UD: Well honestly I prefer to think of it along the lines of Brecht’s Messingkauf dialogues, which are more of a dialectic materialism than a Hegelian dialectic.

JC: I think the fact that both of us understand what that means is indicative of the root problem here, Uther.

UD: What root problem, Josh?

JC: The inherent superiority complex that arises from an eclecticism of education that is part and parcel of the modern BA.

UD: Are you saying, Josh, that the endemic lack of competition and absence of non-abstract benchmarks has made the BA an achievable dream for people who would otherwise struggle in other, more rigorously assessed degrees?

JC: Yes Uther. Yes I am.

UD: How so?

JC: BAs fundamentally enable the hobbyists to justify their lack of provable skill and measurable achievement.

UD: But not all people with BAs are deluded hippies whiling away their hours on weaving animal-scaled tea cosies. Many successful artists start with BAs. Look at me.

JC: I am, Uther. Believe me, I am.

UD: The real problem seems to be that BAs lack the clear developmental path into a real-world career that other degrees like an LLB and a BCA do. People aren’t taught to survive with a BA.

JC: Do you feel that this has something to do with the lack of concise focus within the degree itself? For example, I am majoring in Film, but this semester I am taking papers in Philosophy, Science and Language Studies.

UD: I think it’s partly that, but it’s generally quite a forgiving degree anyway. You can get through the whole thing without really finishing anything, which is a skill you really need in the real world. Especially if you want to be creative, like, I think we can safely assume, most BA students do.

JC: It does seem that the BA fosters an attitude of lethargy. It becomes far too easy to start something and then get distracted by frivolities. It occurs to me that there is a more profound problem at work here though. As White Middle Class Males we have a support network that is second to none. But we have been raised to take it for granted. Anyone getting what appears to be a better hand up than us inspires some kind of muted outcry, but realistically our greatest concern is the age-old question of Beatles or Rolling Stones.

UD: We’re trained to aspire to the future without preparing for the present. With that comes a great sense of entitlement and an almost Fascistic sense of what is right and wrong. We’re more concerned about how badly we don’t want to sell out than with the actual facts of the work we want to make.

JC: I think that the greatest challenge we face is the inability to instill a sense of discipline in BA students. Oft we are told that as adults we are responsible for our own self-discipline, but the reality is that in the modern work force there is an exercised regimen of control that keeps us on deadlines assigned by others. Rarely do we actually have the opportunity to decide our own timelines. But within the BA framework there is little to no backlash for not sticking to an arbitrary set of guidelines. This encourages us to focus on devising arguments for getting out of handing in assignments than it does on getting them finished in good time.

UD: That’s all well and good and I think we can all agree that there needs to be a greater sense of effort going towards the BA. But we have to consider what the degree symbolises as a whole. It’s the degree people take when they’re not good at anything else or misguidedly want to be famous artists. Nine out of ten BA students, even if they won’t admit to it, are in the programme in the hope that it will somehow magically lead to an easy life. To think in a right-wing way, how many artists can New Zealand society support? Is tightening up the criteria of the BA a way of stemming the tide and making life easier and fairer for the people who actually put the work into their art?

JC: Do you think that the gatekeepers of the BA are, at least, partially responsible for this?

UD: Yes and no. There is an element of “those who can’t do, teach BAs”, but at the same time there are an equal amount of lecturers who are genuinely talented practitioners of the art they lecture in. The problem becomes not one of a lack of talent on their behalf, but a lack of caring. As the funding of universities changes, I think we can agree, for the worse lecturers are forced more and more to teach things they have no interest in. So it’s easy for them to stop caring and allow mediocrity to flourish.

JC: Harsh sentiments. No less true for their callousness, but harsh nonetheless. Is there a wanton lack of regard for the real-world implications of getting a BA? We implicitly understand that as an artist the odds are that we are only going to make around $20K a year for the rest of our lives. We will never own our own homes and we will probably die destitute and alone. Under a bridge somewhere.

UD: Obviously. But, at the same time, that is what is so great about the BA. Sitting here in my honours year, staring bleakly down the barrel of my future, it is easy to be annoyed with not having done a “safer” degree. But, at the end of the day, given a time machine and a sense of purpose, I wouldn’t go back and change it. The BA has all the joys of making art, but with none of the real-world bullshit. You just have to make sure you’re ready for the real world on your own terms. Which, admittedly, the BA is not a big help with. How hard can it be, really?

JC: I don’t know Uther, I just don’t know.

UD: Hold me, Josh.

JC: No, Uther. No. And that is the end of it.

Luckily, the government of our fine nation has examined the possibilities of these disasters actually happening and has put together a list of suggestions for us, so that we may better serve as their minions in a post-disaster scenario.

A helpful website

When you go to www.getthru.govt.nz it says in nice big bold letters on the front page: “This website will show you how to get ready, so you’ll get through”. While I can’t see that Telstra will still be providing my internet if Mt Ruapehu has just blown it’s top and covered most of the central North Island in lava and volcanic ash, people aren’t stupid enough to not check this site before a disaster, right? Preparation is key.

Get Thru recommends having an Emergency Plan. The plan should outline all of the gathering points and supply caches you have created. There is a small downside to this: it’s highly likely that at least a few of your dwelling mates won’t be at home when a disaster occurs. So live and let die. The good of the many outweighs the needs of the few. The government also advises having a Getaway Pack ready, but more on this soon.

“Ensure your insurance cover is adequate and up to date” is another helpful tidbit of information. Obviously the first thing I’m going to be doing when the hordes of ravaging pillagers are smashing through my front door is call State Insurance to make sure I won’t be liable for the excess when they eventually get around to seeing to my (comparatively) piddling insurance claim.

When disaster strikes, expect to get the middle finger from your insurance provider. They will have bigger fish to fry. Try expressing your point with a thoughtfully placed petrol bomb. They won’t see to your claim any faster, but you will feel better about establishing your place in the dystopian wasteland.

The Kit

Everybody knows they should have ‘The Kit’ somewhere. The Kit is a collection of supplies to get you through until normal service can be resumed. The Man would have you believe that after a catastrophic event everything should be back to normal in around three days.

However, I have been intently watching footage from disasters that have occured around the world over the last twenty years or so. I have kept scrupulous records of what happened, where, and how long it took until life was back to normal. I’m here to tell you that, in the event of a system-shattering catastrophe, if life is back to normal in three days then there is an afterlife—and you probably won’t need a survival kit.

But assuming that you made it and you have just stepped outside the shattered ruins of your once-whole house to find a ravaged environ full of toxins and hazards, what do you really need to survive?

First thing’s first: make sure you’ve got the basics covered. For those of you taking notes, never fear, I will have a handy checklist for you to cut out and keep at the end.

Water is a vital consideration. A rough guideline for how much water you’ll need is three litres per person, per day—give or take a bit based on your consumption and general size, etc. I decided to look into this further. Three litres of water takes up a fair amount of room. If you need nine litres of water for three days for one person, that’s 27 litres of water for three people for three days—about 12 2.25 litre Coke bottles. It should be noted that the New Zealand Government suggests we use empty Coke bottles for water storage. I wonder how much Coke paid them for that little slice of advertising genius. You can’t buy empty Coke bottles.

Don’t forget you need space to store your 2.25 litre Coke bottles. The entire floor of my walk-in pantry is filled by 12 2.25 litre bottles of water. And they are pretty heavy. What if your house burns down in the disaster? You’d be well fucked. Or would you? Does your next door neighbour have a spa pool? Mine does. That’s a water source right there. Or, you know, go grab a distillation kit and distill seawater—then you have salt AND water. Both are essential to human survival.

Food is the next consideration. I would recommend stocking up on biltong, wasabi sauce, Maggi’s Vegetable Cuppa Soup (kerching!) and Watties Fruit Salad (canned(kerching!)). An odd-sounding mix perhaps, but bear with me. Biltong is dried spiced beef. It’s tasty as hell and was the staple food of the Dutch when they colonised South Africa. So if it’s good enough for them, then it’s good enough for me. It also lasts longer than anything you’re likely to create in your life, and in times of great need its fibers can be woven into a makeshift rope.

Wasabi sauce will provide a lot of the nutrients that a protein-only diet would be lacking. Like biltong, it’s tasty and you can smear it on your fingers as an added close-combat weapon. Jab that shit in someone’s eye and see if they notice (this will also help determine if they are human). The vege soup has dehydrated carrots and other miscellenia—it can’t be all bad, and at least it has some carbs in it. The fruit salad, that shit never, ever goes off and it’s fruit. It even has cherries in it. That’s pure class right there.

You should have a first-aid kit. Now I’d recommend you go and buy a tramping one, but let’s be honest—we’re all students here, and frankly given the choice between buying a first-aid kit and a beer and well, I’m pretty thirsty. Realistically, you only need a few basics thrown into an ice cream container. You definitely need band aids. If you can’t afford them I would suggest tapping up every store you go into, they generally have a box around somewhere. A little fake blood goes a long way here. Added bonus: you end up with a widely varied selection of band aids so you can appropriately accessorise.

You need a needle and thread. This one is for the wounds beyond the help of band aids. A lighter wouldn’t go amiss here either, as it helps sterilise the needle. You will also want to put some non-iodised salt in the kit. This helps stop wounds bleeding and disinfects. It also flavours your food. Make sure it doesn’t have iodine in it, or it will just make the wound worse. Iodine + open wounds = bad news.

You will also require clean cloths and a pair of scissors. With these two basic items you can take care of damn near anything in a pinch. It won’t be pretty and it’ll damn sure hurt, but the injured person probably won’t die. Unless they were going to die anyway, and then you can take solace in the fact that your inept fumblings were never going to do any good.

At the end of the day it comes down to this: Do you want to be Mad Max or the Mariner from Waterworld? Cause if you want to be top dog after disaster strikes, you need to be hardbitten and tough as nails. A take-no-prisoners attitude will get you a long way. Alternatively you could potter around from now until the Apocalypse collecting items that might be useful and stowing them away. Maybe you can successfully revive a barter economy after money means nothing because the government is buried under a landslide and burning to death in their concrete deathtrap.

As promised, the checklist:

• 3L of water per person, per day. I’d recommend freezing it.
• Biltong, wasabi sauce, vegetable cuppa soup and tinned fruit salad. If you’re a vegan or you don’t own a can opener then you’re pretty fucked, huh?
• First Aid kit. Even the rudimentary one I outlined above is better than nothing. A little goes a long way with these sorts of things, but it never hurts to be over prepared.
• Leather jacket (leather pants are a good option too). “Why?” you ask. They are hard wearing, they don’t catch on fire easily and they are really good at keeping you warm and dry. Again, fuck you vegans.
• A machete. Pretty self-explanatory really. Should be your go tool for most things. A shotgun would be a worthy addition to your collection if you can manage it.
• A sweet dog. Bonus points if it’s a Blue Heeler. Mine’s a Shih Tzu/ Schnauser cross and I’m not worried.
• A creased, weather-beaten photo of your loved ones. ‘Cause if they can’t get you through then who can?

Be Prepared. Stay Alive. Survive. I’ll see you on the other side.

Names have been omitted for privacy reasons.

So just to clarify, you work in the sex industry, right?

I have—I’ve just finished working as a ‘supervisor’ at a brothel. I was actually a legit supervisor, not just saying that. So, I worked this year as a supervisor three nights a week at a brothel, basically running the place, serving at the bar, putting bookings through, and some light cleaning and a bit of sales. I did about two and a half years as a prostitute, with a bit of kink work added in. I also did three years on and off as a stripper. I got into the escort work through being around it in the strip clubs—I got to know some working girls and I was happily promiscuous. Eventually I decided if I was going to be having casual sex with drunk men who were often fucking crap lays, I may as well get paid for it.

I got into the stripping because 18-year-old me had an endearing habit of running around in underwear every time alcohol was consumed. It was much the same rationale: may as well get paid for it!

I worked for about two months as a waitress/promo girl in the strip club before I got up on stage. I took my time and really scoped it out, and I thought about the decision to start whoring for quite a few months before I started that too—and I’m very glad both those decisions were quite considered.

So it was something you thought through fully?

Yup, and my decision to quit was much the same. I was definitely still enjoying the job and it was still working out for me, but it was just getting more tiring, and I thought it’s definitely better to quit than get burnt out.

That’s a little bit different from the popular idea that women somehow get exploited and pushed into it. Is that idea justified?

I think that the idea that sex workers are coerced or exploited is part stereotype and part legitimate concern. Even though I entered the industry at 18, I have seen many girls start escort work at 18 who clearly weren’t aware of their own psychological and emotional limits, or the boundaries they needed to set to keep themselves happy and safe. And while I don’t, by any means, think that the industry is inherently exploitative, I think that if you aren’t protecting yourself and with a good support network in your personal life, there can be a lot of really hard emotional and mental problems to work through. Some related to the job, some related to the social discrimination, and some related to the wider social aspects, i.e. the prevalence of drugs in the industry.

So it’s something that, perhaps, wider society needs to gain a better understanding of?

Well I’ve always thought that a lot of the self-destructive behaviours I’ve seen—the higher visibility of substance abuse in the industry, the seedy characters some girls hang out with, and the messy relationships that are definitely hyped by stereotype, but can sometimes be seen—they can quite often be fuelled by self-destructive urges which are clearly fuelled by these internalised messages that girls get about their sexualities. NOT that I think being promiscuous means you’re automatically self-destructive, just that there’s often a link, you know?

I think the point is that we’re all a little bit ‘deviant’, and while there are millions of people who will never want anything other than monogamy and meaningful sex, I think a society that realises everyone’s a bit kinky in their own special way and that’s ALRIGHT will definitely be better off. You don’t need to be a raging whore who likes nothing more than a night of tequila, fivesomes and reclaimed language, to agree with sex-positive or sex-radical principles. The thing about sexuality is that’ll mean different things for absolutely everybody.

So, to go down a slightly different track for a minute—what do you think makes a good sex worker?

I think the most important thing, and it may seem glaringly obvious, is people skills. Especially empathy. The nature of the job is such that, even if you work in a very standard knock-shop where it’s ‘get in- get off- get out’ mentality, you’ll never have any two clients looking for exactly the same thing.

The most successful hookers I’ve known have had the same things in common: an ability to have interesting conversations on many levels, the ability to connect with many backgrounds, a brilliant natural smile, and a sense of ease with their own bodies. If you don’t have those things, the jobs where clients book you for four hours just to talk about their lives, depression or ex-wives, are going to be the hardest things ever. And no matter how good your body is, if you’re not comfortable with it, providing a really good and non-awkward sexual service is near impossible. One of the most incorrect stereotypes about the sex industry, in my experience, is that guys book girls just so they can fuck ‘em and walk away.

All of my regular clients—and I had several who’d book me around once a fortnight/once a month each—did so because I was genuinely open to trying new things, and I welcomed the idea of getting myself off at work, and showed them how to do it.

So what should the stereotype be?

The stereotype of what the client wants?

Yeah, we’ll start there…

It’s a hard thing to generalise, but I think almost everyone who uses the sex industry wants to find a service—no matter what ‘flavour’—with someone who is happy, respects themselves, and makes the client feel like a king. More often than not the essence of the service is escapism—and the punters I know would hate nothing more than spending an hour with a worker who’s clearly unhappy with their job, because then they, the client, isn’t going to have much of an indulgent escapist time.

People like being pampered, and paying a beautiful person to have sexy fun with you is definitely an indulgence.

It must be an incredibly insightful role to be in. To be the arbiter of people’s deepest desires, needs, fetishes and dreams. Does that ever weigh on you?

[Laughs] Woah—it does now that I think of myself as the arbiter. It’s definitely a responsibility, especially in terms of confidentiality, and respecting people’s privacy… I’ve definitely found it more empowering than anything—the confidentiality’s an important concern, but the feeling of being trusted, the quite real connections you get—especially with regulars—and being able to see the beaming smile on a repressed dude’s face after you’ve pegged him for the first time, that’s pretty rad.

And I wish more of society could appreciate just how fucking sweet a post-orgasm smile is, without being grossed out by it.

Geoff Stahl, a lecturer in advertising and sub-cultures in the Media Studies department at Victoria University, says that the internet is a “triangulation of market, audience and participant”. Which is a fantastic way of saying that at times we are targeted as a seller’s focus point, sometimes we sit back and watch stuff go on in front of us, and sometimes people watch us do our thing. Kind of like the real world. So what’s the difference between the internet and the real world?

We are all very aware of the massive scale of the internet, so perhaps it would be easiest to indulge in the petty vice of metaphor to gain insight. Bear me with me, if you will.

The Looking Glass

The internet, as mentioned above, is a repository for the brain farts of the most privileged people on earth. At some point or another, each person on the internet has decided, this is the time for me to leave a little piece of myself in the public domain. You can find it there if you’re willing to look hard enough. So it is essentially the world, as it relates to the privileged few. To dip into metaphor, the internet is a lot like the Wild West was a little over one hundred years ago. There are a few laws in place, but essentially you can get away with anything until you commit an act in a jurisdiction where it would be deemed inappropriate or illegal.

The internet is the last truly free ideological domain. It is a place for the learned and the intelligent to converse, share, idealise and realise. We are without restriction and can remake ourselves to be anything we want. We can research and discover the highest flights of intellect that mankind has reached. We can sate our deepest, darkest and most depraved desires. There is a place for us to revel in our most fringe interests and hobbies. The internet brings us, intellectually at least, closer to those who we never imagined were just like us. Stahl refers to this idea as “…an evolved ethos stemming from a commitment to a collective. It also, in some ways, rests on an idea of exclusivity.”

Each of these communities is, online, called a forum. Often there are numerous forums devoted to the same subject or the same collective interest. Within a forum there are numerous threads, each dealing with its own specific area of esoteric debate. Within these there are often sub-threads. Let’s think about it like this:

Each forum is a town. A town is made up of a number of different kinds of buildings. So the main part of the forum is going to be the town hall. Then you have the church, the store, the school and various specialty businesses. In order, you generally have a thread about the canon (or accepted truth of a matter), a thread about merch, collectibles or stuff associated with your interest that you can purchase, a thread for those who are new to the interest or who are looking to expand on their knowledge base, and then a whole bunch of other threads about everything else associated with the focus or focii of this town. Sorry, forum. Some of them might actually have nothing to do with the focii, they just happen to be things that like-minded people (in one area) want to discuss among themselves.

The players in this little farce

There is an enormous misconception surrounding people on the internet. Of course it’s funny to make jokes about how you were chatting to this super hot chick from just down the road and she suggested you meet up. So you toddle down to the carpark outside Pak’n’Save and wait, wearing the red hat and polka dot scarf you said you would. Suddenly a dirty grey panel van pulls up next to you with “Free Candy” poorly hand-painted on the side and a shadowy pot-bellied figure mutters through the open window, “Hey you going my way? I was just talking to you online.” Yeah don’t bother lying, everyone has a story like that.

It is imagined that somehow the internet allows you to be less authentic than you are in real life. But this is fundamentally not true. Unless you are some sort of psychopath, you constantly pretend things about yourself. Stahl sums it up well: “Real life is not necessarily more authentic than online life. We are constantly performing a version of ourselves that is situationally appropriate.” That pretty much says it all. You might not be pretending to be a 14-year-old girl when in fact you’re a 23-year-old guy, but you’re definitely pretending to like your boss even when you’d rather choke the life out of them with your bare hands. Or when you pretend to be civil with your boyfriend’s dropkick mates when you’d rather cuss them out and smack them in the head with the ugly fry-pan you got given by that weird chick who used to live in your hall of residence, but now lives in a possession-free commune.

All the internet does is lift the restraints of what we are physically capable of dissembling. As long as you can keep a decent thread of continuity running through your stream of lies, no one will ever be any the wiser. Or maybe you’re just letting loose the beast that dwells deep in your chest, but no one sees it IRL (in real life).

So where does this fit into our carefully crafted metaphor? In the glory days of the Wild West there was relatively little communication between the towns. So it was pretty easy to completely change your identity between towns and ride into a new one being someone utterly different. Of course it’s a little more than that on the internet, but for the purposes of this particular metaphor it will suffice.

The existential paradox

Of course into every life must fall a little rain, and in every good Western myth there is a bad guy. The spectre of privacy invasion looms large on the horizon here. Let’s have a look at a case study. At the moment the single most popular community site on the internet would arguably be Facebook. It exploded across the public consciousness, sweeping with it a whole new way of interacting. It also made the seven degrees of Kevin Bacon game a whole bunch easier ’cause suddenly you could see exactly how many steps removed you were from anyone else. So why is Facebook the villain of the piece, or at least the villain of this particular case study?

It has become more and more apparent in recent months that there are some glaring flaws in the privacy settings on Facebook. Not only that, there are some truly disturbing inadequacies in the terms and conditions of the Facebook user agreement. It turns out that none of the information that you upload onto Facebook actually belongs to you once it is uploaded. It becomes the sole property of that nebulous entity called Facebook. “But!” I hear you cry, “What’s so nebulous about Facebook? What can I possibly have to lose here?” A fair question indeed, intrepid user. It turns out that Mark Zuckerberg, the former Harvard student who graced us with his system, was perhaps a little less than forthcoming with his intentions. In documents very recently brought to light, he outlines his laissez-faire attitude towards the privacy concerns of the users of Facebook. This instant messenger conversation from 2004 highlights this particularly disturbing facet of this informational powerhouse’s personality with alacrity:

Zuckerberg: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuckerberg: Just ask.

Zuckerberg: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?

Zuckerberg: People just submitted it.

Zuckerberg: I don’t know why.

Zuckerberg: They “trust me”

Zuckerberg: Dumb fucks.

An incredibly cavalier and distressing viewpoint from a man who runs a website that has somewhere in the region of 450 million users. I think the character of villain quite nicely fits Mr Zuckerberg in this particular metaphor.

We are anon and we are legion

Before you start tearing your clothes and covering your heads with ash, weeping and mourning for your lost privacy, we should first examine the curious heroes of our metaphor. Oddly enough, and as is so often the case, we find them where we would least suspect. The heroes of the internet are the oft-spoken-of but little-understood trolls. Their community exists within a forum called 4chan. In the main, the surface of 4chan and the sub-forum /b/ seems to be little more than degrading bigoted and inflammatory rhetoric. It sets out to instantly offend those with tender sensibilities and to hound the hypocrite and the outspoken status quo supporter. But with a little patience and some careful digging it is possible to begin to understand a little more of the denizens of this seemingly lawless town. Perhaps it is best to let them speak for themselves on the matter of their own psychology:

“Behold, a public Bulletin Board, Built of Both Brilliance and Barbarity By Bastards with Boners. This Bastion, no mere Bulwark of Boredom, is a Brutal Barrage of Blistering Bullshit, Barely Benevolent…But Behind the Bigotry and Boobs, Beyond the Bitter Broadcasts of Bragging Buffoons; here be the Body Politic. A Brotherhood of Blasphemy, Blessed with more Balls than Brains, Battling the Bland, the Bogus, the Benign. Bedlam? Bring it on.”

Within this touchingly poetic self-assessment of their own mentality lies a fundamental truth. While to all intents and purposes they appear to have only their own interests at heart, they do in fact have a decidedly rigid code of ethics. They wreak havoc on systems that they deem to be fundamentally imbalanced or unfair. When roused by an example or expression of injustice they take it upon themselves to rectify the situation. When this wrath is brought to bear, the sheer weight of numbers and varied areas of interests among the members ensures that most problems are resolved swiftly, in vengefully vigilante-esque fashion.

So within our metaphor they take the role of the group of unknown gunmen riding only for justice in its most primary of forms—the most fascinating thing about the Anon movement, for that is how they refer to themselves. Which is, in itself, a fascinating insight into their psychology, for it ensures that no one member can be found or singled out to be more important or above the rest. But as I was saying, the most interesting thing is that every time they exploit a flaw, they scrupulously document in a publicly accessible database. Every time they find a weakness in a website or seek to wreak havoc on a chain of stores that have unethical employment standards, they document every step of the process. This puts them in an entirely separate class from run-of-the-mill troublemakers and mischief seekers. But the essential fact remains that they work for the benefit of people rather than institutions.

All good things must come to an end

So there it stands. An examination of the internet through metaphor and discourse. It’s still not a friendly place to go, but interesting places are rarely completely safe. I have no doubt that for the most part you will continue on in the vein you have already, by perusing Facebook and occasionally swooping through Google to do some last-minute revision. But in the words of many, many generations of hard-toiling prospectors: “There’s gold in them there hills.” All that remains is for you to summon your courage and find it. And rest assured, if it all becomes too much for you and you find yourself at the mercy of the wicked denizens of the internet, if you seek honestly and fairly, there will be those who will help you.

Best of luck. It’s a wild frontier out there.

In this vein there a number of introductory classes in NZSL. These classes are held at lunchtime in VZ201. Each class is 45 minutes long and gives you a very small taste of what Sign Language is like. It’s a bit like having a taster of the bottle of wine without buying it. But you can buy the wine—by signing up for DEAF101.

The Deaf community is an active one in New Zealand and at last census, around 25,000 people said they used NZSL. There is also a thriving community of sign language interpreters. Unfortunately, the only qualification for interpreters is only available in Auckland. Shosh Cleary, a former Vic student, chased her desire to become an interpreter up north.

“I recently moved to Auckland to begin a Sign Language Interpreters course. Prior to this I was studying at Victoria University Wellington. I was studying Psychology, Linguistics and Sign Language,” she says.

“I was encouraged to apply for the Interpreters Course and unfortunately the only place that offered the course was in Auckland, but that came with its positives and now I have a wonderful deaf boyfriend. I’m really enjoying the course up here and the Auckland Deaf Society has been very welcoming and lots of fun.”

While the New Zealand Deaf community has been a fixture for almost as long as New Zealand has, the road to recognition for NZSL has been a rocky one. The first recorded teacher of sign language in New Zealand was Dorcas Mitchell, who taught British Sign Language (BSL) in 1868. For a long time there were specialised schools for Deaf children, and while they were focused on teaching Deaf children to speak, the social interaction gave rise to the first iteration of NZSL, which drew heavily from BSL. The new sign language was frowned in the main by the hearing teachers, but kids will be kids and it was almost impossible for the hearing teachers to stamp down on it.

This attitude towards the Deaf community abated somewhat in 1979, when the powers that be decided that they would introduce a program “Total Communication”, which had an ideology that essentially ran: communicate in anyway possible. The most recent problem that the new generation of Deaf children face is the societal move away from specialist schools, and the attempt to integrate their education into the mainstream. This has proved difficult for Deaf children who feel isolated from the children around them, and in some cases cut off from their peers. Adam Smith, a 23-year-old building apprentice, shares his experience.

“I was born full deaf and I lived in Dargaville. I started signing and trying to talk when I was 3 or 4 year old and I started school when I was 5. I was alone at school and I could only communicate with a few friends and my family. I went to KIT (Keep In Touch) Day for Deaf children. We would play around, ride horses, feed cows and sheep and talk sign with some great friendly people. When I went to high school in Hamilton I was the only one who was deaf, everyone else could hear.”

The biggest problem faced by the Deaf community is a lack of understanding. If you ever wanted to understand a little more about people just like you but you never knew it you should definitely head to one of the NZSL taster classes. When language is your only barrier you have only yourself to blame for not breaching it.

Josh: What do you do?

Daniel: I was hired back at end of ‘96 as a conceptual artist. I was one of a group of concept artist/designers—a kind of interchangeable term really for us—all hired about the same time when Weta was looking to build a design team. Until that time, they had a couple of artists who would do design work for them, and on the kind of projects they had been working on until that time, that was as much as they needed or could sustain. But the company was looking a bit bigger at the time. Lord of the Rings was the major film that came along straight after the original King Kong fell through for us. And I really cut my teeth on that—that was a pretty amazing experience. I tried to spread myself around at the time.

Since then Weta Workshop has diversified a lot more, and we have got more strings to our bow. Now the company does collectibles…we have a little bit of publishing [and] our own TV production group now as well. I’m finding I’m less involved in the actual art design side of things, and a bit more in art directing other things, like we have got Weta Productions, which is making children’s TV programmes. We did Jane and the Dragon a few years ago, and most recently is The Wot Wots.

My role with those, or with The Wot Wots, has been liaising with companies that come on board as licensees. So there has been a toy company come on board to make toys for them, and I am in charge of supplying them with reference imagery, and art directing the toys they bring back and say, ‘Hey we want to do this’, and I’m like, ‘Well it doesn’t quite look like the character so change to this’, whatever. I am a toy collector as well, so it’s been quite cool to see how the other side of that works.

Most recently I have been helping get some books off the ground for Weta. I wrote the World of Kong book that we did, which was a fictional bestiary of Kong’s islands. We did a behind-the-scenes art book for the Narnia series and I wrote the text for that as well… At the moment, I am just in the last couple of weeks or so of finishing off the District 9 book, which we are hoping to have out for Christmas this year. A little late behind the movie, but I think everyone was surprised that the movie was such an amazingly big hit—not because it wasn’t cool, but because nobody was expecting it to get the exposure that it did.

Josh: How did you get to doing what you are doing?

Daniel: I have always been interested in creatures and costumes and monsters and all that kind of stuff. Most importantly world building, because that is something we really pride ourselves on doing. I’ll explain a bit more about that as we get along. But I have always been interested in that ever since I was a kid. It wasn’t until I was at Polytech—I was at Auckland University of Technology—and was doing an illustration course [and] within that I was trying to twist it as much as possible towards creature design for the movies and that sort of thing… There is no degree you can go and do in that. Fortunately, my tutors—once I had convinced them and shown them there was actually a career to be made in doing that—they were happy to support me as long as I met all the broader curriculum requirements.

I found out about Weta in my last year that I was there—I found out there was a company here in Wellington doing that kind of stuff, which blew me away as I imagined you would have to go to the States to do it. I contacted Weta and came down and did some work experience here, and walked away three months before my degree was due to finish—when I left they said there was a job waiting for me as soon as I had finished. So I graduated and moved to Wellington two months after graduating, and have been here ever since. So it was a pretty wild ride.

I think there is a combination there of luck and good timing, but also being passionate about what I was doing. I wasn’t necessarily especially good about what I was doing in the beginning, but I had a real passion for it and Richard [Taylor] really responds to passion. As I say, good timing as they were looking to put together a design department for King Kong, didn’t have any people, and I walk in and say I am interested in this kind of stuff. So really, really lucky.

It is a lot harder now because everyone knows about Weta. The kind of career I am in is something that a lot of folks know about and would aspire to be in, so the competition is much bigger and fiercer. We get dozens of portfolios every week and you look through them and just go ‘wow’. There are some incredibly talented people out there… but obviously there is only a certain number of people the company can hire and it’s all built on what opportunities are available at the time for work… So I feel very fortunate to be there and I can’t see myself going anywhere in the near future.

I touched on world building earlier… World building is—say you get a script for a movie and it needs a monster—we want to think about what the whole world that monster lives in is like and how does that affect the way the monster should look and how does the monster look in that whole world. The whole package.

Often you go to movies and you will see a monster run on screen and [it] is wearing a crazy costume—maybe it’s a medieval setting—but you look at the costume and think ‘Well that looks like cast rubber’ or ‘that looks like some sort of kevlar composite or something like that’ and ‘that creature looks really really clean but everything around is dirty’. There is something in it that makes you go ‘that is not fit for that’.

What that tends to be a product of is that they will have one company doing the set design, they’ll have another company doing the costume, another guy doing the creature and you end up with a weird jumble of parts that doesn’t usually mesh. What we try to do at Weta, and why the company has in the past taken on so many different roles on a different project, is to try and get that singular brush stroke that paints the world believably from start to finish.There are many artists working on it but they are all pulling in the same direction and they all understand each other.

Josh: What if someone, at uni say, shared your passion and wanted to get into this notoriously close-knit industry? What would their path be?

Daniel: It shouldn’t discourage people from pursuing the dream. I am proof that it can come true. So if you have a dream and a passion for this kind of stuff, then throw yourself at it. I think nothing will sell you better than a portfolio that is filled with really cool work that demonstrates how passionate and excited you are about what you are doing. Because you can’t engineer passion, that has got to come from the person. That is the one thing when you come to see an employer [that] you have to have from the beginning. You can learn and get better as you go along, but [passion]’s got to be there.

I think an important ‘to do’ is to be creative in where you go to. Weta is obviously the big name in town at the moment but there are other companies around. [They’re] obviously not the same size as Weta, but something that is really opening up, particularly in the last five to six years is video gaming, and there is a massive need for conceptual artists and designers in the video game industry. The gloves are really off there because you are creating completely fake worlds so you don’t have to be restricted to the kind of visual constraints that say somebody making a costume to fit on a guy has to. Even if they [designers] want to end up back in film eventually it is a great place to get in and some of the smaller gaming companies could certainly use talented young artists.

Publishing can be a way in, I think. [It is] tough in New Zealand because it is a small market for an illustrator to break into, and I can’t really speak too much about it because my experience has really been based in film design. But comics or illustration, particularly if you can find overseas clients to work for in addition to New Zealand companies, so you can get the amount of work you need, there [are] possibilities there as well. And the internet also makes it possible to work for clients overseas so Weta need not be the only company to come knocking on the door of.

Josh: So it’s hard for fresh faces to get house room at Weta. Is there room for smaller outfits to develop their own corner of the market?

Daniel: Yes, certainly there is. And Weta is not the only guy in town. They are obviously the best and most well known, but there are plenty of other companies doing stuff. Three Foot Seven is going to be doing a huge amount of work, arguably much more than Weta would be on The Hobbit. And in Auckland you have a massive film and television industry up there as well, which shouldn’t be forgotten about. In fact we get all the press down there and typically we are doing the movies down here. But a huge amount gets done in Auckland—like six TV shows being done up there at the moment. There are plenty of opportunities around… It’s tough because the work comes and goes, and it’s a bit of a roller coaster ride in getting work [security], but there is definitely work around to get.

Josh: What keeps you in a famously fickle business?

Daniel: The one really amazing thing about Weta Workshop—and it is totally to Richard Taylor and Tania Roger’s credit, the founders and runners of the company—is that they are in it for the long haul. The film industry is feast or famine, jobs come and go and there will be lots of work for a short amount of time and there will be no work for a time. Richard and Tania have really tried to build a crew that they then, as much as possible, keep during the hard time and sustain during those times. Also they will find work to suit the crew they have got, rather than necessarily finding crew to suit the work they have got—I mean they do that too, but definitely they try to keep the core group. My limited experience with friends overseas is that the [visual] effects companies tend to shrink and grow according to the jobs—they will fire everybody when a job finishes and then hire a new bunch of people when the next job comes along. Richard as much as possible tries to create that sustainability of work all the way through where people can go to work and know that they have a job eight to six every day, five days a week, forever.

Richard wants crew to be there for the long haul. He says that his greatest pride is not the number of prizes on the shelf or certificates on the wall, it is the number of babies born to the crew. He says that if people are having babies it means they have sustainability and security in their work, and that is something to be really proud of in the film industry where the whole industry is anything but sustainability and security. That loyalty comes back in the other direction because of his attitude.

I would say the values of the company are part of it. Staying in New Zealand because I still think it’s the best place to be and definitely where I want to raise my kids. That keeps me here. A lot of it is definitely that loyalty you get from the company.

Josh: Do you have a favourite outsider who has come in to employ your services—someone you personally dealt with? I mean obviously Peter Jackson is probably going to be a notable figure there.

Daniel: He’s pretty awesome but I tell you what—I can’t say too much because this is still in the works­—but Guillermo Del Torro, the time I have spent with him so far is amazing—just incredibly giving, friendly, open guy who is just all about the artistic merits of what he is producing, and not at all about ego and political nonsense and that kind of stuff, which makes him a joy to work with. So from the amount of interacting I have had with him, which is not a lot so far, he is amazing. An incredible guy. And whatever happens with The Hobbit—it happens or it doesn’t happen or whatever—that in the future we will get to work with him more because he is awesome.

Tom Hardy. What a man, what an actor. The man is a god. Honestly. Everything I have seen him in is solid gold. Range, depth, emotion and emotiveness. And Bronson really gets him to stretch through a lot. Because, frankly, a man who is famous for being Britain’s most violent prisoner doesn’t really grab me as a concept. But this movie manages to hold my attention from start to finish.

It opens with Bronson, played by Tom Hardy, addressing the camera and explaining that he always wanted to be famous, that he was destined for greater things and he always knew it. The movie then graphically portrays what he is good at. And let me tell you, there is more sexually inexplicit penis on screen than in Eastern Promises and Watchmen put together. Because when Bronson is in prison he fights naked. It’s never really explained why he does this. I would perhaps posit that it is in keeping with his Celtic ancestors who fought “sky-clad” as an intimidatory tactic, a sort of non-verbal “Fuck you, you don’t scare me.” Whatever the reason, Tom Hardy spends an inordinate amount of screen-time naked.

I feel that while this movie works on a number of levels, what with its juxtaposition of delicate music over violent acts and its examination of what fame means to us culturally as a people, the thing that I found most fascinating was the portrayal of unrepentant recidivism. Bronson never repents any of his actions. It is only his legacy that he is concerned with. From the start to the end of the movie it feels like almost nothing happens, because nothing changes for him. The walls differ but the cage remains the same. This is starting to sound like it would be boring, but it’s not. It is absorbing in its meditative focus on Bronson’s captivity.

Anyway, I could rant for pages about this movie because it really does peel back like an onion, but the bottom line is: Go see it. Masterful performances and fascinating film-making. Do it.

Bronson
Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn
Part of the World Cinema Showcase

At least that is the surface meaning.

If we dig a little bit deeper, a permanent village represents a significant step in the agricultural growth of a community. This is a fancy way of saying a village suggests an infrastructure. This infrastructure is what supports us. So we are going to take a closer look at the infrastructure that supports us, namely the university and StudyLink.

So what does the university do for student parents? I was surprised to discover they provide a number of facilities. Director of Campus Services Jenny Bentley says “a number of … support services contribute significantly to assisting parents to achieve at university”.

She says “All our … student support services are well funded and resourced, but with the increasing student numbers and increased student awareness they are generally in high demand throughout the year.”

For a seemingly silent, unacknowledged sub-culture, student parents do present their own draw on resources. The facilities on hand certainly do their best to deal with the challenges provided.

Student Health Service

I’m sure most of you have at some point or another come into contact with the public health service. The fact is that they are enormously overworked and understaffed. It should come as no surprise that interminable wait times and rushed service is the name of the game there. You can expect to feel like just a number on a list, because that’s basically what you are. At Student Health, however, you become more human in your representation.

They are a student-oriented service. They can give you the top-to-toe checkout, and tell you if you’re pregnant. Student Health can’t really help you with the whole midwifery and ante-natal business though. Let us skip forward a few months then. What other services does this fine old establishment offer student parents?

The Creche

Bentley says there are six early childhood centres under the Campus Services umbrella, and there is a parent room available to parents enrolled at the Fairlie Terrace centres.

It is clear to see that the high level of service the crèche provides is a testament to the tenacity and commitment of the staff to education. All of the people who work there are of a wonderfully sunny disposition and they very obviously care about the kids in their care. Not only that, but they are always willing to stop and talk to you if you stop in. The time they can dedicate to the conversation tends to depend very heavily on the calls on their time when you show up though, so bear that in mind.

The Counselling Service

Bentley says the Counselling Service “frequently deals with students who need support to address the competing demands of study, parenting and the financial pressures that can come with this”.

In fairness, bringing a child into the world is going to put some pressure on the strongest of wills, and these people are here to help as best they can. The staff at the Counselling Service are an amazing bunch of people, and they have been a rock in the storm for many, many students with a variety of troubles.

If you can find the time to talk to them, it’s probably worth it. The truth is that every so often problems arise that you just can’t talk to your mates or family about, and the people at the Counselling Service are more than happy to help in any way they can. Awesomely, the service they provide is free, so the budget will remain unstrained by the help they offer.

StudyLink and WINZ

The next leg of the infrastructure trousers that clothe student parents is of course StudyLink—and by proxy—WINZ. The StudyLink website is not the most user-friendly. It often doesn’t point you in the direction you want to go in, leading you to think it is designed much like a maze, full of false turns and blind alleys. Persist and you will discover that while the help offered may not seem like much, it is there. And you should make the most of it.

Student parents may be eligible for help from Studylink for:

• Accommodation costs
• Childcare costs
• Disability costs
• Emergencies
• Health costs
• Scholarships
• Work costs
• Student Allowance Transfer Grants
• Unemployment Benefit Student Hardship

Studylink can also provide advice on:

• Study assistance from Work and Income
• Temporary Additional Support
• Working for Families Tax Credits from Inland Revenue

Here are a few tips to make your experience at StudyLink and WINZ a little more palateable:

1. Have a folder of everything they could ever need from you ever. Have the originals of your birth certificates, two forms of identification, a bank statement with your address on it, a verified copy of your tenancy agreement, or letter from the leaseholder outlining your accommodation costs. Pro-tip: Make the bank statement look good. If it reads McDonalds, Kitty O’Sheas and Peaches & Cream, odds are you wont get what you’re after. Go buy a stamp, some petrol and panadol from a pharmacy. Make it look like you’re in legitimate need.

2. Make an appointment. It is frustrating having to track down a landline to make the 0800 call, but it is less frustrating than lining up, child in arms, to make an appointment that could quite conceivably not be for a few more days. Payphones will let you make the 0800 call. They’re rarely utilised these days, so make them look useful.

3. Don’t overdo the sob stories. They want to know what they can help with. If you go too over the top with your outlining of the circumstances, they are likely to look deeper than they would have otherwise.

4. Remember they are bound by law. The fact is that the 20-something sitting across the desk from you probably has no idea what your circumstances are like. They have a set of rules that they have to follow. You can argue with a lot of things, but the law is one of those things where you’re probably going to lose the argument.

5. Don’t get angry. Getting angry just makes it more likely that you will end up on Police 10-7 as one of those “terrible parents exposing their children to anti-social behaviour”. You have enough on your plate already. If you’re really that upset about it then get your child and some chalk and spend a wonderful Sunday afternoon scribbling your complaints outside their office. This way you can vent your frustrations safe in the knowledge that it’s mostly harmless, and your child won’t take your vitriolic bile spewings to heart because they are written in multi-coloured chalk.

6. If this isn’t going to be enough, you always have the right to officially complain about a decision. They will listen to you and follow due process with your complaint. Your side of the story will be heard, clarified and understood. If they are in the wrong they will fix the problem faster than you imagined possible, and if you are in fact wrong they will very patiently explain why. If you think the explanation is bullshit I recommend referring to the above.

StudyLink and WINZ are functionaries of a system. They are the governmental fronts for the machine that purports to support you as a student parent. That machine is not perfect. It can make mistakes. The odds of those mistakes happening to you are long. So long, in fact, that if they do happen to you, they can appear to be the machinations of a far reaching conspiracy calculated to make your life miserable. It’s not, but it can feel that way.

The infrastructure is there for you to utilise. It can be helpful. One last piece of advice: don’t lie to them. When they catch on, and almost inevitably they will, the full weight of the system will fall on your head and you will not come out on top. Other than that, please go forth and grab what you can with both hands. Or with one while you hold your child safe against you.

This is part two of Josh’s feature series on what it’s like to be a parent at university. If you think you might have something to contribute, flick him an email,
josh@salient.org.nz.

“Now the thing about having a baby—and I can’t be the first person to have noticed this—is that thereafter you have it.”—Jean Kerr

So the bomb has dropped. That which your parents so patiently warned you about has occurred. You’re a student with a sprog. Or maybe you’re thinking about becoming one. Or maybe you’ve just had your impending parenthood dropped in your lap. Or maybe you’re just looking for something to read about that utterly un-affects you. But to the parents and parents-to-be out there—kia ora. Welcome to the club. There’s more of us out there than you think.

Let me tell you, you have a whole lot to look forward to.

The Singularity: The moment where everything changes, nothing will ever be the same again

So you just found out you are going to be a parent. Maybe you got a phone call. Maybe it was a discovery via a Juno-esque dearth of pregnancy tests. The writing is now on the wall. Your future is shaping up in front of your eyes. The bad news is it’s hard work. You will very intimately understand why sleep deprivation is used as a torture technique. Your entire focus will shift.

Nicky, a father of two (Rebecca 3 years old and Ashleigh 9 months), muses, “It’s a change in focus. We used to be quite selfish and now, it’s not a selfish thing anymore. It’s for other people, you’re living for other people, making money for other people, for the kids.”

Speaking as a new parent myself (my daughter is at time of writing 9 weeks old) this is unarguably true. I was, and in fairness most students are, enormously selfish. You study the subjects you want to better your chances of following the career that best suits you. You choose your tutes to fit your lifestyle and fit your essay and assignments around your calendar as you see fit. It’s not a bad thing.

A child throws out this entire dynamic.

Suddenly you have antenatal classes to attend. Never in your life have you imagined packing in three lectures and a tute and then heading to a room full of glowing mid-30s couples who stare at you like you and your partner are exhibits in a travelling circus while discussing the pros and cons of caesareans. It can be taken as gospel that there is no experience like being judged in hushed voices and being stared at pointedly every time the instructor talks about drugs or drinking. But at the same time antenatal classes are important because they introduce you to other couples in a similar situation to yourself.

“We had all these single friends and now we have all these friends with kids,” says Nicky.

“That’s quite a big change, you end up talking about kids instead of drinking. It’s kinda weird.”

At the same time as a student parent your schedule is, in a lot of ways, freer than working parents. You aren’t locked into the 9-to-5 schedule five days a week. You can arrange your classes and tutes so that you can be a much more active part of your child’s life. Which is awesome. Admittedly for the first few months the father isn’t going to have much input into the raising of the child. You’ll spend a lot of time changing nappies and making dinner and cups of tea. I spend a lot of my days off baking and helping with housework.

Speaking of housework, there is an enormous paradigm shift around the house. No longer can stacks of dishes stand idle being hastily rinsed when it’s absolutely necessary.

Eve* is the partner of a student parent and is currently a stay-at-home mother: “I gave up my career and a portion of my social life to spend most of my time at home cleaning dishes and clothes. I had no ‘home life’ before.

“Adam* is a lot better mentally and emotionally as a student than as a full-time worker, which makes a huge difference to me. I have a much happier student dad than I ever would have had in a working dad.”

So if the bun is baking it’s probably time to start exercising those domestic muscles. Because you both need to pitch in. It is difficult to quantify the experience of being a parent who isn’t one. This isn’t a trite way to fob off the offspring-less rubber-neckers who will infest your life.

“The trouble with learning to parent on the job is that your child is the teacher.”—Robert Brault

If you are really lucky you will have surrounded yourself with people who love children and are completely understanding of the new life you have brought into the world. But the truth of the matter is that you won’t know if you have until they have been introduced into the crucible your life is about to become. The one thing you can generally count on is that, once they have gotten over the initial shock, your family will be an inestimable resource.

“It starts with the in-laws, we never saw them before and they only live ten minutes away. Now we see them, almost every day… Before it was once a year. So it’s changed quite a lot. Really they are there for the kids but they support us too, mow the lawn and things,” says Nicky.

“Our wider family was a bit critical initially because Adam didn’t go out and get a job, which the father is widely expected to do,” says Eve.

“Once we were firm in what we were doing, we found a lot of support from people who’d done it, or known others to do it. Our families are now a lot more supportive, and maybe more than they would be otherwise, because they know how stretched our time and money is by taking this path.”

So look forward to spending time with your extended family. It’s really not such a trial when you can offload your child on them to calm and comfort and change them when you have been up doing it for the last 14 hours. But if you can’t count on your family then what can you count on really?

I will admit here and now that I have never been as grateful to anyone as I have been to the people who assumed the mantle of childcarers in my house. It is absolutely the gift that keeps on giving. There is no more precious gift, that anyone can give, than their time. Anyone who is willing to give some of theirs to help with your child should be gratefully accepted. You will appreciate it when it happens.

In the end, and this is the hardest but also easiest part of being a parent, the only people who really matter any more are your child, and your partner. Your life will never be the same. It is a trite affectation that nothing worth doing is easy. It fits being a student parent like it was made for it. It is incredibly hard work. But at the end of the day the feeling you will have when you cross the stage and receive your long awaited, and hard earned accreditation will be one of the best feelings you ever have. You can be a student and a parent. And it is worth the slog.

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”—Friedrich Nietzsche

*Some names have been changed at the request of the interviewees.

This is the first part of Josh’s feature series on what it’s like to be a parent at university. If you think you might have something to contribute, flick him an email, josh@salient.org.nz.

Cult Author. The words send a frisson of delectable forbidden delight through the core of my geeky soul. The author that you simultaneously want everyone and no one else to read. The person who uncovered the darkest depths of your soul and spilled them forth to examine them prophetically, druidically even. But what makes them so special? How do they have such insight? What sets them apart from Diana Gabaldon and Jefferey Deaver, or even (dare I speak his name) Dan Brown?

Perhaps, just perhaps, we can gain some insight into this.

“Buy the ticket, take the ride.”—Hunter S. Thompson

It is, unequivocally, the readers who make a cult author. Seems like a sweeping statement to make. But consider who we hold up as examples of cult authorship: Neil Gaiman, Chuck Palahniuck, Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Kerouac, Aldous Huxley, J. D. Salinger, H. P. Lovecraft and Kurt Vonnegut—undeniably good writers in their own way. I would contend that, considering the incredible diversity of the material that they work with, it was someone’s personal recommendation that got you to read their work. At this point I will admit to make sweeping generalisations about your reading habits. Suffice it to say that if you haven’t read any of these authors then I would recommend you do. Not that you actually know me from a bar of soap.

The most important thing to remember about any cult author is, for the most part, they didn’t set out to be one. It is hard to imagine Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson setting out to be the voice for the disillusioned masses in the sixties and seventies. But they were. Their message rang loud and clear at the time and, in a lot of ways, continues to do so today. I would posit that there is nary a journalism student who hasn’t been inspired, at least in part, by Thompson’s unflinching disregard for anything but the contrary animal that calls itself the Truth.

It is the voice of these authors that has reached and grabbed the attention of all of their readers. They have offered up themselves and found thousands who find like-mindedness in their views. In a lot of cases the readers found more in the writing than perhaps the authors put there. There have been a number of prominent murders that have been associated with The Catcher in the Rye, for example. It’s hard to imagine how one young man’s tale of New York could inspire anyone to murder, and yet history stands testament to the fact that people have found this, somewhat twisted, message in Salinger’s writing.

All this aside, to be a cult author you need to give the readers something to get behind.

“If you can do a half-arsed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.”—Kurt Vonnegut

So you want to be the one-eyed man. What vehicle will your insight take? What do cult authors write their missives about? The simple answer is, just about anything. Almost without fail, however, they write a critique of the society in which they live. How metaphorical this critique is can be left up to the individual author. Hunter S. Thompson scorned his society openly. Aldous Huxley posited a future that his current society would develop into. Neil Gaiman, on the other hand, expresses the fantastic in a contemporary setting. Gaiman’s distaste for some of the tropes of modernity is palpable in the moments where real meets surreal, when plausible meets fantastical.

So what should you, as the budding cult-literary-figure-to-be, choose as your setting? Stick to the classics, people. Write about contemporary society. At the risk of sounding trite, write what you know. I’ll go out on a limb here and posit that if you’re reading an article in our esteemed student magazine for a how-to-become-famous guide, then imagination probably isn’t your strong suit… so avoid science fiction. Richard Morgan states “good science fiction or fantasy needs the engine of imagination to drive it…”.

To qualify this somewhat, Richard Morgan is the brightest new rising star in the sci-fi literary world. He is also a favourite author of mine, and time will prove me right when I put forth that he will prove to be as incisive and important a cult author as Orson Scott Card (Yes I’m very aware of the odds, and I will beat them thank you). However, if you do want to dive into the heady freedom that is second-guessing the future, you really should try to have an essential point of difference. There are a million published authors publishing a billion books about everything you can possibly want to read about. So why are so few of them cult authors? Why do none of them stick in our collective consciousness so well?

“I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.”—Aldous Huxley

Most cult authors’ works are either considered “before their time” or are just flatly disliked by mainstream consciousness. It is a rare cult author who lives out their days in wealth and security. The ones who do so happily are rarer still. Of course the flip side to that particular coin is that, in a lot of cases, the author never wanted to be adored. Chuck Palahniuk once said “I don’t care what they do with my book so long as the flippin’ [cheque] clears.” This, from the man who runs neck-and-neck with Brett Easton Ellis to hold up mirror to contemporary Western society’s dark twisted face. Even H. P. Lovecraft never expected to be read: “heaven knows where I’ll end up—but it’s a safe bet that I’ll never be at the top of anything! Nor do I particularly care to be”.

So, realistically, popularity is not what you should be aiming for. By its nature anything that is easily digested and understood by the mainstream cannot stand outside the comforting firelight of the communal consciousness. A warm seat by the fire precludes the possibility of shaping the community as a whole. No one ever changed anything by doing what everyone else was doing as well. Cult authors are the people who shake our Id by the scruff of the neck and make us re-examine what fundamentally makes us who we are. It is a lonely place to exist in, but it is also an enormously rewarding calling.

“A novelist is free in ways that other creatives can only dream about.”—Richard Morgan

Any author can write about anything they want. It takes the exact balance of narcissism and pessimism to write something that changes lives. You can only ever write down what is in your head. There is nothing you can think of that you cannot write down in some fashion. The harsh reality is that most of what you write down will be utterly inane. But the truest joy there is is finding the shards of diamond brilliance buried in the core.

The thing that makes cult authors so terrifyingly magic is the shards they assemble into a shining whole resonate with so many people for utterly different reasons. Everyone sees the same diamond, but each person finds a different facet captivating. The biggest difference between cult authors and mainstream authors is simply this: cult authors make no apologies for the darkness in our souls. A mainstream writer often has a tragically flawed central character. But they valiantly struggle against their flaws. They do not define themselves by their flaws. A cult author’s character (and by proxy the reader) lives in spite of their flaws. The flaws simply are. They affect decisions made and paths taken, but they continually exist.

It would take a rare person to claim that they were without flaws. They would also be a liar. For the rest of us who do not wish to pursue careers in law or politics, we have made peace with our flaws. This is not to say that we like them, but we have developed ways to live our lives in spite of them. The genius of cult authors is their ability to show us the characters’ flaws and make us see our own alongside theirs. They make us understand our place in the world and, in turn, inspire us to change it and despair that it should be such. Kerouac perhaps best summed up this phenomenon: “I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life.” A cult author relishes the ability to show mankind both its darkest aspect and its brightest ideals. The balance of these is the crucible that tempers the significance of an author.

Kerouac firmly held onto the ideal of beauty in all things experiential. Hunter S. Thompson held the truth accountable for all ills and triumphs. Huxley prophesied a societal breakdown of common values. Richard Morgan explores what it means to be a human being in an inhuman world. Salinger understood what it meant to be old before your time. Palahniuck stirs the bile and vitriol of humanity’s indifference.

“An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.”—J.D. Salinger

The reality is that cult authors write for themselves. Most authors do. Yes, you will always be able to find corporate shills who will write anything they are asked to if the price is right, but in the main it’s literally every writer for themselves. So what does this mean to you?

Let’s try to summarise it for you. We could even make it a checklist.

1. Write for yourself.
2. Bile and vitriol will take you far but only if it’s readable. The internet is full of writing that is not.
3. Be brave enough to explore that which is uncomfortable for you. Face the darkness.
4. Don’t try to be more than what you are. If you can inspire others to greatness, awesome. If you can show others another aspect of life, fantastic. If you can only tell your story but you tell it well, there is room for that too.

No one ever set out to be a cult author. They set out to be a writer and somewhere along the way they felt an obligation to shoulder a burden greater than themselves. They took it upon themselves to show us what is and what this might mean. There is nothing more shunned than a hard, unwanted truth. And the reality is that often the truth will go unacknowledged and unrecognised for year after year, languishing in obscurity. It doesn’t stop it being the truth. If a million people believe something it doesn’t make it true, but if a million people are told the truth it will mean a million different things.

I guess the bottom line is this: cult literature stands the test of time because it reveals a fundamental truth to us when we read it. If you want to join those hallowed ranks you had best find your own truth to reveal in us.