1133 Big Brother House day

I try to project the present truth of me which is that it is difficult for me to project the truth of me.

Human beings cannot bear too much reality, I think it was TS Elliot who has said this, and the reality of self is the most difficult, especially as one approaches the end of life and knows that it is impossible to repair damage and seek full redemption.

I read a poem of a friend yesterday in which he said I know what to do and doing it. He said this a year ago and used the precisely the same words that I have also used. It confirms that no individual experience is truly unique and that in addition to everyone being connected to each through their past and their present, we inherit more of a collective genealogy than I have appreciated. However sometimes within the macro of what I am doing, I lose myself among the micro options and this is what happened to-day.

Staying up until past 3am writing and then reading in bed for perhaps another hour was destined to have consequences on this day, and so it does as it is just before midday when I decide to write more, although I have been up for half an hour. I have a surfeit of choice today, more than most days in that to day is the main day of the Sunderland air show with the Red Arrows display closing the event at 5pm. There are clouds and a few darker ones in the present sky (and this became he pattern for the rest of the day with the odd shower and increasing darkness as the evening progressed).

This afternoon Jason Donovan and friends are performing for free in South Marine Park, and although I am not a fan, I am interested to find out how many people attend giving competing attractions north and south of the town. Yesterday a European market was added to the normal Saturday market of about 80 stall, presumably in an effort to maintain local interest in staying for the day in the town. There were fewer people than normal, but I would not say significantly, and although it was not very warm or sunny there was also a flow of folk making their way to sea front.

The European market filled the top half of the main shopping street, but only some stalls appeared to be doing the kind of trade that would justify a summer touring British towns in unusual and variable weather. While there were stalls which interested me, one on European Olives, another on Salami's and Dutch one on Cheeses, there was also one on soaps, the prices were such to make me hesitate, and I was not alone, as those who shop in South Shields know comparative value. I had also purchased more goodies than I needed and should from Morrison's if I am to make a successful reduction in weight and physical being again this year. The most popular stall was one full of sweets but at £1.39 100 grams it was more expensive than at the cinema, and nearly twice as much as elsewhere. The Spanish stall serving paella at £3.50 and £4.50 a portion appeared to have no trade, but there was a mini queue for Dutch Pancakes and a large area devoted to colourful plants at reasonable process was also doing a good trade. The purpose of my visit into town was to acquire two cartons of the remaining large red and sweets cherries from Marks and Spencer's. It will be possible to buy them still, but at an increasing and for unjustifiable price.

There is one more choice today which has already passed in that at the Baltic Gateshead Festival the first of a series of free films is about the life of Alan Lomax who chronicled USA folk music history has already begun, as has the outdoor concert in the new seating area.

There is work that I should and have been neglecting, there is continuing work scanning some photographs to complete the Myspace 101 collection. Here on discovering there is a limit to number which can be uploaded 1000, I think I have had to redesign the exhibition down from the 13 to 15 101's initially planned as part of the target 101 x 101 to 10 and then reconsider the issue of creating additional sites to pursue the objective of an organic contemporary art experience of personal histories and statements as performance art, revisiting the same issues and events over time with acknowledgement to Sophie Calle and Bruce Nauman.

What I would like to do is continue my revisits to places in the sun after returning briefly to Athens of 1967 and Rhodes of the mid 1990's I think. I have an itinerary and some documents somewhere, as well as diary notes and on reflection perhaps these were combined and are already available in the volumes of sets covering 1939 to 2005, which occupy the display units in my bedroom at the top. My inclination to check is strong, but I know if I do and I find the material I will want to continue beyond the rest of this day I have set myself. Next week I have some household and some technological tasks to accomplish which could spill over to the subsequent week. Everything must be sorted to recommence work on the novel 2007 after returning from London in mid August, writing of that experience as will be appropriate and then giving over to the writing. Once I am underway, the writing and the rest of my life will be self based on the experience of the past four years. There has been psychological and emotional safety2006, although at one point I had settled fro a different kind of project experience for this year. I do not regret how I used the months of April, May and June, and which had their impact on July, but it has affected what I will achieve in my work in other respects, and its has affected how I view my work to-date and my life as it has become.

I have decided, I am going back to my first visit to the South of France, no I am going upstairs to explore if I can return immediately to Greece, no I going to have the second half of the feta cheese and olive salad made up by Morrison's which formed Friday's lunch, while yesterday I used the Greek Meses to top up a home made salad. On Friday I also had two large Ciabatta and yesterday although restricting lunch to one now soft roll, I had another at midnight with two thin slices of processed cheese. I will have to go and walk if I an to do the roast lamb with roast potatoes this evening, or even if I have the second portion of potato wedges, onion rings and sweet corn vegetable fritters which made a Tex Mex kind of starter/main course consumed first last night at an amazing price of £1.99 for 800grams.

Having prepared lunch I decided to eat watching the latest situation in the Big Brother House and found a dramatic situation with several contestants in tears. Although I have maintained an interest watching the eviction decisions and eviction day, plus some overview programmes, the interactions had become familiar and the personalities over familiar in which it had become evident the roles being played and something of their basic personalities.

The one overview programme which has become essential viewing is the Big Brother House Couch in which Davinia McCall master and shrewd anchor lady interviewer talks with guest psychologists and psychiatrists about the participants in general and in relation to specific items engineered by the programme designers and controllers. This week the male contestants were provided with a special meal on their own in the Diary observation room as a means of assessing their approach to sex. Gerry the gay intellectual rated the best because he assessed and savoured each offering although because he is the most thoughtful and insightful along with Carole he may have worked out the nature of the situation and played along and up to the exercise. Brian who is self conscious about his lack of education lived up to expectation after his initial caution about the food, was it fake, were Big Brother playing a game and wolfed everything, making lots of noise and talking with his mouth full, Liam and Ziggy were considered disappointments in relation tot heir physical appearances, with Ziggy revealing his interest in more than one dish at the same time, so much for true love to Chanelle and Liam indicating his inexperience and lack of having had a meaningful close relationship with a woman.

The insight of Gerry was confirmed when his drawing of Big brother was shown and discussed. This accurately showed a TV screen in which Big Brother was the controller of the participant puppets who all were reduced to be the same, and the controller as someone with a good side, provider of what they anted but also a bad side able to punish and withhold. Carole in contrast saw herself as the centre of the event, performing a variety of important roles, maternal in nature, guilty about leaving her family and anxious about their continuing feelings towards her. Ziggy who was yet to separate from Chanelle had a photo of him and his dog with Chanelle not in view while Chanelle and Ziggy attach to her as a small appendage. There was a discussion about the five New participants and on the overall impact of participation over a number of weeks and in the instance of five girls/women since it commenced two months ago with Ziggy a week later and Liam Brian and Gerry later still. The most important discussion was on the impact of being in the programme and the issue of paranoia in its various forms from persecution to nihilism and grandeur.

The impact of living closely with strangers day and night is something I can identify with from being in prison for six months, adult education over two and then one year periods and a succession of residential courses from a week to four related to my work, and an open university summer school.
A second overview programme worth catching from time to time is Big Brother, Little Brother in which the events of the day are discussed with a well known personality and an invited audience by a regular anchor host. Big Brother Little mouth has a well known guest presenter. There is a nightly one hour overview of the previous 24 hours with on Fridays this culminating in the announcement of who is to be evicted. After a gap of half an hour the eviction takes place followed by an interview and then any new arrivals are admitted. The evicted individual attends a media conference, appears on various TV shows and then returns to comparative obscurity. The live programme continues for the greater part of the day on a secondary channel, and an hour later on its twin, with some live showings on main channel four overnight

Until to-day I have not used the internet site which contains whole programmes, and clips, photographs, biographies and programme history. And reminds that I have not created material which reflects the experience over two months and relate this to my work and past experiences.

The programme is important at several levels. It demonstrates not just the ability to observe and record everything that we do, but to edit, recreate and represent. It provides an opportunity to experience how people behave when they live with each other in exceptional circumstances over a period of time with and without the prospect of significant monetary reward, it also uncover some of the different roles and layers we dress our nakedness. The issue which caused the interest is the decision of Chanelle to walk out for the third time following rejection by Ziggy although she is still there over 12 hours later! I will leave my observations on the 25 contestants to date to another day although I will maintain the approach of not saying anything which could go beyond the limits which they and the programme have set.