the art of looking sideways

people in space(s)*

2011-01-21T05:14:00.000-08:00

i've been utterly distracted by 'freunde von freunden' for the past few days - sort of 'the selby'-esque (which i'm also prone to spending hours on, coveting other peoples' homes/ brooklyn rooftop gardens/ pets/ trampolines/ lives) but more understated, more focused on the creativity running like electricity in its subjects which also flows through the objects and spaces they create for themselves to live in.

at least that's what i'm choosing to believe is going on. most of the interviews are written in german.

the one i most want to live in is illustrator sarah illenberger's. it's so full of light and ease. i've become obsessed by this curtain for reasons i don't think have words:

but the rest of the shots are probably more comprehensibly lovely.

*i have also been drifting in space these past two months. i apologise; i'm trying to work out what i'm going to do with this, and with myself. bear with me, wouldja?

life recorded by nine eyes

2010-11-15T05:05:00.000-08:00

since google streetview launched, accidental images of absurd, beautiful and shocking moments have been immortalised by this roving, nine-eyed machine - and then, inevitably, isolated and forwarded around by internet memesters.

but for 9eyes curator and artist jon rafman, it's opened a pandora's box of questions about photography, privacy, art and basic humanity.

he's penned a much more articulate explanation of his project than i possibly could right now, so i heartily suggest heading thataway for a proper background.

it reminds me of that robert rauschenberg quote i love so much:

“I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly, because they’re surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable.”

beauty in the ordinary. wonder in the ugly. yes, please.

a labour of (typographic) love

2010-11-10T02:15:00.000-08:00

really loving bianca chang's simple, stunning paper sculptures. made from everyday photocopy paper using just a ruler, scalpel and compass point, they're real labours of love.

see how she does it here:

the awesome book of thanks

2010-11-02T08:33:00.000-07:00

not much to say at the moment besides no, thank YOU, dallas clayton. infectious and happy-making.

An Awesome Book of Thanks! from Dallas Clayton on Vimeo.

make it beautiful

2010-10-15T04:41:00.000-07:00

it's everywhere at the moment, but troika's 'shoal' installation is really very lovely.

TROIKA_SHOAL from Troika on Vimeo.

o perfection, thy name is schwartzman.

2010-10-15T04:34:00.000-07:00

it's ridiculous, it's over-the-top, it's hammy and it's contrived. and it's jason schwartzman, and there is nothing he could do that wouldn't make my dimples deepen.

uh oh

2010-09-20T02:02:00.000-07:00

lock up your bookish daughters - DBC Pierre is reading at the ever wonderful book slam this month. if it's anything like the last time i saw him read there, expect a swarm of girls crawling over him like angry bees, fighting for the dubious privilege of buying his many whiskies, while DBC takes it like a premiership league footballer at a strip club. odd. but kind of hard not to be riveted.

listen to him on his best behaviour being interviewed by my brilliant (in all senses that word may be taken) friend martin makenzie-murrayhere.

more vicarious shopping

2010-09-17T06:32:00.000-07:00

oh, how i want this:
Frustrated by the hustle of NYC, Carly Margolis escaped to the Catskills with her boyfriend to work on art and record music in an abandoned cabin in the woods. During these months spent in the woods, a collection was born. The Sacred Mountain Collection is inspired by sacred objects of past and future. The pieces from this collection might pass as ancient relics from an indigenous Meso-American civilization or a symbol of some future nation. They are meant to resemble miniature kingdoms.

palace brick ring by magpie & rye.

i realise there's an awful lot of wanting going on at the moment. i'm still blaming my birthday. there's got to be some compensation for it, doesn't there?

rampant birthday wishings

2010-09-15T05:57:00.000-07:00

being perpetually skint of late has turned me into a rabid, foam-mouthed consumer. under the guise of daydreaming about things my many minted beloveds might like to get me for my birthday, here's what i've been hankering after...

...a candle in a sugar bowl

...boots made for walking

...a massive orange 'n'

...a blanket you can wear

...yotam ottolenghi's new cookbook

...colour you can send floating up to the stars

...a new pannier to replace my bike's collapsed box

...and a bunch of happy ranunculi

...or you could just turn up at my house with a record to listen to and i'd be a happy lady, really...

on the shelf

2010-08-26T06:21:00.000-07:00

on a sleepy sunday, the prospect of the seething masses and the cross-london trek tends to put me and HRH off the idea of going to brick lane, but having just perused the wares of shelf on cheshire street, i’m quite tempted to brave it…

i love the kissing dolls…

the handpainted cockerels…

the perfect picnic blanket…

shinzi katoh's zoo print...

and this awesome painting by SCUBA…

also, I want to wear all 12 of these japanese tin parrot badges at once…

thank god the tides of money in and money out restrict me to window shopping right now.

that's how slamming they cook at margot

2010-08-24T06:18:00.000-07:00

junot diaz's incredible loose-flowing piece for gourmet magazine about the best dominican food in NYC has got me salivating.

But if you want to see the real El Malecon, visit after midnight. When everyone is returning from a dance, a party, a drive, a long stretch of work. Past midnight is when you will see the community best. When all the impediments fall away and the X-ray of who we are is almost perfect. And yes, no matter what, order the vaunted rotisserie chicken. Sometimes you’ll catch a bad bird and it will be dry—well, my friends, dust off the middle-school Spanish and send it back for another. The juicy ones are worth enduring the rolled eyes of the servers and your inability to conjugate querer properly; the juicy ones, you see, are divine.

the names of the dishes themselves are enough: alcapurria, friquitaqui, majarete.

mind you, it's hard to eat badly in the big apple. as diaz himself puts it, "If you’re in upper Manhattan and can’t score a decent taste of Dominican cooking, either you’re trying real hard to screw up, or something’s very wrong with your luck."

for my greenbacks, the best food i've eaten in new york is at la esquina's diner-style van - the pescado a las brasas tacos were gorgeously zingy, fresh, and charcoal-y, smothered in green tabasco sauce. i ate it with salsa running down my arms and a lunatic grin on my face. incidentally, i was sporting a similarly lunatic grin a few hours later after a baker's dozen margaritas downstairs at their secret bar.

freemans was the cat's pyjamas, too, if a little too model-y for my appetite. kind of hard to knock off a whole bowl of luscious mac and cheese while surrounded by people whose last meal was a cigarette, but still.

the union square coffee shop is an institution, and i can't pass the first 6 hours in new york without stopping in for shoestring fries and beers, at least, although you'll be rewarded for more adventurous ordering, too.

we had amazing food at il buco, too, if twiddly italian is your thing (and it is verily mine) - i ate pulpo a la plancha and had to refrain from plate-licking because of the rather more well-behaved clientele it attracts. i think from memory they also humoured me sending back about 3 bottles of wine, so they get extra points. for more down-to-earth italian grub, you can't go past lombardi's - it's touristy, mio dio, but it was recommended to me by an italian-american born-and-bred new yorker so dispute her claim that it's new york's best pizza at your peril.

for beers, boisterous behaviour, and sturdily executed food, stop into fanelli's. you'll think you're just popping in until you leave 12 hours later, happily sozzled, giggling, and having accidentally befriended a clutch of locals.

this time around though, all the eating out planets aligned for me at marlow & sons. i couldn't say, hand on heart, that it was the best food in new york (brooklyn, in this case) but the food was delicious, the wine was beautiful, the place feels like a tiny secret, and i spent one of those golden afternoons there that you find yourself grasping to recall on grey days when your shoes are wet and everything feels wonky.

but ignore everything i've said here, because the true joy of being in new york is finding your own favourite corners, your own favourite friquitaqui, your own unexpected golden afternoons. take as big a bite as you can.

love is the message

2010-08-10T08:43:00.000-07:00

life; confounding, ecstatic, banal, repetitive, jolting, exhausting, gorgeous, putrid sublime life.

yes.

from radiolab, which makes me think all things are possible and work is simply what you plough your curiosity into.

friday is for...

2010-07-09T06:02:00.000-07:00

breton stripes...

...red lipstick

...watermelon pip-spitting

...and brian eno & john cale

images from cali.v on lookbook.nu, wiksten-made, and flypeterfly.

glowing a little less brightly

2010-07-08T02:17:00.000-07:00

harvey fuqua, motown legend, genius producer and marvin gaye's mentor, died yesterday.

he was 80, and he managed to wring so much juiciness out of life, so it's difficult to be sad. after all, not many people get to leave behind songs like 'your precious love', 'ain't no mountain high enough' and 'if i can't have you'. we should all be so lucky, no?

so long, harvey, and thanks for the music.

sometimes i wish

2010-07-06T08:24:00.000-07:00

"Sometimes I wish I had a job where I could be quiet, maybe as a jeweler cutting stones. But if poets don’t pass on the enthusiasm for poetry, who will?"

from Bookslut's too-short interview with the brilliant rae armantrout.

daily poetry

2010-06-21T06:28:00.000-07:00

i would like to kiss the face of the person responsible for poetry daily, especially today's edition:

Cutting Apples

My father always carried a penknife
to pare his green apples, raising their skins
in perfect spirals. He never drew blood
slicing his bananas for breakfast,
their dark-seeded cores like little faces
dropping into the milk, one more item
in a life of a thousand chores,
one more notch in a life advancing
by millimeters or inches, not seconds or days.
I watched him turn himself as carefully away
from violence as a lathe on a table leg,
cutting each curve and flourish
from the flat face of a block
clamped in his hand. His hand and its thumb
never shied from the blade; he knew
that what you do with any tool gives it its value,
like a life—not too eager or afraid.

Michael Salcman

plucked from places obscure and obvious, they're always sparse and wonderful.

i know it's wrong...

2010-06-15T04:09:00.001-07:00

...but i can't help myself. i want these boots. oh, the adventures we'd have...

golden light and the golden age

2010-06-14T09:18:00.000-07:00

if you're partial to long-haired boys, barefoot girls, treehouses, folk art and 70s lens flare - or have ever wanted to live inside a fleet foxes song - pay strange eyes a visit.

a place to nest

2010-06-14T02:13:00.000-07:00

oh, to live here:

allandale house is stunningly beautiful, a modern day A-frame cabin in the woods designed by william o'brien, jr. that light! that view! that room empty of anything but books!

i'd still settle for linda aldredge's beautiful perch, though...

(treehouse image is via tree porn, if you're arboreally inclined.)

i've got the metallic taste of wanderlust in my mouth at the moment. baby, we were born to run.

a love letter for you

2010-06-09T06:55:00.000-07:00

i first came across stephen powers' philadelphia mural project, 'a love letter for you', about six months ago. i was waiting for the right moment to show it to someone, but there's no point waiting for the right moment (unless you're hatching an egg, maybe); there's only this moment.

so, here it is.

some are hip hop lyrics, some are sweet nothings; all of them are stunning.

cockle-warming...

go see.

louise bourgeois

2010-06-01T03:14:00.000-07:00

rest in peace, louise bourgeois.

i'm not sure i could say that i liked your work, but for your clear-eyed vision, your forthright ideas, your boldness and your commitment to turning impulse into reality, i thank you.

dance dance dance

2010-05-20T10:02:00.000-07:00

sun is shining, weather is sweet...

2010-05-06T08:33:00.000-07:00

tug off your shoe prisons, peel off your sock sarcophagi, and get dancing. because i said so.

dancing through space

2010-05-05T07:35:00.000-07:00

santiago calatrava's lithe, elegant buildings always look to me like solid forms paused mid-twirl, so the decision to commission him to create sets for the new york city ballet's new programme is inspired.

from the wall street journal:

'Mr. Calatrava, known for designing the sweeping, futuristic shapes of the Milwaukee Art Museum and the forthcoming PATH terminal in lower Manhattan, created artworks that will be onstage during five new ballets. The work includes sculptural forms, such as a series of gold discs floating above the stage, and sketches—to be used as backdrops—inspired by desert landscapes.

'For Mr. Calatrava, the connection between dance and architecture lies in the beauty of natural shapes. "I have a real devotion to the human body," he said in reference to his work. "The most pure expression of the body is given by dance."'

last year, i went to see sutra, where the shaolin monks leapt over, hid inside, and perched perilously atop antony gormley's simple architectural shapes, assembling, dismantling and reassembling fleeting buildings from the pieces. imagination meets imagination, and solidity meets motion: it's electricity.

one more reason to wish i was in new york...

mitjili napurrula

2010-04-09T03:29:00.000-07:00

i'm currently having my mind blown by mitjili napurrula's work. a pintupi, from the northern territory, she apparently only started painting aged 48, but she's now shown in the NGV and the Australian National Gallery.

they're so expansive, full of mystery and story and red earth; and i love that she thinks of them as the product of her family: "My mother taught me my father's Tjukurrpa; that's what I'm painting on the canvas".

i can't stop looking at them.

and it's spring

2010-04-09T02:26:00.000-07:00

yesterday, all the signs that i needed to believe were all there...

lunchtime squinting into the sunshine in regent's park:

the flowers were in full petal explosion:

the council workers were semi-naked:

...hallelujah.

is 5, Four, VII

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
-the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis

(ee cummings, of course.)

birds

2010-03-11T06:49:00.000-08:00

birds and a les paul? this is on my list.

also, i love how much icelandic sounds like birdsong.

karina/ carina

2010-03-09T02:41:00.001-08:00

look what passes for a blog post these days.

at my eye test next week, i'm secretly hoping my eyesight will be found to be defective so that i can justify buying round glasses in homage to the wonderful anna karina.

exciting things are cooking. i (extra-contextually) second barbra: well, the time has come.

make yourself happy

2010-01-11T09:53:00.000-08:00

this year, my only resolution is to take responsibility for my own happiness. eek.

may 2010 be a colourful year-

...admiring it

...eating it

...wearing it

...and feeling it.

let's make something good.

x

sartorialism

2009-12-04T08:38:00.000-08:00

lord knows why, but i've been fossicking around in men's fashion these last couple of days. it's pure aesthetic indulgence - i don't even have to consider what it might look like on me so i'm free to just appreciate.

i've been enjoying the cut of selectism's jib. it bills itself as a 'daily men's fashion, footwear, lifestyle and design culture magazine'. i would call it 'pretty things for boys'. i am especially enamoured of the damir doma hightops...

put this on is brilliant, too.

a "web series about dressing like a grown up", they aim to help equip men with the knowledge they need to avoid dressing like a manchild for all eternity.

in a friendly, straight-talking, no-a-pink-shirt-won't-turn-you-gay manner, they dispense wisdom on how to choose cashmere, why you need a belt that's not made of webbing, how to go shopping without once setting foot in a sports store, and where to get a custom-made bow tie.

(okay, they also make an occasional worrying foray into mancapes, but whatever, each to their own...)

in a quasi-related sidenote, i really want this florian rope necklace from oki-ni:

...santa?

anOther magazine's new 'loves' blog is also a honeypot of covetability...

and that is quite enough of that.

fix up, look sharp

2009-12-04T07:49:00.000-08:00

i stumbled into an amazing photography exhibition at londonewcastle project space at lunchtime.

called 'gentlemen of bacongo' (and accompanied by a book of the same name), daniele tamagni documents in glorious technicolour the 'sapeurs' - men of the congo who, though they live in slums, revel in wearing handmade designer suits. new york times magazine explains:

The culture of La SAPE, La Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes, began when the country was ruled by the French and the local men began to adopt a little European flair. The sapeurs, as they are known, spiff themselves up with colorful tailored suits, fedoras and the occasional cigar — it’s more English aristo than Iceberg Slim pimp daddy.

it's the details i love best - the bright streak of a fuschia pocket square against a black breast pocket, the trilby, the impossibly expensive leather belt, the cummerbund, the glossy pipe, the single glove...

oh, and the best. sunglasses. ever.

the way these dandies strut and pose in their finery is incredible. it makes the dusty streets look like wonkavision.

if you're in the neighbourhood, go see - it's only on for a couple more days.

wow

2009-12-02T03:43:00.001-08:00

this has to be one of the sweetest labours of love i've ever seen. when this talented illustrator realised he wanted to spend the rest of his life with his best girl, he painstakingly crafted this question-popping work of art.

good work, mister.

also, apologies for the nuptial flavour this week. i find it as weird as you do.

in six weeks' time

2009-11-30T03:46:00.000-08:00

for elena and nic, and for kate and david, for being brave.

You are the known way leading always to the unknown,
and you are the known place to which the unknown is always
leading me back.

from wendell berry's 'the country of marriage'.

coveting

2009-11-24T02:20:00.000-08:00

the empire of wonder that is it's nice that just keeps growing with the launch of a brand new zine 'if drawings were photographs'.

from the website:

The brainchild of designer Rob Matthews and Illustrator Tom Edwards, put simply – “Tom gave drawings to Rob and Rob tried to make them into photographs.”

keep an eye on goings-on over at it's nice that towards the end of december, when sanky will be rummaging about in his bag of tricks for a special series of guest posts. yay!

while on the subject of pretty things, present and correct is brimful with goodies making my credit card itch.

this has my name all over it:

maybe i'd be better at remembering what day it is if i had this calendar...

and anyone who watched last night's installment of david attenborough's 'Life' series will have a whole new appreciation for this no-nonsense educational poster:

home (?)

2009-11-23T03:20:00.000-08:00

checking flight prices this morning for my upcoming trip back to my hometown, perth, i checked my rss feeds and saw that facehunter has just been through.

that scorched blue sky and bleached, scrubby landscape makes my heart ache with longing.

the sight of amplifier bar, rosie o'grady's (where i once had my drink spiked), and 'beware snakes' signs do not.

it gets less and less like home every time i go back but somehow that strange outpost with its back to the desert will always be in my marrow.

a dog's life

2009-11-20T07:56:00.000-08:00

riley (a friend-of-a-friend's dog) has got it made. here he is, getting measured for his tailored gieves & hawkes winter coat.

oh look, and here he is on the vogue blog. obviously.

goosebumps

2009-11-20T07:01:00.000-08:00

happy friday, pals. go get yourself a beer from the fridge. you've had a tough week and we're proud of you.

heaven can wait

2009-11-19T04:51:00.000-08:00

deliriously weird and wonderful new video for charlotte gainsbourg & beck's new song:

a series of small cheers

2009-11-12T04:28:00.001-08:00

let's hear it for wooden soldiers!
i want this little parade of wooden soldiers an unreasonable amount.

let's hear it for mat bickley!
anyone who can carry off a corduroy blazer while swearing like a sailor on shore leave, do his own dentistry, discuss miranda july and then send you on your way with a massive bearhug is a-ok with me. he's like a gold-toothed, foul-mouthed bill ackroyd circa 1986. also, his blog is marvellously weird.

let's hear it for throaty colds!
i can momentarily sing brian jonestown massacre's anenome roughly in the same key as mara keagle.

let's hear it for obsessive consumption!
the art project by kate bingaman-burt, not the pasttime. although lord knows i've done enough of the latter of late...you'd forgive me if you could see the cobalt blue skirt of wonder, though. ANYWAY. the obsessive consumption project documents the artist's personal daily purchases - and credit card statements - illustratively. must really turn the brief sting of a rash purchase into a slow ache. act in haste, repent at leisure, etc.

i'd consider giving it a go if it didn't make me apoplectic just to think about. i can't work out whether i'd be more self-conscious about my extravagances (another bottle of red! taxi!) or my scrimping (another tin of beans for lunch. 3 for £9 pants.).

binge. purge. repeat.

in the queue

2009-11-11T04:04:00.000-08:00

when the filmmaker richard rogers ('dick' to his friends) died in 2001 he left behind countless reels of film for the one project he couldn't find a way to finish - a documentary examining his own life. his wife asked his former student, alexander olch, to make the film her husband couldn't - he was just too close to the subject to see the story. turns out that making the autobiographical documentary required actors, scripts, and more than five years of olch's own film-making time.

it looks like it was worth it.

via the marvellous hollister hovey.

the peckham experiment

2009-10-15T03:14:00.000-07:00

following on after a fashion from the last post, i'm going to check out the peckham experiment, which rewards the audience for further economic tanking. do you want crisps or a job? hmm. what flavour are the crisps?

from the exhibition website:
Ellie Harrison’s Vending Machine [...] will distribute free bags of crisps throughout The Peckham Experiment – this largesse is, however, dependent on the machine receiving bad news about the UK economy via an internal BBC information-feed. This basically means that what’s bad for the rest of the country is good for exhibition-goers! (although the actual crisps are probably quite bad for you….)

it's part of a 'social health project' called The Peckham Experiment. and as i'm currently conducting my own peckham experiment i'm definitely going to have a poke around...

hoarding your goodness doesn't make you richer

2009-10-15T03:08:00.000-07:00

Every morning I scramble to cram myself onto a crowded train full of already armoured commuters. Everyone’s staking their claim, chafing against the day, ready for a confrontation. It’s a bloody ego battle played out in hot looks and hair flicks. Who slams into you when the train judders, who’s going to be first off when the doors slide back – suddenly becomes this crucial measure of who’s best, or more important, or – something. I don’t know. Do any of us know?

I do it too, every morning. But I’ve been thinking about opportunities to be kind. This morning I decided to let everyone off ahead of me. I smiled. I gestured for them to move first. Even those people who met my gaze (Londoners are conscientious objectors to eye contact) looked at me suspiciously. But one lady looked surprised, and smiled widely at me, and said thank you, and she meant it. We gave each other the opportunity to be kind, and I felt a bit less of an army of me by the time I stepped onto the platform.

Maybe I’ll forget tomorrow, or be crabby, or late. But days are just ordinary moments strung together like beads on a string, and I want my fingers to hover longer over the sweet options. If you’ve got it, give it away.

image above from masaaki miyara via flickr.

circles. philip glass. sesame street. 1979.

2009-09-30T08:41:00.000-07:00

hyponotic, philip glass-scored awesomeness for kids. 'nuff said.

much marvellous

2009-09-11T03:29:00.000-07:00

peter broderick last night was mesmeric, deft and genuine and kind of - what am i trying to say? - kind of like that sweet pre-sleep state where you're bobbing about on the surface of sleep, stringing images and thoughts and sensations together like beads, content. like that.

he was followed by the fourteen-legged musical party that is efterklang.

the last time i saw these guys was in a field. the rain was coming down sideways - literally horizontally - and it had been for hours. it was a summer festival. i wanted to go home. and then efterklang came on dressed as sort of danish matadors, all in white except for their swishy green capes. they played their hearts out and i stayed and forgot all about the rain.

they're coming back in october to play at the barbican with an orchestra. so much yay.

blowing my tiny mind

2009-09-11T03:17:00.000-07:00

"A dying star on the verge of exploding creates a cosmic "butterfly" in a new picture from Hubble's WFC3. The central star, now obscured by a dense band of dust, was once five times the mass of the sun. Over the past two thousand years the star has expelled most of its outer gas envelope to create the ghostly "wings," which together span about two light-years."

...holy moly. do not miss the gobsmacking new images from the refurbished hubble telescope. we are so tiny. nature is god.

megazines

2009-09-08T08:42:00.000-07:00

having spent chunks of time recently in various airports and remote outposts of WH Smith i can say for sure that if the magazine industry wasn't dying it'd probably be a candidate for compassionate euthanasia. seriously, grazia, with your constant hysterical claims to have FINALLY REVEALED: THE DIET THAT KEEPS CHERYL COLE SO INCREDIBLY SLIM can i help you out? her entire daily calorific intake is derived from mascara. mystery solved.

conversely, yay for the good ones. here are a couple to have a gander at, none of which are likely readily available in your local petrol station but nonetheless worth locating (and some are just on the interweb, so no excuses there).

wooooo magazine is written by the irrepressible jason crombie. it's kind of vice-y in its irreverence, but where vice is basically knocked out by spoiled kids angry at the world because they weren't born dov charney, wooooo is charmingly and unprepossessingly off-kilter. and then completely juvenile. jackpot! read the blog if IMing strangers, penis cakes, 'foxy but worm food' features on deceased beauties, shark obsessions, interviews with david byrne and dancing to lou reed tickle your fancy. if they don't, i feel a little bit sad for you. i bet you don't even like jelly.

i've never happened across a real-life copy of monster children but i'm intrigued. previous issues have included sister corita's art, todd selby's favourite shoots, beautiful losers, geoff mcfetridge and kate moss's nipples. it's an aussie effort, so little wonder it's a bit surf and skate obsessed. i'm not so sure about the 'freebies' though - an asahi coaster?!

it's nice that is more of an occasional publication but it's marvellous, collecting all sorts of loveliness within its (ad-free) pages. issue 1 was brilliant and number 2 is due out shortly. you might want to pre-order it because it's going to be amazing. i feel it in my waters. also it's going to involve karlssonwilker, fred butler and rob ryan, so there's pretty much a moneyback guarantee on it being mint.

uppercase magazine is a sweet little thing out of a gallery of the same name based in calgary. the third issue is imminent, but if past issues are anything to go by, it'll have gratuitous double-page spreads of people's obscure collections (scissors, anyone?), funny illustrations and a bit of design nerdery.

all you need now is a sunny afternoon and a mini milk, and you're in business. what are you reading?

a small list

2009-09-07T09:26:00.000-07:00

a few things to help you out in case you haven't found enough things to like about today:
each and every one of the supersweet editions paumes books (buy in € from yvestown).

lena corwin's travel poster that reawakened my weird elvis thing.

these stuffed dog portraits cracked me up. is it just me?

having a world full of music to listen to after a week-long roadtrip with only the same. three. cds. to listen to... oh god. liking 'the gardener' by the tallest man on earth, very much.

plimsolls and no socks. summer's on the turn but for now i'm drinking it in.

plimsolls via stevsoll's flickr

anything with a hot air balloon in it generally pleases me

2009-08-26T09:12:00.000-07:00

sweet video for a sweet song. what's really lovely is that it's a fan video - it's not even the official one. how much proof do i need that if you want to make something, you ought to just get the fuck in there and make it...?

Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear from Gabe Askew on Vimeo.

i know this much is true

2009-08-25T07:56:00.000-07:00

if you feel it, say it. or, as frank o' hara said with heart-stopping simplicity -

it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it

this is what i have been doing

2009-08-25T06:36:00.000-07:00

in case you'd been wondering, i've been:

a bit of this:

interviewing this guy:

marvelling at this:

chuckling at this loveable eejit:

missing this guy.

coveting a set of brian eno's oblique strategies.

nursing a couple of new girl crushes.

where have you been? i haven't seen you on the bus for ages.

in the in-between

2009-08-13T02:52:00.001-07:00

Originally uploaded by rubydoomsday

like joan didion writes, when i find myself in choppy waters, i 'go to the literature'. writers are the ones i hope understand the world better than me, or at least there is comfort found in their tales of the journey back from the dark edges. this is the power of stories. keep turning the page. you'll see.

when i was at university i swallowed books of poetry whole. most of it passed through me or maybe into me, i'm not sure which. one poem in particular has driven me mad since i read it ten (ten!) years ago - i could only remember a few of the lines, and searching for it in books or online yielded nothing.

yesterday in frustration i googled the poet, alan riach, and found an email address for him. i explained that his poem was important and asked him to please tell me where i could find it. he emailed me back less than two hours later to tell me that it had only ever been published in a magazine but he'd do his best to find it.

this morning it was waiting in my inbox. wowsers.

i hope he won't mind me publishing it here. i think it should be in the world.

Crepusculario

In darkness how they haunt us, these shadows of a past we know –
a past we always know we’re on the point of superseding –
always in the moment of the dawn’s anticipation, letting go
of an evening spent before this sun had risen.

May all the hauntings be of favoured memories of real things
Not things you’d wish forgotten or that never should have happened.

Let them linger in their traces as they go. Let them lead to this.

- Alan Riach

dark days and starry nights

2009-08-12T07:37:00.000-07:00

I’ve always made a racket. It’s not because I’m extroverted – I’m never really sure whether I'll be silver-tongued or blushing and trembling – I’ve just always been noisy. I tend to talk too loud, and my laugh escapes in involuntarily noisy bursts. I’m embarrassingly clumsy, too, bumbling into and dropping things, and I grew up being told that I went at things ‘like a bull in a china shop’.

This last weekend, in fact, my dad took me and my sister to our old butcher’s shop, where he christened me “that noisy ommer” (Lancashire for ‘noisy hammer’).

I’ve also been told by people closest to me that they know something’s up when I go quiet.

So I apologise for being a bit mute here, lately. There are a lot of things roiling and churning in my heart and my head that have drowned out any other thoughts worth sending out into the world.

In the meantime (and it’s always the meantime), I’m heeding Robert Rauschenberg:

“John Cage said that fear in life is the fear of change. If I may add to that: nothing can avoid changing. It’s the only thing you can count on. Because life doesn’t have any other possibility, everyone can be measured by his adaptability to change.“

So. Enough of that.

There’s a meteor shower tonight. I’m going to be sitting on a rooftop with a great friend eating noodles and drinking wine, eyes peeled. I’m even going to download some of the National Trust’s wonderful stargazing guides. I might even try to learn my three constellations...

Here’s to starry nights.

reduction

2009-08-04T08:13:00.001-07:00

walking to meet a friend for lunch today, i noticed that the smeary windows of a defunct dim sum joint looked different.

at first i thought they'd been drawn on, but actually, they were creating pictures by rubbing off the cruddy whitewash that had been slapped up to mask the goings-on inside.

instead of layering things up, it was taking away that made this so lovely.

i stopped to chat to the guy as he worked. i thanked him for making this ugly corner a bit prettier, and he told me that tomorrow night they're opening a new bar-restaurant-art space there.

take away the depressing dim sum place and you've got a new space full of potential. rub away some paint to make a new picture. reduce and have more.

i like it.

step one: open a bottle of champagne

2009-08-04T04:20:00.000-07:00

most people love apple for their slick, designery gadgets. me? i love them for their cooking skills. well, alan dye, their creative director, at any rate.

any man who whips up a plate of oozy mac n' cheese, washed down with copious bubbly is alright by me. that might just about be the best sounding meal i ever heard of.

attention, men of the world (okay then, man of the world): please woo me with carbohydrates and bubbly. thank you.

marilyn agrees with me:

champagne and potato chips? that's a GOOD PARTY.

i wish the world was like this all the time

2009-08-04T02:58:00.000-07:00

this is wonderful beyond words. stick with it - its charms swell. i promise.

via the truly marvellous duo that are something's hiding in here.

make it dangerous

2009-07-29T05:51:00.000-07:00

yes. yes. yes. if maurice sendak loves it, you know it's going to be astounding.

last of the sky-gazers

2009-07-22T03:11:00.000-07:00

there's some pretty amazing stuff going on up there in the big not-so-blue at the moment. (well, all the time, no doubt, but narcissistically, i am going to persist in my belief that i am at the centre of the universe until i actually make it out into space to have my delusions of my own grandeur blown to smithereens.)

an amateur astronomer recently alerted NASA to an imminent collision on Jupiter, following in the grand tradition of starry bedroom discoveries.

HRH might very well get her own space agency soon.

if you missed this week's total solar eclipse, you can watch it in all its freaky majesty here.

i'm hankering for this scale poster of the moon by blanka (it glows in the dark!).

and, thrillingly, i'm not too old too become an astronaut. actually, at the youthful age of 29, i'd be one of their youngest.

promise i'll land back on earth soon.

image above from kyoto/ reuters via the guardian

clare de lune

2009-07-21T06:09:00.000-07:00

i'm sorry, i know i keep chirrupping about this whole LANDING ON THE MOON thing but there's so much incredible stuff out there about it right now that i feel as though it's happening now. i'm only just beginning to comprehend how staggering a feat it really was...typically late to the party.

i've only just begun to poke around the incredible site we choose the moon but while i'm chipping away at work i can't stop listening to the audio archive of the launch. hearing the astronauts updating houston about their altitude and progress, and hearing the hushed burn of the engines below the voices, makes it stunningly real.

also, google earth has released a new 'moon' area, including tours of the landing site narrated by the astronauts.

lunatics rejoice.

dumpster swimming is the new dumpster diving

2009-07-21T05:49:00.000-07:00

one man's ~~skip~~ dumpster is another man's swimming pool. in brooklyn, there's a secret pool party going on, where the cool kids can splash about in a repurposed skip. it looks beautiful.

i love that, where we're used to seeing a rubbish bin, the organisers saw the opportunity to make some magic.

if you're lucky enough to be headed NYC-wards (you know who you are...), please charm your way in and report back.

full slideshow here, and muchos gracias to the boy wonder that is BADam for this treat.

if you believe we put a man on the moon

2009-07-16T08:00:00.000-07:00

forty years ago today, the apollo 11 launched, carrying the first people who would ever look back towards earth from the surface of the moon.

researching relative computer power for a work project today, i came across these astonishing facts:
- the computers that guided man across space and landed them safely on the moon were less powerful than a pocket calculator.
- the apollo guidance computer was "more basic than the electronics in modern toasters that have computer controlled stop/start/defrost buttons".
- the codefor the AGC program can be downloaded as a PDF file.

this explanation of how difficult it is to navigate back to earth, by astronaut david scott, really blew me away:

"If you have a basket ball and a baseball 14 feet apart, where the baseball represents the moon and the basketball represents the Earth, and you take a piece of paper sideways, the thinness of the paper would be the corridor you have to hit when you come back."

it's easy to forget how incredible a feat this was. i'm going to celebrate the landing itself by watching this and bowing towards that great bright orb:

ps: james may has the best job in the world. ever.

30 before 30

2009-07-14T01:47:00.001-07:00

it’s coming…and I want to be ready for it. I want to celebrate the last few months of my twenties, and relish this summer, these days, my friends, my lovely (and Sydney-bound) sister. i want to milk this.

So, here’s my list of 30 things to indulge in before I turn 30. (Some of them may be slightly familiar…)

1. Swim in the Hampstead Heath ponds.
2. Write every day for a month.
3. Host a tea party.
4. Finish reading Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit.
5. Take a self-portrait every day for a month.
6. Train for, and run, a half-marathon.
7. See the Wellcome Collection.
8. Purge my wardrobe.
9. Buy a saucily old-fashioned one-piece.
10. Bob about in the Strait of Gibraltar.
11. Watch the sun go down from a hammock.
12. Make chutney.
13. Photograph light drawings with sparklers.
14. Camp near the sea.
15. Eat razor clams in Whitstable.
16. Cook something involving samphire.
17. Celebrate something at Moro.
18. Stay up all night dancing with the best girls in the world.
19. Roll down a hill with Kate.
20. Memorise a Walt Whitman poem.
21. Plant flowers in my window boxes.
22. Sign up for an oral history course.
23. Get a British driving licence (finally).
24. Eat a really good knickerbocker glory.
25. Set off a firework.
26. Learn to identify three constellations.
27. Get my bike fixed.
28. Make the best ever lemon tart.
29. Make dioramas with Rach.
30. Decide what to actually do to celebrate my thirtieth.

wish me luck. also, if you have a secret stash of fireworks, would love to take me out for slap-up moroccan, or want to fill out the DVLA’s D1 form on my behalf, please speak up...

time wastes too fast

2009-07-10T04:00:00.000-07:00

i know i've mentioned maira kalman before, but i can't help doing it again - she just keeps telling my favourite kind of stories.

this one is an inquisitive look at the complicated, curious, talented thomas jefferson - "scientist, philosopher, statesman, architect, musician, naturalist, zoologist, botanist, farmer, bibliophile, inventor, wine connoisseur, mathematician and and..."

word of the day: orrery

2009-07-09T09:17:00.000-07:00

or·re·ry, n
a mechanical model of the solar system that shows the orbits of the planets around the sun at the correct relative velocities.

wow. and these lucky doers actually OWN the one above.

(photo at top by donricardopezzano via flickr)

this just in from the great blue yonder

2009-07-09T01:47:00.000-07:00

national geographic reports the likely discovery of a new kind of cloud - a roiling, rolling, tidal-looking thing called undulatus asperatus - or, affectionately, the 'jacques cousteau cloud' by cloud expert gavin pretor-pinney.

Asperatus clouds may spur the first new classification in the World Meteorological Organization's International Cloud Atlas since the 1950s, Gavin Pretor-Pinney said.

(there's an International Cloud Atlas? i need this!)

if you're a cloudlover after my own heart, check out his talk at the marvellous 'do lectures':

there's also a handbook, and a society if you're that way inclined.

if that tickles your fancy, swing by gavin pretor-pinney's other love - his magazine, The Idler. it's a beautiful thing.

go love yourself some clouds.

love is coming to us all

2009-07-08T06:49:00.000-07:00

i think i've found my favourite (caveat: for now) crosby, stills and nash song. it's the perfect combination of all the power wielded by the mighty band of brothers: it's unashamedly catchy but then weird and intricate beneath the immediate earworm potential. it's poppy enough for them to smuggle in a brief moment of psychedelic freak-out in the middle, too, which momentarily disorients before sending you spinning back into the chorus:

Carry on
Love is coming
Love is coming to us all

Where are you going now my love?
Where will you be tomorrow?
Will you bring me happiness?
Will you bring me sorrow?
Oh, the questions of a thousand dreams
What you do and what you see
Lover can you talk to me?

two weeks ago, i got to stand in a field with rapturous hippies and old men listening to these three play as one again. my dad texted me midway through to say that he was watching too, on television. they've still got the power to turn a mess of separate individuals into a unified loveworn and lovelorn collective.

they've still got the power.

album version here.

a lot of things in life feel hard

2009-07-07T03:01:00.000-07:00

...so it's a relief to find soft alcoves - which is exactly what sarah applebaum creates.

wild explosions of colour arcing across a white space...

...and inviting little places built for curling up in.

it's like holi festival inside a gallery inhabited by a knitter ecstatically losing her mind. or something.

tea? i've got the kettle on; i was hoping you'd come knocking.

ps: sanky, the gorillas are especially for you...

i know this much is true

2009-07-03T09:20:00.001-07:00

the lost tribes of new york city

2009-07-02T08:41:00.001-07:00

oral history, lo-fi animation and endearing telephone boxes - how could i not love this?

make your own language

2009-07-01T04:32:00.000-07:00

feeling stuck for words post-glastonbury mayhem (more on THAT later), so i'm instead wondering - if i made my own language, what would my vocabulary consist of? to begin with, there would be symbols for places where people sit and talk, important trees, places to swim, a symbol for dreaming and one for singing, men and women and children and babies, and a clutch of symbols to show the intricate connections between the cast in this great play...for starters.

i've realised that the artists i love most are the artists who spoke in their own secret tongues - alexander calder, joan miro, cy twombly.

today i've been re-immersing myself in alexander calder's sculptures, like some airborne metal ballet.

they - and the man himself - seem to radiate an intense generosity of spirit that seems as though it would make each day a new prayer.

more and more these days i want to work with my hands, to MAKE.

and here, just because, two together: calder, and dolores, pilar and joan miro.

all images courtesy of the calder foundation.

play me, i'm yours

2009-06-23T08:58:00.000-07:00

Image from el_rapsoda_mut via Flickr

"Presented for Sing London and the City of London Festival, 30 street pianos have been installed on streets, in public squares and parks, train stations, and markets. Like a creative blank canvas, the pianos are there for any member of the public to play and engage with. The pianos will be in place until July 13th, after which time they’ll be donated to local schools and community groups."

so lovely! time to dust off fur elise.

the first of many

2009-06-22T04:04:00.001-07:00

soon, there will be something exciting. until then, there's this.

o, to be able to draw

2009-06-19T04:15:00.000-07:00

it must be amazing, really. to look at something and have it translated through your hand. to look down and see, like a seismograph, the pen moving almost involuntarily, the ink lines unfurling across the page. to see a thing emerge: a person, a tree, a singing bear wearing a sandwich board.

this week i am very much enamoured of matt dorfman’s odd, dark, funny drawings. his wedding invitation was a thing of beauty and is all over the interweb, but actually, the secrets of his sketchbook are what have me gaping.

is it possible to learn to draw? anyone? don’t go giving me false hope, now.

the magic faraway tree

2009-06-17T03:42:00.000-07:00

(image copyright henry adams)

i never had a treehouse as a kid – maybe that’s why they light up my heart so much now. a treehouse of my own? That’s definitely on the life list. In the meantime, though, I’m very excited about the treehouse gallery in regent’s park.

besides the beautiful-looking structures perched among the leaves, there are going to be art installations, winemaking classes, printing and weaving workshops, and all sorts. sounds crunchy and thoroughly up my street.

what would your treehouse look like? (mine has a swing and a big verandah with a rocking chair and paint on the floors…)

porno for pyros

2009-06-10T07:37:00.000-07:00

burning down the house: in the mood for both the song and the sentiment today. thanks again for the metaphor, astrobarry, you all-knowing muddyfunster, you.

i second deth p sun: please be brave.

and if you’re putting the kettle on, I’ll have a jar of coffee and a wet spoon. thank you.

the big quiet

2009-06-09T06:44:00.000-07:00

feeling a bit off-colour and sad and generally meh after saying goodbye to my mum and stepdad and little sister until next january. until i get my chin up again, here are three things that are making my wobbly bottom lip turn up at the edges a little bit:

1. this sweet, sweet picture from the obamas' wedding (via people magazine):

2. tommy's beautiful guide to paris:

3. ...and the fact that i get to GO to paris with this mister.

don't forget to get enough sleep. it's very important; trust me on this.

just because

2009-06-01T09:29:00.000-07:00

love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds

-- ee cummings

(i bow towards you edward estlin cummings)

tell the right stories and we live better lives

2009-06-01T08:49:00.000-07:00

In four months and eight days I acquire a new age, a new year, and a new decade. I’ll be 30. Until today I felt more or less fine about it: it’s just another numeral flicking over into the next. But today it’s taken on hall of mirrors-style horror, all warped and weird.

Thing is, it’s not really just another year. It’s a big landmark on the roadtrip from here to there, the kind of thing you’d stop the car to have your picture taken beside; a Tropic of Capricorn on the unspooling road north. And while you were there you’d maybe hop back and forth across the line a few times, knowing it’s just a painted line indicating a fairly arbitrary location, but wondering still at all the distance you’d come and all the way still to go.

I thought that by the time I turned 30 I’d be good at something, really good, that I’d be recognised for the Thing, that people would be talking about the Thing and someone would say, ‘Let’s ask Clare, she knows that stuff better than anyone’ and everyone else would nod and feel reassured that the Thing was now in my good hands. I thought I’d have a book with my name on the spine wedged between Ali Smith and something I like a bit less than Ali Smith.

I thought I’d have a house. And a garden that I’d have finally learned how to be patient with and committed to so that it wasn’t a tray of drought-stricken seedlings I never seem to have time to plant out.

I thought I’d have a home, that somewhere would feel like home, that saying, ‘I’m going home now’ would be a place and a meaning and a sweet feeling.

I thought I’d have worked out how to be lovable all the time. That I’d be good at loving all the time, that I’d met somebody who thought I was all the world’s best magic and run down the aisle to marry them.

I thought I’d maybe have babies, bobbing in a bicycle seat behind me as I pedalled along the canal paths.

But I know that this is what I do: worry that there isn’t enough; turn the world into an empty pantry in ration time and me too hungry. I have a tendency to tell myself the wrong stories.

Actually, I have a lot. I have a beautiful, funny-shaped family that looks out for each other and mostly manages to love each other exactly as is, and I understand more and more how rare a gift that is. I am in love, fiercely, and when I let him, I’m loved back. I have a job that pays me enough money to have adventures and fresh food and new shoes. I’ve made a whole new life for myself, by myself. I’ve had cats and best friends and faraway friends and chance meetings that I’ve loved, and loved, and loved.

Lately the pace of things has been too fast, too many things that aren’t the things that make my world juicy, too much muchness, and it’s given me a bit of life-sized car-sickness. Maybe I’ll pull over and watch some clouds instead of pushing on towards that stupid line of latitude, and make up some stories about plans that didn't quite come off and about not having a plan at all.

why i'll never be able to watch 'wizard of oz' again

2009-05-26T05:52:00.000-07:00

my favourite of the wizard of oz characters is was the cowardly lion.

now he's the newest player in the ensemble cast of my weirdest nightmares, thanks to this:

moral of the story: never google where fond, nostalgic childhood memories are concerned. eek.

yeah, what would you know about it, astrobarry?

2009-05-26T05:42:00.001-07:00

Photo by inkling

turns out, quite a bit. dammit.

Your days of holding the interpersonal dynamic at a breezy, easygoing, half-an-arm's-length distance are numbered, Libra. It's getting deeper, fuller, more intense and flavorful… and there's really no useful use in trying to defer the inevitable. I was also going to add that this heightening of involvement level (whether in a romantic, professional or other collaborative context) is due to occur whether you like or not, then thought better of it—mainly because I intuit that you will like it, even if this affectionate pull is unconscious (while your conscious mind continues to freak out about all the ramifications). But we all know there's only so long that two people can play a semi-detached game of nicey-nice with each other before it simply has to 'go there'. You know what I mean? As the next few weeks unfold, you will see that this is either the beginning of the end… or, perhaps more precisely, the beginning of the end of the prior initiatory phase and simultaneously the start of something more profound. Do not fear the tangled web you find yourself being woven into. There's an undeniable thrill to knowing that, though you'll soon have much more to lose should things go south, you'll also soon have much more to gain if and when they don't.

argh. astrobarry strikes again.

things i'm learning, over and over again, these days:

- there's nothing to be scared of, except of being cowardly.
- being afraid means you've got something to lose. having something to lose means you've got something at stake. having something at stake is brave, and good.
- strawberries taste exponentially better when the sun's out.
- i am really a very slow learner.

now wait until the sun goes down and light a sparkler. apparently it is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. weirdos.

i know this much is true

2009-05-07T09:23:00.000-07:00

we all must die. but until then, we all must live.

the tectonic plates are shifting. i'm just glad to be here to see it, to have to squint through the sunshine to see the monitor, to smell my mum's skin again, the most ancient smell in my small world.

...and for further proof that a pink moon gonna get us all, look at Nicholas Nixon's lovely, unsentimental series documenting the ageing of his wife and her sisters, or the Family Goldberg's collective growing up, or The Chive's fast-forwarded life, or, or, or -

341 years

2009-05-01T09:43:00.000-07:00

in honour of the appointment, after 341 years, of a female poet laureate, i give you the poet laureate of my heart: sharon olds.

The Abandoned Newborn

When they found you, you were not breathing.
It was ten degrees below freezing, and you were
wrapped only in plastic. They lifted you
up out of the litter basket, as one
lifts a baby out of the crib after nap
and they unswaddled you from the Sloan’s shopping bag.
As far as you were concerned it was all over,
you were feeling nothing, everything had stopped
some time ago,
and they bent over you and forced the short
knife-blade of breath back
down into your chest, over and
over, until you began to feel
the pain of life again. They took you
from silence and darkness right back
through birth, the gasping, the bright lights, they
achieved their miracle: on the second
day of the new year they brought you
back to being a boy whose parents
left him in a garbage can,
and everyone in the Emergency Room
wept to see your very small body
moving again. I saw you on the news,
the discs of the electrocardiogram
blazing like medals on your body, your hair
thick and ruffed as the head of a weed, your
large intelligent forehead dully
glowing in the hospital TV light, your
mouth pushed out as if you are angry, and
something on your upper lip, a
dried glaze from your nose,
and I thought how you are the most American baby,
child of all of us through your very
American parents, and through the two young medics,
Lee Merklin and Frank Jennings,
who brought you around and gave you their names,
forced you to resume the hard
American task you had laid down so young,
and though I see the broken glass on your path, the
shit, the statistics — you will be a man who
wraps his child in plastic and leaves it in the trash — I
see the light too as you saw it
forced a second time in silver ice between your lids, I am
full of joy to see your new face among us,
Lee Frank Merklin Jennings I am
standing here in dumb American praise for your life.

no-one's going to give you permission

2009-05-01T03:03:00.000-07:00

i'm loving the NYSAT project in new york at the moment. from Cool Hunting:

Finding it difficult to locate a strip of space free from any advertising, Jordan Seiler of Public Ad Campaign did some research and found many of the billboards around New York City are illegal. To propose an alternate use of these city spaces, Seiler organized the New York Street Advertising Takeover, a network of citizens set out to transform the spaces into their own works of art.

aesthetically, there's some really lovely work in there, but what warms my cockles most is the way that we're usually so cowed by the law of ownership and the money changing hands and the simple feeling that public spaces are not OURS. how much time do we lose waiting for an elusive somebody to grant us permission to do something we long to do?

i spend a lot of time waiting for someone to write me a note or issue authorisation to go ahead. but i think i might bunk off.

here, let me help you with that

2009-04-23T09:31:00.001-07:00

i thought i would helpfully assist you in your wonderings about what you could do to make me happy today.

you could teach me how to make slightly odd, sweet paper animations.

you could arrange to have michel gondry draw my portrait. (you can be in it too, if you like.)

you could assuage my quasi erotic longings for the amazing honey gelato that i was eating this time last week at san crispino in rome.

you could turn up at my house with a picnic blanket, a watermelon and this magnificent record player all set for an afternoon in the park.

knowledge is power, innit?

time to go listen to nina simone singing 'here comes the sun' one more time. loving this enthusiastic british spring the way that alveoli love oxygen.

but i still love you more.

One and Other

2009-04-22T01:53:00.001-07:00

we gave ourselves away

2009-04-21T07:12:00.000-07:00

tiding myself over until Where The Wild Things Are blows my tiny mind watching other pupil-dilating Spike Jonze efforts, like this music video for UNKLE's song, 'Heaven'...

the sun's out. go kiss somebody.

when it's time to work, WORK.

2009-04-08T09:03:00.001-07:00

Originally uploaded by themarkpike

************BELIEF & TECHNIQUE FOR MODERN PROSE******
List of Essentials

********************************************************************************************

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy

2. Submissive to everything, open, listening

3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house

4. Be in love with yr wife

5. Something that your feel will find its own form

6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind

7. Blow as deep as you want to blow

8. Write what you want bottomless from the bottom of the mind

9. The unspeakable visions of the individual

10. No time for poetry but exactly what is

11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest

12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you

13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition

14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time

15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog

16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye

17. Write in recollection and amazement of yourself

18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea

19. Accept loss forever

20. Believe in the hold contour of life

21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind

22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better

23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr monrning

24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge

25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it

26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form

27. In Praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness

28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazzier the better

29. You're a Genius all the time

30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

as ever,

Jack

[By Jack Kerouac, exerpted precisely as published [sic] from a letter to Don Allen 1958]

from Heaven & Other Poems, Grey Fox Press, San Francisco 1994

a little bit light, a little bit dark

2009-04-06T06:33:00.000-07:00

Marcel Dzama's new music video for Department of Eagles is the stuff of (dark, engrossing, fantastical) dreams...

care to dance?

2009-04-03T03:54:00.001-07:00

i was going to say, 'should i ever get married...', but screw it, i'm just going to dance to it now, whilst taking lessons from tammy terell in the fine art of eyebrow batting.

the day gets bigger

2009-04-02T10:29:00.001-07:00

Originally uploaded by Jaako

Reading the lovely Scout’s blog, I come across Maira Kalman, whose name I have never heard before, and am intrigued. I start digging and find a book, a wonderful TED talk, a website, and a NY Times column. She’s wonderful. The world cracks open slightly and is brighter.

I want to know more about her: does she have children? Where does she live? Does she have a pot-bellied pig, a fancy studio, red tights like the ones I’m wearing today? If I understand her life more, can I live more like her? Can I live better? Can I die better? (Because like her, I think those are the only two things worth dedicated yourself to the study of.)

I find out she has two children, a series of children’s books, a mischievous face. I find out she had a husband, Tibor, a renegade graphic designer now dead. Renegade graphic designers – my specialist subject. I read his obituary.

It mentions how he went to live in Cuba, his politics, and that he wrote a rare book called Chairman Rolf Fehlbaum. I look to the left of my desk: I have this book; it’s been there for months, untouched.

I read this book, and it makes me marvel. The world cracks open slightly and is brighter.

I go back to finish reading his obituary, feeling I’ve found new friends today. At the end of the obit, one of Tibor’s friends gives a wonderful testimonial: "He remained charming and prickly and funny literally until the end. Since people our age have not yet died in great numbers, it's a great model for us all as a way to die, not just with dignity, but with effervescence."

The friend is Kurt Andersen, a writer, whose name is at once new and familiar. I realise – yesterday, waiting for a friend, I picked an old magazine from a rack and opened it, randomly, to a writer’s description of his perfect final meal. The writer was Kurt Andersen, and I had never heard of him until last night.

I sit here and the world feels bigger, and smaller, and brighter, and closer, and strung through with possibility.

giddy

2009-03-26T04:51:00.000-07:00

spike jonze + dave eggers + arcade fire + monsters + MAURICE FRICKING SENDAK? ladies and gentlemen, that wild rumpus cannot start soon enough.

someone i know: rach

2009-03-12T04:29:00.000-07:00

The day that Rach started at the place I used to work, I knew we would be pals. I remember talking to her that first morning in the office’s kitchen as I unloaded the plates from the dishwasher. We were both wearing jeans and trainers; the talk came easily. That night, sitting at the big kitchen table in my borderline-derelict share house, a housemate asked how my day was. I answered happily, ‘I met a girl who’s going to be my friend!’

Rach was different to the other girls who worked there, who were mostly pretty, primped and perky account managers. She swerved between effervescent enthusiasm for obscure kinds of pens and cats and art and baked goods, and moody, solitary disdain. She liked Roots Manuva and Steve Reich. She could draw better than anyone I ever saw. She talked about the full sleeve tattoo she wanted an artist to design for her, about swanky hotels she wanted to stay at, about Sweden in summertime.

We went to New York together and she was sad and distant for much of the time, struggling to be away from the boy she was falling in love with. But the freezing December day we got the Circle Line ferry around Manhattan, she suddenly sparked into fizzing life and drew, with utter ease and certainty, the skyline of the entire island.

For a few years we dated boys who lived together. We saw more of each other than at any other time in our lives. But it was less somehow – both preoccupied, running in different gears.

I left that job; took another. Rach and her boyfriend broke up. She changed jobs, too. We drifted.

I don’t even remember how it was resuscitated – just suddenly, there she was again, and we were eating lunch together, talking about men with beards and hatching plans to make robots out of cardboard and watching John Cusack films and trading pictures of cats with weird expression to shake each other out of the doldrums.

For Christmas, just before I got on the plane to fly home to Australia, we went out to drink martinis and Rach gave me one of the most wonderful presents I’ve ever had. It was a care package, full of everything she thought I’d need for such a long flight – Green & Black’s chocolate, small felt-tips and a colour-paper notebook from Muji, a tiny tube of Chanel face wash, an Iris Murdoch book we’d talked about, an eye mask and earplugs that allowed me to carve out 5 solid hours of sleep in that endless night.

She hates having her photo taken. She teaches herself impossibly difficult programming languages on the computer. She dances better, makes better chocolate cake and wears the best socks of anyone I know. My friend said, after meeting Rach for just a few hours, ‘She can do anything, can’t she? Talented gal.’ He’s right.

I call her Razzamatazz, or sometimes Racquel, or Razzle, but she’s one of the few people in the world whose true name is the one they were given at birth. Rach.

(belated) tuesday: i know this much is true

2009-03-11T04:37:00.000-07:00

after we moved to australia, every week, my mum would get two aerogrammes in the post, one addressed in my nana's dense scrawl, and the other bearing my aunty peg's spidery handwriting (she was actually my great aunty peg, but woe betide anyone who called her that...). every week, without fail, they sat down to take stock of the days, think of my mum across the globe in this scorched new place, and fold up their observations and ideas and missingness.

i remember how my mum would sink into them, how she'd become far away, how she'd stop being mum for a few minutes and become someone's daughter.

tuesday: i know this much is true

2009-02-24T04:11:00.001-08:00

i don't know much, but i know i love you. plus one or two other things besides.

love the winter.

2009-02-12T02:34:00.000-08:00

"There's a point where you can give up on winter--when temptation can enter your soul, prying its way in like cold air through the cracks in your cabin--around January sixteenth or so, and this can make you realize that February's coming, and beyond February, March.

See, I don't yet realize that March will be the hardest month. Early February's the coldest, and often the snowiest, but March, strange, silent March, will be the hardest.

The danger in yielding to thoughts of spring--green grass, hikes, bare feet, lakes, fly-fishing, rivers, and sun, hot sun--is that once these thoughts enter your mind, you cant get them out.

Love the winter. Don't betray it. Be loyal.

When the spring gets here, love it too--and then the summer.

But be loyal to the winter, all the way through--all the way, and with sincerity--or you'll find yourself high and dry, longing for a spring that's a long way off, and winter will have abandoned you, and in her place you'll have cabin fever, the worst.

The colder it gets, the more you've got to love it."

~Rick Bass, from 'Winter - Notes from Montana'

Curtsies in the direction of the marvellous Keri Smith

2009-02-11T07:07:00.000-08:00

It’s nice to be back in the world. After two days of trembling fever and lurching nausea, shutting the door behind me to go to work on the bluest morning I know had that caterpillar chrysalis feeling, the colours ratcheted up a notch, the sound balance altered. The air was so fresh and clear it could have been the alps instead of (when I grow rich, said the bells of) Shoreditch.

Today I would like to sit with my eyes closed and feel the shapes the wind draws as it streams past my face.

But I’m at work (bah), so instead I made a trip to an art supplies place at lunch time to buy fat felt tips and glue sticks, and now I’m fossicking through TV on the Radio’s back catalogue courtesy of the marvellous Spotify.

It’s grey now, and there’s not much to see, maybe it’s a day for listening…

Beach House:

J Tillman:

…or just daydreaming.

I like you a lot; you have a talent for always knowing the right thing to say.

on good things (where good is both worth having, and worth doing.)

2009-01-20T07:25:00.001-08:00

Vintage Polaroid film boxes
Originally uploaded by missha

(1.) work, and how it gets that way*
Each day, a new tiny tragedy occurs at work to remind us of the presence of the wolves at the door. When I returned to work from holidays, five desks were suddenly empty. This, of course, was not one of the smaller losses: all good, likeable people, working neither harder nor any less hard than any of the rest of us; people with new mortgages to pay or elderly parents or a broken shower or a dyslexic’s panic about having to rework a CV. This was their loss, and our loss, and each of us shed a skin of confidence. This is real. Oh.

The smaller disappointments creep in quietly, like a new season: a constant shortage of coffee, cheap biscuits, the omission of any talk of the new year bonuses it was posited we’d receive just a couple of months ago, a tension in peoples’ faces when you arrive late or leave on time.

I don’t know when the look began. The look on a project manager or account director’s face when you question the brief, ask a question that’s likely to make the client uncomfortable, wonder aloud whether that’s the best way to do something, or if it’s worth doing at all. It’s the look that says, ‘Please. Just do this. And then we can all get paid.’

But the client isn’t always right, and sometimes we do them a disservice by creating something useless or clunky or half-arsed or ill thought-out. Not asking questions or rocking the boat oftentimes means creating something that’s just not very good. Which means it won’t achieve its aims. Which means it’s a waste of money, a waste of time – and it lays waste to everyone’s enthusiasm for actually making something worth having. In short: wasteful.

People aren’t buying; maybe it makes sense to stop selling them things, for a bit, at least. Maybe this is evolution at work: a chance to strip out all the stuff that isn’t working and change tack – create things that have inherent value, actually add value to peoples’ lives. Things that are simply nice to have, to play with, to cherish.

Maybe that’s the worst of these mundane tragedies: watching that small death each morning as a person switches on their machine and that tiny light turns on, while their own tiny light flicks off.

(2.) computer love
Rach was happy this morning; chirruping about how she’d enjoyed a moment of perfect clarity where she realised that she loved her job. And then immediately began worrying whether that meant anything; whether it mattered when the beautiful things she makes online can’t be touched or held or hung on a wall or folded up and tucked into a wallet.

Which made me wonder: why is it hard to love anything made of pixels and blips with the same force of passion we save for lovely new books or a snuggly scarf or a piece of art? Is it because an essential part of loving something is the potential to own it or have it for ourselves, or the exquisite knowledge that someone could (even though it won't be you)?

(3.) an impossible rescue mission
One of the marvellous things about creating something people really love is that they will help it to survive without you, if need be. Kind of like godchildren – their built-in lovability gives them an insurance policy if some awful fate befalls their parents.

Which seems to be the case with Polaroid. It’s just so damn lovable and weird and idiosyncratic that people refuse to let it die what looked like an inevitable death. But in swoop IMPOSSIBLE, plucking it from the rusty jaws of obsolescence. (Fingers firmly crossed, yes indeed.)

(4.) *henry miller has the last word
“Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.”

lovings and thankings

2009-01-08T08:08:00.000-08:00

for paul elliman's sweet alphabet.

for sheer playfulness, jamie johnson's short film, 'holiday around my bedroom'.

for david foster wallace, again. and for this precise and generous assessment of his unique gifts.

for striped bendy straws, miso soup in mugs, andrew bird, pavements crispy with frozen muddy footprints.

for being happy. for being home in my bed. for being home in my skin. for feeling the perfectly curved lightness of hope in my cupped palms.

now: to dunk chocolate biscuits in tea and watch the streetlights come on.

bowie + mercury

2008-12-05T07:00:00.000-08:00

every friday me and danceface rach take it in turns to choose a song, email it to the other, and then we listen at the same time in our offices across london, as loud as our ears can take it.

i can't believe how incredible this week's edition was. i'd forgotten how much this song can stop me in my tracks when i really, really listen. but now i remember.

Can't we give ourselves one more chance?
Why can't we give love that one more chance?
Why can't we give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love?
'Cos love's such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves
This is our last dance...

wow.

tab, you're it!

2008-11-12T02:33:00.001-08:00

Tabs that are open on my computer right this very second:

Alan Yentob’s Imagine – last night’s ‘Let there be light’ episode – on BBC iPlayer

hungryman’s inside-outing ‘Timesculpture’ ad for Toshiba

Gerald Cooper’s amazing talk about bees

Image search results for ‘Capitoline Wolf’

Karim Benzema’s Wikipedia entry

An overview of a previous episode of Imagine profiling Doris Lessing

Malcolm Gladwell’s look at the social life of paper

the art of happiness

2008-11-11T03:36:00.000-08:00

I’ve been a bit obsessed by the question of how to be happy for a long time. So much of our happiness is down to our personal quirks, the vagaries of our days, whether the guy in the café butters your bagel while it’s hot out of the toaster so it goes all deliciously melty, or waits for it to go cold and then thickly slathers cold grease over it. But it seems that the structures for improving happiness might actually be fairly quantifiable.

To some extent, a one-size-fits-all approach is still pretty effective. Physical activity is proven to improve emotional wellbeing, for example. So is feeling engaged within a community, be it colleagues, family, or fellow members of the Justin Vernon Appreciation Society.

But listening to Martin Seligman’s talk on TED last night, it got me thinking about how much of happiness is also knowing who we are, and skewing our lives in the directions we’re more or less built to go in. He talks about the Pleasurable Life, the Good Life, and the Meaningful Life, and though I’m totally mangling this, each of us is hardwired with certain skills to derive more happiness from one of these ways of living more than any other.

It made me realise I maybe just don’t know myself very well. Which is interesting, really…hi, nice to meet me! I sat down to take Seligman’s Signature Strengths questionnaire and the process of working out my answers was as interesting as the results. I think it’s cheating, but I had to enlist my housemate, Badam’s, help with some of them. Would friends say I can be arrogant? Um, Badam?

So 240 questions, 2 glasses of wine and the realisation that I am utterly unambitious later, I get to find out what my signature strengths are and it’s pretty much a longwinded way of saying surprise! YOU’RE A LIBRAN.