/7/ Turl Street Arts Festival

IT IS DONE!!!!! (DUN DUN DUNNNN)

Do you see that look of gleeful terror in my eyes? The exhaustion, the anxiety, the TINT OF LUNACY? No? It’s there.

Last week was the week of Turl Street Arts Festival, and I was on the committee. If I said that it was the most exhausting thing I have ever done I don’t think that would be a word of a lie. I’ve  been known to put on five plays in a term, to hike for days in the Peak District with 13kg on my back, and to spend fourteen rainy and cold hours in the city of Trondheim without anywhere to go.

No, TSAF wins.

In theory, it was an amazing experience. I personally was involved in putting on an art exhibition and a Prohibition-themed party but there was also a comedy evening, a live poetry reading, and an exceptional original play, as well as lots of recitals and concerts, all squeezed into one hectic and crazy week kicked off by a Call Me Maybe flashmob and concluded by dinner at High Table in Jesus College.

Unfortunately, I was so drained that I zombied my way through the last few days of the festival! From midday on Friday to midnight on Saturday I had about three hours break, plus about seven hours of sleep. It was not a lot, not enough, and by Saturday evening it was all I could do not to burst into tears. Instead, I morosely held a punnet of plums and was stuck in a taxi home by a concerned friend.

The whole thing was an extraordinary thing to do and I’m very glad of the friends I made and the things I learned by taking part. But I couldn’t be more relieved that it’s over. Even though  I have an essay due today which I can’t finish in time (so sad, first missed deadline of the term!) and two more due next Monday, even though I am still juggling four jobs with a fifth on the way, I am relaxed for the first time in a fortnight.

Painting my nails and writing/crying about the holocaust. That’s how I’m spending today.

More photos from the festival: Art Exhibition with live music; a moment of respite from the frenzy; Prohibition party in Exeter College hall.

  




  

Solution in a Teacup

My jewellery box was overflowing, cheap, and ugly. Every time I had to dig around for the second of a pair of earrings, or disentangle a ring from a necklace I wanted to wear, it would really stress me out. Not Big Stress, but the petulant kind of “well, fine then, Universe, I guess you just want me to be ugly today” shrill irritation.

So I decided to turn to tumblr for inspiration and rectified the situation with a £2 set of teacups and saucers from a charity shop, and some superglue from my Dad’s toolbox.

I think that finding beauty in the ordinary or the plain, or creating beauty from the ugly and the flawed, is something which I really go on about quite a lot (and on and on and on and on and on). Perhaps looking back at some of those past posts, it’s not quite immediately apparent how they show finding beauty… but it’s a series of small choices.

  

Imagine you are watching your favourite television program, or reading your favourite book. You’re looking at the life of these characters and you might think that they and their lives are unattainably perfect. Nobody actually curls up in bed, with a cup of hot cocoa, candlelight and a good book. Nobody actually cooks a full meal when they come home exhausted from work. Apart from anything else, it’s all a lot of effort. Right you are! But do it anyway.

To me, it’s a deliberate and defiant act. When I talk about making something beautiful, I’m not talking about the superficial appearance or aesthetic impact of a thing, though that is usually the outcome of beauty. Beauty is proof that there is meaning, and purpose; it’s a testament to the will and the heart of women and men. A doe tenderly stepping through a twilit clearing cannot be described as beautiful unless observed, because beauty isn't inate in the material world. Its genesis is in man.

To make or find something beautiful is proof that we exist and can improve our lot in life. It’s a symbol for the daily struggle to find Self in the wide sea of everyone, and it’s something I rely on for sanity and the small slivers of happiness I can create.

Symbols and twilit deer aside, I think that making or finding something beautiful is a sign of affection for the world. So I did exactly that, found something prety, and made something beautiful. Do you like my teacups?

on the desire to run

{These photos have come from the internet and none of them are mine, this is kleptomania.}

Sometimes I get moments,

not dark moments, not necessarily,

though often they are,

where I just want to RUN so far away.

Where I wish I was more of the reckless,

the piebald,

the steel-spirited,

the selfish,

the winged,

the illuminant,

the gargantuan.

And sometimes I do  run,

but I always end up somewhere. Somewhere bigger, maybe,

stranger,

wilder,

or somewhere smaller.

You can’t run from everywhere.

(You can still try.)

friday

I’ve spent hours eating a box of fair trade chocolates, reading stories about life and love on the internet, going through my old photos of Orkney and allowing myself to be immersed in the television show Sherlock. It’s the perfect way to spend a Friday, and I am so chilled out. Never mind the fact that my to do list reads “do vocab, Ch 12 Norwegian, 1 hr Icelandic, plan Effi Briest essay, book flights, tune guitar, read Gregorius, return form, finish translation, develop film, buy lip balm, type up lecture notes”. Never mind that, internet. I literally forgot that list, until I awoke from my stupor to the sound of my neighbour’s friends knocking on his door, giggling loudly.
Half of Oxford is out right now, drenched in alcohol and sweat and adrenaline.
Not me.
Tonight, I get my fix elsewhere.
I’ve been to India in the last hours, to the 1890s, and to the mind of a young gay man. I like my Friday evenings.

looking through a filter

My extraordinarily cool friend Ellie recently posted some atmospheric, chic, old school, Hipstamatic iPhone photos of a lovely evening within beautiful Bristol. I love hipstamatic and instagram and all those fancy iPhone gadgets to make photos grainy and stainy and beautifully feathered with stories.
I however do not have an iPhone. But instead of lamenting my state of affairs – oh poor me, first world problems, no iPhone?!?!?! – I went out on the internet and found pixlr-o-matic. Well, you’ll know what’s coming next.
And you’d be right. PHOTO SPAM TIME.

Dean

      

Anne

Julia

      

Melissa

Sophia

      

Aladin

Got Ink?

I’ve not stopped thinking about getting a tattoo since I made a post in which I listed some of my favourites. . I’m not planning on getting one right now, but it's fun top play around with ideas. And anyway, who knows?

1) Heritage flowers. The first idea and one I’ve had longest is this one, to get the two flowers of my heritage tattooed on my body - that is, of Scotland and Germany, more specifically, Bavaria. I don’t think I need to go into much detail, since flowers and heritage tattoos are both realtively common and self-explanatory, but as I’ve always been rootless between these two roots, I am strongly drawn to them.

What are the flowers? An edelweiss for Bavaria (the alpine bit of Germany where I’m from), and a thistle for Scotland.

I’ve done a few little sketches to show the designs: I’d want the tattoos in brown, and in more of an outline than a true-to-life style. It’s important that the tattoo is hideable, yet something I can see and show without too much difficulty – that means no wrists, but also no inner thigh.

 

 

2) Northern Lights/Aurora Borealis. This tattoo idea came to me more recently so it’s something I’ll definitely let grow for a while longer. Obviously Scandinavia and Iceland are extremely important to me and have been for quite a while, so I think this is a very good and beautiful way of showing my love to the world. I also think that, as with the heritage flower tattoos, this would be comforting for me.

 

Please let me know what you think of the designs, the placements, even the very idea of getting a tattoo! Would you get one? Have you got one? If so, what would you get? I’m really curious!