Wednesday, May 08, 2013
Posted by discotheque confusion at 12:27 pm
Monday, April 22, 2013
But now the slog continues and this blog will remain a little empty until my May Day deadline. In the meantime, why don't you listen to this fantastic song by Pete Dunaway from the 'Black Rio 2: Original Samba Soul 1968-1981' album? Reading wise I recommend 'Faster or Greener.' It's a new blog written by my friend Joanna. Often when I read a new blog I find that I can tell it's new and needs a bit of time for improvement. But Joanna's is fantastic and not at all like that. She's been a big blog reader for years (as well as being generally one of the most well-read people I know) so she knows how it's done and Faster or Greener is already packed with well-written and thoughtful posts. From beautiful photographs from around Montpelier (where she is currently living) to helpful documentary compilation lists. Anyway, I like it and I think you will too. We had a fantastic time couchsurfing across the United States a few years ago and for the sake of nostalgia and friendship I will post some photographs of our adventures here. It is also worth a shout out to Lily, my childhood best-friend who introduced us in the first place and Patrice who we shared fun, a comfortable room and Denny's breakfasts with at Coachella (and who took most of these photographs)
Posted by discotheque confusion at 2:34 pm
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Posted by discotheque confusion at 11:51 am
Monday, April 01, 2013
If I was a magazine editor I would run the show with an iron fist. I'd keep the iron fist in the top drawer of my desk and bring it out on one occasion, to enforce one very special rule. The only rule. I'd send a memo around to all staff on a Friday night, just as they're leaving the office and thinking about all of the fun ways they're going to spend the weekend. They'd quickly scan my email, informing them about the meeting being scheduled for 9am on Monday which will be held in response to one of the features being run in the April issue. I will tell them that it has come to my attention that a feature is being run which violates The Rule. Every experienced member of staff will know word-for-word how this meeting will go, even before it happens. They will think about it as they're putting on their coat to leave the office that night and again while they're browsing flowers on Columbia Road on Saturday morning and again when they're handwashing their tights over the bathroom sink on Sunday evening.
The meeting will be tense but short and to the point. And everybody who attends the meeting will never forget the words of The Rule. The assistant who wrote the feature will absolutely never forget the rule and for 6 months will carry her belongings to work in her pockets in order to avoid the associations with The Rule as provoked by her handbag.
The rule goes like this:
"In the event of a 'What's In Your Handbag?' feature, please ask yourself these questions and only proceed with the article is the answer to either is yes. 1. Is the subject Mary Poppins? 2. Does the bag belong to a traveling salesman specialising in now-defunct magical sweeties only available on the black market (which are still, miraculously still within their expiry date)?"
My point and my question really is this: "Why are handbag features a thing?" Like all brilliant imaginary magazine editors, (or the Carrie Bradshaw of 2013) I voiced this question aloud on Twitter. These features are really, really not very interesting. I would much rather see the contents of a fridge or a wardrobe or a personal photo album because these things are actually revealing of a person. (Well, the fridge doesn't really, in the food department I'm just nosey) But anyone can carry around keys and a phone and some lipbalm. And what makes these features boring is the fact that they are usually completely unbelievable, comically so! If you look into one of these bags, on a blog or in a magazine, they contain 2 heavyweight SLR cameras, a dog-eared copy of Camus's The Plague, a Stila blusher, a small shell-shaped compact mirror, an iphone and a moleskine. Come on! Where are your tampax? Look into your best friend's bag and it will contain a bus pass, some loose filters, a snotty tissue and a McDonalds straw wrapper. (I know this because she faithfully replied to my tweet listing the exact contents.)
For research purposes, please allow me to reveal the mediocre contents of my bag for your delectation:
You will find: Wallet (in dire need of a sort-out in light of fact that fat receipt situation will not allow the clasp to close), 2 separate sets of keys, a bike light, headphones, a make-up brush (yet notable absence of blusher) Railcard, Make-up bag, 2 pens, an orange, deodorant, chewing gum, lots of tissues- grabbed from the dispenser of the toilet on the train I travelled on this weekend.
I very much enjoyed some of the contents of bags on Twitter which did indeed reveal something about the owners and lack any of the glamour of the unbelievable magazine features. See Anna's rotten apple and selection of whiteboard pens which show in very real terms her progress as a teacher-in-training. Teachers in cartoons have shiny apples on their desks! They must end up buried forgotten in handbags, slowly rotting.. Kat, who describes herself on her Twitter bio as 'A lover, not a fighter' carries Pom Bears in her bag. Naturally, the ultimate sharing, caring, extended olive-branch of animal shaped potato snacks. Fiona's bag pays tribute to her Easter bank holiday, containing confetti and eggs shells from a 'drunken Easter egg hunt'. Brilliant. Evidently a lot of what these features are missing is the crucial back story behind our bag crap. As the famous saying goes, "On the shoulder of every Great Woman, hangs a mediocre handbag."
Posted by discotheque confusion at 10:22 pm
Saturday, March 30, 2013
In Manchester, the End is Nigh. Of course, only for those who are at the end of their University experience and must remind themselves this is a rite of passage and one that has been lived by many before. There are those, like myself, who live everyday leaning towards some Reality Bites inspired 'end of University angst', occasionally sighing forlornly 'only 8 weeks to go now. We'll never see each other again.' There are also those who roll their eyes in response, swig their last slug of beer from their can before realising, equally panicked that the End is indeed Nigh. The time is 2am and that was the last can. Such small crises continue in the midst of the bigger one.
Final papers are being handed in, bikes are cycled through bitter winds and into University to collect grades which finally mean something. Those in relationships are determinedly ignoring June and the future, and others are snogging old friends before it is too late.
Future plans consist for some of blank pages, for others trips to Malaysia or graduate schemes in which one must once again start at the bottom as the runt of the litter, but with the pride of telling relatives at parties that a salary is in sight. While we stir our meals in big communal pots at dinnertime someone asks 'who will be the first of all of us to have a baby?' with the same wariness and excitement reserved for the one who will cure cancer. Gigi, obviously, we quickly conclude and go to scrape the lentils which started to burn in the pan while we shallowly contemplated our own lives as if we were starting to sketch the storyboard for our own future-montage scene. The rest refill their glasses and continue with the next and darker instalment of 'Would You Rather?' with a gruesome scenario which involves a life of being forced to watch your parents most intimate moments, or worse.
Lots of us have left already for Easter and today me and Nanon spent all of our time together, walking along desirable streets after stopping at the greengrocers, pointing at the houses we fantasise about living in next year. I put on a comedy Lancashire accent and tell Nanon "ooh, you could be a modern day Lowry with all them bricks around you, stand still and I'll take a picture." She poses and says "I'm just like Ian Dury" before realising that she meant Curtis, but that Curtis definitely wouldn't have worn a camel coloured coat with slightly puffed shoulders. We continue the househunting like an older and wiser couple and come up with equally fantastical life plans and wonder if they might actually be achievable. We'll get jobs as waitresses and rake in the tips which are currently elusive to us, and in the evenings write the screenplay for a truthful sitcom all about women in their early twenties which will be dazzling and successful and will inevitably recieve comparisons to Girls, because it's about girls, but that's okay, you can't change everything at once. We'll never fall victim to those days when try as you might you can't get out of bed and we'll do all the things and more.
We come home to mine once the snow has returned and our eyelids are too cold to take any more fantasising outdoors and we cook more lentils and together with Yas we youtube 'Can't Hold Us Down' by Christina Aguilera and Lil' Kim and remember who great it is, being overly nostalgic about something that only happened in 2002. We think about how nostalgic we'll be in 10 years time, we'll really have license then, but realise that in 10 years time nostalgia will probably be a luxury, and just a way for students with few hours of classes and no real concerns to pass the time, which is okay for now.
Posted by discotheque confusion at 1:39 am
Friday, March 29, 2013
If I want something really satisfying I have learnt to bypass the usual titles (even those fashion magazines that parade as different and as promoting strong women but ultimately don't) and stick to some tried and tested formulas. Jessica Stanley's blog is one of my absolute favourites and I always feel satisfied after reading one of her compilation posts of interesting articles and interviews from across the internet. She has a knack of finding opinion pieces or articles, from random blogs I would never have found, or maybe something from the Paris Review archive. Maybe it will be about the romance of being single, or the creative process or a really touching and well-written piece about a memory of living in New York. Either way it is the sort of thing I'll read while I eat my porridge in the morning and it will stay with me for the rest of the day, or maybe even longer. Magazines like The Gentlewoman and Apartamento also hit the mark for me in terms of insightful encounters with subjects and I remember enjoying this interview with Sheila Heti on KCRW via 10.17.
When I read an interview I'm ultimately curious about how people live their lives, because if we're not making it up as we go along, then we're quietly watching others for clues. I want to know about their routines or their self-doubts or what they've recently watched or read or thought about. I'm a big fan of 'isms' and maybe my requirements of interviews are ultimately selfish, by wishing to be left with something for myself at the expense of a subject revealing something about themselves. Really though, I know it isn't selfish, more a wish to be left with something more meaningful than the release date for a film.
Last weekend I spent 45 minutes or so watching a 4-part interview with Nick Cave on Youtube and it is absolutely an example of the 'satisfying interview'. A conversation between the interviewer and the subject rather than a personal portrait laden with a heavy portion of flattery. The interview is from 10 years ago, and very informal with the conversation between the two men starting with some memories of the last time they met and Nick Cave asking "Are we doing this? Are you filming?" about 3 minutes in, after their conversation has become the interview but without a cue to indicate it. I would really recommend sticking the kettle on for a cup of something hot and watching the 4 parts which are broken into the topics of discussion 'Habits and Routines', 'The Creative Process', 'The Love Song Lecture' and 'Self Image'. A lot of the brilliance of this interview is down to the interviewer himself, by asking interesting questions and knowing what Nick Cave has to share. Nick Cave, cigarette in hand, is all the time speaking very much within himself, and using his energy to find the right words rather than channelling it into being self-deprecating and fun and liked. This is definitely something I notice a lot in a majority of interviews and I think it is something we do on a daily basis in our conversations with each other and sometimes it takes away from what we're actually saying. Not that we have to always be serious and thoughtful, but the very British habit of being self-deprecating is one that sometimes becomes draining in social situations. Either way, I recommend all 4 parts to be enjoyed with a cup of Earl Grey and a slice of Banana bread and a blanket over the knees.
Posted by discotheque confusion at 1:15 pm
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Posted by discotheque confusion at 10:36 am
Saturday, March 23, 2013
( I recommend them thoroughly and personally can't stop myself from watching Sunset Sam and Lucy and Ramona hanging out in their rollerskates and tight pants.)
Posted by discotheque confusion at 4:15 pm
Monday, March 11, 2013
Posted by discotheque confusion at 5:08 pm
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
On a side note, hopefully some more frequent posting can continue soon. That place I'm swiftly leaving the house for is the library. Final few months of studying and all that.
Posted by discotheque confusion at 11:16 am