We're all going to learn a lot this year. Forget everything you might learn in class, I mean we're going to learn things better than that. Firstly we'll learn about the nature of struggle, of determination and defeat. We're going to learn how to accept people's imperfections and frailties and learn to reconcile our own. We're going to learn that people aren't always going to want to talk to us or deal with our bullshit, and how that doesn't necessarily mean that there's something wrong with us. We're going to learn that the people around us may be coping better or worse than us and may be hiding it better or worse than us. We'll learn not to make judgments but to resolve conflict with our surroundings. Finally, we'll learn that there's only so much you can do, and if you did it all, you did your best.

 

Or we may not, but we'll probably never get the opportunity ever again.

Ok, I'm not actually that sad. My exam results were (good). It's just that our lives at the moment (well, speaking for myself I suppose) are these grotesque illusions, days hung on strings of tests and performance appraisals (or that's what I'm making it for myself: 'mind forged manacles').

 

Punk is a cultural movement born of the 1970s and 80s, encompassing primarily music, but also art and literature, and as with all cultural movements, there are multiple conjectured causes for its birth. One major argument is that it occurred as a reaction against the newfound complacency of the earlier rock'n roll movement of the 1960s, which in its beginnings cried rebellion and anti-materialism, but whose immense popularity led it to become the commodity of record companies who polluted its musical authenticity and essenitally turned it into a profiteering scheme. Punk is iconic for its spectacular clothing which transgresses across ingrained expectations, its constant battle with the social norm, its endeavour towards the real, not the fake or unauthentic.

 

Punk in literature embodies these ideals: it has always emphasised a reaction towards the big players of the corporate ecology- record companies, the government, the media- always pioneering the power of the maverick individual.

 

There are three forms of literary punk which I love because they blend the attitudes of punk with the manipulation of history and time. All three forms have elements of dystopia- where society is on the point of decay, the social framework is close to collapse, and where discord and chaos run free on the streets.

Biopunk tells of societies in which synthetic biology and human interface technology are advanced to the point where biology and robotics are no longer separate- the organic and the mechanic are stitched together. This can be in the form of eugenics, which is a form of selective genetic engineering, basically pedigree breeding, an example of which was Hitler's attempted construction of a master race through restricted unions between Aryan people. Biopunk is evident in the film Gattaca, where people whose bodies have not been integrated into technology are marginalised, because they are given no important jobs and are treated as second class- their humanity is their downfall. The game Resident Evil is also biopunk literature- the T-virus which breaks loose and transforms people into zombies is an incarnation of the idea that science's venturing into the human body can be responsible for social breakdown.

Cyberpunk is futuristic, and speculative, usually set in the not-too-distant future where fields of skyscrapers are the new urban landscape and where information now exists in the illimitable mathematic world of cyberspace. In Cyberpunk, forget the tangible, because everything is computers and computers are everywhere. However, society has failed to anticipate the decay that occurs following Industrial Revolutions and culture has been basically forced underground to make space for the money flying through the air at ground level. Ghost in the Shell is cyberpunk- imagine stunning urban vistas of cities that span vertically to infinity. In 1984, William Gibson wrote Neuromancer, a book that envisioned the presence of computers (and also cameras) in our lives like never before- where the infiltration of the security network of a major pharmaceutical company can send Switzerland into the third world.

Steampunk reverses the cycle of history backwards, but also forwards, basically to the point the advancement of technology is not so much regressed, but reimagined, such as the existence of steam-powered computers or with space rockets used alongside horses and carts. Think FullMetal Alchemist: a revisioned section of history, kind of medieval, kind of modern, where cultural attitudes reflect the attributes of both, and with elements of magic and fantasy throughout. How about Final Fantasy VII? There's no way to say whether its futuristic or historical- it borrows elements from the past and the imagined future, and sets a pack of vigilante characters on an adventure in a truly original world. It's alternative history, and its incredibly creative.

 

That's three types of punk literature for you. Trust me to nerd up something so cool.

Trinity is a trial. It's almost too obvious or ironic to be stating it aloud, but the final year of high school is a trial. Not just in the sense that every your every academic effort is meticulously appraised and scrutinised by what seem like the most unsympathetic, apathetic and basically cruel horde of teachers you could possibly have been forced to labour under, but also a trial in the sense that you are made to sit in classrooms for six hours a day watching helplessly as your merit as a student, is measured against multitudes and multitudes of other students, in a way which seems to constantly reiterate your inescapable and unending mediocrity.

 

Earlier today I would have wanted to write a lot more but I guess there's not much more to be said. I'm one of however many millions of final high school students around the world, many of which aren't coping as well as I am. I could be a starving Biafran child, or stitching Nike shoes on US$1.10 a day in Chongqing. I chose to be enrolled at Trinity, I chose to do six TEE subjects, so as far as anyone is concerned, shut the fuck up Liam.

 

 

The fruits of some personal research:

 

Ok, current life rundown. It's been ages since my last entry and since then my head's been at 3600rpm.

 

I quit my job. I hadn't been that stressed out since my neurosis prevented me from stepping on a bus in year one. Not to say that I didn't enjoy it, but I could literally see my psychological situation deteriorating spectacularly before my eyes. There has been semi-regret and semi-gratitude since I've done it, and at the end of the year I wouldn't be surprised if I asked for that job back.

 

School is all pervasive, dominating, insidious. I was once lively and effervescent, socially inept but at least likeable, and adaptable before all else. Now I'm honestly a light-starved gremlin sitting at a desk wearing hideous clothes trying to get my head around English Literature. Yeah sure, the grades are great and I'm satisfied with the gratification I get for knowing the time I've put into something has paid off, but that's one side of a coin: Three weeks ago I was taken into first aid at school because a panic attack I got nearly burst a blood vessel in my head. So here am I, at home and school, shivering about my own academic performance as my own social life and aspirations vitriolically decay.

 

I have a life direction, vague and multilateral as it may be. School handed us the university prospecti and said 'there go get a life direction tiger' but it took a great deal more introspection to achieve anything even foetally resembling a life direction. I identified a basic trend in my thoughts- no matter what it may be, I'm interested by people- or more specifically, human behaviour, actions, thought, pattern recognition. I find myself rapt in Big Brother watching the psychological fragility of the housemates and gauging the weight of their every word. I have the potential to be quite a prolific voyeur- I could sit at a cafe and watch the people who sit there all day, wondering why they say what they say or do what they do. I am interested in people- the mindsets, relations, and minutiae of people.

So how does that lend itself to a life direction? Well, I know I'm good at two things: Humanities and Science. Psychology, History, Anthropology, Human Biology, Neuroscience, Linguistics - they all seem to be variations on a theme for me. So while it may be as simple as that for now, that I've narrowed down a few courses that sound good, I'm still closer to finding something I want to do for the rest of my life.

 

Finally, the friends. Pretty sure I'm changing, for better or worse. How much of it I can control is impossible to know, and how much of it I'll like is in most likelihood close to 50%. Here are the two rhapsodic sides of my soul: I want everybody to like me, and I want everybody to see me the way I want them to see me. It's a weakness, a crippling sensitivity, but also an attunedness I guess. Anyway, that's what I hope to change, and hopefully by the looks of this entry, a lot of it has already occurred.