Don't Judge A Book By It's Cover… Ramble Ramble

Anybody that has lived with a dog will understand completely the sentiment of a dog being a ‘man’s best friend’. Canine familiaris is an intelligent mammal species that is also unique. Humans have gained the trust of many species, befriended and domesticated many more. Many people assume that the dog is a work of man, however the origins of dogs are not solely human based. First the wolf had to want to be around us. It has been found through a long, ethically debatable, research project that you cannot raise a wolf from a pup and expect it to act like a domesticated dog, however the friendly members of the canine family do seem to hold a docile gene, just as they hold an aggressive, ‘wild’ gene. This study found that silver foxes that showed tolerance and friendliness towards humans could be bred together to produce even more tolerant offspring, and after many generations ‘tame, domesticated’ silver foxes were being born in abundance. Science believes that dogs came about through the same process. Tamer, more docile wolves came upon humans and both reaped mutual benefits and eventually these animals became more and more similar to the earliest dog breeds we know and love today. It is only in relatively recent years that we were able to morph this friendly canine into the hundreds of breeds we now have, many of which are twisted and deformed to serve perverse human fashions (see pugs, Pekingese and even basset hounds). 

So that is a simple telling of the origin of dogs, I only tell it as I feel it is paramount for changing the attitudes of people towards dogs that they understand the species and respect the fact that they are not a creation of man. Domestication is not unique to dogs; however the relationship a human can have with a dog is unparalleled with any other species. Even cats or horses, our other commonly found pet species. No other animal, not even chimpanzees, can read us humans as well as the dog. It is their ability to read us that makes them so special, and thus their ability to communicate on an emotional level with mankind. Through living alongside each other, we have both learnt how to successful form mutually beneficial, deeply impacting and emotional relationships – yet still people do not see dogs as animals to respect or trust. Many people do not even believe dogs to hold emotional levels, let alone emotional constraints similar to our own.

And this is where the point of this blog post lies. To me, humans are a species that is despicable, disgraceful and downright disgusting. We have potential for greatness, potential for incredible emotional holdings and intellect yet we are still a people that is blinded by greed and ignorance. I could tap away about the issues regarding human on human rights, however my focus in life is on animals and in particular the creatures we have welcomed into our homes. I am already nearing the word limit I give myself, so I will not go into detail on all the issues in this post however be warned – they are coming. All I want to say today is that the distrust and breed specific hatred that is found amongst pet lovers and pet haters alike is just inhumane and disgraceful.

In all honesty what I want to say is getting lost as just trying to get to the point is making me angry. I want to talk about the prejudice dished out to bull breeds, dogs that were bred to be loyal and loving to people alongside the ability to fight bulls and alongside the history of dog fighting. I want to point out that dogs are all born with the ability to be dog friendly, people loving and highly intelligent non-human sentient beings. Yes some, just like with people, may have medical problems that compromise this ability, however this should be disregarded when trying to talk about the issues we have as a whole. Just as we wouldn’t judge an entire race due to the actions of a minority, an entire breed should not be deemed evil because people have made individuals act in despicable ways.

A dog will never attack without reason – be that reason medical, or be that reason human abuse, or mixed signals, or dangerous situations either the person has been put into or the dog has been reared in. People need to stop judging dogs on their breeding, just as we don’t judge people on their families. People need to understand that animals are not robotic machines but actual living creatures that feel as we do. People need to realise that all the issues we face with aggressive animals is down to our own ignorance and naivety. People need to realise that to own an animal is a great responsibility and that an understanding of that animal’s behaviour is a must.

What I do not understand is that if people are supposedly the most intelligent and highly evolved animals on this planet, how are there still people that cannot empathise or see and understand the truths that are staring them blindly in the face!? And this comes down to more than just my views on dog breed specific legislation and prejudice but just general life! Sometimes I just want to scream and grab people by the wrists and somehow make them understand how stupid and ignorant they are being. If only I could transfer another persons consciousness into my own, so they can see what I see.

I am not some super intelligent person, I am moderately educated, and I struggle with many social situations that I may come into, and by no means am I an animal expert. What I do know is, however, that I can empathise. I feel it may be this ability that allows me to see things other people cannot. I can put myself into the point of view of even those people that I simply cannot agree with on any level, and I can do this with animals too. Now this isn’t some crazy ability, it is something all humans are meant to be able to do, yet for some reason many people seem to ignore this part of themselves – even when it comes to their friends and family.  Empathy, to me, is key to unlocking true human potential. People need to stop living for themselves, living for greed and living for power. People need to stop living in the now and take a step back, look at themselves and look at the world around them. Stop thinking about yourself for one moment and actually realise the situation we as people are in. Okay, I have definitely digressed down a major tangent path right now… not sure how to bring this blog back to my original point so I’m going to end now with a simple little moral we are all preached as young children:

Do Not Judge A Book By It’s Cover.

Romance Is Not Dead… Or At Least I Hope It Isn't...

It is not touching that ignites romantic tension, but the concept of holding back. If you sit beside somebody that literally makes your stomach swoop, tingles run up your spine and prick bumps on your skin, it is the closeness without touching that really makes your heart pound. As the beat drums in your ears and your blood courses through your veins, your cheeks tinge red and your breath catches in your throat, you long to reach out… you long to touch… but you don’t. And in that moment everything plateaus and you just want to scream, or turn around, grab his face and just pounce on him. I can only imagine how those dances in the Victorian era used to make people feel… hands a few centimetres apart, fingertips drifting closer together…

In this day and age romance seems to be lost. I feel people see romance as buying gifts or playing slow jam music, but in reality everybody rushes through relationships so quickly that romance can’t be possible. To ‘French Kiss’ on the first date is not romantic, and it often isn’t even passionate or lustful it’s just messy and awkward. To hold hands or for fingers to brush together, or for fingertips to trace little movements into the other persons hand or even leg (if you want to be really forward) is real romance. The kiss should be slow, it should be gradual and you should build towards it. It should be hesitant. Tingles and Goosebumps and butterflies should all be firing up.

I feel like the art of wooing has been lost in the rush for sex and passion, but really passion comes with the romance. Or at least that is how it should be in my opinion. I don’t believe in the ‘no sex before marriage’ unless that is how you want it to be, each to their own, and I think people can be as kinky and lustful as they desire, I mean sex and passion and lust are important, but getting to that point in a relationship should be just as enthralling.

Maybe my opinion is one of a girl who loves romantic films and romantic fiction, even a dash of poetry, and I have definitely filled my head with songs that ooze emotion and feeling. Maybe I am wrong in feeling that romance is a little lost, but let me make it clear that I definitely don’t believe romance is dead. True love, chemistry and real connections are out there and they are desperate to be made. Little tingles from merely looking at the person you are into does still happen. Hearts racing and pounding against rib cages are still a thing when your man touches you, his fingers brushing against your or lightly pulling at your clothes because he wants you close. Just look at Tom Hiddleston, or just look at this link I am posting here: http://www.buzzfeed.com/ellievhall/15-convincing-reasons-tom-hiddleston-is-an-actual-disney-pri. He just (from how the media portrays him) embodies modern day romance and true love. He is a Disney prince. And he isn’t the lone prince in the world.

So anyway, I am going to stop here before I roll onto the topic of saying you love somebody because I could go on for days about the ‘love’ thing… and I’d rather bore you on that in a separate blog post sometime soon…

Foreign Music and Scores...

There is something special about listening to music that is in a foreign language or doesn’t have vocals at all, and for the latter I mean score music specifically. I think the ‘special-ness’ is that not listening to the words and not having the lyrics clog up your listening powers, you truly hear the music.

Obviously I love music with vocals as well, in fact I find vocals the best part of most musical pieces. I cannot stand it if the singer can’t sing, or if their voice is pitchy or auto tuned. It just grates on me. I don’t listen to music because the artist is ‘an entertainer’ or a ‘great performer’. That isn’t why I have iTunes, or why I tune into the radio. No. I watch films or the television or go to the theatre for a great performance. I’m not that keen on dance as entertainment anyway, I mean it’s amazing and when done right can be awe inspiring however I prefer deep intellectual acting or beautiful sung words to really get my emotions going.

But listening to an elegant, magnificently constructed score… it can just send me to a place that no other music can. It can literally get my heart pumping and my blood coursing through my veins. In fact, the way score music makes me feel is how Liam from WOTO New Music describes in their playlist video about classical music. He states at some point and I’m pretty sure I am paraphrasing here, how score music is like a film in itself, which makes sense as it is made to make you truly connect to what you are seeing on the screen. This works especially well with things like animation and fantasy because sometimes it is hard to connect with a talking lion or a superhero. Score music with animated films is often the best, in my opinion.

And I get this same feeling, this same connection, with French music. I feel like a true hipster saying that I listen to French music even though I don’t speak French more than having the ability to say ‘hello, how are you, I’m good thanks’… but I just love acoustic French music. I say acoustic, I also love Yelle and they are electronic pop. And Justice, but they are just French – the music not so much. Carla Bruni just feels so natural and easy to listen to and to emote to, even though I genuinely have no clue what she is singing about.

I think these feelings, for both score and foreign music, comes down to the way the body connects to music in general. I find it strange that music is actually an incredibly natural thing, even though it can be made by completely inorganic objects and materials. There is nothing more pure than music… singing… the way it makes you feel… and this must be some sort of evolutionary adaption? Feeling emotional when singing, being able to put emotions into singing? I mean a war song can be powerful enough to make someone believe in fighting to the death, and score music can be so incredible you feel exactly like you are part of the movie you are watching. And… birds sing. Birds sing for a variety of reasons, the most common being territorial battles, similar to the howl of a wolf, but still their musical notes are emotional spikes that cause others to emote.

I feel I have definitely gone off on a bit of a tangent but ah well…

Links: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adzTR7Y42u8   - the video I referenced (literally have become a bit obsessed with watching WOTO and New Music... anything to stop revising I guess)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLUaKyQGxuo  - one of my personal fave pieces of score music that gets me truly emotional every time

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvyMG0z0FZY - Carla Bruni, the French artist I have been listening to constantly 

Two Halves, they don't always make one whole...

Cut me down the middle,

And what do you find?

Do you see my soul,

Or do you see my mind?

Is there one or the other, 

Or are the two combined?

But what if you find me divided?

Two sides raging war,

One pushing for adventure, 

Eternally seeking more,

The other fights for simple,

Seeing the first as a chore.

Conform to society, one part screams,

Fight for individuality, I hear the other bark,

But which half speaks the truth of my dreams,

And which should I force back into the dark,

Can both sides be appeased?

Or must I choose one,

to draw the final curtain upon?

What is it that makes you, you?

What is it that makes me, me?

Are we all divided, as separate

as the land and sea.

Or is this war unique,

And known only by me?

Cut me down the middle, and what do you find?

Do you see my soul, or do you see my mind?

Questions...

What is it that determines the path a life will take? Are there reasons behind each of our choices, a link that can be made similar to a dot to dot drawing connecting all, both pivotal and not so important, motions that a body will fall through, or is it all completely random? Is it down to fate, or genetics? Does it even matter? Is it true that our choices are what make us who we are – or do we have a soul, and is our soul fixed to our body or are our body’s ephemeral objects that eternal beings such as souls flit in and out of when the time is right? Are the mind and soul two separate things?

Obviously these are some of those unanswerable questions, which makes them that more unavoidable, that you just can’t shake from the back of your mind. They creep upon you when you are too tired to keep them out, or if you are feeling particular sad or down (they never seem to appear when you are feeling a sudden burst of happiness or excitement), and if you are like me, these thoughts always plague you when you look up at the night sky and realise just how tiny our Earth really is.

Such a silly notion, it feels, to think there is a cosmic power that created each individual person and deals in the fates of lives. And what a mundane task that must be. If you have the power to create the universe, or even just one planet, and to masterfully put together beautiful landscapes and create mystifying beasts… why would you spend the rest of your time writing out plans for billions of lives. Maybe it is the mundane nature of it all that stops everybody being happy and keeps some people in a permanent black hole. Or maybe you realised that for one person to be happy, another has to be sad. For somebody to be alive, another has to be dead. To feel guilt there must be the inspiration of that emotion. To feel love, there must be hatred. But how do you make that choice between who shall love and who shall be hated?

I guess we could be looking too far into it all. Maybe there was an ultimate creator who built the planet we all live upon and share. Maybe he created the orb that once was merely nothing but rock and pushed it on its path to greatness. Maybe there wasn’t a plan for life, and life just happened? Or maybe those first few single celled organisms were created and evolution just happened? Or maybe it is a great game, where you put certain plans into motion and then wait and see what evolves?

Who knows, there maybe thousands of planets like ours all created by the same cosmic power – or maybe we are the only one? Who knows? Well I guess God knows, or the Creator knows, if that is what happened but for the sake of argument, who knows? And does it all matter? Why do I let my mind wander over these thoughts and allow the darkness to seep in when I am already feeling blue? It isn’t exactly nice to come to the ultimate conclusion that the universe is just too grand for our planet to unique and special, and too many terrible things happen for there to be an Almighty creator looking down upon us and giving each and every one of us a path to follow that will lead to our eternal glory. I can’t help but be pessimistic, or realistic, as all pessimists like to say, when it comes to my thoughts on the origin of life.

So why do I let the thoughts creep in? Well what else is there to do but think when you are a tree. My 110^th birthday is coming up and I can’t help but let my mind wander…

The next blog will be happy I promise!

My father is a pessimist and my mother is a worrying optimist. Sometimes I feel I have inherited a little bit of both from my parents – the pessimistic tendencies of my Dad bundled up in the tangle of worry from my Mum. On my dark days that is definitely how it is. Dark days, I wonder if everybody has dark days. Not just days when you feel a little bit down but truly dark. Deep, depressing thoughts that batter your soul then sit on her crumpled form with a malicious grin spreading across their face. I’ve been having quite a few of these days recently.

I can’t help but often feel I am wasting my potential for life. As a child you are born and you are literally a bundle of consciousness that could become anything. And then normality happens. There are great people in this world and then there are Pawns. Most of us fall into that latter half category and I see myself plodding along amongst the other normal folk and I feel a deep regret rip through me. I don’t want to be nothingness; I don’t want to be special either… I just want to be something more.

But as a pretty much talentless person that isn’t super tall or skinny or beautiful, I can’t really see this happening. I can’t act, sing or dance. I’m not incredibly intelligent or creative. My greatest talent I guess is my ability to understand dog behaviour, animal care in general, and maybe blag myself out of an awkward situation. I love to write, and I think I sometimes have snippets of good writing however they are merely that, snippets – not novel, screenplay or even short story worthy. 

It’s good to have a dream though, I guess.