Jo > Recent Status Updates

"Never to get lost is not to live, not to know how to get lost brings you to destruction, & somewhere in the terra incognita in between lies a life of discovery."

"Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That's where the most important things come from, where you yourself come from, and where you will go."

"A student came in bearing a quote from what she said was th pre-Socratic philosopher Meno. It read, 'How will u go about finding th thing th nature of which is totally unknown to you?"

"I wanted to say, 'You're deluded, the only way you're going to succeed in the arts is if your fathrt bankrolls you and your mother pulls in a few favours at the Telegraph!'".

'TWAS EVER THUS.

"Sometimes my memory feels like nothing more than a 2kg plum pudding, unassailably rich, densely monotonous, and I am forced to plough my way through it alone, occasionally striking a gold coin reminiscence."

Wow, Anna Metcalfe's story! Bravo. I am officially invested.

"Th schools I went2arguably taught me more about injustice than I've experienced b4or since. In mny ways, they were experiments in soc justice which, for a lot of th ppl who went2them, succeeded only in reinforcing unfairness."

"Th fact is tht 99% of ppl do hav2do a job in order2pay th bills, but by no means does it put 99% of ppl, never mind 99% of th jobs they do, in th same boat. Power accrues more fiercely th closer2th top u are&2 deny this fact is an act of what Bourdieu termed 'symbolic violence' towards third with less of it."

"Anybody says he knows just how someone else feels is a fool."

"I told Angus my mom being dead wasn't something I pinned exactly on my birthday. 'It's more like this bag of gravel I'm hauling around every day of the year. If somebody else brings it up, honestly, I'm glad of it. Like just for that minute they can help me drag the gravel."

On th tabloids & the working class: "if you live in a soc & linguistic environment where any broadsheet might as well be published in Greek - until u acquire th cultural & educational capital to tune into its, by turns, Olympian & self-consciously demonic wavelength - how will u now find print news reporting that is not based on the assumption that you are an imbecile?"

Christina Patterson's Indy column on Shannon Matthews: sickening. Sick.

"That a 40-yr-old British man, in 2008, might have no teeth, suggests a sickness in the society rather than in the person: the sickness of being unable or unwilling to give dignity to all its members." This.

"As Hoggart implied of the socially immobile 'carousel' existence which he knew & resented from his childhood, it's in th interests of institutionally powerful people to tell you that you're thick & that it's too late to do anything about it."

"...to keep those you love close to you requires keeping them within the world you know. Th consequences of advancement may mean good news for the individual but bad news for the family & th neighbourhood...With every departure came a loss of th meaning & hope that comes from being with others. Th flourishing of individual potential was seen as harmful to th collective"

Comp schls: "Rathr thn brng about a greater mix of soc groups & academc abilities thru a single-tier system, ingrained assumptions about th insubordinate & disengaged 'nature' of w/c children made comprehensive schools arguably even more class-ridden."

"...that's what being-middle-class-in-the-world is about [being nice and 'reasonable']. Darkness is managed or hidden."

"A school can collude in girls' social & economic entrapment through th courses it offers"

"...how come a wc boy, even now, is permitted2gain fewer good GCSEs on th grounds tht 'he isn't academic' & b set up4a life of lower wages & less autonomy, when a mc boy, showing th same 'non-academic' inclinations, will b expected to pass them anyway & progress to university regardless?"

"...yr unconscious may well have internalised a soc hierarchy which deems you to be morally & intellectually deficient"

"We spent our formative years being insulted & we knew it. Individual teachers didn't insult us: the institution, the set-up, the joke of it, was the insult."

"...in th words of th geographer Doreen Massey, 'most ppl actually live in places like Harlesden or West Brom. Much of life for many ppl, even in the heart of the first world, still consists of waiting in a bus shelter with yr shopping for a bus that never comes.' To this day, this is a sentiment apparently often forgotten by editors of th overwhelmingly London-centric broadsheet newspapers..."

"There was a sort of resignation, as well as rapture, in their accounts of th world, which they could have learned only from being surrounded by ppl used2deferring or denying wht they wished for in life. They were, in effect, learning2fail-or at least learning how2b disappointed, dispossessed, depressed & permanently accustomed2not getting what they needed from th ppl & institutions they relied upon."

"A common tendency among th socially-mobile is2feel always tht they r living th life of Riley, but on borrowed time: tht at any moment some1 is going2tap them on th shoulder & tell them it's time2go back. I hav this feeling all th time, & th greatest fear tht accompanies it is not of losing th substnl privileges th come with being mc, but of knowg tht if I had2go back, I'd fit in even less now than I did back then."

"To feel as tho u lack power is2believe tht none of yr actions has any consequence: which means, perversely, tht u give yrself th licence2do what u like on th assumption that it won't matter. That's kind of what it means2b 'rough': 2draw wht strength u can from yr place on th margins, to let it all go2pieces & not really 'give a shit'."

"Th difficulty comes when u hav a thought tht goes along th lines of 'I believe life can be better than this'; a thought which is then interpreted by other ppl as 'You believe you're better than me.'"

"In many ways, indeed, respectability is a defining factor of wc experience in th whole. It expresses th need to defend yrself & those you love against threats, whether real or perceived, to yr existence."

"Soc mobility has its limits: limits which perhaps u hav2 set yrself in order to stay at least halfway related to th person u started out at."

"The faggots have accepted all that they know and see as the way things are and so can no longer be shocked. The men live in the fantasy that everyone is like them and so are constantly shocked."

"Faggot wisdom: There is more to be learned from wearing a dress for a day, than there is from wearing a suit for a lifetime."

"But the faggots have no leader. They have only dead heroes."

"Sometimes you need ppl to b perfect & they can't b & u hate them forever for not being even tho it isn't their fault & it's not yours either. You just needed something they didn't have in them to give you. And then in other ppl's lived u do th same thing, you're the person who lets everyone down, who fails to make anything better & you hate yourself so much you wish you were dead."