I want to dance with somebody

I've always been a fan of ballet. As an eight year old I dreamt of being a ballerina. I came up with this exquisite poem in year 3.

When I grow up I want to be, dancing at His Majesty's.

I thought it was so clever, considering everyone else's a) did not rhyme and b) were astutely boring.

In my classical ballet class my favourite moment was just before the end of class, when my teacher would turn up a CD and let us "free dance" - choreograph our own spectacular solo performances. This really involved seven little girls running around the studio, leaping and turning and trying not to crash into each other.

I took "free dance" very, very seriously. I would watch myself in the mirror and throw in as many leaps as I could. Leaps were the bestest.

Alas, I never did make it as a professional ballerina. With no stage parents to send me to classes twice a week, I could only practice in my living room and wasn't able to sit examinations.

On my 21st birthday I went to a performance of the Nutcracker at the Lincoln Centre in New York City. No piss up 21st for me, just fulfilling my childhood dream in a different way.

The New York City Ballet now has its own You Tube channel where you can watch the company on tour in London. It's fascinating, candid and emotive and also scored with funky tracks from UK artists.

New York City Ballet - You Tube Channel

Belief

This year thus far has been rather tumultuous. I started off the year overseas with the vague plan of coming home, finding a job and figuring out my next "move". In betweeen I somehow found myself making a last minute decision to enrol in a postgrad marketing course (which has actually been rather enlightening) and in an uncertain long distance relationship. I found out the hard way that long distance things are inevitably difficult and, in 90 per cent of circumstances and in my own personal situation, are not meant to work out. Hence, I'll be staying home for Easter.

In good news and signs that perhaps things are finally going my way, I've got a job lined up and am feeling relatively calm. Of course there is still anxiety/fear/apprehension about being in a full-time job that does in no way guarantee five years of stability. But I don't really want that. I still want to travel, to move out of here, to work overseas, to give back to society...

When I talk to people who have finished uni and then gone on to work, there is still that lingering sense of "Did I choose correctly?" or "Is this really what I want to do?". I haven't even begun my job yet, and I still wonder about both of those questions. When I first started uni, I would've been shocked if I thought I would still have doubts when I graduated. The reality is that you can never be sure about anything, you just have to take things as they come.

I went to the West Coast Blues and Roots Festival on the weekend and saw my favourite musician John Mayer in concert for the second time. Although he played a rather short set and I spent a lot of the time angling my head so that I could see in the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd, it was amazing. The vibe was great, Mayer seemed relaxed and happy to be performing in Australia, I didn't see Jessica Simpson but that's no loss. I guess it can all be summed up in the last line of Gravity:

"Just keep me where the light is."

My Generation...The World According to Y Review

So I've recently finished reading the above book, lent to me by my good friend Kassie.

My generation, known as Gen Y, for people born on or after 1982, often gets a good beating in the media. We're apathetic, we're not politically engaged, we are materialistic and the list goes on. I really liked this book because it debunks a number of these stereotypes and also looks closely at what's really going on in Gen Y minds.

For instance, it expands on a research theme I came across during my honours year - that whilst young people may not be engaged in political parties and other traditional forms of civic activities they are volunteering, members of community groups and charities, which they feel are more adequate means of expressing their beliefs and values.

Another interesting theme is that Gen Yers prefer friendships to relationships. People in serious relationships still value their friendships and are unlikely to let them wilt away (perhaps like our parents' generations). I found this quote particularly interesting:

"For many Y women, even mature sexual relationships can't quite match the intimacy of unqualified friendships that stretch from childhood into adolescence and adulthood. This is a Sex and the City generation and young women values their female friendships above all others." Huntley, p. 31

That resonated well with me but then I found the next quote even more interesting.

"This ultimate trust and intimacy between young women supports a double standard. A typical Y girl has higher moral expectations of her female friends than she does of the man in her life."

This is because women tend to excuse the bad behaviour of men, because they're more liable to screwing up. When it comes to women we expect them to know correct behaviour but we're more forgiving of men. I think this is probably true, perhaps it's unfair that we demand perfection from our friends but maybe "sexual love", in the sense of a coupled relationship, allows a greater degree of forgiveness. Since female-female relationships are more intimate, the betrayal cuts deep.

Personally, I think this is very reasonably, the truth. Not that I've experienced being cheated on and had to forgive a lover or anything remotely like that. But I think it's the case in the relationships I have with my female friends, there's a silent degree of expectation. And if you break that, in any way and not necessarily limited to cheating per se, your relationship may never recover.

The book also talks about Yers as consumers, how we don't profess to love branded culture but how we're stuck within it. Our power as consumers seems to elevate above our powers as voters or workers. We still have brand loyalty even if we don't want to admit it. I think this leads to consumerist guilt, we want that nice top/jeans/mobile phone but we feel bad because we know we're subconsciously ruled by status rather than asking ourselves if we really need product x or where in fact did product x come from? The sad fact is, we've been brought up around commercials and corporatism and whilst we are fighting it, we're not sure who is really winning.

Anyway I'd recommend this book to Gen Yers and those from other generations, it's a great read and broadens your mind to us "young people of tomorrow".

T

Living low in the highbrow

I went to a writers festival over the weekend. I always get inspired listening to other writers, hearing about their creative process, their advice, their failures, their characters...It's also surprising how much of creativity and writing is a mystery. For a lot of the questions, the answers the writers were giving were "I don't know" or "I'm not sure" but they ended up having a really personal way of writing. It was quite humbling to think that there is no perfect guide to writing.

The other thing was that my workmate and I ended up having political/life discussions over the weekend. Our main concern was that in our generation we seem to be caught between a world of pop culture and the political/social world. The lowbrow VS highbrow. The mainstream VS the intellectual. It's so strange to think that we have to choose sides, when really pop culture, the Paris Hilton/Britney, branded, capitalist, marketability is unavoidable. Consumerism is what we've been brought up with. It's difficult to fight it. It doesn't mean that we can't both be informed and be consumers, like gossip columns and like world news. As a young person, we feel like we're being pigeonholed. Choose your category and stick to it.

T

P.S. Here is a few of my favourite travel photos.


The Full House terrace houses in San Francisco.


Central Park in December.


Nice, pebbled beaches and laid back French charm.


Venice is a tad smelly but, makes up for it with its romance and the bottled bellini.


Mozart lived here in Vienna.


Mt Pilatus and its mountain goats who appear unaffected by the altitude.


In Lucern the temperature was so cold that I had two hot chocolates in one day.


Book burning memorial in Berlin.


The Vlata River in Prague.