Stream of Consciousness: “Preposterous”

Somehow I appear to have gained quite a few followers over the last week. So, thank you. I have no idea where you came from but it’s nice to have you around.

<fairwarning> This piece will probably make you disappear again. </fairwarning>

I would like to clarify that, despite its layout, the following piece is not a poem. I don’t do poetry because I’m just awful at it. There are already too many atrocious poets out there; I feel no compulsion to swell their ranks.

So, if it’s not a poem (“But it rhymes so it must be a poem!” *smack*) what is it?

It’s my brain’s response to years of listening to people explain why they support whichever particular political party they support, in whatever country they live in, all over the world. I understand the instinctive human need to establish a core set of values. But the idea of throwing your full support behind an entity whose decisions and responses you cannot predict or influence from one day to the next just doesn’t sit right with me. If the last two decades have shown us anything in this area it’s that such entities are quite willing to ignore the public consensus and just do whatever the hell they want anyway.

So, this is what fell out of my head when I found myself staring at a blank piece of paper waiting for the office clock to hit home time last Friday. I’ve (over) punctuated it since then, but other than that it remains unmolested and rather rough around the edges. It contains some swearing and a weird sexual metaphor that I don’t actually remember writing…

Preposterous

My politics are preposterous: this could be true,
You might call me liberal – but I hate more than I do.
I deplore violence and war and lines in the sand.
But I’d rather cut you than shake a racist’s hand.

I don’t mean to be a dick, but sometimes I am –
It’s one of the reasons I’m writing this down.
You see, if it’s in text form, and I read it aloud,
I’ll hopefully be able to turn that around.

I tried socialism, once, but it didn’t work out.
No-one could agree, and that’s what it’s meant to be about.
And sure, you stand smug with your true party vision.
But what use is a strict core when we only progress through cooperation?

There’s more than one way to skin a cat,
There’s more than one way to cut benefits back –
but fuck knows if your parties can think of another.

My politics are preposterous: This appears to be true.
But so are yours, whether pig red, piss yellow or faded thong blue.*

“All politics are bullshit!” – my inner punk’s shining through.
So, yeah, my politics are preposterous – but at least I’d help you.

I’d help you up, not grind you down,
Offer you support, not judge you as you drown.
And it’s not my religion (I have none you see)
It’s just basic human decency that separates you and me.

So – Yes – I’m a dick, and I’m fuming with rage
Spurting angry words all over this page
My politics are preposterous, now this much is clear,
But I’d rather keep my mind open than blindly follow in fear.

 

*I live in the UK – these are the colours of the three main parties. The piss and the thong are currently ruling as a coalition, though an anthropomorphic piss stained thong would probably be a less damaging option if one were to ever run for election.

Authorial Voice and Blogging

When writing fiction, exercising your authorial voice is a tricky thing to get right. Rough drafts can sometimes end up cowed by its shadow or limp due to its hesitance. Being able to strike a balance is essential in order to allow a story to unfurl organically. Yet, no matter how hard or easy you may find it to begin with, it will always be there. You are writing a story, after all, and it’s rather difficult to tell a tale without a voice driving the narrative forward in some form.

Blogging, on the other hand, is a rather different beast. The possibilities presented by a blog allow for significant deviation from the normal mode of writing. Yes, you can write stories and relay information from your own perspective – you’ve probably noticed that (when I do write) I tend to follow this path. But there are plenty of other ways to approach a blog.

You can address your readership directly and encourage interaction and discussion to gain a wide range of, hopefully, constructive criticism to inform how you to decide to refine particular projects. You can display your work and just be happy that it’s out there for people to see, without ever checking for comments. You can even create a community blog and involve your readership in the creation of content. You can use this approach no matter whether your blog covers fiction writing, non-fiction, or news.

There are virtually limitless possibilities regarding what you can use a blog for and how you can present it. But still, the most prevalent type of blogs are those where news, in all its forms, is regurgitated with no distinct voice behind it. I have never understood the purpose of this last type.

It doesn’t particularly matter whether you are writing about international events or this week’s comic releases. Good reporting, or journalism of any kind, needs an authorial voice just as much as any work of fiction. Yet, there are countless blogs out there that are quite happy to spew up a vague rewording of a press release or news report without ever attempting to comment on the story they display.

I am certainly no great authority on blogging, but the basic purpose of a blog is to allow you to connect with other people, even fleetingly. If you have a personal blog it should be there to represent your opinion, your outlook on the world. If you would rather fill that space with words cribbed from other sources and never comment on a single thing you may as well print out those original articles and throw them blithely into the streets. Without your voice present to explain why the articles you are re-hashing are important in some regard, personal or political, your blog is meaningless.

Blogging is accessible to almost anyone, but it is a medium driven by personal opinion and expression. I learned a long time ago* that not everyone has something to say. I just wish they would realise it so that those that do can be heard.

* In a childhood far, far (OK, not that far) away

Breaking Boxes

Boxes are made to be broken. From the inside out, or the outside in, that is their purpose. You may be labouring under the common misapprehension that boxes are made to contain things. It’s an easy trap to fall into. After all, boxes do tend to end up containing things. But that is not their purpose, it is merely part of their function.

Boxes are a manifestation of decisions, conscious and otherwise, to segregate naturally occurring phenomenon. Sometimes they are constructed for convenience and ease of identification. But too often they are assembled with malign intent.

Not all boxes look like boxes. Some are fashioned from fences and walls. Others manifest in the form of police lines and hysteria.

Most are built with words.

Fear is a box builder, the most prolific of them all. It dwells deep inside us, waiting to be called upon when we are confronted with something we do not yet understand. Initially it emerges as instinct, infecting us in utero, ready to compartmentalise the feedback received by our newly formed synapses. We are then born directly into the boxes fashioned by the fears of our parents and elders to protect us from the tumultuous tides of the world. Though each of these boxes dimensions vary, sometimes wildly, their flaws and knot holes are firmly of our guardians design.

Whilst every new container has been constructed from a blueprint, at this point in our evolution they have been re-drawn so many times the lines have begun to fray and bend. Successive generations of boxes are beginning to break faster than at any prior point in our specie’s short history. Fear may be a prolific builder, but it is not a good one, and we are growing smarter. We are escaping faster. You may cite plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise. But, before you do, step back and take a look at how far we have traveled from our inauspicious origins. If you then take a closer look at where we are now you will quickly become aware that those amongst us that hate, and fight, and kill are still deeply entrenched in their boxes. They have sealed the lids, erected defenses, and declared hostility to everything that exists outside the construct of their inner fears.

That is why it is up to those of us that have been freed from our hereditary captivity to take a stand. The very existence of these boxes hurts us all; they stunt and deform us.

In order for us to advance together, they must be destroyed.

The Importance of Non-Violent Protest

I actually started to write this in a notepad late last night with no intention of sharing it on here. But, after today’s events at the Shard, it seemed pertinent to share my personal take on the importance of peaceful protest in raising awareness of causes that would otherwise be overlooked.

I’d also like to say congratulations to the #iceclimb team for being so successful in their endeavour. You stole the spotlight and made a lot of people who didn’t know much about the Arctic drilling – myself included – a lot better informed, and outraged, in the best possible way.

 The Importance of Non-Violent Protest

When I was ten, I was a chorister at Westminster Cathedral in London. This involved singing mass in the Cathedral itself six days a week with Monday off. In exchange for this, I received a private school education between the ages of eight and thirteen. It was a very regimented, sheltered environment

I had no clue about anything.

The real world might as well have been another universe. Please don’t misunderstand me here, I wasn’t a “true believer” or anything like that. But all I knew was the ritual and the songs and, frankly, the ritual didn’t mean anything to me. It just meant standing up and sitting down in a pre-ordained sequence, and occasionally we would get to sing something cool in between the day’s plainchants. I certainly wasn’t alone in viewing it that way. Though I will admit that the pageantry of the main feast days was quite fun in a purely theatrical sense.

My friends and I were just kids that could sing. We didn’t think much of the wider implications of anything we were participating in – we weren’t required to.

The first real indication I got of the reality that existed beyond the high, protecting walls of the choir school happened on a Sunday in 1994. I believe that the gospel had just been read and the presiding priest was mid-sermon when, all of a sudden, there were white balloons floating up to the high arched ceiling, and a small group of people were being escorted from the building amidst tuts of disapproval from the general congregation.

Of course, they weren’t balloons. They were helium filled condoms. But no one bothered to explain that to us. Nor was it explained that the people being escorted from the building were members of the LGB rights group OutRage! who were protesting the incumbent pope’s stance on homosexuality.

It wasn’t until after I’d left the choir school a few years later that I was able to find out any of that information. No one told us a thing. But I’d caught a glimpse of something different. There were adults that disagreed with the established narrative and these people… protested?

“What’s a protest?”

No answer.

As far as epiphanies go it wasn’t anywhere near the level of a particular Mitchell & Webb sketch. But my mind began to open to the possibility that not everything I had been told was necessarily as sacrosanct & agreed upon as I had been led to believe. So I started to ask questions, and when I continued to be ignored, I read books and learnt about things no adult would willingly share with me.

Needless to say, by the time I eventually heard of a band called Rage Against The Machine, a year and a half later, I was already well on my way to leading a much more interesting life than the one that had been chosen for me.

All because a small group of people weren’t afraid to stand up in public and say, “No!”

Changes [aka, How I Plan On Escaping the Rise of the Morons]

I’m going to preface this post with a warning. If you recently started following this blog (*thank you*) because of my short story posts, you might want to give this one a miss. This post is the sound of me writing down what ever junk is cluttering up my head and throwing it out on here so I can think about more important things – like stories! If you come back later in the week there should be something more to your taste up here. But, for now, this is what was happening in my head at eleven this morning. You have been warned.

I spend a lot of time sat at a desk, in an office, doing nothing of importance. I’m doing it right now. Sometimes it’s busy; other times, not so much. But no matter how busy or slow it is I know for a fact – I do not want to be here. This is not what I should be doing with my life. So I scheme, and dream, and imagine an alternate me doing all of the things that I wish I could be doing. Then I go home and plot how to make things change. I do it for hours. Then I go to bed.

Occasionally I will free myself from this pathetic shroud of misery and spiraling disappointment and realise:

“This is the most ineffective and depressing way of going about changing my life!”

Then I sit there and keep right at it, like some demented reverse pavlovian dog/man/dumbass.

On even rarer occasions I get to the stage where I will write about this phenomenon. See, I’m doing it right now(!) This sort of exercise tends to end in me announcing, to no one in particular, that I’m going to change. “I will seize the reins of my own life and do everything that I’ve always dreamed of doing!”

It doesn’t work.

I’ve honed my inner cynicism and anti-establishment sentiments to such a degree that when I make such a grand proclamation some hideous, hipster-like, part of my brain reads those words and screams, “FUCK YOU, I WON’T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME!”

It’s dumb, and it probably relates to the depression that I have, but usually refuse to acknowledge until it has me over a barrel.

So I’m making no promises to anyone, or anything, anonymous or otherwise. I’m just going to try a bit harder to change things from day to day and see how it goes. I’ve already been writing more in various notebooks for the past few months. It’s cool, but it sucks too because I want to share the things I’m working on but they’re nowhere near presentable at the moment. It’s very easy to talk and write about how fantastic something’s going to be in the future. But my problem has always been getting there. Getting to the future with the story laid out in some place that isn’t my head is not something I seem to be able to do much anymore.

I’ll level with you – my grammar sucks. I just don’t understand it now. I used to – I nearly did a combined English/Drama degree for god’s sake – same as I used to be able to read music as easily as I breathe. But somewhere over the past decade those skills have faded as they’ve become less applicable to my everyday life.

It’s probably safe to say that I’ve unlearnt more than I’ve learnt in the past ten years. My memory is definitely worse than it used to be, but I think that’s just because most of what I l hear and see each day is irrelevant to me, personally. It doesn’t compare to the conversations I used to have with friends, teachers, or colleagues at my previous jobs. There is no excitement or interest in the wider world, and I am no longer surrounded by people who like the same things that I do.

For example, if I were to mention any of the following topics: Politics, Gender, Sexuality, Equality, Hacktivism, Comics, Anime, Performer and Performance as Catalyst for Change – all of which can lead to some really interesting discussions, I think you’ll agree – the best reaction I can hope for at work  is a shrug or grunt of disinterest. In some cases these are actually met with outright hostility and a level of closed-mindedness that absolutely astounds me:

Politics – “It’s all Bullshit; they’re all as bad as each other.” <-An amalgamation of pretty much the same phrase I’ve heard from everyone I speak to about this subject at work, and home.

Gender/Sexuality/Equality – “Where the fuck did we go wrong?” <- That’s a genuine quote from the woman that sits next to me at the office. This was said in response to the subject of transgender & gay people being brought up about a month ago. I won’t expound any further on her views of equal marriage. But you can see my reaction, here.

Also – “They’re not usually pretty, are they? You don’t usually see any fit lesbians.” <- That’s another quote from the same conversation; this time from the woman that sits opposite me. She then went on to say that even her boyfriend (and father of her child) thinks that the sole [unfortunate to have ‘friends’ like these] lesbian they know is an anomaly because she’s, “actually fit enough to be [considered] doable”.

Hacktivism  – Oh god. Yes, apparently hacktivists are the scum of the Earth and are, most likely, just putting on a show so that they can gather credit card numbers and personal pictures… Fuck that conversation, I’m sick of it.

Comics/Anime – I don’t dare mention these at work, even though I have an Adventure Time cast picture as my desktop background. At home, my wife is not a fan. She pretty much just views them as a waste of time and money. I also have one friend who claims to be the world’s biggest X-men fan, despite not reading any of the comics since the early 90’s. Any time I mention anything Marvel related my opinion is (obviously) null and void…

Luckily, though, my kids think that daddy knowing lots about comics and cartoons is REALLY COOOOL, so at least I have them to cheer me up. My kids are awesome.

Performer & Performance as Catalyst for Change – This idea is so far out of the box for my work colleagues that I refuse to ever try and broach it again. Some people are just willfully stupid and I see no point in slamming my face into brick walls.

…

So, yes, I need to make a change so that I am happy and able to pursue something that I find interesting in order to lead a more fulfilling life.

If you were expecting some kind of pay-off at the end here, I apologise. I just needed to vent and re-kick my own arse to be the change I want in my life. After all, who needs a support group when I can just scream into the internet in vain?

 

TL;DR – I’m gradually trying to change my life because if I don’t I will remain miserable in a pointless job and be surrounded by morons forever.

Album Review: The Impossible Girl – The Sky Is Calling

In the interests of full disclosure I would like to make it clear that I am one of the 1,319 people that backed Kim’s kickstarter for this album. Therefore, whilst I have tried to approach this review as objectively as possible, you should be aware that I do not tend to just throw money at things I think I may like.

The Impossible Girl – The Sky is Calling

Now that’s out of the way let’s get down to the business of actually looking at this artist and album.

The Impossible Girl was originally the name of Kim Boekbinder’s first solo album but has since become her musical alias. Before her first album Kim performed with her sister, Zoe, in the cabaret band Vermillion Lies. However, I didn’t become aware of her as a musician/artist until she wrote this post all about pre-selling gigs over on Warren Ellis’s blog. Even after that, which I thought was a rather excellent idea, I was too dumb to actually go and listen to her music. I have only myself to blame.

As I eventually found out, The Impossible Girl (album) was a rare thing of quiet beauty built around simple loops and melodies with Kim’s voice weaving everything together to form a musical love letter to anyone smart enough to stop and listen. The array of instruments involved, from the standard set of  guitar/piano/violins to the supporting cast of found objects (e.g. glasses/dishes in Open/Avocado), all helped to shape the landscape without ever overwhelming the listener. It’s quite mesmerising and I would recommend it to anyone regardless of their personal taste. With that in mind, I was intrigued to see how this approach in her song writing had evolved for The Sky Is Calling.

Firstly, let’s take a look at the theme of the album. From the get go this was established as an album about SPACE, which is a pretty vast subject to tackle at the best of times. Droves of prog-rock and synth bands have spent their entire careers writing about it. The problem with space, as Douglas Adams observed, is that it’s big. As much as I love The Impossible Girl it is a very personal, as well as fantastical, album. So I honestly wasn’t sure how Miss Boekbinder was going to approach such an expansive subject.

The answer turned out to be incredibly simple and effective. She takes us on a journey. The album starts at the beginning and progresses to the distant end. That is to say, it begins at the start of everything – The Big Bang – and progresses, through the past and present, into the future.

Like I said, simple and effective.

After the initial four second synth recreation of that pivitol moment we are pitched straight into the heaving cosmic uncertainty of particles being born, joined, separated, re-joined and shaped into new elements in the first main track of the album: Stellar Alchemist. The bubbling synth loops and steady rhythm capture the idea of fluid creation whilst the Impossible Girl’s voice twists and weaves through the flux with ease giving the song its form. She embodies the Stellar Alchemist and, in doing so, transports the listener in to this brave new land.

Lyrically, the next track, Fix You Good, leaps forward to the idea of humanity attempting to master creation in the lab. Musically, this track incorporates the first use of repeated, layered vocal motifs. This technique will become a leitmotif of the album and harks back to songs from T.I.G., like Open/Avocado. However, its use in this particular song, combined with the vocal imitation of the mid-synth (alto) loop, helps to give the song a more regimented, industrial feel. In turn, this helps to lock the previously fluid, ambiguous possibilities presented in the previous song into a clear pattern. The elements have been tamed.

The title track then breaks from this new found form with an ode to exploration. You should go and listen to it here. This track essentially captures the soul and DNA of this album. It incorporates all of its major song writing elements – simple repetition, layered vocals, and a multitude of synths, to name just a few – and uses them artfully to describe a personal fascination with the cosmos that is instantly relatable for all of us dreamers. The Drake Equation then builds on this, asking the age-old question – ‘Are We Alone?‘.

It says a lot more about me than I would usually care to admit that the mid-point of our journey, Hand to Mouth, is far and away my favourite song on the album. That’s not to say that it’s the best song on the album. But it’s the one that affected me the most on a genuine, personal level.

On my first listen I was already enjoying the album by the time the initial, sparse, synth sequence kicked in. I was glad that I’d backed this album and felt that I had already got my moneys worth. But this song took me by surprise. Like I said before, I was already very clear that this was an album about SPACE. So when an acutely personal song exploring self-doubt, perseverance and the drive to improve and get better/be better materialised from nowhere, it hit me hard. I wasn’t expecting it, and it took my breath away. I ended up listening to it at least four or five times before I could carry on with the rest of the album.

From a purely technical perspective, it’s the drums that carry the song. The fragile nature of that first synth sequence combined with the minimal guitar could have grounded the song and bogged it down. But the drums are relentless. They drive the song forward, never allowing it to falter, and this mirrors the lyrical drive and  determination in Kim’s vocal delivery. Few artists can give voice to lines as easily maligned as, “Will I ever be happy? Look at me now, I’ve got it all, I’m still sad somehow.” or, “Always finding a reason not to be loved.” without spiraling into trite self-pity. But she does it, and it works because self-pity is not the point of the song. It’s the journey – the getting through. I could go on, but all you need to understand from these particular paragraphs is that Hand to Mouth is my personal song of the year. And I never saw it coming.

The next track, Falling Apart, continues this exploration of the personal but takes it and relates it to the larger world; cleverly disguising itself behind the facade of a bouncy, pop song. All of which is then subverted when we come to my second favourite track of the album – Animal.

Animal is a primal, multi-layered, exploration of sense and sexuality told from the perspective of an inventor building a female A.I. that can never be satisfied. Why? Because she lacks the fundamental, natural, ability to feel. It’s a fun song and serves to diffuse any underlying melancholia that more sensitive listeners may have carried over from the previous two songs. It also brings us neatly back to science and exploration.

The following track, Alien, is structured in such a way as to detach from the rest of the album. It slows right down and uses vocal layering to evoke a shifting in the musical ether. Personally, it called to mind the shimmering lights and shifting gas clouds so often used to represent the alien, or other, in countless sci-fi movies. Whilst I originally had some doubts about this song – so jarring is the shift in tempo – I’ve warmed up to it on further playthroughs. I eventually realised that, in some ways, it is the best conceptual song on the album as its structural difference so completely embraces and embodies the track’s title. To Be Touched explores this theme even further with a highly evolved consciousness craving the physical touch of another being. But again, at its core, it is a personal song.

And this is the point at which all the themes of the album, and the musical history of Kim Boekbinder herself, tie together. Yes, this is an album about SPACE. But it is also an album about the self. She has successfully taken this vast theme and used it to explore the deeply personal whilst incorporating the fantastical, as she did previously in The Impossible Girl. Likewise, all of the core song writing mechanics exhibited in her first album are here, just on a grander scale.

The final song, Planet 216 (which is, actually an asteroid) is a celebration of life. The main refrain, a defiant mantra:

“In my solitude I wrote three commandments: You will be fierce, you will be fragile, you will be free.”

The album’s journey has been completed. But the song acknowledges that the personal journey of the listener, and the artist herself, continues; and, like all good art, it gives the listener something to take with us on our way.

You can buy the album here, and you can find out more about The Impossible Girl, HERE.

I strongly recommend you do both of those things.

Of Dark Heresies & Comics

After a very productive beginning to last week, documented here, time rather ran away from me. As well as work I’ve been GMing a Dark Heresy campaign for the past few weeks. For those of you unfamiliar with it, Dark Heresy is an RPG set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Your group play the part of acolytes of the Inquisition and much mayhem ensues as you charge around the galaxy (more specifically, the Calixis Sector) purging Heretics, Xenos and Daemons. It’s just a little bit awesome. I love playing my Battle Sister in my friend’s campaign because she kicks a lot of heretical butt.

However, we are currently transitioning from that campaign, which is on hiatus for a few months, back to another campaign with different characters. But before we start back down that road of blood and fire I’ve been filling in with a series of short, sharp, one-off campaigns whilst one of our number has been on holiday. It’s been a blast, although rushing to put everything together week by week (I’m one of those GMs that does handouts) hasn’t left a lot of time for much in between. Still, this week was the last of my campaign so I should be back to updating at least a couple of times a week.

On the subject of Comics:

I strongly suggest you catch up on X-Men Legacy. The first arc concluded with two endings(!), which included an unexpected twist and a lot of foreshadowing, whilst somehow staying very open ended. I will be going back to look through it issue by issue with as few spoilers as humanly possible. If you haven’t taken a look at this series yet, you definitely should.

Similarly, I will be going back to look through The Massive & Mara, which are two very different stories written by Brian Wood. I will also be taking a look at Saga, which is heartwrenching & brilliant. Seriously, it’s not often I find myself turning to the final page of a comic and swearing profoundly whilst choking back tears. But Brian K Vaughan seems to have perfected the ability to elicit this sort of reaction from his readers. The fact that everything is arted (real word, honest) so beautifully by Fiona Staples seems to double the emotional impact. Reading Saga is rather like reading George R.R. Martin. And if you don’t get the implication behind that after my previous sentence… well, just read Saga. You’ll catch on quickly.

And finally, on another tangent…

Happy Starcraft II Heart of the Swarm Release Week!

Prepare to be Zerged!

Quick Update & A Book Recommendation

Hello amazing internet denizens!

I haven’t disappeared completely, honest.

The last month and a half has flown by for a whole array of conflicting reasons, and I realise I haven’t been updating even semi-regularly. But that will change soon as there are a lot of things that I,

a) Want to write about, and,

b) Have already committed to an obscene amount of notepad entries currently littering my desktop.

These will all start to materialise soon.

In the meantime I have been using my twitter feed to stay in contact with the wider world whilst I’ve been getting myself organised.

Now, before I disappear again, I would just like to recommend that you go and take a gander at *this story right here* by Lee ‘Budgie’ Barnett. Here’s the synopsis for You’ll Never Believe A Man Can Fly, ripped right off the man’s very own blog:

“What’s the story about?

The world outside your window has never known super-powered beings until now. The first is a man named Ian Davies, an ordinary man who’s about to face some extra-ordinary events in his life. But what if, instead of giving an interview to The Daily Planet, he gives an interview to The Guardian, a newspaper with a reputation for typos?

He wanted to be known as The Public Defender. But someone at the Grauniad forgot the word Public has an ‘L’ in it…“

Mr Barnett posted the whole thing up over the course of four or five weeks so you can read it all, gratis. However, I strongly suggest that if you like it, you buy it. This can be achieved by clicking on the pay link at the bottom of any of the chapter entries. The story is consistently funny and brilliantly written; it certainly helped to brighten up my lunch breaks at work. (Yes, I bought the e-pub and then still read it as it was posted).

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a whole lot of writing to organise and catch up on whilst you get acquainted with Mr Davies and his new found headache/gift.

No Epitaph

Shattering black glass
Crushed beneath our weary feet
Etches history

–

Politicians shrug
Whilst missiles illuminate
Killing skies above

–

No epitaph here
No final rallying cry
We are forgotten

San Diego Derby Dolls – Indiegogo Campaign, last 22 hours!

Do you like Roller Derby?

Yes?

Then pay attention.

The San Diego Derby Doll’s indiegogo campaign to raise funds for a new, permanent training facility and venue is in its last twenty-two hours. If you enjoy the sport, even a small contribution would be a great way to show your support. The league is heavily involved in its local community and setting up a permanent base would give them the opportunity to do even more, as well as giving them an established  league venue.

But don’t take my word for it, go and look for yourself over on their homepage.

Some of you may wonder what my reason for supporting this particular project is when I don’t even live in San Diego. Fair question. Well, it just so happens that a very dear friend of mine likes roller derby, and her local community have helped her quite a bit over the past few years. When I first met her, around nine years ago, she looked like Tank Girl and had all the associated attitude along with a wicked sense of humour. Over the years she has settled down and had a family, but she’s never lost her edge. She just couldn’t express it as openly as she used to due to the responsibilities of parenthood. Being as outspoken as she is blending in has never really suited her. But she is an Awesome mum – and her kids are just as wickedly creative and hilarious as she is – so she did it.

Then, a few years ago, she started going to her local roller derby league’s events over here in the UK. It’s given her a place to focus all of that pent up attitude,whilst also providing a fantastic network of friends and support within her local community. The kids love it, her ‘normal’ friends think it’s fantastic, and she has a place to cut loose and enjoy herself with her family as they cheer the girls on together. She’s even had the chance to do some skating and roller derby at their community events!

Supporting this project makes sense to me because of the positive impact the sport and local league’s fan community has had on my friend’s social life. Hopefully, some of you will be able to relate.

If you’ve read this far, please, go and watch their project video. This league deserves your support, not just for the teams, but for their community as a whole. As this project is set-up under indiegogo’s flexible-funding campaign banner, even if they don’t reach their overall target, your contribution will still go toward the setting-up of the new facility. So, no matter what, you’ll be helping to make a difference.