Not even a real journalism

Connor Dunphy's space for writing

[notevenarealjournalism-blog]

MAKING FACES UNDER WATERFALLS: WHY GOTO’S CHARACTER IS GREAT

I remember getting into New Japan in 2013, right about in the middle of when their big surge in popularity was happening. Obviously, this meant that there were a lot of new Western eyes on the product, and thus came a lot of posts, on Reddit, /wooo/, Twitter, wherever you can think of, that sought to “explain” everything. Tanahashi is the ace, Okada is this guy, Shibata is that guy, Makabe says “fuck” a lot, so on and so forth.

One of the things that I’ll always remember is how vaguely Goto’s character was outlined. Very often, these prophets, tasked with spreading the word of Gedo, would merely say that Goto was meant to be a “Samurai Warrior” type of guy. Maybe they’d bring up his friendship with Shibata, but otherwise you’d just get the impression that he was a pretty good wrestler, end of.

After coming up to four years of watching New Japan, I’ve concluded that his character is much more complex than any of that shite.

Goto is not someone who exists despite wins and losses, like many of the wrestlers in the current WWE climate. In fact, he is nothing without them. Irrevocably shaping him is what happens in the ring. The Goto that won the 2008 G1 Climax and the Goto that lost to Minoru Suzuki at Osaka Jo Hall are two different people. The main difference being that Goto, since his G1 win, has had a shitload of shots at the IWGP title, and has lost all of them. Every time, he will come in with a new attitude, a new attire, a new entrance video, yet all those times, he will lack the killer instinct, the intangible force that puts one over the line from good to great, and he ends up losing.

When Goto loses, when he chokes, it is not just a loss, it is a fall. He falls down, collapses. The best case I can think of here, and the one that brought me around to Goto having such depth, was his last shot against Okada at New Beginning in 2016. After losing to Okada, he’s in a 6-man opposite him. After a big, defiant entrance where he had all that kanji painted on him, he almost slinks into the background here as his team make the walk. He stays in the corner while his teammates stare down the opponents. And then, Okada comes forth, with the cheekiest fucking look you’ve ever seen, points out his foe, and beckons him to come out and play. Goto looks like he absolutely wants to die. He has sustained his reputation as a choke artist, unable to win the big one, and as a result he lost all the self-confidence that he had spent the last month building. It was one of the best acting moments I had ever seen in wrestling.

As well as that, though, Goto tries to get back up. He tries to rebuild. While it may not look it, the year he had from that low point in February was him recovering from it all. His decision to join CHAOS did not come as some swerve like it might have in other companies, it came because he found himself at the end of his rope, with the only one reaching out to him being the man who had so severely destroyed him, Okada. From there, he started to find himself again. He made friends (!) with his stablemates. When YOSHI-HASHI got an upset win over SANADA in a random Korakuen tag, Goto celebrated with him like they’d just won the tag titles. He entered the G1, and he started doing really well. People were chanting his name again!

Beneath the serious, understated surface is a man who is always analysing his own actions. Perhaps it could be chalked up to confirmation bias, but I see this slight bit of self-doubt when Goto is in a big match. He’s overthinking things. He’s saying “don’t screw it up don’t screw it up DON’T SCREW IT UP” because he knows that choking is his thing and he so desperately wants it not to be. Thus, encouragement from his friends and the fans is the thing he, on some level, seeks most in the world. It is validation that, actually, no, he’s not screwing up.

What ended up ultimately pushing him over the line, though, was the criticisms and dismissals from people who didn’t pull punches.

Like in the fateful aftermath of Destruction in Hiroshima, where with his comrade YOSHI down and out after being beat by Kenny Omega, Goto made a stand. Although he had lost to him in the G1, he nevertheless made the challenge for Omega’s Tokyo Dome briefcase.

Omega laughed at him. He told him to “Goto hell.”

This wasn’t just some crappy pun, it was an insult with connotations informed by the prior decade or so of Goto’s career. What’s this guy doing challenging for the big one again? Has he not learned? Is he not already enough of a joke? Fuck off, loser.

Again, all this played an integral role in what was to come. King of Pro-Wrestling came. Goto/Omega II came. Omega still taunted him, even up to the introductions. Everyone thought of it as a formality, even Kenny himself.

Red Shoes goes to take the briefcase. He shows it to Goto. Suddenly, Goto takes a shot at Kenny. Suddenly, Goto takes the briefcase. Suddenly, Goto steps out from the same old song and dance, he’s no longer here to fall victim to his own insecurities, he’s here to win. Kenny gets brained with the case. He gets DDT’d, he gets thrown through a table, he goes dead-eyed after taking a huge Yoshi Tonic. It feels like a fight, a heated fight instead of a contest of wrestling wherein he is objectively inferior. Even the finish, wherein Goto still loses, feels like a development. Kenny hooks him up for the One-Winged Angel, and right up until the moment the back of his neck meets the canvas, Goto is punching, scratching and clawing to try and get out of it. No longer did Goto humbly, submissively present victory to his opponents, they had to pry it out of his furious soul.

It came time, then, for all this to come full circle. Goto reached his breaking point in spring, had a summer of growth, and showed off to all an epic bloom in the fall. Now, in the winter, to test that all this development meant anything, one more person who thought him a joke came along. One more person who knew him as a perpetual loser. One more person who happened to be his former best buddy, Shibata.

When Okada was trying to court Goto into CHAOS, Shibata was seen looking on in the background. Once Goto bit the bullet, though, he was nowhere to be found. Too preoccupied with the NEVER Openweight title. It wasn’t until the World Tag League where they met once more, bringing up a lot of bitterness after that the past months of separation helped ferment.

Shibata went all-in on his old friend, even disparaging the very fact that people still brought up that relationship. He attacked Goto for changing all the little things but not changing his losing ways, for endlessly chasing revivals when it’s unclear when he was ever at a peak, and for ultimately being in an entirely different dimension than Shibata, then seeming to be on the cusp of being a superstar for the company, was. Once, it was no longer time to go quietly in defeat. Now, it was no longer time to go in defeat at all.

Wrestle Kingdom 11 was where it all paid off. I could feel the same thing happening all over again, and then I could sense that something had changed, that Goto was getting better, getting more of an edge in exchanges. Shibata’s attempts at proving his comments right turned into trying to survive, his dominance slipping throughout. Then, finally, Shibata’s heavily-taped neck began giving out, and Goto pounced on it like a predator. He gave him a reverse GTR, meeting Shibata’s throat with his knee. Then he gave him a regular one for good measure. One of the best, most emphatic finishes I’ve ever seen, and Goto had won.

January 4th at the Tokyo Dome, and Hirooki Goto stood victorious. Not in a tag match, not in a meaningless singles match. He was handed the NEVER Openweight championship. It was a big one, and he had won it, silencing his critics, including the biggest one, himself.

This was a highly significant moment for me as a fan. It would not have been that way if Goto consistently choking had not been the focus of his story for the past couple years. It would also not have been that way if Goto had not acted like every single one of those chokes impacted him as a wrestler and as a person. Without evidence of growth, journeys are nothing. Without evidence of journey, destinations are nothing. With Goto, I felt like everything meant something. He finally dug deep inside himself, not just saying that he was or doing it for show, but that he had finally reached rock bottom, and came back up as a wholly new person. I have felt way more invested in Goto than in most other wrestlers on the New Japan roster because the story of “Is good, but impeded by fear of failure, rejection, lack of confidence” will always be more relatable than “Is good”. When I think of the whole concept of fighting spirit, of never giving up, my mind will never jump first to the guy who just brushes past every obstacle without any trouble, the Okada who sits in a heel hook for 30 minutes and doesn’t tap out. My mind always jumps to the Goto’s of the world, the guys who do in fact give up, who are in fact beaten, who fall, but who end up picking themselves up again, to become stronger and to succeed amidst adversity. That, more than anything else, is true inspiration. Banzai. Banzai. Banzai.

[notevenarealjournalism-blog]

Wrestling is grim

Shibata suffered a subdural hematoma. It’s not a work. I know it’s not a work for two reasons. One, his legitimate doctor talked to the press about it. Two, no wrestling company above the cheapest indies would stoop to this level for promotion. There’s puffing up attendance numbers, and then there’s pretending one of your biggest stars has an injury that is often lethal. Everybody knows it’s because of his headbutts. You could count the number of bloody ones on one hand, but as for ones that didn’t draw blood, and would thus fly under the radar, that number could be far higher. His doctor said he’s not optimistic.

This has given more thought to something that has nagged at me for a while now. It has to do with what wrestlers are effectively doing for us. It’s one thing to look at the wrestlers of the past who have died, or experience a lesser quality of life due to their injuries, to solemnly observe that their style did them no favours with the benefit of hindsight, but it’s another thing to look at a wrestler who is still kicking, who we just saw compete a couple of days prior, who you can just imagine going down that same road, and trying to treat it with that same sort of wisdom. With a Misawa, you can feel sorrow watching his epic matches where he compresses his neck, yet there is this feeling of “What’s done is done”, where nobody can go back and influence how he works in the ring. With Shibata, the sorrow becomes almost a form of guilt, because it’s happening right in front of you, and there’s more of a instinctual human feeling of “This can be stopped”. Perhaps, though, Sakura Genesis was the last night where such a thought would be correct, where Shibata had not totally cleared the event horizon.

If he does come back to wrestling, say, in 6 months, it would be horribly stupid to allow him to keep doing headbutts, but saying that makes it sound like that’s all we need to worry about. As if we can just scold him to stop doing this one move, and then he’ll be fine to just continue for another 10 or 15 years. What if taking a basic back bump causes fluid to start building up in his brain? What if he goes months looking in perfect health, but then starts showing symptoms of another hematoma? Moreover, and this is the question that most brings me pause: What if he dies in the ring just because I wanted him to wear the shiny belt?

It’s something that makes me confront what would effectively be my limits, how much a wrestler would need to invest into their work before I could stop and say it’s enough. To go back to the point of headbutts, it’d be easy to say my limit is headbutting, but to say so would be to scapegoat that as the only cause, and to falsely brand their removal as the true solution. The trouble about confronting such a thing as limits, where generalisations fail you, is that what remains is so abstract that to try to glean something tangible seems useless. What would it mean to, for example, “not be so stiff”? Could you ever hope to enforce a rule of “don’t kill each other out there”? When “I wrestle my style or I don’t wrestle at all” seems like the most fixed value for not only Shibata, but most wrestlers, do we really have the power to ever stop their potential self-destruction?

I mainly wanted to write this out, not in the pursuit of making a coherent opinion piece, but more to get these thoughts out of my head onto something. One of the best wrestlers we’ve seen could be done and dusted, and it feels like a dull sort of dread, one that I didn’t want to keep inside. I don’t know the answers to any of the questions I’ve asked, and this likely isn’t going to help answer them, but I at least put it into words. As I say, Shibata is a truly amazing wrestler. His match with Ishii at G1 23 got me into New Japan, and by extension Puroresu. Though there would be loose ends left untied if this were the end, it’d still be a spectacular career he’s had. All we can do is wait now.

[notevenarealjournalism-blog]

INTERVIEW WITH CAROLYN FORAN ABOUT ALPHONSE MUCHA & KELVINGROVE ART GALLERY

Art is an omnipresent thing. It is an expression of self, of a collective, of a peoples way of life. A piece of art, no matter the medium, will act as a window into the creator’s thoughts. You look at a George Grosz painting and find a disgust for German Jingoism, you look at a Basquiat piece and see an attempt at mixing a Manhattan upbringing with Haitian roots. It is one of the joys of exploring different sorts of art, that these different tongues, environments, cultures which are otherwise so far away from us can become accessible to us.

It is the duty of public services like museums to give us this accessibility. The Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum did just that when they opened up the In Quest for Beauty exhibition on the 8th of October, exhibiting the works of Alphonse Mucha, one of the central figures in what is now referred to as “Art Deco” or “Art Nouveau”.

Mucha is probably one of my all-time favourite artists. I studied him in Secondary school Art & Design. For my exam, I wrote about the poster he made for the melodrama, Gismonda, gushing about how expertly it utilised colour and composition. In him, I found someone who didn’t just build a foundation for others to definitively improve on in the future. This was a guy whose work was totally timeless. All that has changed with people who follow in his footsteps is the exact technology used, we still have the basic concept of using expressive-esque colours and characters in order to advertise a product at the core of most marketing departments these days. He was a ground-breaking artist, whose presence can be felt throughout most of what we come across, when it comes to advertising, comic books, even album covers, which is why I was elated when I heard of the exhibition going on at Kelvingrove.

I spoke with Carolyn Foran, a Museum Education Officer (MEO) at Kelvingrove, about Mucha, as well as about the place of art within Scottish culture. She told me that the main motivation behind the exhibition was appealling to the different demographics who come to the museum. “For a building like Kelvingrove, we need to get a really good mix, because we’ve got adult visitors, we’ve got toursists and we’ve got families.” Alongside exhibitions of artists like Mucha and Jack Vettriano, Kelvingrove has organised exhibitions like “Hatching the Past: Dinosaur Eggs and Babies”, which appeals to families by packaging history as a fun, interactive display. Thus, the Mucha exhibition, as Carolyn says, is “just about making sure we’ve got a mix of exhibitions, mixing up social history, natural history and art.”

Dinosaur Babies and Mucha do contrast with one another, and the latter obviously has a different target audience (All the prints are hung at adult height, and some of the prints themselves include depictions of nudity, or smoking, etc.) but the exhibitions both have the same aim: To present a subject in a way that all demographics can understand and enjoy, as well as learn from. As an MEO, Carolyn develops the museum programs for nurseries, schools and colleges, and she also oversees the execution of these programs. She told me that a group of Secondary school students who were studying the Mucha pieces would ask “Right, we want to know how this artist compares with that artist.” Or “What did this artist inspire?”

It is an exhibition which provokes these questions within young minds that succeeds as an art exhibition. Not only does it inform those who visit, it can inspire them, it can encourage them to create their own art. Asking Carolyn about local artists, I began to wonder how the tag “Scottish artist” could really be defined. Most examples one could point to, like the Glasgow Boys, could be said to simply be artists who were Scottish, rather than artists who were inherently Scottish.

“When the artist, and any person, does [art], they don’t usually say ‘I’m trying to present this, or that’. [For example] the Glasgow Boys didn’t call themselves the Glasgow Boys, these names tend to come later.” So, perhaps the “Scottish Artist” doesn’t exist. Rather, representations of Scottish culture exist, created by individuals who, in the centuries after their deaths, become a symbol of sorts of not only their art movements, but also their homeland. In that way, the exhibitions of Kelvingrove serve to pave the way for modern artists in Glasgow: Just you do you, and history will weave it into the fabric, into the history, of your country.

In Quest for Beauty will continue to be exhibited until 19th February 2017 at Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum

[notevenarealjournalism-blog]

INTERNATIONAL FOOTBALLER MURDERED AT HOME

Stockville Utd. Striker Tom McGunn has been found murdered in his luxury apartment. Police have launched an enquiry into his murder, and are currently requesting public assistance in tracing McGunn’s missing glamour-model girlfriend, it was confirmed today.

Tom McGunn, who recently made his International debut playing for Scotland, was discovered at his home in Deansgate, Muir Road by a member of the public at 5 am, who contacted emergency services.

Those who arrived on the scene found broken glass, a lot of blood, and a kitchen said to be trashed. Police are looking through CCTV footage between 2nd and 3rd of October for any footage of the crime and the perpetrator.

The victim’s girlfriend, glamour model Leah Peters, was seen leaving the couple’s house at 8:30 AM with their son the previous day.

Police Scotland do not have her as a suspect as of press time, but they do have a lead on Ms. Peters, asking for any information as to the whereabouts of her or the couple’s son. The member of the public who discovered Mr. McGunn’s body is still currently assisting police with enquiries.

Nicola Hayward, Detective Superintendent of Police Scotland, described Ms. Peters as having a distinct dragon tattoo on her back, with blond hair in a ponytail, wearing a pink shirt and white trousers.

A spokesman for Stockvile Utd. has released a statement on Mr. McGunn’s death.

He said: “This is a tragic loss of a young man who had a bright international career ahead of him. We are devastated by his death, and no games will be played for a fortnight in respect of this tragedy.”

A further release will be issued by Police Scotland once the post-mortem has been completed. Police are appealing to anyone who noticed strange behaviour on Muir Road on the evening of 2nd of October, or on the morning of 3rd of October, to contact their incident room.

A further release will be issued by Police Scotland once the post-mortem has been completed. Police are appealing to anyone who noticed strange behaviour on Muir Road on the evening of 2nd of October, or on the morning of 3rd of October, to contact their incident room.

ENDS

[notevenarealjournalism-blog]

Hasty Pickings

Gaze into the trash

I am in self-exile

Will come out of it at an entirely arbitrary point in time

Clicking the turnstiles to see a giant subconscious mass

-

Ruminating at approximately 5.6663 nauticals per second

Exhuming all sorts, pitch up vulnerable memories 40.4 Hz

The family of theraphosas in my office ought to be a sign

Then attention jerks, acting as the deadliest of weapons

-

Hey, I heard about the torrent of self-doubt that washed over your temple

I just want to let you know

The morning you wake up and do not feel regretful

Is the morning that your work of font is dealt a death blow

-

Why do people keep going for a sunset flip?

They know what’s going to happen.

[notevenarealjournalism-blog]

2016 Advanced Higher English Discursive Essay

One of my first loves was pro wrestling. It is something very dear to my heart. For me, it is an unsung art. It is a performance that captures a certain method of narrative, a certain method of conveyance, and a certain method of entertainment that no other media can quite capture. Nowhere else can stories of pride, hatred, hunger, perseverance among others be fleshed out in not only such a physical way, but also often in a silent way, wherein the actions of the wrestlers ultimately are more important than their words. It is unlikely though, at least in my lifetime, that this ability to act as a performance will ever be truly realized and appreciated by the general public who look upon wrestling, often with disdain, and disrespect. They will cite the sport’s predetermined, or fake, nature, the sensed homo-eroticism of men in trunks grappling one another, as well as, in the case of lapsed fans, nostalgia for the “boom period” in the late 1990’s of the World Wrestling Federation, (Now World Wrestling Entertainment) and the now defunct World Championship Wrestling. Although nostalgia for better times may differ from the out-and-out rejection of the sport, both criticisms ignore an industry that is largely still churning out a high quality product. The aforementioned WWE may be the first to come to mind, but this piece will be focusing on other promotions, and other time periods. WWE’s talent pool is plentiful, but their creative direction often underwhelms. To write about them would reinforce the monopoly they have over Pro Wrestling and thus, encourage their mediocrity. Moreover, the examples given here serve as timeless classics which serve as benchmarks even in 2016, where the influence of wrestlers like Genichiro Tenryu and Toshiaki Kawada on modern stars like Bryan Danielson and Hiroshi Tanahashi is very clear. An example of amazing wrestling worthy of respect and merit, in terms of telling a story is a match from December 16th, 1988, in the Japanese promotion, All Japan Pro Wrestling. The finals of the “World’s Strongest Tag Determination League”. The foreign American heels (bad guys), Stan Hansen and Terry Gordy, teaming up against the aforementioned babyfaces (good guys) Tenryu and Kawada. One of Pro Wrestling’s greatest strengths is it’s use of characters. While none of the four here compare to wrestlers like Hulk Hogan or Randy Savage on the surface, both the former’s understated personality and the latter’s colourful and boisterous personae share the fundamental role of informing how a wrestler works, acts and responds to what goes on around them. Tenryu is the grizzled veteran, with skin hardened by decades of chops, kicks and submission holds. He doesn’t wear a fancy attire, he never poses, the crowd gets behind him because of his technical ability. Pro Wrestling at it’s best, rather than being a glorified carnival show, can be a place wherein athletes are supported, idolized and immortalized for, above all else, their skill within the ring. Kawada is the wily rookie. In the future, he would become a legend, but in 1988, he was a small guy wearing leopard print tights with a “Never say die” attitude. He is the underdog, the David versus a Goliath. A wrestling promotion is wont to build anticipation, get eyes on the screen, sell tickets, so people like him don’t always win every single match. They fail, but then they get back up and try again and again, resulting in the audience seeing a man evolve before their very eyes into a top athlete, paying to see every stage. One could be cynical regarding the financial reason as to why this journey happens, but in order to build that hype, to get those ratings, to sell out those arenas, the wrestlers have to be good, good enough that people, rather than going “Screw this, he’s a loser.” when the underdog fails, they think “He was just that much closer.”, they start to suspend disbelief and get invested in the story. This feeling of investment, as brought up earlier, is one that no other media form can quite compare to. Terry Gordy and Stan Hansen are both “hosses”, basically a term for big wrestlers. Hansen, in particular, was known and acclaimed around the world for his brutal feuds with people like Bruno Sammartino, Kenta Kobashi, as well as with the people in this tag match. His finisher, a running short-arm strike known as the “lariat”, became infamous for legitimately injuring others, thus it more than often not ends matches and gets a great reaction from the audience, leading to Hansen becoming a huge draw around the world. It is very easy for any one thing to become meaningful. A guy could take something like a simple slap, or a headlock, and if he won all of his matches with those simple manoeuvres, they would begin to mean something, the audience would perk up if he motioned that he was going to go for the headlock, because they’ve been trained to think that the headlock means that the match is over. We see in this match that Hansen simply tugs his elbow pad, and the crowd starts going nuts because that means he’s going to hit the lariat. There’s immediate drama based off of that one gesture; Will the opponent avoid the lariat? Will he reverse it into something else? Will he be able to kick out after getting hit? All these possibilities start popping up in your head, all because a guy adjusted something on his arm. So simplistic, yet due to the talent of the wrestlers, as well as the booker (the person who dictates the winner of matches, the direction of wrestlers, etc.)who decides which move should be built up like so, it manages to get a crowd of hundreds, thousands, millions on their feet. Regardless of one’s own perception of Pro Wrestling, the ability of a good wrestler to wrap the audience around their finger with but a physical movement is, of itself, entirely deserving of respect. The match itself contains all types of offense done at the exact right time and place. Akin to a Tolstoy novel, everything feels purposeful, everything builds up the story of the match. Kawada can hold his own against Gordy, but then, in the middle of his fiery comeback, Hansen boots him in the face and destroys all of his momentum. The audience starts getting into Kawada and Tenryu’s offense, and then they’re stopped in their tracks by that boot to the face. Not only does the match convey a simple story to be followed, it also engages the audience as an integral ingredient. You start to be one with those people, getting hopeful when Gordy starts selling (acting as if hurt by) Kawada’s kicks, then feeling a, for lack of a better term, fun sort of frustration when Hansen comes in to stomp him out. One moment that really stands out in this match is one of those times when Hansen stomps out the babyfaces’ offense. Tenryu puts Gordy into a headscissors submission hold, and it seems to be working. Soon, Hansen gets impatient, marches into the ring and with a fiery rage, starts slapping Tenryu’s chest until he goes limp, releasing the hold. Just how emphatically the hold is broken up, how dangerous Hansen comes across in those 10 or so seconds, it really contributes to this feeling of hopelessness. We start to wonder if the babyfaces can actually overcome. On paper, the tag team formula of “babyfaces get some offense, heels suddenly get the advantage and start beating up babyfaces, babyfaces make comeback, either team then gets the win” has been done to death and should be stale, but in execution, with great wrestlers, one can still get invested into it like it’s the first time they’ve ever seen such a style of match, a true sign of a talented cast, able to maintain a freshness in spite of how many times the same formula has been presented. The heels eventually pick up the victory, with the tug of the elbow pad leading to the lariat, and a successful pinfall. The babyfaces never did say die, their bodies eventually just gave out. Not only does it make Hansen and Gordy look like a million bucks, it builds up the babyfaces as formidable athletes who, going back to my earlier point, could have got the win on any other day. This match is in a league of it’s own when it comes to storytelling during and after the match. It’s ability to have very simple characters, motivations and circumstances lead to an amazing contest and story that can be understood whether in context or in a vacuum, should quell most criticisms that people make of Pro Wrestling. Objectively, all four are talented athletes, and made a large crowd buy into what they were selling. That should be respected the same way that actors in a good play, or a gripping television drama, or any great work of fiction that relies on some investment on the part of the viewer should be respected. Most fans of Wrestling will be the first to admit that this level of quality is not reached by all matches, promotions and products. However, if there is one point to be gained from all of this talk about the psychology of a wrestling match, of why this is great and that is great, it is that when Pro Wrestling is good, it reaches that point that has been previously brought up. It goes from just a fake sport into the sport of kings, a performance art that can showcase athleticism, chronicle a heated rivalry, that can surprise and captivate me to this day. I say not that everybody should love Wrestling like I do, merely that the amount of talent involved in it’s greatest moments be appreciated and respected on the same level as other forms of entertainment. To dismiss anything as fake, stupid, or even pejoratively describing something as “gay”, just seems so narrow-minded, compared to giving that something a proper chance to show you why it should be given consideration. I hope that, soon, Wrestling will manage to move beyond the preconceptions and be appreciated for what it is, a truly unique, diverse, and fun, form of performance art.

[notevenarealjournalism-blog]

INTERVIEW WITH A JOURNALISM HND STUDENT

A journalism student revealed how he practices his writing: Jotting down around 2000 words every day, catering towards an audience of alcoholics, drug addicts, and his own psyche. Brian Webster, 28, is currently studying Practical Journalism HND at the Cardonald campus in Glasgow Clyde College. Asked about when he decided to pursue journalism, Webster recounted his years in primary and secondary education. “During school I was quite….an unengaged pupil, I really disengaged from a lot of different subjects. But, I was always real keen on reading and writing, so English was always something I was passionate about.” Webster is influenced mainly by writers such as Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac, as well as Hunter S. Thompson. He says he aims to emulate their observational, personal style. To this end, he writes in spontaneous prose most days. “[I] tend to write about 100 or 200 words per day whether it’s forced or natural, it can flow into 1000, 2000 words, but I always write something about….what I think, how I’m feeling, whether I’m happy, sad, and I always try and keep it as true as I can.” When asked about the audience he aims to appeal to, Webster simply stated: "Alcoholics and drug addicts."

[Video of Hunter S. Thompson reading the aforementioned Campaign Trail. Thompson’s unique, stream-of-consciousness analysis is often credited as leading to the creation of the “Gonzo” journalism style.] “My style, it’s like, psychological, y’know, it’s like breaking down barriers, not being afraid to speak and share.” “The most embarrassing part of our psyche is very hidden, I think that creates a big problem in society, y’know? So, I write to conquer that, so I don’t get affected by it.” Webster also touched on his own approach to different philosophies and social groups, saying that he attempts to remain open-minded, rather than subscribing to an agenda. “There’s a struggle in modern society by people believing other people’s word as a holy scripture of sorts, y’know? Whereas the challenge for [journalists] is to remain unbiased regardless of our views.” Webster currently works as part of the Lifestyle team for Glasgow Clyde’s On The Button online magazine.