I wish I could understand.

I'M BACK!

So. It has taken a while, but I am, Back, that is. Both literally and figuratively, thank God. Nobody bloody reads this thing, which is nice, as it means i can make sweeping highfalutin statements like "I'm back" whilst both imagining somebody cares where I have been, and knowing at the same time that I am completely exempt from any judgement over my apparently towering ego, because nobody does care. I'm in the groove now, and i will also say for the record that I am Huhmazing.


...or maybe that should say 'sad'?

Anyway, I am a bit of a blogger once again, and in the time I have spent away, I have become a huge fan of this lady...
http://fashionzen.blogspot.com/
I adore her style, her writing, her fringe...she is wicked cool.

Where did everything go?

Now and again I sit back a little and I take stock. I happen to know that this weekend, old classmates of mine are getting married, old work mates are moving to the capital, old housemates are dealing drugs. Right this second I'm pretty sure I don't want to do any of these things, but I don't know what I do want. My stock take is throwing up one glaringly obvious issue: avoiding the decision is not good enough. Most of my decisions up until now I have blamed on someone, or something else: "I had no choice because" is a cop out. Cowardice is always cowardice, however cleverly it is disguised as the gap between a rock and a hard place. All of these 'I had no choice' choices have got me here, with no degree, a frustrating job, friends I rarely see, an old life I miss desperately like one might a lover, and a well rehearsed pack of lies to cover all that up. This is not the direction I was headed when I was 18. This was not the direction I was headed at 20 either. Why then, at almost 22, have I resigned myself to the walk when my feet are hurting? My soul is saying stop, re-evaluate, turn around?

I think that you might be one of the most selfish people I have ever met in my life.

This part is for you.

It is more than fleeting. I hope so still. x

This is for you

Today I am sitting in my room and thinking of Manchester. I am thinking of when I last went there. Manchester is on my mind for a number of reasons; some are quite involved and one is because I had my opinion that the city produces some of the coolest people I have come across confirmed, when yet another of its talented children cropped up in something I was reading: a short story to be exact, written by a gorgeous poet, about holiday romance. Thoughts of Manchester and fleeting connections have got me here, sitting, with This Is For You by Rob Ryan open in my lap. Thinking back to the shop I bought it in, sharing a joke with the cute, bookish guy behind the counter, and the day i bought it on, sharing more jokes, trying on hats, being silly, with another guy.

'I only did Victoria's Secret so I could fuck a supermodel, and I did.'

So announced Rie Rasmussen after her walk down this particular runway in 2001. An unapologetically loud voice during the two years she spent in fashion, she seems just as difficult to bypass as an artist, film maker and actress. Indeed, her work speaks for itself. Her powerful and widely acclaimed work in film - (her debut Thinning the Herd, a thriller short, was nominated for a Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2004, and her first feature length film, Human Zoo, premiered at the Berlinale film festival last year to favourable reviews) - is inspiring enough, but it is her paintings that pull me in.




I admire this work. It manages to convey the depth of the raw emotion involved in sex between men and women without a romantic overtone; there is tenderness, for me, illustrated in the softness of the markmaking, but it is interspersed with a drama that sometimes verges on aggression. They are very primal stories, and, I think, all the more stunning and beautiful for that.

MANIAMANIA mania

Jewellery is my thing. It is my great love. I wear it all the time, and my preference is usually big and clunky and OTT. Too much is just enough, in other words. The other day it struck me to count the necklaces I was wearing after I took my earphones out, thinking they were broken, and realised the curious sound I could hear over Joanna Newsom was me, jangling -I had on five, and they were not small. Now, this is a personal best of course, but my point is this: I overload on my treasures because I love them; they have become great friends in many cases, mostly because they have often come from great friends.

Naturally, I have a little wish list of bits and pieces to add to my collection, but officially topping it, as of today, is the Immortals ring from the 2010 collection entitled 'Real Life Awaits Us' by ManiaMania.

Just gorgeous, and a little rough around the edges, which, come to think of it, is my preference regarding most things in life.

I also have a major girl crush on the designer of this beauty Tamila Purvis, who, if not rough around the edges, is definitely gorgeous, and definitely amazingly talented. Photographed wearing her designs here by Garance Dore (another source of abiding admiration) she looks exactly how I want to look when I pile on my jewels of a morning: Chic, and then some.

"...the bright day is done,
And we are for the dark."

William Shakespeare

It's getting dark, Darling. Some people don't know the gift they have.

My heart,
Its nearly your time of year...just a few days to go. I think of you often, even though its been such a long time now, since we walked in the same places. So long that I'm afraid I won't see your face clearly again. I've forgotten you see. I see you now, immobile, as if always, always in our pictures. I'm ashamed that I can't remember how you looked when you spoke.
I remember little things, that over time have become big. They have to take up a lot more room now that there are more years to fill. That's life I suppose, although I wish you were still here so I could get to know you better, and you could get to know me better. I do know you loved me though, I felt it. And I love you. And I miss you.

I'll see you one day xxx

Francesca Woodman, Forget Me Not's.

Francesca Woodman's work has been an inspiration to me for a long time. After quite a sustained period of - (I don't know what the correct term is) - 'block' in my own creative thinking, I found myself revisiting the work of my favourite artists, going through ancient sketchbooks, and so on; retracing my steps to find another beginning. The feeling was akin to swirling myself into a childhood comfort blanket. At once familiar, and slightly panicking in the sense that I knew things must be bad if I was back here.

Each time I look at these photographs though, I am newly in awe at their uniqueness and communicative power. Art critic Kathryn Hixon said of them: "Woodman's pictures are not de-constructive but constructive. She added layers of reflection and mimicry within the photograph to confound the transparent recording of the real. The images become psychological portraits of the identity of the body rather than identifying physical portraits that reveal the psyche." For me, they are a symbolic representation of the famale body and our relationship with it as individuals, when so often images seem concerned with its relationship with other people; as such these images are far removed from voyeurism, but are simultaneously intensely personal reflections and an ongoing series of new encounters of the self.

I'm grateful I'm having some problems, its meant I have this work flitting around in my mind. No bad thing.

The forget me nots are in bloom in the garden too. I've decided to consider the whole day a sign that this is the right way to get moving.

One Minute Blog

"Life shrinks and expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anais Nin

Untitled

Stop it. You're hurting me.

Is it ever wise to look down?

My brother asked me today why I was wearing my jeans 'up there', before telling me I looked like an American from the 90's. I looked down, hoping he was right, and saw my vintage 501's covering me from just below my belly button to just above my ankle. cuffs rolled up, faded just so by their previous owner(s?), they put a grin on my face as thoughts of Alexander Wang, Americana and mussed up, plaited hair slid attractively into my mind, single file like the models on that dear man's catwalk.

Now, I know that if I were a true Wang Girl, I would be lusting after black with a hint of black, a la Autumn/Winter 2010 (for the record, I am: that boy's cigarette pants are to die for); but the sheer number of wang plaits adorning heads when I leave my house convinces me that, although very very old news in fashiony circles, the styling here still appeals. And so I am continuing my search for a pair of double waisted, slouchy, sporty pants on the high street with renewed fervour, and until I find them, I will carry on wearing my levis, which I love, and God bless America.

Urgh...get out of my magasine

Yesterday found me sat, maxi-dressed in the sunshine with a pot of rasberry sorbet and lovely elle magasine in leiu of vogue, which i left at that boys house (silly me), with a big spoon at all times between my mouth and said pot. Bloody marvellous set up I think you'll agree. Until I choked on my sorbet, having seen a picture of this girl I used to know when I lived in Canterbury, in a style profile article in my magasine. Who was decidedly un-nice when I knew her. The article was about what stylish people wear to work...which also means she has a good, elle-approved job. There she was, in her erdem shorts, looking primped and glossy, and bloody good, actually. How irritating. I had a really really big spoon full of sorbet, congratulated her inside my head and turned the page. Good for her, but I hope she's nicer now. I? I am getting my Vogue back at the earliest opportunity. There's never anyone I know in there.

These are the shorts. I think you see what I mean.

How acceptable is it to cry in public places? And does there need to be an obvious reason for doing so?

I am very well aware of the fact that people think I am wierd and its never really bothered me, in fact I agree wholeheartedly: I don't think they realise the full extent of it actually. This makes me glad; I don't think too many people would continue to spend their time around me if they had sat in my head for any length of time. But there we are. However. However. However this weekend I realised something. I realised that I have cried, really, honest to goodness cried real tears, in two places full to the brim with public in the space of forty-eight hours. And I didn't do it subtly, let me tell you. Is this just a bit too odd?
I went to see Laura Marling on Friday. Tiny little Laura Marling who commanded the stage and held everyone in absolute thrall for two hours as if she were an amazonian giantess with a machine gun and a chip on her shoulder, not a little slip of a thing armed with a beautiful sense of the world and a guitar. And a voice. Let us not forget her voice. Like a machine gun, it smacked me between the eyes and hit my heart, and I felt it hurt me. She sang these lines: "there is hope in the air, there's hope in the water...' and I felt the tears slide down my face and fall on my hands that I had clasped in my lap and was squeezing tightly together without noticing that i was making little purple crescents on the backs of them with my nails. She didn't make me sad, she made me proud; and acutely aware that for some people, talent is a duty. I thought then, that she fulfills hers absolutely.
If Laura Marling understands what keeps us all ticking over, then there is no doubt that Nicholas Sparks understands that its nice now and again to punctuate all of this bloody reality with a gorgeous man falling for a gorgeous woman. To a soundtrack. No real explanation needed i fear, I wept at the romance of it all and wished unshamedly, along with every woman in the cinema at the time I imagine, that one day I'll find my John and live in a movie all of the time. Pipe dream? Possibly. But I was touched nonetheless.
Dear John is a film based on a romantic's imagination. Laura Marling's songs remind me that there is something to be said for our mad world after all. Its seems they are both adept at prompting my mother to say she's glad I'm in touch with my emotions.

Three things that have been beautiful today

1.
I wish I could say this was some fabulous friend of mine, or better yet, me. But it is not. Still, never mind. She has made me happy, whoever she is; and she has made me wish desparately for her hair. She has made my mind up, too. I am dying mine tomorrow. I think.


2.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt1dmt-Zqyc&feature=PlayList&p=372FD90B4DC11EF9&playnext_from=PL&playnext=7&index=6





I sat and listened to Laura Marling sing and I thought, 'this, this is what it sounds like to be beautiful. I heard strength. And I imagined her smiling through nostalgia and tears.




3.

Third on my list is a feeling. I was at my desk at work, wandering around in my mind as I tend to do now and again, feeling sorry for myself because my current bout of flu will not relinquish its hold on my body, however many lemsips I drink - in short, I was wallowing - and a ray of pure spring sunshine fell on me. My head was bent and the strands of my hair that had fallen forward glinted like metal does. I smiled a big smile because it didn't seem accidental; it seemed like someone somewhere knew I needed springtime, if only for a minute.

What's MY problem?

I do not see why it is an issue for me to be right? I dont need a hobby, I need you to be nice to me. Dont you dare criticise me for knowing something you dont know. say fucking thankyou.
And my daddy did not commit bloody suicide.

Sometimes, I wish I'd stayed with you.

For my friend,
When I see you again, I know I will love you. I know. I'm completely certain of it.
One day we will grow, and move, and change our lives, but always I know that I will love you when I see you again. I imagine myself as an old woman sometimes: I will have been burned many times by fickle lovers, entertained lavishly, fallen completely under someone's spell, made something of importance, breezed around all the wonderful places in the world looking wistful and enchanting, and (I hope) felt good about my naked self at least once; but my favourite thing to imagine is that we are friends, just as we are now. And that you are woven into the cloth I will make with my time here, and I am in yours. Know that the threads I use for you inside my head are the most wonderful, vibrant colours I can imagine, for when I hold you in my mind, I think of only beauty.
Love from your friend x