Because i'm not an academic my day to day life does not call for Harvard referencing but doing my MA does. It's something i find difficult. I think i am more forager than farmer by nature, with all sources of sustenance. But, i figure that while i'm studying it may be sensible to have a bibliography blog entry that i can easily amend and update as i go along. i think if i do that it will make things easier when i come to write essays and will allow me to track my inspiration pathways. Tracking is mapping & i love mapping so even if it feels a bit of chore now, the chances are i'll like it later. So this blog is my referencing for the term to 12/12/19. Forgive it being a bit sketchy to start with, i'm learning how to do it  

Books
Chetwynd, M.G. (2014) Bat Opera. Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig
Hughes, T. (1967) Poetry In The Making. London: Faber & Faber Ltd
Lewis, J and Rigby, P. (ill) (1976) The Chinese Word for Horse. London: Bergstrom & Boyle Books Ltd
Okri, B. (1996) Birds Of Heaven. London: Orion Books Ltd
Sattar, A and Zohra, S (ill) (2018) Ramayana: an illustrated retelling. New York: Yonder
Jacabon, B. (2015) Ay! Mi Amor. France: Benoit Jacques Books
Patel, S. (2010) Ramayana: Divine Loophole. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books LLC
Hegley, J. (2013) New and Selected Potatoes. Hexham, Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books
Journals


Webpages
Swansea University (2019) Research as Art: available at https://www.swansea.ac.uk/research-as-art/ (accessed 25th November 2019)
Firer, S. (2018) "Transubstantiation": available at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/12/transubstantiation (accessed 25th November 2019)
Louisiana Channel (2019) Rachel Cusk: You Can Live the Wrong Life : available at https://channel.louisiana.dk/video/rachel-cusk-you-can-live-the-wrong-life (accessed  3rd October 2019)
Louisiana Channel (2019) Jan Grarup: The Dark Side of the Lens: https://channel.louisiana.dk/video/jan-grarup-the-dark-side-of-the-lens (accessed 29th September 2019)
Louisiana Channel (2019) Erkan Ozgen: When Language is Not Enough: https://channel.louisiana.dk/video/erkan-ozgen-when-language-is-not-enough (accessed 1st October 2019)
Christies (2019) Quentin Blake on doing things a writer can't do: https://www.christies.com/features/Quentin-Blake-a-retrospective-forty-years-of-alternative-versions-9274-3.aspx?lid=1 (accessed 2nd December 2019)
Hass N (2018) Kiki Smith & the Pursuit of Beauty in a Notably Unbeautiful Age: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/26/t-magazine/kiki-smith-artist-profile.html (accessed 26th November 2019)


Films
Kar-Wai, W (dir) (2008) Ashes of Time redux (DVD) Jet Tone
Zecca, F.  (dir) et al (2012) Fairy Tales: Early Colour Stencil Films from Pathe (DVD) BFI 
Trueba, F. (dir) (2012) The Artist and The Model (DVD) Axiom Films
Renoir, J. (dir) (1951) The River (DVD ) London: BFI
Boyle, D (dir) (  ) Slumdog Millionaire (DVD)
Van Sant, G (dir) Elephant (DVD)

Paintings

You Tube
BFI (2010) Temples of India: available at https://youtu.be/VI-l-dn_hFA (accessed September 2019)

BFI (2009) A Road in India: available at https://youtu.be/cOsv6kWGxGI (accessed September 2019)

This is the end of this terms MA units December 11th 2019 ... the bibliography is incomplete and no doubt full of mistakes but i have started to think about how to reference. At the weekend i will start a new bibliography for the next terms units and hopefully i'll make a better fist of it. Just as with my degree it seems like there are skills that will be learned beyond the making art malarkey. It's value for money really, an added extra, learning how to research, learning what i'm interested in, and how to lay markers on my trail that allow me to see how i have got from A to B. 

I'm mad at myself for not having blogged my MA from the start. Maybe i would feel less edgy if i had. I jumped into my course feet first, excited to be learning again. But out of the loop of learning i find that i was unprepared and now i feel like i'm floundering, anxious about my documentation, is my work good enough ? will i pass ?
The course is divided into two threads RIPU and ASU. The names are enough to make a mind wonder what is going on. I think RIPU is Research into Practice unit and ASU is Art Studies Unit. I imagine this was explained to us right at the beginning but right at the beginning my head was spinning with all the new, new acquaintances, new teachers, new learning, new being. 
For me my MA is my first major step back into life since Jon died. My "i am alive" affirmation, my "life goes on". And it is certainly giving me that affirmation i already feel miles away from where i was a year, two years, five years, ten years ago. I feel like i am passing through a fire ritual, coming out cleansed and beautiful. By beautiful i am not so much talking physical beauty as being beautiful, being spiritually beautiful. It's perhaps not for me to say whether this purification by fire is succeeding but it is my hope and the feeling i have right now. 
The course began slowly. We were enrolled on a Thursday and then there was a week before our first lectures. I'd wondered if one day of teaching a week would be enough but it turns out to be plenty as it leaves four days to make use of the studios and to learn from the technicians who man the studios. The generosity and patience of the technicians i've met at NUA both now on my MA and before on my BA is enriching. They give their knowledge away with such heart warming kindness and show respect for our work and desire to learn even when what we turn out is unoriginal, ugly or unsuccessful. And when we succeed, when we make something that makes us happy, that gives us a "yes", they let us know they see our happiness and it makes a difference. Being witnessed in joy is a gift. 
I am trying to catch up on a term's worth of knowledge in this blog and i know i will fail to get it all in so i may jump from moment to moment as moments pitch up in my mind while i'm writing. If i try to go carefully day by day i think it's likely i will struggle to keep my momentum. I think i will be a monkey leaping about in tree canopy rather than a more earth bound creature like a deer, an elephant or pig rootling on the forest floor. But maybe i won't. I never know how words will fall out of me when i blog so to fetter myself with an identity is perhaps unhelpful. 
After enrolling i went into the studios and wrote and drew on sheets of paper on a table in the corner that was not then my studio space but is now. I say it was not then because being the only one in the studio it wasn't really my place to give myself a specific corner without the agreement of the other students sharing the space but it came to be my space because no one minded that i kept it and i was happy to stay there. For three days i went in to the studios and saw pretty much no one. It was very odd. It was cold and as i wrote in my notebooks and scribbled on paper and tried to feel like i belonged and was meant to be there i could hear the working life of the university going on a round me. I felt separate then. Now i feel like part of the university body. In a year i will no longer be part. Now i walk through the big doors swipe my card to get into buildings that for this one year belong to me and to which i belong. It's a good feeling. It feels like coming home. It feels like i am amongst people who understand to a point, whose minds may also be filled with ideas that in other worlds seem off beat or weird. I am amongst people who get excited about a mark on paper, a line, a dot, a sound, a smell, a shadow, a body, a thing of small consequence that maybe matters an awful lot for an instant.
Being in such a world takes a little getting used to after being out of it for a while. Suddenly every sense is alert and it's easy to feel a little skinless, or whippet-skinned as opposed to great bear-skinned or pig-skinned. There's a desire to do everything, every which way there are enticements, i briefly went through a phase of feeling like a child in toyshop told she can have anything. This was somewhat closed down by a tutorial in which i was given instruction to refine and draw in my exploration. 
Tutorials are strange. I have felt sad and disheartened after both my tutorials with my tutor. He is kind and he is polite but after we've spoken i find that my confidence takes a dive, that my trust in my process is diminished and it takes me a little while to pick myself back up. I am not sure if this is a teaching technique and i wonder if maybe it's part of the course that in tutorials i will have my practice torn open and questioned, that tutorials are not where i will receive affirmation or approval and that maybe they will be easier if i accept that is not the point of them. Formal education has a form, it would be a shame if at the end of my MA i was making the same work as i was making before i started it would be a shame if i had not moved on and perhaps the pulling apart is part of the process, the journey from interview, acceptance and enrolment to, hopefully, graduation and working life after graduation.
But the MA course is designed well, i think, because before we enrolled we were asked to create a manifesto for ourselves and when i feel knocked back i refer back to mine which is a "snakes and ladders" manifesto. I let myself feel the slide down the snake but know that it's part of the game and that with a new dice roll i'll be back up and running and to remember the joy of the game is playing and that when i reach a hundred the playing will be done. 
Perhaps I'll end this blog post here to come back to later, later today or tomorrow, or the next day. I'm aware that i'm on a catch up but for a moment maybe i need to pause and draw breath and get back to tackling the first draft of my RIPU essay which is giving me a headache and making me worry that i will fall at the first hurdle.