Sunhead Bowed

In a melancholic pre-menstrual mood and craving closeness to stave off thoughts about someone who doesn't belong to me. In the position where I could fall in love if I let myself but that isn't allowed and I've got one one those already. It's so hard to be specific when they know you on all your corners of the internet but they'll only let you operate in the universe in one way so that's the end of that.

Falling is love is terrifying and I don't recommend it.

I would like to spend a great deal of time learning to make collages and analysing David Lynch films.

Everything is feeling too much for me. I hate the way the hormones make me feel, pulling a blanket of pressure down to press upon my chest and making slipping into death seem like an easy solution. I know it's only a cyclical reaction to the ministrations of my womb but I still fear the day when I am without tethers to the world and there is nothing holding me back. But will I still want to slip down with nothing to latch onto? I barely notice the melancholy when I am otherwise distracted and happy and there is no niggling trouble to be supernova-ed in the back of my mind. 

I should be sleeping but I still haven't put together a handout for my presentation on Blue Velvet at 11am. Norman Rockwell meets Hieronymous Bosch, but I can't help but feel like Andy Warhol's electric chairs are a more fitting image of pre-fab completeness. 

The beauty in the world is today covered by the rotting underneath. It's deep pink lines across the wrists of a girl who is beautiful from the inside out and it's finding stalkers in romance. It's all still beautiful but it eats away at me tonight like sunlight glinting off maggot-flesh.

I'll be back together again in the morning but tonight there is a layer of damp lace between my skin and the underneath and in the darkness it grows mould.

Young Hearts Run Free: Melbourne Rookie Meet Up

A quick snap with Tavi

We few who missed out on tickets to Rookie Day

Getting everyone in on the spirit

My haul from Retrostar Vintage, Polyester Records and the Sticky Institute

Hoe can I express the event that was my Saturday?

Through word of mouth and links and my gift-bag-giving, Tavi found out about our Rookie meet-up. At a little after ten, as a group of Rookies stood together under the clocks at Flinders Street Station wondering aloud whether or not she would actually show, Tavi suddenly emerged from the crowd at the crosswalk and came smiling towards us. She was tiny and utterly human and coming right towards us. Composure was maintained as we made space for her in our circle as we had for each other, but I, for one, was inwardly jumping up and down and making inhuman noises. 

As other Rookies joined us there were beautiful moments of the sudden realisation of Tavi's presence and the hurried reinstatement of a casual expression. 

We all went shopping with Tavi Gevinson.

The most gratifying part of the day was being able to in some way facilitate a beautiful group of people meeting Tavi and being able to chill with her in a non-official-event capacity. It was a wonderful joy to see her conversing with my fellow Rookies and have them be able to achieve goals of having her compliment their craft or to take her portrait. And for those who couldn't join us for that portion of the day, it was still wonderful to be able to hand out gift bags and talk about Rookie and Tavi and meet wonderful new people. It was magically, serenely surreal to walk up Swanston Street with the group and see Tavi having a conversation with one of my new friends. I cannot express just how happy the whole thing made me feel.

At Polyester I tried something my boyfriend does and bought a bunch of cheap CDs I'd never heard of. They are 'Mycorrhizae Realm' by Fursaxa, 'Young' by Summer Camp and 'Where the Messengers Meet' by Mt St Helens Vietnam Band. I haven't had the chance to listen to them all yet, but 'Where the Messengers Meet' is beautiful and atmospheric and I recommend it (although the band's name borders on the ridiculous). We also visited Lady Petrova and Alice Euphemia.

I met so many wonderful people on Friday and Saturday, and I really hope we stay in touch. I've spent the whole weekend not buzzed or on a high but bathed in a soft, warm glow which comes from within and makes the world seem beautiful. I got to fangirl and shop and talk about things I don't usually get to talk about. I got to go on a picnic. I got to wear flower crowns and hang out with people who are ten times more amazing than I am and on average at least two years younger and I got to meet one of my heroes. 

We had a mini show-and-tell at the picnic and I brought Just Kids by Patti Smith. I reminded everyone that we don't need to be Tavi at Tavi's age; some people are amazing, beautiful human beings but don't receive recognition until they are a good deal older than we are now. I feel it's important to remind myself of that sometimes.

To all the people who were kind enough to join me, thank you. You are all beautiful.

Tavi's World: People Care, Things Matter, There Are Good Days

I got back from seeing Tavi Gevinson at the Athenaeum Theater. Her talk was basically a complete affirmation of the philosophy I have developed and my attitude towards the world. 

She spoke about the value and importance of being a fangirl. It was wonderful because I've gotten to the point where even though there's still a lot of frustrating, depressing, infuriating stuff in the world, I still love it and I love people and I get really bouncy and excited about small, seemingly trivial things. Like, I still freak out when a band I haven't listened to for years release new music (TWO NEW AFI SINGLES OHMIGOSH) and I get really excited about pugs and flowers and shiny things and I spend lots of money on glitter and food because they make me happy. And sometimes people tease me about that or give me a hard time, but it doesn't really matter because it won't make me love those things any less or make me less in love with the world.

Tavi signed my copy of The Virgin Suicides, which she'd been talking about in her speech so that was cool. It's a book I only read recently and one I sort-of wish I'd discovered earlier when I had more time for reading so I could devour it all in one sitting. I fell in love with the language and feel of the book in a way I haven't for a while, which was really wonderful. She told me it was brilliant when I handed it to her. 

She's probably the best famous person I have met, from the combination of sincerity, enthusiasm, and also being someone I really idolise. It was also much easier talking to her than to some of the other people I've been lucky enough to meet. She's younger than me by a couple of years (she's the same age as my brother, which is terrifying, in a way) and still figuring herself out, but is still hugely successful, which is enormously validating to me. 

Meeting Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer was incredible, and they were all really fantastic experiences, but also quite intimidating. They have experience gained from years of practice and a solid understanding of the world, which is great once you're there but can also be nerve-wracking for people still figuring things out and haven't aligned their experiences with their beliefs and may yet grow to disagree with the people they now idolise (and by 'they' I of course mean 'I'). With Tavi I can both be in awe of her and feel like we are actually peers and might actually have something to say to each other which will be interesting and not just annoying and/ or one-sided, which is sort-of my fear with some of the older people I idolise. 

I am actually terrified of the concept of going to dinner or something with one of my heroes because I'm pretty sure I would either blather on like a idiot about incredibly banal things, or just make a series of mildly alarming choking noises while covering myself in soup. With Tavi, I feel like we could have a conversation. It may just be wishful thinking, but hey, so is most of my thinking, and that doesn't mean it's inherently impossible.

She told us about her new mantra, taken from a Rookie commenter, which is kind of a summary of how I view the world and the sort of thing I remind myself of when things get bad: people care, things matter, there are good days.

I think it's really important for everyone to remember that and to make it their mantra.

People care.

Things matter.

There are good days.

I would just like to establish...

... that I bought my Birkenstocks in January or February, because I am a fashion visionary. That is all.

Things Occurring in My Life

Next weekend, I'm organising a meet-up for Melbourne Rookie fans. If you are one of the zero people who reads my blog, and want to come along, the facebook page is here: https://www.facebook.com/events/563765947016391/?fref=ts

Uni has started back again. Today is the end of week three. Week three! Time goes too fast. My subjects are really interesting. I get to read obscene novels and be a pretentious wanker, which is all I want from life, really.

I have an etsy shop! http://www.etsy.com/au/shop/GrandmasTattoo It is very productive I swear. (mostly I just need to be able to take photos in decent lighting, which is apparently difficult). 

Was I going anywhere with this post? I don't know. I think mostly I am putting off housework.

I have to do my application for Masters sometime in the next week. That's in addition to my Dad and my brother visiting this weekend, plus organising the meet-up, plus making flower crowns and gift bags, plus going to a Fannibal meet-up, plus going to Tavi Gevinson's keynote, plus writing articles for Gay Geek, plus uni work, plus maybe actually completing a job application, minus all of the browsing tumblr and procrastinating which is what I will probably actually be doing. My greatest achievement last week was doing four loads of washing on one day - including things which probably haven't been clean since April. Hopefully this week I can do better.

In other news, my face looks awesome today. My hair magically reached a nice-ish length a couple of days ago and I'm just feeling really happy and optimistic about everything, despite how much I have to do. Yay positivity!

Nostalgia: Love Will Tear Us Apart

My housemate and I went to the Harry Wragg warehouse sale today. We were shown into the backroom where a pretty girl sat in a shin-high pile of old vintage clothes. We stuck to the fringes at first but suddenly I noticed I had progressed to the middle of the pile, crawling through satin shirts and patterns that never should have been born. Everything in the room was $3.50 and it was like being in a tale of op-shopping from one of the magazines I read, the ones where people who by now have had their turn at their 20's spurting nostalgia for the good old days of Lifeline ties for 50 cents and dead designers in bargain bins.

Imagine if the secondhand clothes we bought came with small brown envelopes with facts about their previous owners and one or two poorly developed photos of them wearing what you've bought. You wouldn't be allowed to open the envelope until you had brought the garment home and were alone in your room. It would be like opening up a secret. The Bargain Hunter's Reward.

Between the Edward Scissorhands negligees and paisley scarves were things which reminded me of my grandmother, who dressed like her art in globulous patterns of rich purples and greens.

The sun was out this morning, before the clouds scrabbled it back in again, eating up the blue to grow fat in its bilious grey cheeks. The wind is cutting through everything and spreading up the coast to where my family can sit in front of the fire. It smelled like sparklers in the street this evening.

I've been reading The Virgin Suicides and it affects me in a way not much else does. I don't get the melancholy with it I was expecting - though that could be due to post-period lack of emotional turmoil - and instead certain passages fill me with an intense momentary despair. The book must be a death sentence for anyone with depression because it is almost killing me, but it is so, so beautiful and one of those books I want to give to everyone I meet. Some bits make my skin crawl because he is a man writing about teenage girls, but not as many parts as I had thought.
I wonder what would have happened if I had read it as a teenager, if it would have altered the way I was back then. Now, it just makes me happy to read, to put down and pick up again. I want to re-read it at a time when I can devour it all in one sitting. It makes me want to write like poetry, and I make myself cat-like content with pale imitation because some things are meant to be perfect on their own.

The photo above was taken last year, when I was cutting my own hair. Things are so much better now, but I still miss that haircut. It was the closest I've come to looking like Karen O. I have too many style icons, too many heroes.

I'm seeing Tavi Gevinson in August, and Amanda Palmer the month after that. I am always inspired to do more, to do better. I feel in a good place now, like I'm always moving forward and getting closer to the life I want, so I can look back and say not just that I've changed, but that I am where I wanted to be. It's nice to look at myself and see a person I wanted to be, even if only for a little while, and not that long ago.

On Self-Indulgence and Becoming

I found an incense stick today in the record sleeve of a Fleetwood Mac album given to me by a close friend's boyfriend because he was clearing out his things and I couldn't take the desk with the map of the world. Bits of shrapnel from other peoples' exes worming their way into my life.
It makes me think of Stevie Nicks' dreamcatcher and the fact that Tavi Gevinson is coming to Melbourne. She's high on the list of reasons I wish I could rewrite my childhood into an amalgamation of '90s tv shows. I find things too late, when they're no longer educational guides for living my life and now just relics of a decade I wasn't cool enough for. I was the Lindsay Weir or the Angela Chase, straight-living kid from a good home hanging out with the freaks but I was still listening to Delta Goodrem instead of the Smashing Pumpkins, then trying to be emo when I want to go back and rewrite myself into Enid Colweslaw's 1977 original punk look.
I found all the good things too late because I didn't know where to look and we had dial-up for too many years. I grew up sheltered in a sweaty Queensland suburb and the best bits of the city were off-limits until I already knew I liked them, instead of wandering in and finding something new, a fresh paradise built from bootleg Twin Peaks videos and brown and orange floral mod dresses.
I blame Brisbane for my late blooming into cultural awareness. The city and its people kept things from me, and I let them. I was too  busy cultivating a well-adjusted morbidity to seek out the things which now curl up in my soul. I tried to hard and now I can laugh too loud at things I would probably have sniffed at then. Sometimes I think about what I would do at fourteen if I found out that the twenty-year-old me occasionally enjoys hip hop. Self-immolation comes to mind as a reasonable solution.
I feel I have grown so much since then, and yet I have always known myself. Some changes happen naturally the way faces shift with age and others have perhaps been more conscious but always I feel I have been moving away from false, from trying to be a different idea of 'cool' and into the truth of myself.
I still enjoy Die Hard and David Hasseflhoff's 'Hooked on a Feeling' more than is probably healthy so I feel reassured that the pretentiousness I know is in myself is well-balanced with an un-ironic love for truly terrible things. I've written before in defense of my love for the awful but I still wish I could look back on my teen years and that I, too, was sassy and cool and full of spunk as a spry young thing. The best characters for young girls and women exist in those films and I feel myself floundering now, looking for a guide and role model over the age of seventeen who is a projection of someone I would be comfortable becoming, and not someone I would have to bury parts of myself to be. I have been seeking such a woman in order to create a costume but the best female characters for the over-twenty set are rarely feminine. I write this now in a man's shirt and jeans that are washed intermittently after three-months' dirt but I still don't want to be anything but a woman.
I still wish more of my wardrobe was mod dresses and pleated skirts but I always end up with more T-shirts bearing pictures of David Bowie Jesus or pizza slices melting with cheese. I still try to construct truth upon truth from a seat of comfort - and comfort is underrated, for feeling like I am completely wearing my own skin is my greatest day-to-day accomplishment.
I wore foundation recently to costume myself and the flawless, painted look was eery. I did not know myself in that false skin. Girls who make their face up each day must feel as though they are deconstructing themselves when they spread on that first smooth coat, erasing each pore's point of difference. More likely they no longer notice, or perhaps never did. To overcome the insecurities of youth I had to become entirely certain that this is my face, and I must love it as it is and so to erase it and begin again is something to run from.
The incense is slowly burning through on the table. I imagine the scent is sandalwood, but I am making assumptions, and do not know for sure.