Sunday 5 April 2009

thirty-seven

stand dead centre of london bridge, and look down at the river. here, it stretches 265 metres wide, all brown and murky from the churned-up silt. that's what thames means: dark. darkness. it used to be far, far wider. shallower, too, but still daunting. count how many steps it takes to walk that bridge, times it by five and you'll get the idea. we hemmed and tamed it, building embankments and barriers to keep that dark water at a distance.

the city grew around this sprawling of water, with celts and romans and anglo-saxons all settling and resettling the land: Plowonidonjon, Londinium, Lundene. letters shift and disappear but something remains in each name, the thread of an idea, an echo of impossible water, saying: ‘too wide to bridge’. here, we cannot cross. the city is named for the thames. london is not people or buildings, but a memory of humans defeated by a river.

whenever i sit by the thames, i think of you, of us, years ago, bellies flat on the embankment wall, watching the water, watching it swell, and break. do you remember the boy we saw, how beautiful and sleek he was, like a fast running stream? and how, when he saw us staring at him, your hat, an old army cap you found in your garage, fell from your head and sailed downwards? you tried to catch it, arms flailing like those cartoon characters who run straight off a cliff edge and scramble in the air, trying to hold on to nothing, trying not to fall. by the time it reached the surface of the water, the boy had disappeared. later, breathless from running along the bank, following your hat until it got dragged under a boat-restaurant, we called him angel, spirit, nymph, and your hat a votive offering for us having seen what we were not meant to. it could be worse, you said, we could have lost our sight, been turned into spiders, been turned into men. the gods, you said, had a strange sense of justice.

in certain places, when the tide is out, i climb down onto the bed of the river, to be where the water was, will be, imagine being under it. i pick up shells, and later at home i put them to my ear and hear the river moving, embedded in me, keeping me here.

thirty-six




from the girls rock! movie, via frl.zucker.

Friday 3 April 2009

thirty-five

my sister has red hair; people never believe we are related, because i apparantly look greek/italian/spanish/romanian (sometimes i think people just pick nationalities out of a hat and assign them to me), whilst she looks more like a renegade leprechaun. for as long as i can remember, i have wanted red hair, or jet black hair- it was a toss up between the two, and more and more often i come down on the ginger side.

despite my hair's determined brownness- even attempts to dye it fail miserably unless copius amount of bleach are involved- i do think i have the ginger gene. i'm 97% sure of this. in the absence of some genome reading instrument, my belief is based on a solid foundation of instinct and fingers-crossed hope.. though, i do have some pretty convincing evidence: pretty much whenever i see a ginger man, i think 'PROCREATE PROCREATE QUICK' regardless of his attractiveness, and despite the fact i do not want children. what else could this be except the deep urgings of my ginger gene, desperate to repopulate the (allegedly) flagging redhead population?

because redheads are, according to some, a dying breed: over the past few years, the rumour that gingers are going extinct keeps appearing, like some delphic prophecy. julia baum, a photographer and redhead, was inspired by this rumour (which has proved both false and remarkably persistant), and created a series of beautiful portraits 'as a way of documenting and preserving the legacy of redheads'. she continues:

'As redheads, we are used to being one in a crowd and regularly noted for our appearance. Experiencing life in this way from infancy through adulthood influences who we are. As a natural redhead, I know our hair color affects more than just our appearance. As only 1% of the entire human population, our distinctive coloring is a relevant topic from day one.'

i had come across some of the photographs before, ages back, but forgotten about them. i don't know how, because they are stunning.

see more here.

what i wore today:

nemo has heard of the ultimate accessory group on flickr, and is desperate to get involved. fame isn't everything, i've told her, but will she listen? no. she just wants her picture all over the internet.

Thursday 2 April 2009

thirty-four

what i wore today:



inspired by:
aleksandr rodchenko



mark rothko



egon schiele

thirty-three


new camera obscura album. twentieth april. squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeee EEE EEEeeeeeeee eeeeeeeee. i have already downloaded the new single. verdict: squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee EEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeee eeee.

i think this calls for a 'musicians with great sounds AND great style' post, part the third. well, i think it's the third one. anyway, camera obscura. just like the christians use BC and AD to divide their calendar to recoognise the significance of jesus, i should use BCO (before camera obscura) and ACO (um, you can probably guess this one), to properly acknowledge the unenlightened, monochrome existence i lived before discovering their music. and then, when i saw pictures of them, i properly understood that they are SO UNBELIEVABLY COOL and that i really want to be friends with them.


i have to admit, i do have a soft spot for geeky, unpolished looking bands. it makes them seem more real, like they want to write and play music rather than be popstars.


oh hi, giant swan brooch. you are the best. oh hi tracyanne campbell, i have a massive crush on you.


why do i not have that furcollared coat? why do i look hideous in berets? could that teddybear be more endearing? so many questions.

songs to play on repeat:
Lloyd, I'm ready to be heartbroken
let's get out of this country
books written for girls
happy new year

Wednesday 1 April 2009

thirty-two

words cannot quite describe how much i love this necklace



it's based on prokofiev's peter and the wolf. i don't know the story that well, though i did catch a splendid stop motion version a couple of christmases ago. from what i remember, the bird has a damaged wing and cannot fly, hence the balloon and rope, and the fat ginger cat wants to eat the two birds, and the wolf wants to eat everyone. tch. they should just take up veganism and have nut roast, it would save all the palava.


look, there's even the duck in his belly! oh,what detail.