Monday Moodboard

On my mind: Opening Ceremony's most excellent upcoming Magritte-inspired collection/ Pat Bradbury's playful works; this one appeals to my current watery swimming-pool thoughts/ 'Boogie socks' from Monki. Footwear that suggests good times on the dance floor and feature fern leaves? Socks that tick all of the boxes/ Beautiful, simple earrings from Rebecca Mir Grady, like kirby pins that have been dipped in gold and hammered/ Some groovy manicure inspiration via Alice at Lingered Upon/ Line drawings by Christina Ramberg, whose show I'm looking forward to visiting at Glasgow International this week.

This week I got some very exciting news, and after 8 months of interning I've been given a promotion at work which will involve a lot more responsibility- something I'm intimidated by also really looking forward to. I'll be sharing a jazzy job title with the likes of Pete Campbell and Ken Cosgrove so I'm planning on starting to smoke cigars, buy a flat in the city centre and have affairs with lots of young women. (Alternatively I think I'd rather write science fiction under an alias and learn how to tap-dance) If I lost you with those Mad Men-isms then I hope that you feel an obligation to go away and return once you've caught up.

In the mean time I'm super excited to have this week off work. Yesterday I had a lie-in, made myself a big breakfast (eggs and sriracha sauce, always) then got back into bed to catch up Girls before going for a swim. I never get back into bed during the day; I used to a lot at university but now I generally have less hangovers and less time for duvet slobbing so the novelty of being propped with with pillows and guffawing at Lena Dunham really hit the spot.

Later in the week I'm heading up to Glasgow, a city I've been meaning to visit for blooming ages (especially after reading lots about it over on Ally's blog when she was living there a couple of years ago) I've booked myself tickets to the screening of The Big Melt with a Q+A with Martin Wallace and Jarvis Cocker and am planning plenty of mooching around Glasgow International.

Music-wise I've been binging on Real Estate's 'Atlas' and belatedly discovering the joys of Future Islands. Samuel T. Herring's voice! And his recent performance on David Letterman. In which he wore a Simon Cowell-esque outfit and paced the stage like an unpredictable Gorilla and still pulled the whole thing off, crooning with sexy aplomb. I recommend watching the video, it has the sort of 'off-ness' that I spoke about last week. 

Swim swim beach beach

Clockwise from top left: 'The Hockney Swimmer' by Michael Childers/ The wonderful 'Lifesaver' tapestry by Anton Veenstra/ Close-up and original swimming pool shots by Massimo Vitali/ 'Marginal Waters #19' from Doug Ischar's fantastic series of gay sunbathers in 1980s Chicago/ Massimo Vitali's 'Beach and Disco' one of those ultimate coffee table books that gives you page after page of joy and you just want to photocopy every single one and paste them onto your walls. 

This morning I almost hit the snooze button on my alarm, but managed to find the will to blinkily arise and walk the 5 minutes around the corner for my morning swim. The pool was unusually crammed, with every regular apparently having had the same idea; Thursday, 7am. There wasn't much that was relaxing about this swim. Some mornings you can glide through the water and if the sun is already strong it comes through the glass roof and throws itself onto the the water so that the surface becomes dappled with the optical illusion of fried eggs. When it's one of those bright mornings, and everything feels warmer and you have to squint I often close my eyes and glide through and think of beaches and tight swimwear and the various photographs above which I've seen along the way. Massimo Vitali and Doug Ischar and David Hockney. Sometimes the water is smooth, and sometimes the Angel of the Pool arrives at around 7.20 and makes choppy waves with his front crawl and flips as he pushes off the walls at the end of each length. Today though we all weaved in between each other, checking behind ourselves like indicating cars and giving more thought to the process of the swim rather than what we might wear to work or what we had to do today. The showers were fuller than usual and there was more conversation. I spoke to the woman beside me as we lathered our armpits and cleaned between our toes with soap- I increasingly enjoy the oddness of washing openly with the same strangers everyday.

See also: Benoit Fournier's beach series 'Copacabana' and 'Stranger by the Lake'.

Lights and Music

Last week was for me, the week of the light show. *Echo effect* The Light Show, Light Show, Ight Show. This is because it was also the week of FuturEverything, a blooming fantastic music arts festival which, from my experience aims to woo its audiences with the instant gratification of a laser beams, mirrors and stamina-shattering stroke lights. Without really realising I'd filled my week with events from the FutureEverything programme with performances from Darkside, Dean Blunt and Evian Christ.

Darkside was a show that was unexpectedly soothing, projecting a lunar dreamscape across the room in the form of a mirrored orb and a sound that tiptoed between Pink Floyd and a road movie soundtrack. Pink beams of light swept over our heads like the surface of water and I felt like I was on drugs instead of two beers down. A few of the dilated pupils around me looked happy, so although I imagine it was mostly for their benefit I felt wonderfully blissed out too. I also considered whether I should adopt a no-festivals policy for the sake of enjoying live music in lab-like conditions where the sound and lighting is as controlled and joyous as possible and you stroll out converted, like the new member of a cult. 

Speaking of cults and feeling spontaneously blissed out and creepy, earlier in the week I caught a screening of Under The Skin. My gosh. What a film for feeling enthralled and terrified. It always amazes me when films like Under The Skin bookend the hype of Oscar season. Just as the collective obligation to attend the cinema and keep in the loop with cultural references dissipates then along come the films that are actually worthy of accolades. Mica Levi's hypnotic score has a lot to answer for and carries much of the film's strange beauty. While some part of the film made harrowing viewing the score, the images of black watery voids and of Scarlett Johansson as a predator in a white van were what stuck with me. I found myself at points almost revelling in the sight of Johansson's van cruising around the streets of Glasgow. What a novelty! The familiar image of the male lech completely inverted, and although I knew I was watching someone cold and dangerous I almost felt empowered by her view of the men on the pavement, suddenly vulnerable and gazed upon which is how anybody who has been yelled at from a white van will have felt. The documentary element of the film also blew my mind somewhat; with the most ordinary people you will see, to the point of being hyper-ordinary. And Scarlett Johansson, Claire's Accessories and constant references to Tesco supermarkets, all happening at the same time; everything about the film felt off and jarring, but wonderfully so. In a way that made me think that 'off' doesn't happen nearly enough. Other films that have stuck in my mind for feeling 'off' or completely new to me in their style are Holy Motors and more recently Nymphomanic. Off is good. 

Clockwise from top left: Dean Blunt, Darkside at The Ritz, the dark watery void in Under The Skin, white van preying in Under The Skin, Dean Blunt's normcore cap, the green lasers at Evian Christ and The Hall. 

And while I'm praising 'off'-ness, I suppose the highlight of my week was the Dean Blunt gig at Soup Kitchen. If we're talking about jarring, awe-inspiring newness then I'd say that Dean Blunt had all of those bases covered. On a side note- while I'm enjoying a renewed interest in going to gigs and listening to new music at the moment I'm not claiming that my 'new' is the same 'new' for you. Some of you lot may be in the habit of going to much more experimental performances than I am. But the Dean Blunt gig felt like a game-changer. 

My colleague Polly wrote a piece which sums up his musical style very eloquently. The gig started with about 10 minutes flat noise- almost static- and dimmed lights, and an audience that went from writhing with anticipation to relaxing into conversation before becoming restless again. Then it was all saxophones and beautiful Cranberries-esque vocals from Joanne Robertson and drum machines and Dean Blunt's flat singing style and sound effects. Dogs barking and glass smashing, sirens blaring. Musical genres flitted, the lights came up and down, and all the while a member of Blunt's band stood at the back of the stage doing absolutely nothing. Just standing still, with the purpose of looking ahead, hands crossed. At points his black outfit merged into the dark curtain behind him so that it looked like his head as floating in the same dark water of Under The Skin. The most intense strobe show I have ever had the unease and gradual pleasure of experiencing also happened. That was a good one for connecting the audience. The lights started off so intense that nobody could look at the stage and we all covered our heads like we'd cut an especially unforgiving onion. Everyone grimaced, framed by the lights into slow motion, watching each other and then very gradually the flashing slowed somewhat and it actually felt good. A bit like the feeling of eyes growing used to a dark room but in reverse, it felt manageable and actually comforting. But nothing about that performance was familiar and nothing could be pinned down. 

Did you read that recent piece about Normcore? Or one of the multiple others that circulated during the same week in which somebody finally named a sartorial non-style which many of us have been wooed by/trying to pin down for a while. Dean Blunt and singer Joanna Robertson were as normcore as they come; he in a baseball cap with a simple Nike tick and an outfit so non-descript and 'American Dad' that I can barely remember it. She wore an oversized North Fleece jacket which made it look like she'd come straight from a campfire to absorb the warm glow of the strobes too. The Nike and North Face logos weren't flashy, they blended in with the whole undefinable quality of the performance. Ultimately I felt like I had witnessed a performance piece and an artist who likes to fuck around and challenge his audience. It's always refreshing to watch an artist who is brave enough to do things boldly and risk losing you, but who has enough faith in the audience to do so. What I really want is to see him commissioned at the Manchester International Festival, given an extraordinarily large space somewhere and to see what he creates. Something similar to the Massive Attack and Adam Curtis outing at the last festival would do it. 

The swansong of the week of flashy lights and haunting scores was a performance from Evian Christ and The Hall. I hadn't heard of Evian Christ beforehand and did wonder if I would arrive and find it a top-secret operation, the unveiling of Kanye West's own brand of bottled water, which is frankly what the name alludes to. In my mind. Instead we were beckoned into a small theatre space and invited to sit on the floor ("like carpet time!" I exclaimed loudly) underneath a mirror, a laser and vacuum pumps. I just had to google what we were sat underneath. At the time I couldn't be totally sure. Were there two mirrors? Or was that other just a reflection? It was so dark I wasn't sure. I spent the next hour feeling hypnotised, watching streams of green laser beams splash and change form. Sort of like the visualiser settings that used to respond the music playing on Windows Media Player. Except right there in the air above us, responding to the sounds being produced by two baby-faced men, plugging and twisting at their synths and a complex series of wires beside us. I had no idea what was making all of this happen, but I sat blissfully unaware watching the dancing beams until it was all over and I was spit out into the light of day. 

I spend an increasing amount of time at work interacting with arts organisations and thinking about programming and creative practises which is fantastic and something I hope to continue to do. I do however find that my own personal time for writing and creating things take a hit and the last week has been a reminder to battle on with finding the time. I sometimes question the balance of attending film screenings and inspiring events if I'm not then able to put time into messing around and trying things out for myself. For now that's where this blog comes into play; somewhere to lay out things out and come back to later. In the mean time I've created a personal rider list containing two words: Light Show. 

PS, You can download Dean Blunt's last album Stone Island for free here. 

On eBay and Bellies

When I was at college I was a pretty die-hard eBayer. I was 17 and straight up and down and took punts on loud floral jumpsuits and button-down suede skirts and everything I ordered would arrive and fit me well. Now that I have hips and a little belly the eBay experience has become somewhat murkier territory and as a result I was put off for a while. Ordering bottoms became risky, sort of like a sartorial dating profile in which I would eye the denim skirt sitting at the top of my wishlist and project our perfect future onto the thumbnail. I would make plans, deciding which blouses to pair it with only to experience the heartbreak of misfit once it arrived. The glass ceiling gets a lot of press but often it feels like the thing really stopping me from getting shit done is the hip ceiling; that moment when you're standing in front of the mirror with a waistband exhausted at your thighs and you're pulling and you know how this is going to end and you could cry with frustration but then you think if you do that the soundtrack might kick in and you'll realise that you're actually just a character in He's Just Not That Into You and that is not a road you are going to take.

Unfortunately I don't have a redemptive tale to share, and for those in a similar situation (we all grow, don't we?) my only nugget of wisdom is to embrace the tape measure and then if all else fails, your stiff upper lip. And so my love-affair with eBay has been revived. These things come and go in waves and as I'm currently suffering disillusion with high street shops, that trusty internet auction site has reclaimed my affections. Who knows how long this will last- probably until I next pop into Cos- but the satisfaction of being able to hunt for completely random, niche things online reigns. A couple of months ago I was buying lunch in Co-op and the woman serving me eyed me suspiciously. "Just one thing," she asked as she handed me my change, "why bananas?" I looked down at the fruity brooch pinned to my jumper and could have shaken her by her shoulders reasoning "Child! Because of eBay!" When offered an empty search box would you not also feel the pure, unadulterated joy of entering whatever your heart desires and then sifting through the resulting contents? Yes, that's why bananas. That's also how over the years I've cultivated a wardrobe that contains an impressive collection of snakeskin, a retro lunchbox set I never needed and an angle poise lamp in just the right teal. Now once again I'm coming home to parcels of the sort of dubious purchases my friends may never understand (see: Katherine Hamnett lime green cord jacket) and being challenged on a nightly basis to love and cherish all of the weird shit that seemed totally right in the midst of 11pm internet-land but is sometimes more adventurous 'IRL'. Me and my little tum are relishing it. 

Peach Melba Bowie

Last week I found myself immersed in one of those cosy little YouTube adventures, video-hopping and guffawing at Kristin Wiig one minute and searching for weird things like daffodils opening in time lapse the next (as you do... I'm looking to make another moving moodboard)

The crowning glory of this duvet-swaddled internet journey was finding this David Bowie interview. I remember watching TFI Friday with my Mum when I was little. I remember feeling like I was part of a cool club when we watched it because you could hear the cameramen and the crew laughing too and also because I thought it was cool that my Mum's friend Sheryl was working on the show and was probably standing there with a clipboard. Plus it was presented by Chris Evans and he was a really nice man who wore glasses. (When I was really young I thought glasses were a 'good person' qualifier which is why until I knew better I really trusted John Major. In my eyes he was exactly who I should approach if I lost my Mum in the supermarket.) I remember waking up in the mornings to the soothingly cheesy jingle of the Chris Evans Breakfast show on BBC Radio 1 and ending the week with him too, the weekend christened with the opening chords of the super cool 1960s theme of TFI Fridays.* I also remember asking my Mum what TFI stood for and her telling me. 

But back to David... this interview is ruddy hilarious and once again I find myself feeling part of some hilarious in-joke with the camera crew whilst watching it. We all know that David Bowie is cool, but who knew he was this funny? 

I'm also a big fan of Bowie's Refresher coloured outfit (and look carefully for those Buffalo platforms!) So in honour of peach melba coloured schemes, I give you lemons and rhubarb and custard sweets and Picasso and Joan Mitchell and super pink gymnasts..

*This is a must-watch too. The TFI theme tune used Ron Grainer's theme from Man In A Suitcase, which has been matched to other footage here:

It's Valentine's: Dress Sexy At My Funeral

If you're going to need some sort of musical acknowledgement of the fact that today is St Valentine's, then I guess we should just go for it.

I get it, we go through life with little musical clues just to remind us where we are. From the death-knell of the alarm clock in the morning to the sweet whispers of Bing and David and Wham! and Mariah come Christmas. And not forgetting Cliff Richard and Alice Cooper as you're dropkicking the doors of your school/workplace/airport shuttle bus open to the summer holidays.

Here then, are ten tracks playing tribute to sexiness, coming out, unrequited love, daddy issues, faultless love affairs and respecting your lady. But remember, you're only allowed to listen to this mix today; on the 14th. Because today is love day.

The Best Valentine's Mix in the World... Ever! from dconfusion on 8tracks Radio.

1) Dress Sexy St My Funeral- Smog

2) She's A Lady- Tom Jones

3) I Wanna Be Yours- John Cooper Clarke

4) Bonita Applebum (Why Remix)- A Tribe Called Quest

5) Si Mi Perderai- Nico Fidenco

6) Outside- George Michael

7) Daddy Never Understood- Deluxx Folk Implosion

8) Slow Burn- David Bowie

9) Let Me Kiss You- Nancy Sinatra and Morrissey

10) Islands In The Stream- Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers

Moodboard

You know the drill. It's that time of week when the clutter of 'recreational tabs' on my desktop has gone from looking inspired and endearing to plain unprofessional. Sort of like a laptop equivalent of a coffee ring slap-bang in the middle of a clean to-do list.

These are the things that have been in my head, in my tabs, in front of my eyes and in my mouth:

1) Have you seen a better photograph of Frida Kahlo (Yes? No? Maybe? It's cool; it's all subjective!) Either way, this is totally frameable. Go on, glue gun some cheap plastic flowers onto a frame and give it to yourself for Valentine's. You know it makes sense.

2) I found this HELLO keyring on the pavement while I was back in Bristol at Christmas.

3) Oklahoma is one of my favourite shop/cafes in Manchester. These are some of the staff showing some steadfast style. (Nabbed from their Facebook page)

4) Uh-oh, am I late on the Laure Provoust train? I know that sometimes doors may close up to 40 seconds before departure but if it's still okay I'd really like to board and talk about how I really appreciate this Turner Prize winning artist's own appreciation of bottom-shaped ceramics and hilarious wordplay. My local cinema are currently running a really great season of Artist Films in collaboration with the ICA and I went to the Laure Provoust afternoon a couple of Sundays ago and had a ball. It feels like it's been a while since I came across an artist with a good sense of humour; or at least an artist who incorporates their humour into their work. If you click right here you can make a note of the names of Provoust's short films and seek them out yourself. I recommend it if, like me, you entertain the idea of one day maybe making videos or getting paid to project things onto walls.

5) This is a pile of food I consumed a couple of weeks ago. Sometimes you go around to a friends place for dinner and they suggest making something you would never think to make yourself. Ham and Eggs. The boys put a gammon in the oven and then popped to the chipshop down the road for the best kind of potato accompaniment. It was simple and sublime. To top things off, sitting underneath the pile of goodness and painted onto the plate was the face of Pope John Paul II.

6) This weekend I visited my friend Lily in St Andrews and made her show me the ship-like Andrew Melville halls, where she lived when she was first at the University, because I'm always down for eye-humping some pretty/ugly brutalist buildings.

A PS, on blogging

A quick ps, to say thank you for all of the lovely comments left on my last post, it really means a lot. I really enjoyed writing about the romance of solitude, not only was it a cathartic piece to pen but it encouraged a lot of interaction from you lot that I haven't experienced for years with the blog. It seems that a lot of people feel the same about solitude and romance, and I hope that maybe I helped some people to recognise solitude rather than 'loneliness'. I actually had the confidence to go to a gig alone after writing that piece and am so glad I did because it was such a wonderful performance, made all the more special by being able to fully immerse myself in it, and not needing to pull myself away to go to the bar for a round!

Blogging has changed a lot since I started in 2006; there used to be a lot more in the way of conversation between the readers and writers of and that's something that doesn't happen as much anymore. I'm just the same, where I used to leave comments regularly on my favourite blogs my consumption habits have now changed. Mostly I'll just scroll, read and then hop off and do something else. Sometimes I'll tweet the author if it's a post I particularly enjoyed, or share it, but having a little more in the way of conversation after my last post was lovely and makes me realise that there is still a community of really cool people out there. Of course I knew there was all along but it's like we all sort of came out of our bedrooms and waved at each other. I find it refreshing especially at a time when my own interest in 'traditional' fashion blogs has diminished and I'm into reading blogs that feels a little meatier, (able to ride through online fads) and which encourage a conversation. I've certainly had up and down periods with this blog, posting less frequently and sometimes feeling uninspired. I think this is pretty natural given that I started writing it when I was 15 (I'm now 22) but I'm glad that I kept going past the moments that I considered stopping and have managed to transition into another direction and that lots of the cool, inspiring people who have been in contact over the years seem to still be kicking about and reading. So once again, thank you for the kind words and I'll be back with an update soon.

FYI: The photograph is by Philip-Lorca DiCorcia who has an exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield opening at the weekend. I've been browsing through this back catalogue online, but that's not the same as gawping at it right up close, and so a daytrip is in order.

What Romance Really Is; an early ode to February the 14th.

Each year as Valentine's Day edges closer my brain starts to make little anti-valentines lists. How to continue my own tradition of eye-rolling at February 14th in a humorous and simultaneously uplifting way? Which songs could be compiled together into a playlist to best celebrate romance as it actually is? Agonising, awesome, boring, overrated, solitary, 'melt'-inducing, shouty? In previous years I've spoken about the time I went to an alternative Valentine's short film screening with my Mum (in which one of the films turned its attention to incestuous romance) and the inappropriate homemade cards I sent in the internal Valentines postbox in Year 11.

This year I want to write about what romance is to me. Because I'm not anti-Valentine's, and I'm certainly not anti-relationship, but I'm in favour of a Valentine's that celebrates the breadth of romance; the romance that ranges from belly-flutters that you share with people you fancy, to the romance of friendship, and perhaps most importantly (because it's the sort that gets overlooked a lot); the romance of solitude.

This year I'm thinking about sending my 13 year old sister a Valentine's card, because it would be a nice thing to do. But a part of me also wants to write a message in there, that accidentally overdoses on earnestness by telling her "Hey, please ignore this card! I'm telling you that I love you but don't think that if I didn't send it you would be any less loved. Equally, don't let this legitimise you in the eyes of your 13 year old girlfriends, because St Valentine's...whatever" But I also realise this would be sort of like placing a sack of coal under the Christmas tree to warn youngsters of future disappointment and the commercialisation of December. Sometimes you just have to play along.

So once again, I will play along with Valentine's Day, just on my own terms, and that is by writing a lengthly post about romance and what it means to me. I am somebody who is always, mostly single. And because I've always enjoyed my own company, being single is generally my preferred default setting. I often fancy about six people at a time; maybe a bartender or an acquaintance or Cillian Murphy in Broken. Sometimes, like many people I go to bed at night and think, "It would be nice if there was somebody here to lie next to and give a dead arm in the small hours" But mostly I'm really happy to do my own thing. I love getting up on a Saturday morning before anyone else and eating scrambled eggs and hot sauce and reading the papers. I like being able to walk past the cinema on the way back home from work and decide to duck in and watch a film. I enjoy getting into my pyjamas early and reading in bed until I fancy turning the light off.

Last year I read this 'Ask Polly' column which now permanently inhabits a small corner of my brain because it celebrates all of the things that are really great about being single; it celebrates the romance of being alone. Sometimes being alone is crap; but that's the same whether or not you're in a relationship. But being alone and relishing it is one of life's greatest gifts. I loved Polly's response to a perpetual singleton:

"When you're older, you look back on the most "romantic" times in your life—falling in love with this or that dipshit—and they don't seem that romantic at all. But the times when you were single? Those were the truly romantic times! Not when you flirted with this or that stranger or put something in your mouth that didn't belong there. No. When you painted the dining room in your rented apartment that excellent turquoise shade, or when you spent all weekend reading Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose just because you felt like it, or when you threw a dinner party and invited 10 people who didn't know each other and made lasagna that was delicious and everyone got drunk and played the version of Celebrity where you use less and less words, and your friend Steve pantomiming Dodi Fayed has been emblazoned on your brain ever since."

In honour of February the 14th I want to honour romance in all guises, from the platonic to the sexy with some of my own recent memories, interspersed with the songs that celebrate the Great Variety:

1. My first ever backie from a boy. Diwali, November 2010.
My first ever backie, at the late age of nineteen. It's nighttime and I'm whizzing down the Curry Mile in Manchester, nipping in and out of cars, past the woman who plays the accordion, the smell of charcoal grills smacking me in the face and I'm thinking "Jesus, this is fun" which was just as well because I was also considering "I could die any minute now." I'm sitting on the bike seat, holding onto his hips as he peddles, suspended in mid-air. I'm wearing a leather skirt which has riden up around my waist, and I keep sliding off the seat and I know that the drivers behind have a pretty good view of my tights-as-trousers look but it's exhilarating and I'm in my first year of university and the boy I fancy is giving me a backie and we're on our way to meet new friends at the Diwali celebrations in Platt Fields Park.

At the end of the month me and this guy will start going out and there will be a few more nice romantic moments but mostly it will be four months of moody passive-aggressive silences over breakfast and an uncomfortable meeting of his parents. The backie down The Curry Mile will remain in my memory as the lovely pre-cursor to it all, at a time when the newness of university, the city and the beginnings of friendships was at the centre of everything.

2. A lazy solo Saturday, Autumn 2012.
I'm now in my third year of university. It's a Saturday night and I've just finished dinner at my friends' flat above a bar in Withington, Manchester. The amount of meals we've cooked together have mostly merged together; this could have been any number of things, maybe a sweet potato curry or a mean chicken pie eaten at the big wooden table which has Queens Park Rangers carved into it by a previous tenant. There is talk of going to the pub but I feel like heading home to watch a film. I pass the cornershop to buy an incredibly indulgent tub of ice cream. I bump into Jim and his really good looking friend who has just moved here from Australia and decline their offer to join them at the pub. I pile into bed, crack open the tub, watch The Last Days of Disco, love it to the core and spend the rest of the week listening to Dolce Vita by Ryan Paris.

3. Driving down the 1, May 2012.
Are my 'romantic moments' the ones that involve me enjoying an easy view from the backseat while somebody else drives? Either way, I'm in the backseat. Driving along Route 1 in California. There are jumpers and pillows in the footwells and a pile of sweating avocados and strawberries and Sierra Nevada and Hoegaarden which we picked up on a bountiful pit-stop. Whilst there we shared a crab sandwich and oysters and tried samples of herb-infused honeys; as ever it all about the food. So it's me in the back of a teal Toyota named 'Shandy', with a hulk of gourmet aphrodisiacs at my side. Jim is driving, Charlie has her feet up on the dashboard. It goes without saying that windows are down, hair is flying, the Pacific is right there, look at it and we're alternating between Burt Bacharach, The Velvet Underground and Black Moon. I am a smug person personified, in love with my friends and the view, with my cynicism waiting for me back in England. We camp the night in Pfeiffer National Park and the next day we take acid (my first time) and hang out, playing in the meadows and running on the beach (and I shit you not, playing Pink Floyd from a set of speakers attached to a rucksack- who do we think we are?) We wade through shallow streams feeling hazy and Charlie keeps wanting to stop to rub the sand out of her toes. Occasionally we return to reality, bumping into All-American families on the trails and getting the giggles when we meet their silent expressions, knowing what we must look like to them. I've fashioned a pair of bunny ears out of a wire headband.

(Special mention to the creator of this aesthetically supreme video)

4. The Lady With The Braid by Dory Previn.
Oh, this song, everything about this song. Dory Previn invites her manfriend to stay the night; no, pressure, but it's a long drive and you should stay, and oh, by the way, I papered that wall myself. And I sleep with the window open, is that okay? This is my kind of love song.

5. Being told something nice by somebody who meant it. April 2013.
The steaks we ordered were disappointing but the rest of the evening with my Dad was brilliant; one of those nights we have once a year when we both drink lots of wine and have fulfilling conversation and tell each other dark jokes which toe the line and then sprint beyond it and my cheeks feel nice and hot by the end of the night. My Dad pays the bill and heads back to his hotel and with the right amount of wine in my belly I decide to join two of my guy friends in town; we go to see Mr Scruff at Band on the Wall and we dance and dance and dance. I'm still wearing the same clothes I've been wearing all day, sweat rings appearing on cotton, but it's okay. The crowd at Band on The Wall is always good; a mix of students and flashes of wedding rings; couples who have paid for a babysitter and are having a bloody good time together. Nobody is looking around to pounce on a potential stranger, we're all just dancing and doing our own thing. My two friends are perfect dancing companions; our rounds consist of sharing one can of beer between us at a time. Later on, the right one leans over, somewhat intoxicated but not too much, and tells me how sexy I look. It's not sleazy, he's just telling me how sexy I look dancing; and do you know how good that feels? To be told that you look nice when you're completely in your element and not thinking about looking attractive? I do now, and those few words were all it took to undo the hangups and damage done by the passive aggressive breakfasts that summarised my only real relationship. We continued dancing, to this among other things:

6. Dancing in my living room, last week. 
My housemates are all out. Working in bars and restaurants on a Saturday night, schedules stubbornly clashing with my 9-5. I'm cooking, slicing piles amounts of red cabbage, sloshing them with vinegar. Steamy broccoli fried with garlic is cooling on the side. Bulk lunchbox preparation for my meals in the week ahead. I'm working my way through the Arcade Fire back catalogue and throw myself into dancing enthusiastic and alone in the living room, turning the music up louder like a teenager but without parents to shout from the other room. Maybe dancing without any care (even the concern that someone might actually walk in at any moment) is better after last April. I get particularly sweaty and head-bangy to Empty Room, consider it an anthem to fine, fine, solitude and then wonder if I could just dance like this 5x a week to hit my exercise quota.

People Don't Change Much: Portraits, Self-Portraits and Kitchens

It's very easy to become absorbed by things we view as defining the 'now', and to forget that actually, as with all things in life, things move in cycles. Tastes recycle themselves and come back around almost as quickly as the new weekend. The newspapers use the same language to describe immigrants as they always have, replacing nouns every ten years but the copy staying the same. The selfie- the phenomenon of 2013- picked up where photographer Vivian Maier left off, her self-portraits captured in bathroom mirrors and shop windows from the 1950s onwards. When the film Bill Cunningham New York exposed the Manhattan-based photographer to the rest of the world, we changed the way we talked about street style photography- this fascination with the person on the street wasn't actually the product of the web revolution (though it helped), it was an innate human nosiness that preceded The Sartorialist's Scott Schuman- and even Cunningham himself. What about August Sander and his captivating snapshots of the Weimar Republic in the early 20th century? His portraits show farm labourers, organ grinders, lawyers, blind children, aristocrats and Young National Socialists- his lens was as great a social leveller as that of Bill Cunningham. 

I'm digressing- my point is that when you've spent as much time over the years absorbing personal style blogs or The Selby-style interiors portraits as I have, it's easy to view them as some modern convention that sort of landed on the internet along with Twitter and livestreams of fashion shows. 

My friend Emily pointed me in the direction of Dinanda H. Nooney (via Messy Nessy Chic) who was documenting Brooklyn residents in their homes in the late 1970s. The joy of the New York Public Library online archive means that hundreds of Nooney's photographs are available for the perusal of yourself and I. It makes a refreshing change to look at these photographs without an accompanying interview which is the norm for interiors porn these days. Was this person, standing in their kitchen a graphic designer who decided to live in the area because they wanted to be surrounded by fellow artists? Who knows. Maybe- that isn't an idiosyncrasy of the 2010s. But maybe not, I don't know. It's just nice to scroll through these portraits of strangers in their studies, their bedrooms, their kitchens, while I'm sitting at my own kitchen table. People don't change much. 

 

And the view from here. I'm in my kitchen in Manchester, where I've spent much of today reading the papers, browsing the internet, cooking (potato salad, red cabbage slaw and broccolli and chickpea salad) and summoning blog-spiration, which happened when Emily's recommendation landed in my inbox. David Bowie is streaming through Spotify- I've listened to Ziggy Stardust, Let's Dance and Young Americans in full. I started off drinking coffee, then onto rooibos, and now a vodka tonic is at my elbow, squatly in the glass which is packed to the rafters with lime, mint and ice.