'Ear we go 'ear we go, 'ear we.. (sorry) :p

Hello friends

It's been a while, I know (so much for a weekly thing), but I have found a small corner of my now busy university life, in between reading all 154 Shakespearean sonnets in one week (that's 22 every day- kill me now) and deeply discussing, nay sounding incredibly pretentious about ekphrasis and the very nature of art, to write my own little bit of silly waffle.

Hearing's one of those things. Without it, we struggle to hear others and be heard ourselves. With it, we sometimes hear things we don't understand, or things we don't want to hear. And that includes music.

Whether it's music we like, music we hate or even music we don't understand ( it's not English, it's not Spanish, it's Sean Paulish. That man has his own language), we react to music almost the instant we hear it.

Now, as the Sasspatch it is my duty, nay my requirement to admit that yes, anything by Aretha Franklin will crank up the sass levels, I will start to dance and sing about how much you should R.E.S.P.E.C.T/ you gotta think/ you make me feel like a natural woman etc etc. It is a natural impulse, that as soon as I hear that, it makes me feel instantly upbeat. Equally, if screamo is heard coming out of some speakers, I back away. Slowly. 

Yes, I have, shall we say, er retro taste for a 20 year old. But when I hear something I like, it doesn't matter how old it is, it just makes me feel good. So, I guess the context of the time it came out or how old I am or where I heard it first doesn't really matter. Does it? 

I think so. Without it, it's why when you walk past people in the street and overhear ' ...and he was trying to get out of his Miss Piggy outfit when he fell over the coffee table...' it sounds really weird (although tbh even if you had context there that would be a weird scenario). It's why when you're hanging out with people who suddenly hear 'their song' and they start crooning along to it, making faces at each other, saying 'remember that time when we... (giggles)...' and they never finish the sentence, leaving you puzzled and quite possibly left out. It's also why when you hear ' order 255, please go to section B' that all you experience is sweet, sweet relief after waiting and waiting in the Argos order queue. The context for that is all that is required for you to wait impatiently to hear that bored-as-hell female monotone.

So yes, hearing is one of the senses we prize above others. But it doesn't mean much without context. When we don't know what is going on, how can we process what we hear? On its own, we can't always figure it out. In experiencing the world, as in talking pretentiously in my seminars, it all requires a bit of listening and a bit of context.

Seeing is.. experiencing?

Hey guys

So today was a bit of a disaster on the technology front, with my internet deciding to PMS out on me every so often. I was initially unsure about which sense to blog about today but I guess that it's going to be sight.

We live in a sight orientated world. The internet is that thing you look at for hours.
Like right now, you lovely people that read this are probably reading this whilst surfing waves of binary, looking for something vaguely interesting to look at/ read/ use as procrastination.
(If waves of binary is inaccurate, I apologise for my lack of technological lingo. And I quote: 'I'm a writer. I give the truth scope!' Well, descriptive flare, shall we say.)

Anyway, point is, whenever I keep losing my access to BBC iplayer (which, as I am sans TV right now, I am addicted to) it gets me thinking about how much I use sight. I mean, I'm an English student. I used my eyes so much last year my prescription actually got worse. I love reading and want a career that is involved in the written word. It would be so much more difficult if one day, I found that I couldn't see. What would I do?
Out of all the senses people live without, the lack of sight is most conspicuous, especially now, as technology becomes more and more influenced by things like the touch screen for example. There's nothing to feel there for someone who can't see, so how do they know that they've typed the right thing? The way people with sight problems navigate in a visually-operated world amazes me.
Sight, the lack of it, the way blind people are treated and our dependence on visual matter are also the most contentious of issues surrounding how we experience the world. With the creation of Skype, Facetime and Snapchat, the power of the image has never been more relevant. Snapchat in particular highlights modern culture's need not only to capture a moment and communicate with it but also its reliance on everyone being keyed into the same visual mindset. The thing is, what about the other ways we experience the world?

Whilst we overwhelm our heads with visual experience and  forget about using our other senses quite as much? Will we just take it for granted that we'll always be able to function in the world when (according to website Fight for Sight http://fightforsight.org.uk/statistics-about-blindness-and-eye-disease ) about 285 million people have sight problems and most of those problems do not exist from birth? Will we rely on images to tell us what life is like 'out there' and stay in with the TV, the computer, magazines etc because if you've seen it, you've experienced what it is like?
I hope not. I'd trade you hearing my favourite person's voice, or eating my favourite dinner anytime over yet another picture someone took of themselves in a fabulous place.
Go out. See the world. But smell, taste, touch and hear it too.

Coming up smelling of roses...

Hello ladies and gents,
 Over the next five weeks, I've decided to make a series of blogs on the theme of the senses, following a very unsubtle conversation with my boyfriend about perfume. To illustrate, the conversation began like this:

Him: In other news
Me: yes?
Him: And this is early days
Me: yes?
Him: But could you like investigate perfumes and stuff
Me: why? any reason?
Him: Just so I can get an idea for which ones you like
Me: :D

He's just so hard to read. Like a sphinx, he is. :p
Anyway, his not-so-stealthy efforts did provoke some rather interesting notes about smell. Even though as a culture we don't rate smell highly among the senses, scent is very personal.

And yes, that can be in a 'oh no that guy over there has the BO of a drunken rhinoceros' kind of way, but I was leading up to the more refined and dignified issue of what scent says about people. (FYI, have no clue what a wasted rhino would smell like but I guess it's pretty bad).
Because, believe it or not, I was actually pretty pleased that he actually asked me what to get. If he'd just went out to the local health and beauty shop and bought something, chances are he'd have easily got me something I hated without knowing, until I spritzed it for the first time, nose wrinkling as I whiffed sickeningly of creme brulee or Parma Violets*. Ergh.

I like to smell of something fairly upbeat, fruity and floral, fresh but classic at the same time. I like to think it reflects my personality and taste, but maybe describing myself as classy is wishful thinking. This wishful thinking, of instantly wanting to project the best version of oneself even on the most instinctive of levels is, in a wider sense, the product and cause of the huge industry surrounding perfume, that has now taken smelling nice to competitive levels of exclusive brands, celebrity promotion and a whole other language of eau de parfum vs. eau de toilette, bouquets and essences, base notes and top notes. Smelling better than your peers is actually a thing. Scent snobbery, if you will, drives people to even tailor make their own individualised, customised boutique odour.
Does that really even matter? you ask. Most of us just want to smell nice.

Smell is instant, instinctive. It's good or bad, delicious or disgusting, acrid or aromatic. Smell can also grow on you, like when a perfume sinks into your skin, mingling with whatever you washed yourself with that day. Smell links you straight back to times and places you love (or hate), food you ate and people who made it or people who wore that smell.

My mum not only has a nice outfit and coordinating earrings when she goes out, she also smells of Cacherel's Anais Anais or YSL's Rive Gauche. Whenever I smell them I think of her, but I also think of her whenever I smell someone making roast chicken, like she does. Yes, her fragrances aren't boutique, her tastes aren't the newest scent with the hippest label or the best packaging. Roast chicken wafting from the fan oven isn't exactly the scent of rose petals in Marrakesh or street food in Thailand, but to me, they smell of home and of a woman of substance. They smell real.

At the end of the day, we can think smell doesn't matter, that the perfume industry is a giant marketing tool on an endless quest to both provoke and assuage our consumer needs and that sight or sound is far more important to our world. And in many ways, that'd be about right. It's my mum who makes those smells in any way important to me. But with them, my memories of her are enhanced, they suit her personality and I think of her every time I see Cacherel's unassuming pearly white and pinky packaging on the shelf.
 I'd much rather have mum's roast chicken than bathe in Chanel no. 5 any day, but no matter what your favourite smell is, your memories would be worse off without them.;
Cheerio folks xx

*Yes, those are actual smells- scents that smells like desserts are called gourmand. For info about what perfume is made of, what certain brands are like and how to make smelly memories of your own, I looked at these sites and they seem pretty comprehensive.
http://www.basenotes.net/products/category/fragrances
http://www.perfumeintelligence.co.uk/#
http://kwonjh.blogspot.co.uk/

'Home' alone: the charms of limbo land, aka Summer...

Hello fair friends,

Much apologies for missing last week, but every now and then a girl just needs a little time to get her (well earned) rest. So, after a lovely holiday joining my parents in North Wales, I'm back to the life of limbo land, staying at Lancaster for work in the week and travelling/ spending free time doing things and talking to my friends.
It's odd to be in a town you know so well but not seeing anyone around. Clear of the forest of students usually populating this small place, people you never noticed before seem to suddenly appear in town.

I walk to work every day and on my way I see the commuters at the bus stop further out of town, waiting until they settle themselves into that train seat before their transformation into professional selves (or indeed just the process of damage control) is complete. I see the parents and the children, now tiring of the long school break, waiting for school to start. The builders and decorators, white vans at the ready, fitting out houses ready for the returning student hoarde this October....
Right now it all feels slightly... charmed, unreal.

Summer is that time of limbo land for most people in education, that place of elastic time that seems to stretch and never end only to hit you straight in the face as you realise you've forgotten how to... well... learn anything really. However, in this one-horse city (yes people, it's actually a city) that sort of is and isn't my home, it's an even weirder time for me, working here but not being in Uni, living here but not with any students. I think this summer's an education of it's own kind. So, like the things you have to learn in Uni courses, I'll only know what exactly I've learnt and why after I've finished it. 

Being on my tod makes me all philosophical... toodlepip ladies and gents xx

The difficult second...blog?

Hello ladies and gents,

So, reading back to my last post, it kinda sounded like I was giving an English talk with my definitions of 'sassy' and stuff, but in my defence, like essays, really long sentences, uni and most forms of exercise involving coordination (snore), beginning this blog was pretty hard, in terms of trying to set out the way the blog sounds and to try not come across like a complete idiot.
I look at this post as the 'difficult second album' phase, where I try to follow on from my previous post, keeping it sounding like me, but er, not just the same thing. Hmm... tricky.

Ok, so the thing with the second album, as Kaiser Chiefs, Duffy, Gnarls Barkley and most recently MGMT will tell you, is that it tends to either do really well, keeping you on the path to success, fame. maybe even money if your record company didn't screw you over.

Or as is the case with all the above, set you on a downward spiral to that place where people who are less famous than they used to be go... (I don't know where that is, although I suspect it's halfway between an 'alternative' stage at Glastonbury that they never show on tv and appearing in a Lindsey Lohan movie. I'm looking at you McFly and your terrible acting, yes you). The sad thing about all of the above, is that they started out good. Maybe just even kind of good. Then they just... dropped out of the spotlight a bit.

But, looking at it another way, lots of creative people let their work go wherever it takes them. From the Beatles, to Picasso, most pop culture references had an 'experimental period', when they really weren't popular. But, throughout all of their creative lives, they let their ideas shine through, even if it wasn't what everyone wanted to hear, see, read etc.
 I can let how my 'blog voice' progresses just go with the flow because you can't control that, but if I let what I have to say be influenced entirely by what is cool in the weird world of the internet, it'll just sound plain...boring. Sasspatch out.

Hello internet, this is Sasspatch

Hello ladies and gents of the fair internet,
I'm Hannah, aka The SassPatch. 
This stupid name was suggested to me by someone who has admittedly had more than their fair share of sass served to them whenever they decided to say something vaguely sarcastic/rude/plain stupid in my direction.

sassy

Pronunciation: /ˈsasi/

adjective (sassier, sassiest), informal

• lively, bold, and full of spirit; cheeky:Toni was smart and sassy and liked to pretend she was a hard nutDerivatives: sassily, adverb; sassiness, noun  (OED)Urban Dictionary defines it as :

  possessing the attitude of someone endowed with an ungodly amount of cool OR Someone who is full of themselves but in a good way. They're cheeky, lively, smart, saucy, slightly impudent, mouthy, cocky, energetic, loud and extremely talkative. There's a load of other definitions, but I'm guessing what most of my friends are meaning when they say I have 'the Sass', are those things (maybe not the ungodly amount of cool bit- but that is on urban dictionary, I kid you not). I think it's a pretty cool thing I guess to be considered straight-talking and sarcastic, but I kind of hope this blog isn't just me making 'sassy' (read overconfident and under-researched) comments about life in general, but just me typing in my normal 'voice' I guess. However, it suits me and to be honest I can't think of anything else to call the blog, being hopeless when it comes to trying to be catchy and spontaneous and all. SassPatch it is.