Thursday, April 18, 2013

mad girl's love song

                    






(Source unknown-it might be tumblr)


Hey there. I don't have much to post; this is basically a hodgepodge of different things that have been a part of my life lately/some inspiration. 

                                                                                           -Yours truly, Britney 

P.S. Sonic Youth is undoubtedly amazing, which is something that I only realized yesterday.



Wednesday, April 10, 2013

endless, nameless


It is Friday, April 5, the day that Kurt Cobain put a gun to his head nineteen years ago and decided to pull. It is Friday, April 5, and death surrounds me.
I am on a bus on the way to school, listening to Nirvana’s In Utero on my cassette player (as a sort of tribute to Kurt) and staring up at the grey-coated sky through the window, which is stained with patches of moisture from the light rain. One of the characters in the book that I’m almost done reading is having a prefuneral-he is dying of cancer, and wants to attend his own funeral, so he gets his girlfriend and best friend together and listens to their eulogies devoted to him. A small part of me finds this narcissistic, but as I think about it, the entire concept of viewing life after death and the world existing without someone is too much to handle.
There is a specific sadness associated with death. It’s intertwined with a fear of oblivion and knowing that something inexorable exists, no matter how much we don’t want it to. Both living forever and dying are horrible in their own ways; there is no complete solution, which makes it worse.
A while ago, I experienced the worst form of dejection that I have ever known. It was a time when I feared death yet never stop thinking about it. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want anyone around me to die.  While my other friends who battled with depression sought solace in suicide attempts and thoughts of ending their lives, I could only live, which I found hard to do when thinking about the future. It lasted for a few years, going on and off until I met with my school’s guidance counselor about it. It stopped after that, and now, for a few moments, it reappears. I cannot help it; I cry. I cry for Kurt. I cry for the character having the prefuneral and everyone who will have to eventually wake up in a world without him. I cry for the fourteen dead people that exist for each one of the living. I cry for the living as well, for having to know that this thing called death exists.
Look on the bright side, suicide…” I cry even more, thinking about how Kurt Cobain must have felt in those final moments. Did he think about how that final second on Earth would feel? Did he think about what would be waiting for him once the gunshot penetrated his brain?
The book that I was reading talked about leaving behind a legacy. When we die, who remembers us? When they die, too, are we lost, our ashes claimed by wind and blown away from existence? Did Kurt wonder if almost two decades after he died, people would listen to his music and cry? I can only wonder, like I do with everything else, as I step off the bus and into the rain.
                                                         

Sunday, April 7, 2013

age of consent (spring vibes '13)


HI. I'm currently up late finishing up some entries in my creative writing for school while trying to juggle my feelings of extreme happiness and excitement (writing this post, gathering up all of my emotions and ideas and thoughts to put here) while dealing with some sadness: this post, as well as this Rookie diary that I wrote for the week. There's just this big blob of adolescence (which I'll touch on more a bit later) and death and nostalgia surrounding me, and I'm not sure of how to escape it.

 
A moodboard that I made. I feel like a lot of spring moodboards are full of brightness and Technicolor (even though winter to spring really is like running from a tornado and into a land full of Munchkins) and other things. I think that's how I felt before in winter, but now I feel more forest inspired than say, a meadow or a pool like before (while those both play roles in my overall perspective, they aren't the central themes). Ghost WorldFreaks and Geeks, and The Virgin Suicides are a big part of that (suburbia and the '70s, because you have to admit, F&G is stuck in the era of the shag rug (Exhibit A: Lindsey & Sam's house, which is green & brown). There is also ADOLESCENCE as a whole, because it obviously isn't absolutely amazing and puppies and sunshine, although puppies would make sense because they poop a lot. Adolescence poops a lot, which is something that I think we can all agree on.

CDG ad that I edited/annotated 



Two pages from  one of my journals. The left page stemmed from the bottom section that I started writing on the right ("Diaries"). (ALSO-My normal handwriting doesn't look like this. I just felt the need to clarify this.) I started thinking about The Virgin Suicides, but really thinking about it-every time I read it, I feel connected to it more, in a way. The first time I read it, I don't think I really saw it for what it was; like with what many people do with Lolita, I romanticized a tale of obsession, one that made the subject(s) of desire out to be otherworldly creatures. Upon reading it again, I realized that it was really about a group of men who refuse to let go of an obsession with the group of girls across the street. This time around, I really got involved in the adolescence aspect of it, which is something I've been doing lately whenever I read literature, watch a television show or a movie, listen to a song, etc. J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye is the epitome of teenage rebellion, but not really rebelling in the way that we are used to, like steal our parents' liquor and getting drunk in the basement, or hating everyone and everything just for the hell of it. Holden Caulfield, the main character, rebels because he (a) dislikes many people based on the fact that he views them as "goddamn phonies" and (b) holds onto youth in a way that isn't sexualized like Humbert Humbert's, but because it's so full of innocence and the mind in it's supposedly purest form, before humans make the transition into becoming possible phonies. My spring vibes (sort of based on my playlist for the season, "Age of Consent") are centered around this idea of what adolescence is, and how there are so many different perspectives on it. In an interview Rookie conducted with Sky Ferreira, she spoke about how so many pop stars are sexualized in a Lolita-esque, schoolgirl way, even though adolescence is this really difficult time full of zits and awkwardness, which is so right; people like to have this fantasy of what growing up is, when really, it is just this ideal that hardly compares to the real thing.

I'm going to post the rest of this later, because I have so much to say (including a playlist focused around this theme, more moodboards, more talking), but my computer hates me.

                                                                                                                 Yours truly,
                                                                                                                          Britney


(Originally posted on The Fashion Aviator, my other blog)