Joy Silence profile picture

Joy Silence

Futurist Fun in the Westcountry

About Me


I edited my profile with Thomas’ Myspace Editor V3.6 !
I'm Joy, a Giro playgirl attempting a PhD in polymer physics at the University of Sheffield. I grow films. I prod them with microscopes and other contraptions. I make vague guesses as to what is happening to the films as they grow by pondering their finished structure and qualities, which are many. It is all jolly fun, except for the boring bits, and I'm thrilled to bits to be living in Sheffield after spending many barren postgraduate years of study and illness in ghastly holes such as Preston and Bristol.When not working, I pass the time with embroidery, reading (especially Edwardian and supernatural literature), exploring beautiful countryside wherever it occurs, and collecting walrus and owl stuff (they're my two favourite animals, along with cats.) I also enjoy going to the disko, which in Sheffield usually means Corporation (a weekly three-storey goth and metal night), the KikKatClub (a monthly dose of goth), the foppish electro antics of Razor Stiletto and the quarterly synthpop heaven Synthetic.I have big love for New Romantic music and attitude, and enjoy expressing myself through clothes, hairdos and make-up - my favourite look at the moment is Numanoid/Darkwave chic and looking androgynous is very important to me. I'm a devout practitioner of psychogeography, which used to be known as 'wandering around cities making stuff up', and since coming to Sheffield I've embarked on an epic quest to retrace the steps and channel the spirit of early industrial pioneers such as Cabaret Voltaire and the Human League, as seen through the eyes of a girl in the +new+ steel city.I have a bit of a thing for the works of Arthur Machen and am a proud member of the Friends of Arthur Machen, a nice little society full of more educated people than me who meet once a year to drink, have a book auction, talk about ghost stories and do the AGM. I had to miss this year's meeting due to work, but I'm definitely going next year! Pagan supernatural literature is a huge interest of mine, but when I say 'pagan' I don't mean the self-important mish-mash pseudo-religion adopted by lonely goth women in tassled dresses - I am only referring to manifestations of Pan in all his beauty and terror. I +am+ self-important though, let me reassure you.I'm an atheist, and my current personal philosophy is best described as a blend of existentialism and logical behaviourism, with a dash of radical anti-gender feminism and a sprinkling of socialism :) My views on that sort of thing change all the time though, so I wouldn't want to categorize myself too precisely just yet.I write a lot in my livejournal and only update the Myspace blog every couple of weeks, so sorry if things seem a bit slow here...If you're fans of supernatural fiction you might also like to check out my LJ discussion community, Darkling Tales .

My Interests

//INTERESTS//As mentioned above, my main interests are supernatural fiction, fashion, industrial and synthpop, clubbing and rambling. I'm also a keen keyboardist and love to play the piano, harpsichord and church organ. I like keeping up-to-date with what's happening in the world of electronic and defense engineering, and writing little bits and bobs of code in C++.

I'd like to meet:

//WHO I'D LIKE To MEET//Phil Oakie, Thomas Dolby, Gary Numan...all these guys appeal to me because they seem unaffected and humorous, despite being total synthpop wizards! A chat with Nick Cave could be interesting, as he seems to have so many layers to his personality and writes as well as making music. I'd like to shake Gwen Stefani's hand too as she's been massively influential in bringing style back into pop music lately. In the "real world" I'd like to meet people who ideally share some of my interests and can think for themselves. Pretentious intellectuals and drama queens are especially welcome, especially if they have good taste in miserable/angry-sounding music ;)

Music:

//MUSIC//80s synthpop/electroclash - Depeche Mode, Alphaville, Gary Numan, John Foxx, Peaches, Fischerspooner, DMX Krew...Goth - The Cure, Bauhaus, Fields Of The Nephilim, Nick Cave, Sisters Of Mercy...Industrial/Noise/EBM - Skinny Puppy, Stromkern, Sister Machine Gun, Needle Sharing, P.A.L, Panzer AG, some Apoptygma Berserk...Baroque/Renaissance music - Alessandro & Domenico Scarlatti, J S Bach, Jean Philippe Rameau, Francois Couperin, John Stanley...

Movies:

//MOVIES//Pretty much all my favourite movies are horror films - Night Of The Hunter, Eyes Without A Face, I Walked With A Zombie, Ringu, The Audition, Suspiria, Tenebrae, Duel - though I can also be persuaded to watch anything involving cyborgs, e.g. Hardware or the first two parts of the Terminator trilogy. I also have a soft spot for 80s teen movies like "Top Gun" and "Pretty In Pink" and anything involving John Waters.

Television:

//TELEVISION//I mainly watch the telly for comedy (e.g. I'm Alan Partridge, Kath and Kim, Fawlty Towers, Darkplace, Look Around You) and any wildlife documentary that will feed my love of birds, cats and walrus.

Books:

//BOOKS//I'll read any old rubbish, especially if it's horror or crime writing, but my favourite books at the moment are "The Orchid Trilogy" by Jocelyn Brookes, "Maurice" by E M Forster, "Room At The Top" by John Braine, "The Owl Service" by Alan Garner, "The Hellbound Heart" by Clive Barker, "Dirty Weekend" by Helen Zahavi, "No Night Is Too Long" by Ruth Rendell, and the ghost stories of M R James, H Russell Wakefield, E F Benson, Arthur Machen, Terry Lamsley, Ramsey Campbell and Robert Aickman.

Heroes:

//HEROES//Carl McCoy from Fields Of The Nephilim - so dusty, yet so dignified...Diana Rigg for playing Emma Peel in The Avengers...Dolf Lundgren for being a blonder, and therefore better, version of Arnold Schwarzenegger (he has a degree in Chemical Engineering too you know!)...the author Jocelyn Brooke for being so suave and such a great writer...

My Blog

Its been a while...

Behold! For my next trick I will string a few sentences together! Better than Siegfried and Roy, though with fractionally fewer maulings I'm afraid. Anyway, I mentioned in my last update that my blog ...
Posted by Joy Silence on Wed, 26 Sep 2007 09:05:00 PST

Another fabulously rare update...

The past year has seen me leave Exeter for Bristol, do three-quarters of my Masters course, cock up the remaining quarter due to illness, and return to Exeter to complete the damn thing while liv...
Posted by Joy Silence on Mon, 26 Mar 2007 07:55:00 PST

The past seven months revisited...

It's just occurred to me that I haven't updated here for ages! But although you Myspacians may be spared the bulk of my rants on Livejournal, you cannot quite escape my mutterings, as this blog will n...
Posted by Joy Silence on Mon, 19 Jun 2006 12:22:00 PST

I'll be on my way then...

This weekend I finally leave Exeter for Bristol - I start my course on Monday! The move fills me with mixed feelings. I am extremely happy to be leaving Exeter as it is really not my kind of place, ev...
Posted by Joy Silence on Thu, 29 Sep 2005 09:04:00 PST

Some Sweetness and Light For A Change!

Today I found out that I've been awarded a funded place on a "Masters in communications systems and signal processing" course at Bristol University! Long-suffering readers of my livejournal will know ...
Posted by Joy Silence on Tue, 06 Sep 2005 07:01:00 PST

In Which I Gallivant Around London and Cluck Over My Cat

I have just enjoyed a weekend away in South London. That's where my twin sister lives, so my mother and I went to visit her on Friday and stayed the whole weekend. There was not much time to savo...
Posted by Joy Silence on Wed, 24 Aug 2005 04:17:00 PST

Of Cattitude and Camden

The past couple of weeks have been agony, I still don't know what's happening course-wise and I'm starting to really freak out about it as it's nearly September! Still, in between the wailing and gnas...
Posted by Joy Silence on Thu, 18 Aug 2005 02:52:00 PST

More far-flung gothic fun

Less than a month before Autumn! And what  a tedious Summer it will have been too. I hope I can get out of Exeter soon:I'm on tenterhooks at the moment, as I am applying for a postgrad course at ...
Posted by Joy Silence on Mon, 01 Jan 1900 12:00:00 PST

Crawling to the finish line of life

Life in Exeter trundles on. Since the closure of the Bunker I have had to devise new ways of keeping busy every weekend. Last week I was kindly given a lift to Subspecies in Bristol, a trad goth and d...
Posted by Joy Silence on Mon, 01 Jan 1900 12:00:00 PST

"We're all going on a tank-based Summer holiday, no more civilians for a week or two..."

Well I don't seem to have written anything here for quite a while, mainly because I've been holidaying in Norfolk with the other two members of the Silence faction. Many wondrous sights were seen...
Posted by Joy Silence on Mon, 01 Jan 1900 12:00:00 PST