i heart...

i heart remembering songs you used to really like, and liking them all over again. I speak of Heart it Races by Architecture in Helsinki.

Funny though how many songs have the word heart in them. Bonnie Tyler Total Eclipse of the Heart has featured predominantly in my social life of the last two weeks, appearing twice in the space of three nights out. First occasion - pregaming in my housemates room playing Kings, I invented a karaoke round and nominated myself as dj, choosing Bonnie as jukebox song number one. Second time - last song played at WAR, myself and Dave on the windowsill.

How many heart titled songs can I think of off the top of my head now hmm
It's a Heartache - Bonnie Tyler
Hearts on Fire - Cut Copy
This Heart's on Fire - Wolf Parade
Heartbeat - Buddy Holly
Heartbeat - Islands
Heartbeats - The Knife
Shape of my Heart - Noah and the Whale
Heart and Soul - Joy Division
Plastic Hearts - Dirty Pretty Things
Olive Hearts - Bowerbirds
Heart of Glass - Blondie
Florence and the Machine - Rabbit Heart (Raise it up)
umm....

BLOGS

oooh how exciting!!! my photo is on the internet on somebody's street style blog! Last Thursday I went to the Bernard Shaw for the Vice Magazine party and was jumped on by a girl in a big fur coat as I walked out into the smoking area. And lo and behold there I am. Level of drunkness at time of photograph: half a flagan and one bottle of beer.

I'm wearing boots from Urban Outfitters that are actually flat even though they look like they have heels in this photo, bought for me by mum as they're sensible for in the rain. Issy's skirt which is from Topshop, borrowed a long time ago. American Apparel Tshirt, part of my 21st birthday present from Nora and Kinsella. Cardigan from Zara years ago. Beads from Topshop that Aisling once wore and broke so bought me a new pair. Scarf from the Halloween car boot sale in the Bernard Shaw.

http://www.dublinstreets.blogspot.com/

trifle (noun) (a matter or object of little value or importance)

The new Islands album is high up on my list of likes for this week. Some of the lyrics are those pukey romantic ones but sang in so happy a manner it doesnt make you cringe as you listen. Amongst my favourite is : "Kicked open a coconut, / could have shared it with anyone / but i wanted to share it with you".

We eat a lot of cow, pig, sheep. It rains cats and dogs but we don't put them on our plates. Ducks? sometimes. What about horse? Um? well i can now check the box for a grilled skewer of horse meat. Was it nice? Yes and no; tender but tasted rather like the smell of stables.

I had a visit to Naas at the weekend. It was nice to be in a family home again, for one it was so clean. For another it was sort of a welcomed return to the way of living that is so routine. Everybody has their things to do for the day but all the while each knows what the other is doing, all to come together for dinner and afterwards the watching of particular television programmes. But only so nice because I knew I was only visiting. It was cheering to see them so contented whilst knowing my life didnt have to be part of this predicatability; I could take the slippers off and go back to myself and my ways.

Sunday was split between the kitchen and Newbridge. The reading of the papers after breakfast, a visit to the musuem in Newbridge silverware, dinner and the talk after dessert. The silverware shop downstairs was a bit on the shiney side for my liking although I had a good old look in the book corner. Upstairs was a Musuem of Style Icons. I never would have expected it, nor expected it to be so good. There were clothes, photos, letters, scripts, general memorabilia, of stars of the past. There were four identical suits worn by the Beatles for their Hard Day's Night album. Grace Kelly. Marilyn Monroe. Judy Garland. Audrey Hepburn. Maureen O'Hara......... These women were beautiful. They were classic, they were ladies. Not the 'get your slap on and your tits out' idiotic types of today, the majority of whom seem to be famous for merely being famous. This girl parties in this place, this one got plastic surgery, this one was on a reality tv programme, this one

thursday

I came across this image in an old ELLE magazine today whilst looking for material to put together a VM board. It's a woollen tube dress, Sonia Rykiel by Jean Paul Gaultier, created for a tribute show celebrating Sonia's 40 years in the fashion industry. I am currently distracted however by the letter that was awaiting me when I came home this evening. As my front door is an emergency exit fire escape covered in graffiti down an alleyway at the side of a pub beside a chip shop and infront of a block of council flats, I was never expecting to receive post. But there it was sitting at the bottom of the stairwell. A letter from a boy. A boy I am growing to love by the minute where I want to call him up and hang out with him, where I want to sit drinking coffee, where I want to listen to music, where I want to call up in the middle of the night, where I want to go out and get drunk and dance on the furniture, where I want to wander aimlessly in the streets, where I want to go to look at exhibitions, where I want to cry and tell my thoughts to, where I want to hug and be beside. But where I don't want to kiss him. Only sometimes do I want to kiss him but only the times when I want to kiss anybody and he's so lovely. It wasn't a love letter, it was a letter of apology of love. It made me laugh and then it made me cry. All the time I'm wondering why. Why he likes me so? and now why he's so sorry so? and will we ever reach the happy place of mutual love in a platonic friendship? Am I still fooling myself that boys and girls can be the best of friends without sexual attraction coming into the equation on one or the others behalves?

white tshirts

what's more of a wardrobe staple than jeans and a tshirt? it's been dressing fine without dressing up for forever. denim has exploded into the realm of super trendy so if it's skinny and tattered it's right. but up top is a blank slate for personal kitsch; it's easy peasy to reach for something to use as a crayola and make a white tshirt your very own sort of cool
1. urban outfitters 2. american apparel 3. mine

a bedtime note

a lunchtime frustration at the inacessible computer facilities led to climbing out a window to pick tufts of moss off the roof to stuff in each other's ears; then a big muddy mess, but that's what they get for denying us the technology time we need. bah.

His lunch was part hot chocolate from a small white flask. he has a lot of cows but not a lot of land so he just stacks them up. when he made fun of my crappy story i said i'd revenge his using my shredded story as hamster bedding by spit roasting the critter, to which he yelped in fear as he fears spits. spitting is fine, he just don't go there with spits. his father was a spit. it was traumatic. it was ninety five percent chocolate with the hot milk added directly from the flaming cow he personally ignited prior to pumping.

a cup of tea is one euro. it's fifty cents in my own mug. but if i bring the bag then the water is free.

testing the waters of a fashion focus

what's in the shops?
H&M advertisments show lots of chunky woollen knits but their main display in store is typical of every other. Black, sequins, leather, fur, metalic, trimmings, excess. Clothes scream decadence. A boot isn't just footwear to keep the rain out; it's got a buckle and a chain and a stud. A scarf isn't just to keep your neck warm; it's extra chunky and extra long and doubles up as an all-in-one head, neck and chest wrap.

Taking dressing to the extreme where the more you look like you rummaged the archives of amalgamated family member's wardrobes to put together your days outfit, then the cooler you look. Obviously it's all well thought out but put together in such a way that it looks effortlessly thrown together, like the consequence of picking up one item made it seem only logical to add on the next one. Getting dressed is dressing up and dressing down doesn't get a word in.

That's the external extreme. But the internal extreme is off-balanced and juxtaposed. Like hugely oversided jumpers - take your fat dad's wooly sweater and wear it with skinny skinny jeans. Tops are short - take a loose fitting tshirt and cut it up above the waist so it slouches and hangs off your collar bones. Shoes tell the story of Goldilocks and the three bears - either heavy rocker biker style ankle boots or soaring to the sky with thigh high boots.

More is definetly more.

a hangover

today the liquor left me less tired than it usually does so i was out of the house before lunchtime. i had a mission of photos to take for christine's class on things that inspire us, although she said to keep in mind that we are fashion students... which resulted in me snapping stalls in the farmer's market in meeting house square. relevant? meh

the afternoon brought me to an art gallery. it was the one that kinsella and i accidently found when we got lost the day i found my room and i located again another night when i went jogging in that direction in the hope of coming across it. how i love the pacifying effect of galleries

crisis

a crisis of thoughts, recurrent waves of panic crashing over me pushing me so far under. grappling with logic to inflate my own lifebuoy. i don't know what i want to do. well secretly i do but i don't think i can, it's too late now mum and dad have spent too much money and i've spent too much time going in another direction. i wish i could go back in time and give my leaving cert self the knowledge i have now and if i could then chances are i wouldn't be sitting here right now. i want to make things with my hands i want to be a painter i want to be a drawer i love sketching people i want to make clothes and costumes i want to draw and sew and knit and put together i want to cook and bake and be happy. but it looks like i'll have to settle for something like writing about other people doing all these things and be grateful that i can still do them on the side as a pastime of sorts.

I met with Deirdre McQuillan yesterday which didn't go as well as I had hoped because i felt as if she was judging me for not knowing enough and thinking i was wasting her time. Well in fairness she was only there because she was obliged to out of decency at the request of a friend. thank you mckeevers. However after a stumbling and occasionally forced conversation i came away a little better off, having seen that a journalist can cover so many areas at one time. well, to an extent within the realms of lifestyle and fashion. She did say one thing that inspired me and gave me renewed energy at facing in this direction - that she things someone who is able to both write and illustrate is hard to come by. Now i haven't much faith in either my writing or illustrating skills but from years of meeting people who went through art college and seeing their artistic output i don't believe the standard is probably as high as i imagine it to be. i just need to find a confidence in my own capabilities and don't worry so much that there's this invisible standard that everyone else is at which is so much higher above where i currently stand. i am honestly my own worst critic. And writing. that's a little trickier. as an artist as long as you have the ideas then you're free to communicate them any which way you want. take cezanne for example; i don't believe he has exceptional technical ability but it's his ideas and the way people interpret his finished pieces that matters, and that they're his pieces which nobody else in the world would or could ever produce. With writing there are so many people all trying to write about the same thing so there's sure to be somebody out there who can do it better than you, it's easier to compare and contrast skills. Althouh Deirdre did say that when she started out she was writing for a women's magazine and she said it could take her two hours to write the first paragraph. Now she says she just sits down and it comes out; largely due to the fact that there's a deadline there and it doesn't matter what you've written as long as it's written on time. But she's got her name and reputation made at this stage. Anyways i suppose what she was trying to say was that it gets easier with practice.

She said she would be very interested in seeing someone who could both write and illustrate so I took that as the niche i could get into. My style of writing isn't very definitive so perhaps that's how i can stand out from the crowd. My hand has since been reacquainting itself with pencils.

And the waves are just waves; there is some calm in between the rushes of fretting. Out running this afternoon i came home along the canal and passed Irish Nationwide. The wall of glass windows was lit up showing the office floors, rows of desks and computers and the image of facts, figures, statistics, numbers, charts, reports, suits, monotonous information, and an altogether restrictive environment. When i complain over trivialities mum tells me to be thankful i have my health, and today when i saw the Irish Nationwide and saw it in light of my daily perturbance i was thankful for living in a world where i'm free to have the choice to worry about what i want and that i'm not a poor soul like Winston Smith.

and so says George Eliot

"I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs, and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with a little music."

the ringing in my ears

i don't know what it is about boys in bands that does it for me, but i fall. i like the idea of a beautiful mind who can make music out of words. poetry that flows to an air. and a beat you can dance to the tap tap snare bang boom. and the nimble fingers plucking the guitar strings, pulling and stroking them up and down, running away with a mind of their own, playing and caressing long and loose. music is my boyfriend and music is my hot hot sex. a world without it just isn't worth it. skinny boys with lots of power. veins forcing through on lower forearms, biceps stringing out above. lumps and bumps of skin and bones pumping blood and adrenaline and passion and heat. the drummer's at the back thrashing it out letting loose a wild and manic force beating and smashing. smashed. smashing. sweating. stdrumming.
as long as it's more than just noisy noise and overly turned inward knees leading feet into stomping it's fine. as long as there are words and not screams it's good. i'll go there alone to stand look and listen. to fall. to forget for a while about all else but the ringing in my ears which carries on long after the final tune.
upstairs in whelans: first up were the band who were too noisy and the room too empty. a shout out to the other bands and few comprehensible lyrics but one i did like, something about wanting to be peter pan and jack kerouac. the ralphs were the reason i was there - jamie's invite at graduation and a reminder in a text message. the music needs refining but the words aren't too forced. he warmed up with a song whose lyrics i know because nora heard them with me long ago in the roisin and poked me with a sly wink, his seeing a girl in college and noticing they dress the same. seeing her in the library and wishing her number would appear on a piece of paper for him and maybe even with an x for a kiss. but being the funny boy that he is, a later song made me smile to myself when he cried out his joy at finally writing a song about nothing at all but making you think it's about you. the coonics were by far the best with less things happening all at once. four unassuming boys making pretty noises and carrying themselves away on stage; to hell with impressing the crowd they were enjoying it for what it was.
the after-show banter and back-stage beer brought me to bedtime and breakfast was served with dumbed down hearing because of the ringing in my ears.

fashion shoot number one

Mongrel was coming to an end as I was coming into my own.

Although it was one of those things that you don't realise are really happening as they are happening, the beginning of college was opening my eyes to a world beyond school books. The idea that a newspaper might actually not be the most boring thing in the world or merely reading something for enjoyment that wasn't a novel or a girl's fashion magazine. I didn't fully understand some of the articles in Mongrel, its finer points were lost on me due to my youthful ignorace but I liked the idea of quirky stories and lots of photos. Plus it was free. And the handiest place for me to pick it up was in an off-licence on my way home from town, which in itself was a bit exciting.

So when Richard Gilligan, photographer extraordinaire, came into college to give us a talk I knew who he was. I'd seen his skateboarding photographs and recognised the name. He talked us through a slide show generally outlining his career thus far and toward the end put emphasis on the work he had done in fashion. His first collaborations were with his friend Aisiling Farinella and the whole thing started out a bit by accident. It was a case of friends calling on friends to help friends to cover friend's backs... But it worked. Really well. And now they're both still doing what they did, but doing it better and getting paid for it too.

So a week later I introduced myself to Aisling.

In addition to being a freelance stylist she runs The Loft in the Powerscourt shopping centre as well as her own shop Circus; and when I spoke to her we were in the Powerscourt centre as she had produced the fashion show that was running that night. I explained my situation to her and she said if I e-mailed her she would see what she could do in terms of providing me with the opportunity for work experience.

Many e-mails later she proved true to her word and we were having coffee together as she laid out the day's plan of action. We were to spend the day pulling clothes from shops for two upcoming photoshoots - one commercial and one a more personal project. I was dressed for the cold day but by mid-afternoon my many layers of cardigans had been shed as the mountain of bags I was carrying grew increasingly heavier, and the pavement pounding coupled with the heated air conditioning of shops got the better of me. The day came to a close in her studio hanging everything on rails and laying out accessories and filing away the important bits of paperwork.

I was to assist on the editorial shoot. It was for a Dublin-based magazine called Oh! Francis and she was Richard was the photographer.

The day of the shoot began in her studio at 8am. Aisling the drove me, the model, and the make- up artist to the location where Richard was awaiting our arrival. The location for this particular shot was an old manor house in the outskirts of Dublin city, surrounded by fields of horses and reached by entering through wrought iron gates and up a tree-lined gravel drive.

As Aisling and Richard have worked together so much in the past there was a really good understanding betweed their visions, each knowing what the other wanted and a compatibility of working styles. As assistant I had little donkey jobs such as carrying the blankets to keep the model warm, holding props for lighting effects, making tea, and just general running back and forth getting and doing things.

They were two really long days, by the end of each I could think of nothing but my bed. But I learned a lot more than any classroom could teach, it really is the hands-on approach that hammers it home... Here's a few of my photos from the day