Ella Fitzgerald, What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?
Sufjan Stevens, Year of the Snake
Mazzy Star, Flowers in December
best wishes for the new year, everyone - hopefully 2013 will leave us all predominantly psychologically unscathed! just kidding! (to be honest i'm not).
if you’re anything like me and spent the duration of
NaNoWriMo procrastinating exam revision and then stressing over how little exam
revision you have done, i thoroughly suggest you take time out of any leave you may have been given off school/work/llama herding this festive season to do the very thing you put aside -the glorious art of writing!!!
of course, this is easier said than done and so out of the goodness of my heart i've assembled tips/rules/advice from accomplished writers whose work i enjoyin an effort to get you and i fired up with inspiration.
in 1946 George Orwell published an essay titled Politics and the English Language, in which he
argued that the worlds of politics and business purposefully express
themselves imprecisely as to avoid taking a side in any matter and as a result
offending numerous persons which would eventually lead to the cogs working in
their machines to render themselves default, leaving the business and political
worldsto collapse in on themselves. he
was just that anarchist, okay??? the author’s rules are brief, concise, and pithy and i am breaking rule #3 with this very sentence.
Zadie Smith is one of my favourite authors ever – her work
is fresh and witty and beautiful and every other positive adjective you can
think of. yeah i am a proud president of the (albeit; imaginary) Zadie Smith Fangirl Club. ((WHY HASN’T SHE PROPOSED TO ME YET???)) her rules show her natural flair for writing.
the article, an adaptation of a speech Eugenides gave to the
2012 recipients of the Whiting Award, is full of cold truths presented in the
author’s typical glowing and glittering poetic manner.
Jack Kerouac is like the middle ground between George Orwell and
Jeffrey Eugenides; the writing love child of starkness and mysticism. his beliefs about writing are more like tips.
my own itty bitty piece of advice for struggling
writersout there is the following:
listen to songs that are stories. they get your sense of a
story outline going and sometimes give you themes to toy with in your drafts (such as unrequited love, going against your parent’s wishes, etc.).
three of my favourite story songs:
Pulp, Disco 2000
Sonic Youth, Little Trouble Girl
Tom Milsom, About Our Universe
if you are one of those people that can’t stand listening to
lyrics when typing away, film soudtracks are the absolute best thing ever.
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, In Motion (from The Social Network's OST)
Hans Zimmer, Mermaids (from the Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides OST)
Danny Elfman, Ice Dance (from the Edward Scissorhands OST)
“meanwhile, in the US, most people don’t even know that their own military just blew away three young Afghan children. the sad truth is, even if they did know, they wouldn’t really care. there’d be no outpouring onto the streets of people demanding a halt to the air attacks and the drone killings. only 28% of Americans say they object to America’s drone warfare, though it is clear that drone attacks are leading to the deaths of hundreds — perhaps thousands — of innocent civilians. according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, a survey of 20 countries about reactions to drone warfare found that in the US only 28 % of Americans said they disapproved of America’s drone warfare campaign. in countries that are normally America’s allies, like Britain, Germany and Japan, disapproval rates were 47%, 59% and 75% respectively. in the US, the survey found 62 % of Americans actively support drone warfare, giving America the distinction of being the only country surveyed in which a majority of the public supports killing by drone.
the attackers of the three schoolgirls in Pakistan, who have been arrested already, will almost certainly be imprisoned for their heinous crimes. not so the pilot and the targeting personnel who called in his deadly strike that led to the deaths of three Afghan children. they will come home from the war hailed as “heroes” by any Americans they meet. people will pass them and say, “thank you for your service” — even though that “service” includes killing little children. i leave it to readers to imagine how they think this impacts on the parents and relatives of the children who were killed by America’s “brave” military. i know though that if a foreign military blew my kids away with impunity and for nothing, they would in that moment create an enemy for life—and Liam Neeson’s character would have nothing on me in terms of my desire to exact vengeance, either. those befuddled Americans who are still asking, “why do they hate us?” should think about this a bit.”- Dave Lindorff, Children Under Attack
interviewer: “is it hard to be a woman and be a painter?” Helen Frankenthaler: “well i think the first issue is, uh, being a painter.” from an interview with Helen Frankthaler,Painters Painting
i'm really sorry about not updating in ages; i was moving apartment and then school started up again. (in short, i've been pulling large clumps of my hair out this past month.) however, i pinkie promise to post more!!!
Björk is one of my many style icons and while i don't get looked at quizzically when i say Alexa Chung holds a place on that list, i do when i profess my love for Björk's clothes (in particular her threads from the '90s). i have unshakable faith in my belief that everything Björk wears is a piece of art, and like all art forms, you get people that love it or hate it. here are my top five Björk looks:
1. her outfit in the official music video for her track 'It's Oh So Quiet'
2. the dress she wore at the Roskilde Festival in 1996 (photographed by Latvis)
3. her outfit in the series of photographs Jeurgen Teller took of her back in 2007
4. the dress worn during her performance at the Royal Opera House in 2002 (the track is 'Jóga', a favourite)
5. and last but not least, her infamous 'swan dress' worn to the 2001 Academy Awards (an inevitable final choice, wasn't it?)
the late Mexican painter Frida Kahlo is a massive inspiration to me. she was a kick-ass revolutionary, artist, intellectual, and style icon. the above are Frida Kahlo inspired items I've found on Etsy.
Katharine Hamnett meeting with then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher wearing her own t-shirt with the slogan "58% DON'T WANT PERSHING", a reference to polls showing public opposition in the United Kingdom against the basing of Pershing missiles in the country
Katharine Hamnett is a British fashion designer famously known for her oversized t-shirts donning political messages in large block letters. they were a massive hit in the '80s and have been worn by celebs like Naomi Campbell and Sarah Jessica Parker. Hamnett stresses the adoption of ethical methods of clothes making by the fashion industry. she also pushes for a greater presence of models of colour on the catwalk stating: "the catwalks are full of white dogs, cosmetic companies don't like black models - the racist bitches. i have no idea why when it's obvious that black girls are just so genuinely much more beautiful than caucasians, who have clearly got the short straw. black girls have much better body shapes and it's such a shame. i just think there should be a bit more of a balance." Katharine Hamnett t-shirt slogans (descriptions come from her official website):
EDUCATION NOT MISSLES: tax-payers want their money spent on education rather than on expensive weapons that we’re never likely to use. education is the source of a nation’s wealth.
BRING BACK GOD: nobody knows how life started. darwinism is just part of the answer and all other possibilities have to be considered equally including a supernatural one. the right to believe in a god is one of our civil liberties.
STOP AND THINK: this was about the war on terror. instead of bombing the country that Osama bin Laden was visiting it would’ve been better to ask why these people hate us so much. have they been driven to this point by oppression, exploitation and injustice and racism and our hideous colonial past and post-colonial present?
NO WAR: war is the worst environmental disaster ever. the money spent on war could deliver fresh water and medicine to every child in the world. protest is essential to maintaining democracy in this world. and i'm not sure about you, but i plan to do it in style.
i love all of Sofia Coppola's films but most of all The Virgin Suicides. it never fails to be so deliciously entrancing, making me slip into the scenes of conservative American suburbia like a cube of ice slips into a glass of cold water on a summer's day.
