. With excellent customer support and a speedy response team, why shouldn’t you go for Godfrey’s?

Featured Image: Meg Boulden

By David Bayne-Jardine

Finally permitted to give in to that festive impulse, on the 1^st of December the world hits ‘go’ on its favourite ritual of organised mania. We haul boxes of decorations down from the attic, hit ‘play’ on Mariah as we march through the cold, and anticipate like giddy children a month of comfort, good food, and boardgame-induced fights. 

Unfortunately, this means the much more significant meaning of this day, muffled and dampened by the tinsel and Bublé tracks, tends to fly under the radar. The 1^st of December is also World AIDS Day – 24 hours set aside to commemorate the estimated 44.1 million people who have died from HIV/AIDS since the first reported cases in 1981. These figures make it one of the deadliest pandemics in global history; for comparison, the worldwide number of confirmed deaths from COVID-19 is 7.1 million.

To this day, there are still tens of millions of people living with HIV/AIDS, and yet it remains a condition as stigmatised as it is unknown. Charities and activists spend much of their time fighting the harmful misconceptions surrounding the disease. For a start, many remain unsure about the difference between the two terms. HIV stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus – the actual pathogen itself that enters a body, attacks its white blood cells, and weakens the immune system to make a patient more likely to develop diseases, infections, and cancers. AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome), however, is the name for the condition of depleted immunity obtained when someone is exposed to the virus. 

Others have misconceptions about the lethality of the disease. No, a diagnosis of HIV is not a death sentence (modern drugs allow a long and healthy life for many with the disease). Others believe it just affects gay men, but in 2023 the majority of new cases in the UK were amongst heterosexual people. 

As a schoolboy, I recall the word ‘AIDS’ being used as an adjective, synonymous with ‘rubbish’ or ‘annoying’. The term was a part of our everyday language, and yet none of us really knew what it meant. Even as a gay man myself, it wasn’t until my early 20s that I finally educated myself on the story of this disease; ironic, considering that it is a story so deeply tied up with that of LGBTQ+ emancipation. Almost all of my mates who I’ve spoken to about HIV/AIDS admit they know next to nothing about it, aside from the fact that a diagnosis is, in the words of one friend, ‘very, very bad news’. 

In the days when the disease was still being largely ignored by politicians, artists played a very significant role in raising public awareness and campaigning for action. One of these figures was Derek Jarman, a renowned British painter, filmmaker, and stage designer who died of AIDS-related illness in 1994, aged 52. His films were known for being highly political, visually stunning,and gloriously punk. Some of his most celebrated works include Caravaggio (his queer biopic of the rebellious Baroque painter), Jubilee, and Blue – a 79-minute still of the titular colour over which the artist meditates on living with AIDS. 

But it is another work created in this same year of declining health, mere months before his passing, that I want to revisit on World AIDS Day. Jarman’s ATAXIA: AIDS IS FUN (1993) is a striking canvas housed in the Tate Modern that is perhaps this artist’s most celebrated and moving painting. Violently spattered and slashed with paint, equal parts angry as it is despairing, ATAXIA offers a profound insight into the artist’s mind mere months before his death. 

What we are first drawn to in this painting is the sense of contrast between the colours themselves and the way they’re deployed. Bright, radiant, almost childish primary colours are applied on a luminous red background with a shocking sense of violence. This dissonance between typically ‘happy’ colours and their brutal application creates a sense of irony, a sort of black comedy that persists as we move through the painting. 

From the mélange of colours, we can quickly make out two lines of text: ‘ATAXIA’, and ‘AIDS IS FUN’. The former, ataxia, is the medical term for what Jarman experienced as the disease took hold of him – a disorder that affects muscle coordination and leaves patients with difficulty walking, writing, and speaking (we can see this reflected in the seemingly uncontrolled form of the painting). The latter line, ‘AIDS IS FUN’, is as disturbing as it is ambiguous. Perhaps it’s a macabre reference to the changes happening in Jarman’s body – the loss of control and new sensations could be considered ‘thrilling’ and ‘fun’ in a bleakly ironic way. 

As we continue rootling through the layers of paint, two more lines of text whisper at us through the canvas. On the bottom, we can make out a desperate and hopeless ‘LETS FUCK’; on the top, ‘BLIND FAIL’ emerges in strokes of murky green, alluding to Jarman’s own loss of sight. In fact, the artist gives the viewer a taste of the experience of blindness through the way information is obscured in the painting. Just as Jarman struggled to make out people and things around him as his eyesight declined, so too does the reader have to squint and scramble to find form and meaning amidst the wash of the canvas’s colours and textures.  

But it’s not just the way we are put in the shoes of the sufferer that makes ATAXIA special. For me, it’s how the painting invokes an image beyond the canvas we see before us. In academic terms, we could call this work ‘palimpsestic’ – the image we see on canvas prompts another image in our head: that of the artist creating the painting. In the violent brushstrokes we can almost see a dying Jarman slashing at the painting, angry at a world that for so long ignored this disease, angry at this disease for cutting his life short. 

In this way, behind the abstract painting lies an intimate and detailed portrait: a visionary artist, desperate and tired in his final months, engaging in a gruelling battle which he is destined to lose. Whilst Jarman stands out as an icon of the AIDS crisis, it is the millions that died before him and the millions that live with HIV to this day that society risks overlooking. I hope that on World AIDS Day, amidst the Christmas chaos, we can spare a thought for these forgotten people. 

Sources:

https://worldaidsday.org/about/

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/hiv-aids

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/coronavirus-disease-(covid-19) (COVID-19)

https://nat.org.uk/about-hiv/hiv-statistics/ational AIDS Trust

Featured Image: Ataxia – Aids is Fun, 1993, Derek Jarman / Tate Collection

By Nicole Ruf

When I was a child, crying fits were a frequent occasion. Whether because I felt things more intensely, or for attention, I am unsure. Something would hurt, and I would cry. And cry, and cry. My father would come to me, kneel to meet my eyes, and explain things to me. He would dissect the world with logic, step by step, with scientific methodology. He would make me breathe and count to ten. And by the time I reached ten, my cheeks were already dry, and those enormous feelings had shrunk into a solved problem, neatly labeled and ready to be forgotten. A gentle lesson in rationality. 

Girls are taught from childhood that emotions are a thing to be contained, that logic and composure are signs of maturity, and that feeling is synonymous to failing. 

This is how we learn to explain things so as not to feel them. 

But these feelings grow as we do, and so does the habit of tidying them away. Somewhere between girlhood and womanhood, the language of reason slips quietly into a language of restraint. What was once a kind lesson becomes a nasty habit. Instead of counting to soothe our tears, we count the calories we eat, the words we speak, the glances we attract, the eternally unbridgeable distance between who we are and who we should be. We become self-conscious, rehearsed, reflective. Somewhere in the process, we trade our chaos for poise. 

What a funny, cruel thing to be a woman; to carry inside all these feelings so vast and so deep, so uncontainable they deform you from within. Worse still, to live in a world that demands you hand them over, tears them from you, turns them abnormal, rationalises them until they have lost their pulse. Your sadness must have a cause, your anger justification, your passions their limit. What a strange thing, to force your heart to fit the mold of the Other, your wishes to their commands, your needs to their whims. You always end up losing. 

The female archive is scattered; diary fragments, forgotten poetry, therapy sessions, late-night conversations with a friend. Each whisper a familiar refrain, carrying the shared burden of attempting to name what is so fervently silenced. The impulse to rationalise one’s feelings is almost universal among women raised in the cult of composure. 

An excerpt from my own diary: “Perhaps I am trying to rationalise my feelings too much. Perhaps I should stop.” 

These recurring phrases and patterns, which my own writing is not exempt from, are not just the bitter aftertaste of personal unrest, but of a collective one. The inheritance of generations of women unsettled by their intellectualised pain and muzzled emotions. 

Private thoughts, or public scripts, whispered into women’s minds and passed between their lips: 

If I am not small I cannot be a woman (not properly, nor successfully). 

If I do not learn silence I cannot be desired. 

If I am so intense, so much, I cannot be of interest. 

With my convictions so sharp, my desires so defined, 

I cannot be softened, cannot be shaped. 

If I cannot be shaped, I cannot please. 

If I do not say what they want to hear, 

I will not be wanted, 

The same goes 

if I do not do 

what is asked of me.

If I am whole, 

I will not fit. 

And if I fit, 

I will disappear. 

If I am not small 

I cannot be 

a woman. 

The catechism of femininity. A doctrine without scripture, taught through repetition; smile, soften, submit, smile, soften, submit. In this faith salvation is found in self-denial and damnation in desire. It demands devotion, asking us to kneel before our own subjugation. 

We bury these thoughts, hide them away from the world because they are too ugly to be seen, and far too irrational (that much we know, even if we all think them nonetheless). Yet as we dig them their graves, we unknowingly pile all that dirt onto ourselves, bury ourselves alive. Beneath the ground, we grow unsatisfied, unfeeling, hollow. To be functional means to be numb, the byproduct of a world that values control more than it does authenticity. 

We learn to see our bodies as burdens; too heavy, too loud, too visible. We are insistent, intense, speak too much, and too soon. Our presence spills over boundaries already drawn out for us. The female form becomes a site of conflict between selfhood and social expectation; being and appearing. To occupy space is a transgression of the worst kind. 

We praise women who take up less room, who bend like silk, soften their edges, make themselves light enough to be carried by a man’s gaze. Those who become what is asked of them; desirable, sensual, small. Mastering the art of being almost, of being seen but never truly known. In this currency we convert performance into power, obedience into love, stagnance into grace. So we all try to fold ourselves thinner, to disappear beautifully, so the world too might applaud. Yet the more we shrink; less air, less noise, less hunger, less body, the more the truth claws its way out, gutting us in its path, leaving us emptied, depthless things. Taxidermied and ready to be used at the will of others. 

It is no coincidence that women’s emotions are pathologised; the hysteric, oversensitive, irrational. The language of medicine and reason has long been used to domesticate feeling. There are times I still find that same sobbing child, hidden away in a corner of my body. I want to tell her there are wounds that only heal if you feel them, that not everything must be explained, much less solved. Perhaps what frightens us is if we stop explaining away our feelings, they might drown us. Perhaps that is exactly what we need. Not to contain ourselves, but to let something overflow.

Featured Image: Tashy Back

By Siena George

‘They’re just spider plants, they can survive anything.’

I was once told this after expressing worry for my most loyal of houseplants, the humble spider plant. The comment was flippant, expressed with an air of cruelty, and clearly meant as something obvious. Everybody knows spider plants can survive ‘anything.’ But it never occurred to me that I was meant to be caring for something simply so it could survive.

The culture around house plants reflects our desire to engage with the non-human. In a world organised around the dominance of humanity above all others it is a potentially subversive act to love and care for a plant, something so easily portrayed as useless. The extent of our care, and how we care for plants is not the same as care toward a friend or a pet but this difference does not mean it is not love. The ritual of watering and sheltering our houseplants could not be a reflection of anything other than care.

As humans living in the 21st century, we are constantly exploiting or degrading plants and vegetation – whether directly or indirectly. This is what makes the phenomenon of houseplants distinct and one that fosters a greater bond between human and plant. The dynamic has shifted, and we are able to appreciate the non-human plant outside of its potential for human advancement or profit. It is in caring for the sake of caring rather than caring for self-reward that makes the relationship between human and houseplant so rich. We give up time, space, capital and water for plants as a means of acknowledging the plant’s existence, purpose and autonomy in our world. The plant takes on meanings beyond its material existence as the human constructs feelings of familiarity and connection in relation to the plant. Similarly, the plant is intimately tied to the human through its dependence on the human for not merely survival but prosperity in the non-native environment of a home.

This seemingly ‘worthless’ love between plant and human is an important act of resistance against the ever-increasing emphasis on productivity. The ways we love and care influence our ability to create new understandings of the world around us and the incredible diversity of actors within it. It is imperative that we question why we should only love those who are portrayed as ‘lovable’ or ‘worth loving’ and who gets to define these categories? How can challenging the normative performances of care enable more equitable relationships between humans, non-humans and wider planetary systems?

The more we care to promote collective welfare, as opposed to accepting basic, biologically defined survival, the more we expand the possibilities in our worldly experience. I want to care and love as widely as I have the capacity to and never as an idealistic aspiration but as an essential mode of living. Perhaps it is silly, but to me it could not be more apparent that my spider plants are as justified in receiving love and respect as you or I.

As humans we love not because it is necessary, but because the world is deserving of love.

Featured Image: Ju Seonyo

By Henry Tennessee

I’m watching an interview with Erich Fromm. I know nothing about him. He speaks very eloquently, and speaks truth.

It makes me want to write something that hopefully, you will be reading now in the goose publication.

How do I convey a feeling in such a way that you might understand? What am I trying to say?

What has inspired me, moved me so much to start trying to attempt this, this thing?

God.

Let’s call it God.

But what I am trying to get at is not so much the religious version of it: yet in some ways it is. But that’s my personal journey. I do not want to confuse the two right now.

Here lies the problem I feel I must address.

I love life. I could never find something to do, because the true love of my life is it itself.

It is a joy to be here. 

Do you ever have these moments? 

Do you ever realise, that right now, you are breathing, and the more you realise this insane fact, you realise all the things around you are equally as magnificent and worthy of your adoration?

Here we find ourselves in 2025, and many a smart and wise person just under 70 or so years ago began to say “look, we might be screwing it a bit”. In 2025, we find ourselves scratching our heads wondering what the bloody hell is going on. I want to tell you what I believe is going on.

What I believe is going on, is the evolution of man, or of society. I believe that this has happened before, around the 60s and perhaps before as well. Why do I believe this? Look at how people talk on social media. Some of the things I see are very wise indeed, and it comes out as people just talking on their phones, getting information out to as many people as they can, because they feel they must. They must because that’s how wisdom works. It flows from one mouth to ears willing to hear, and so on. 

This is happening more and more. But it has happened before.

I believe that’s what the 60s was. The parallels with our time are plausible. Vietnam and Palestine, for example.

The need for more expression. Many people believed we would wear less clothes by the 50s. Isn’t that a strange thought?

But what stops it? Money. People that believe they own this glorious land. You don’t own it. I don’t own it. God owns it. 

It is not meant to be owned, to be dominated, it is meant to be lived on and with.

I believe that the elite classes are still clawing on. They claw because it is all they know, it is all they must do to survive. Their model is archaic. They know it is dying. To borrow a phrase, a wart must come to a head before it may burst. Well, the head is now. 

That is why people are rising up. That is why people are slowly, very slowly, beginning to understand that God is not a white man on a cloud, but a loving entity that goes beyond anything we could conceive. Some call it the universe, or talk of vibration. But this loses its awe and only holds the logic as sacred. 

How does this all sound? Crazy? Reasonable? Why?

Crazy because the idea of God goes out of your head, or perhaps you see it as a more religious entity? 

Reasonable because you feel something in my words?

I tell you God is writing this. Not Henry. I get this when I play music. People say ‘how does that voice come from you’, and I say it’s not mine, it is a gift. I say it’s not Henry singing, it is a voice on loan. And the more you go into this thought, this feeling, the more you realise what God is, you begin to see not the differences between religions but how identical they truly are. And this is not trying to down play the beauty of each individual religion. Their traditions are unique, this is undeniable. 

Now here is why I wrote this in the first place, I am realising the point now. The antidote to the problems of the world are what I have just described. What I have just described is how to access God, not from a materialistic stand point, nor an egoic one- that is to say an identity, but purely leaning into God. Remember, God is the adjective, not the noun. And if we, collectively, can realise this faster, we have the potential to divert catastrophe. Because as we go into ourselves, the things that used to satisfy us no longer do. They can not because everything becomes superficial. The things that you love become more and more apparent, not what you think you love. You dissolve. I have dissolved and set and dissolved many a time, and will probably continue to do so. We are doing this inevitably. True progress is this realisation, it has to be. And if enough of us collectively realise this, we are amplified enough to create a better world. A truer world. 

This is the feeling of Christ. It is hard to do. What made him so remarkable was he did it 24/7. Go into yourselves. Really. Especially whilst you are young and at university. It may feel like you have many exams and things to worry about, but I promise you that you are at a time of your life where you can entertain these notions with more ease. It is dark at times, and very lonely. But it is truth.

Image Credit: Tashy Back

By Liv Thomas

“For whom is the funhouse fun?”

‘Lost in the Funhouse’ makes up one out of four short stories within John Barth’s 1968 collection of the same name –  Lost in the Funhouse.

The opening lines of the tale ask a question to the reader that not only evokes the meaning of its own title, but, in doing so, also introduces one of its central themes – the formation of identity. 

Having read that question (“For whom is the funhouse fun?”), I – like many other readers, presumably – gave my own subconscious answer that I only vaguely remember… I found it interesting that the text then gave a response to its own musings with the contemplative “Perhaps for lovers.” Through this, we are offered the perspective of its central character, Ambrose, for whom, instead, the funhouse “is a place of fear and confusion.” 

Already, the text gives the reader a glimpse into its own identity crisis, flitting over various stages of question and answer, only to provide its own unsure conclusion.

For the use of voice to convey a message, I saw these opening sentences as an ascension of perspective varying from the reader, narrator, and central character, constructing a point I note as the story’s ability to inquire into what we think is reality – or in this case, the funhouse.

To summarise, Lost in the Funhouse follows a thirteen-year-old Ambrose on a Fourth of July outing with his older brother Peter, their parents, Uncle Karl, and their fourteen-year-old neighbour Magda, a girl both brothers are attracted to. Upon finding out that the beach is closed, the group enter a funhouse, in which Ambrose and Peter fantasise about walking alongside Magda as they pass the winding mirrors and shadows. As he wanders, Ambrose begins to associate the funhouse with things beyond his teenaged understandings – sexuality, desire, and the choking inevitability of getting older. Lost in the funhouse, Ambrose realises he isn’t like Peter or Magda; the laughter and illusions that delight others only unsettle him.  

Now, Barth’s work belongs to that late-twentieth-century literary niche in which writers discovered that their work could become realised – self-aware, even. He might be grouped with like-minded authors such as Thomas Pynchon, Donald Barthelme, and Robert Coover, all of whom challenged whether literature still had the potential to offer clarity in a world increasingly obscured by its own reality. 

With this in mind, in Lost in the Funhouse, Barth not only deconstructs the awkwardness of adolescence as it’s portrayed within the coming-of-age genre, but also the awkwardness of fiction itself. Each metafictional aside exposes his realism as artificial, all while Ambrose’s understanding of his youth is increasingly disturbed.

I would like to believe that this was the sole reason for my initially confused first read-through of the short story, in that it hadn’t occurred to me that I would be reading a narrative that was so – some may say critical, others introspective – of its own style and plot. 

“Is it likely, does it violate the principle of verisimilitude, that a thirteen-year-old boy could make such a sophisticated observation?”, questions Barth. 

Speaking outside of Ambrose’s perspective and addressing the reader instead… Not only does this line disturb stereotypes as to how thirteen-year-old boys like Ambrose are portrayed within the coming-of-age-genre, but it also forces the reader to question these verisimilitudes. 

During my second read-through, the whole point of deconstruction became more apparent to me with the story’s own writing-out of linear plots. In particular, the listing of “The beginning […]”, “The middle […]”, and “The ending […]” made me feel as though Barth’s writing had its own painstaking way of telling the reader exactly when and where to expect key moments, all while shamelessly condensing such specification to three sentences on the sixth-something page. 

Here, Barth is not just making a statement on the culture of fiction surrounding adolescents but is also contesting the use of conventional narratives to effectively portray the fragmented reality of such characters. 

Truly, Lost in the Funhouse stands out to me as something I need to understand better, the same way Ambrose supposes he needs to understand the course of his life, but the tale nonetheless stands out as a contemplation on writing and those who are both appreciative and critical of it.

Feature Image – dustjackets.com

By Samuel Davie

Bless, O Lord, 

Us Thy servants who minister in Thy temple, 

Grant that what we sing with our lips, 

We may believe in our hearts, 

And what we believe in our hearts, 

We may shew forth in our lives. 

Through Jesus Christ our Lord, 

Amen.  

“the Choristers’ Prayer” 

The organ stirs from silence, the ponderous sighing of the pedals scarcely audible, yet shaking  the woodwork, as technicolour whirls of cavorting songbirds, or glistening waterfalls, or raging torrents, or a distant, sombre procession rise above – perhaps a far-off echo of the ‘royal banners,  forward go[ing]’we sometimes sing of. Into this strain emerges a pair of purple-clad snakes, first a train of slightly ragtag, smaller figures, some clutching waterbottles, or still wearing trainers  from their school PE lessons earlier that same day; following them, six larger figures on each  side, solemnly disinterested in their surroundings. The clergy follow behind, and all bow  together toward the altar upon entering their allotted stalls. The organ subsides, trailing off to  give a starting note for the cantor, who dutifully intones: ‘O Lord, open Thou our lips’. 

‘And our mouth shall shew forth Thy praise’, the choir responds. Thus begins yet another  service of Evensong. 

Service is an interesting word. The Oxford English Dictionary gives three principal definitions pertaining to personal actions:  

‘a form of liturgy or ritual […] for an act of worship’ 

‘the action of serving someone or something’ 

‘the state or condition of being a servant’ 

Singing Evensong places one in all three of these states at once; one is a servant, serving God  (and also the Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral) in an act of worship. If one serves, the question surely follows, why does one serve? To answer this is a complex task. Since it is as  part of an act of worship, surely there is some personal devotion or other belief at work?  

To speak personally, I’m not sure; if asked about my religious beliefs, I generally  answer stating that I am a Christian. On a matter-of-fact basis, this is true: I am a communicant,  confirmed member of the Church of England, who regularly participates in public worship. Unless one is of one of the schools of thought that assert that Anglicans are not Christians, I  meet the standard definition. I affirm my faith, along with others present, in the words of either  the Nicene or Apostles’ Creeds, laid down over a millennium ago as statements of faith  encompassing what the Church as a body believes (disputes over added lines aside). And yet,  I am frequently not sure exactly what I believe. 

I suppose a better word would be ‘hope’. I hope that a man put to death in a truly  barbaric fashion two millennia ago was, as claimed, the Son of God, thereby offering those to  follow a path away from eternal damnation, should such a thing exist. I’m not sure I believe it,  though; there’s still a lot of doubt. Why would God subject and denigrate Himself to render us  that service, if we were so undeserving of Paradise because of our own actions? Those with  any theological background reading this are probably already silently screaming at me to read  x or y; I apologise for my ignorance. I will, however, continue on: if we are so undeserving of  Paradise because of our conduct, then why is the sacrifice required of us for redemption so  small? Not being wilfully horrible, and owning up to it or any inadvertent mistakes should they  happen is hardly a big ask: frankly, it’s just being a decent human being. Flawed as I’m well  aware this reasoning may be, I suppose this is exactly why I hope in the way I do – by not being  an awful person, I have an opportunity to avoid something that may or may not happen to me  in the future, but that I have no possibility of ascertaining. 

I still wouldn’t say that this is why I sing the eight services a week that I subject myself  to, though. Frankly, part of it is the money: although the relatively low remuneration may  be a fairly frequent source of griping, the money has meant that I have (for example, and rather  fortunately) never been overdrawn. It would be dishonest to suggest that that weren’t an  incentive. Day to day, however, the money is sufficiently low (sufficiently insufficient, if you  will) that it doesn’t really matter. Besides, the effect of a sharply worded rebuke ‘Mr Davie,  would you care to look at the music?’ is such that a purely mercenary attitude cannot apply:  such a rebuke is cutting in a way beyond that of merely being called out for not being ‘on it’.  Such a rebuke is instead, in my personal view, a rebuke against my very abilities at a musician,  those that I generally view as defining me. It is therefore evidently the case that I view the  service I render, day-in-day-out, as a defining part of who I am; the pursuit of perfection in my  craft is something which I allow to define myself, thereby exposing me to the harshest impacts  of such a rebuke. 

A well-known Ancient Greek maxim is that one should ‘know thyself’. It is however  apparent that knowledge of oneself is – or should be – crafted, not acquired by happenstance.  To take ownership of the acquisition of knowledge of oneself requires courage: Rollo May,  writing in Man’s Search for Himself, defines courage as ‘the capacity to meet the anxiety which  arises as one achieves freedom’ and ‘the willingness to differentiate’. Further, he describes the  opposite to courage as ‘not cowardice: that, rather, is the lack of courage’, stating instead that it is ‘automaton conformity’. Whilst we must remain conscious of the fact that May was writing  seventy years ago, reflecting on his patients in a very different world to now, I believe the core  message remains true: a blank sheet is itself devoid of meaning; a meaning must be created for  it – for myself, I must create a meaning for my own blank slate, and it is courage that is required  as a virtue to do this. Thus, courage is required for one to know oneself.  

How does this relate to service, though? I see a number of ways: firstly, is that I have exercised the courage to expose an aspect which I have adopted as crucial to my identity (that itself requiring courage to do) to rebuke, and also to offer it to a larger purpose. I may not be  sure what I believe religiously, but I have undertaken the courage to exercise the convictions I  do have; I do this by rendering a service, as part of a service, in the state of a servant. I suppose  it is courageous, too, to be willing to decline my own status to that of servitude for a greater  purpose that I’m not wholly convinced I believe in. Reflecting religiously again, the  Crucifixion was thus an ultimate act of courage – willingly declining and submitting to the greatest denigration imaginable, to render a service for the benefit of all. 

I would always encourage anyone I meet, should it come up in conversation, to attend  Evensong, regardless of any bovine ruminations on courage; it is a wonderful opportunity to  take less than an hour out of the day, to sit with others and maintain a centuries-old living  tradition in ancient buildings. A time to reflect, and to enjoy music offered as a service,  regardless of any religious sentiments one may or may not have. Should you attend, however,  or if you attend any display of personal craft: music, theatre, visual art, sports or anything else 

– take a moment to appreciate the courage that those individuals have undertaken, to expose  themselves and to render a service to you, the viewer enjoying their craft, and to themselves,  to their own betterment and self-knowledge. Finally, take the message of the Choristers’ Prayer  from the beginning: exercise the courage you undertake in order to serve others, in order also  to better know yourself.

Feature Image – Matthew Dodd

By Emilia Brookfield-Pertusini

“Famed for her devotion to all that is most vapid and mindless in this world […] and her appalling taste in clothes” – Kingsley Amis 

I am a thoroughbred republican. Gaudy displays of wealth, inherited titles, birthdays (of which they have more than the average poloi), and dogs seldom impress me. Faced with the prospect of another royal wedding, jubilee, or cause celebre I turn my back and grumble. Armed with my quip that they don’t actually contribute anything to our economy, I have come to loath anything that merely is touched by the royal hand, orientating their ordained seal of approvals into the category of the hopelessly unfashionable and tragedy of organised, mandated fun. In recent years it has become easier to hold this, what for some is, offensively ‘un-British’ opinion of our rulers as each line of succession has slowly snipped away at the ties that hold it in a place above the rest, forcing them to decline and fall to a cacophony of disgrace as clamorous as Handel’s ‘Zadok the Priest’.  Where I falter, where the entertainment and pride that this family bestows upon the nation is finally realised by my red-blooded heart is in the ever-contentious Princess Margaret. 

Margaret’s name is synonymous with the idea of being ‘spare’ – that provocative term that her great-nephew would coin into popularity many years later. Living in the shadow of her sister, Margaret was unable to escape the sphere of influence of centuries-old orders and rules about how a royal should behave. The more her sister performed her role as matriarch, the less influence Margaret had at court, slowly slipping down the ranks of succession and jobs. Given both the regiment of her life, and the lack of purpose given to her as an individual, her name became a by-word for royally bad behaviour. Late nights, excessive drinking, large bills from hairdressers, jewellers, and designers. She pioneered a great brat-ishness as opposed to a great Britishness, making herself well known in both tabloid and broadsheets with her wryly brutal comments and controversial love affairs. As she later said to avant-guard filmmaker and harbinger of pretension Jean Cocteau, “disobedience is my joy”. The pomp and circumstance of her position stifled her and, whilst it certainly gave her the grace and excuse of lofty privilege, ultimately left her with little shape to carve out her own public persona, unless she actively took a step against protocol. It is in this very quote, said to a French Surrealist no less (not the usual member of a royal audience), that makes Margot more than a spare; she understood what she, and in turn the monarchy could be: artistic, engaged, interesting beyond expectation, and ultimately colourfully characterful. 

My disdain for the royal image often extends beyond the national, as I scorn their attempts to invade the personal privacy of my own phone with their out-of-touch, Cath-Kidston-meets-Barbour-inspired Instagram shoots that somehow always worm their way into my algorithms. This attempt to be ‘modern’ and ‘relatable’ misses the mark, royally. These people will never be ordinary; why pretend that they are like us? Modernity doesn’t mean engaging with us in forms that are new, but rather  encapsulating a new age and the interests of a time, and knowing how to position yourself within this. The public persona of the royal family is a difficult PR stunt to execute, but only difficult if the authenticity is taken out of it. Growing up my nonno would recite the phrase “anche la Principessa Margherita mangia pollo con la dita (even the Princess Margaret eats chicken with her fingers) at any sly attempt to rise above our station as children; why though, with her name being a by-word for gaudy exuberance and privilege, is Margaret’s name invoked as a way to quieten children and for them to be humble in their actions?  Margaret did nothing but show the public herself, who wasn’t afraid to get her fingers dirty in order to further her own cause of making herself look modern and engage with the contemporary society around her, refusing to be stuck in the lofty illusions and portences of being different to her subjects. 

The eclipsing power of the royal family is another strike against their name in my books. Erring continually to the side of caution in a scrambled attempt to save their faces they pass round their hands and some well-briefed, sensible words of praise, shielding their real feelings with cliched sayings and sentiments, hoping the camera will stay focused on their extended hands and the label of their dress. With her fate sealed, Margaret realised no matter how she behaved her name would slowly climb down the list, eclipsed by each announcement of a new royal birth. Her entrance in society gave her the first instance of agency in curating her own look and name amongst the crowd of other majesties. She rose to this occasion in 1951 wearing a Christian Dior dress.  She debuted her adult persona in the New Look, hoping to bring the principles of this new fashion in her time as princess; modern, a new shape that dismisses traditional expectation, feminine, cosmopolitan, active, sexual. This first slight, her first disobedience, gave her the joy that inspired her to later run off and create a new look for what a royal could be and could look like.

Cameras came to love her through her ability to strike against protocol. Tweed was swapped for silks. Shoulders were worn bare. Bright colours with bright patterns swayed against revealed legs. The tiaras and heavy metal seen around Margaret’s face were brought with her own money in auctions, suited to her own tastes, rid of the weight of inheritance. She drank with the Beatles. Ate with artists. Danced with Presidents. Wanting to be seen frequently besides what she loved, she positioned herself within the urbane interests of theatre, dance, music, and fashion. Whilst public tastes moved from the countryhouses of Wilde to the Salford kitchen sinks of Delaney, Margaret lavished recognition within the royal box of whatever play the theatre could offer her, regardless of traditional tastes and images. During dowager dinner parties, Margaret and Armstrong-Jones, her commoner husband (if you look past the private education, Society debutant mother, and Earl step-father), would create piles of pieces of torn bread, each nugget representing another cliche that had been passed around the table with the wine. Despondent to hackneyed sentiments, the President of the Royal Ballet and the patron of the newly built Brutalist National Theatre took the tabloids by storm in their fashionable silhouettes and sophisticated tastes, turning their backs to the traditional, country-centric interests of previous princesses, and embracing the lavish artistic explosion around them. 

Rising from the hairdresser’s chair, as she so frequently did, Margaret goes to sign the cheque for her obedient servant. ‘Margaret’ appears on the dotted line. Simply ‘Margaret’. No HRH. No Princesses. No Windsor. The tragedy of the royal family, the reason I believe they grow to become so terrible or simply bland, is their lack of vocation. From the moment they are born they have one job to do and are told they can never want for another. This is what is desirable: waiting in line and shaking hands until it’s their time to wear the headgear. Instead of descending into ruin within this maddening, archaic environment, Margaret made her job ‘the Margaret job’, not the royal job. The unfairness (a boldly sympathetic word for a republican to use, I know) of such a dogmatic dynasty was exposed in Margaret’s youth, not just through her position as ‘spare’ but also in her unfortunate affair with Group Captain Townsend. Living in her sister’s shadow and orbit, governed by the cruel spinster of centuries-old royal protocols and Acts, Margaret refused to throw a silver spoon out of her mouth and complain, but played by her own rules, being simply Margaret, not just a pawn or a rebel. By fashioning herself as a cut different to the rest, she built a persona of modernity and hedonism that suited her. Her push and pull of the rules that governed her life allowed her to both uphold her position and tear down the farce of pomp and circumstance. Craig Brown’s wickedly witty biography on the Princesses is aptly subtitled ‘99 glimpses of Princess Margaret’, because the princess only gave us peeks of the life she lead. Her dazzling provocative exchanges with the public eye fashioned her as a sight of modernity and difference, often obscuring her declining place within her own family and the difficulties of protocol. 

Whilst Margaret certainly had a privileged life (to say the least), and neither desired to be nor was considered ordinary, she dismissed the idea of being of a different cut to the people around her. As the Elizabethan age came into definition, Margaret learned to change with the times and aim towards modernity in building a persona that she could comfortably recognise as herself.  She didn’t pretend to be anything she was not; she didn’t want to relate to us, to appear to us in a football scarf for a team she would have no relation to, or to say some shallow remarks about a cause she had been told to care about. She didn’t try to be liked by all, as she knew that was impossible, in the same way she knew her job of being the perfect princess was also impossible. She gave us Margaret, not a Princess. She was self-affacing and affected, yes, undeniably, and at times she was stuck up and rude. At other glimpses she was bohemian and cultured; in the next instance she could be lost in a sea of organised celebration maintaining her royal name. However, in all these sightings, in person, press, or in piercing rumours, she was always Margaret. Not the Princess of York, or the Countess of Snowdon, or Her Royal Highness Princess Margaret Rose, just Margaret, acting in her own interests with her own agency, wherever possible. 

Featured Image: Margot in Kingston, Jamaica at the races, 1955 / Popperfoto