"I think that all artists, regardless of degree of talent, are a painful, paradoxical combination of certainty and uncertainty, of arrogance and humility, constantly in need of reassurance, and yet with a stubborn streak of faith in their own validity no matter what."

- Madeleine L’Engle

No Mr Bond! I expect you to dye!

I recently discovered that my hair is the exact same colour as a traffic cone:

How embarrassing. Not a classic look, is it? Time for a change.

Killjoys, MAKE SOME NOISE

On Sunday night I went to go and see My Chemical Romance in Manchester. I know it isn't 'cool' to say that you like them unless you're a 13 year old girl with black nail varnish and a bad haircut, but I was a 13 year old girl with black nail varnish and a bad haircut when I started listening to them. They've been my very favourite band for the past seven years, and seeing them again on Sunday after they've been away for so long (I was 17 the last time I saw them) was absolutely beautiful. The gig was EPIC, the setlist was perfect, and Frank...oh Frank. Frank Iero is my favourite man alive. It's good to be reminded of that sometimes (you can tell by how many photos of him I took).

I MUST HAVE IT.

I have looked at this coat on the Zara website about 47 times, and almost as many times I have added it to my cart...but then I remember that it is £99 and I already own one incredibly similar (from the trusty Salvation Army again). BUT THIS ONE HAS ELBOW PATCHES. And it looks warm. And I want it.

And it's pay day next week...

Mmmmm.

Leopard print, and £1 shoes.

I had a rare day off work today, so I went with my dad to the coast to visit my aunt and uncle, who live in Flamborough. I lurrve the seaside, but the East coast is cold at the best of times and today it was freezing. Still grand, though.

My concession to colour today was this leopard print fur coat that I got from Topshop a couple of years ago. I'm not very wild when it comes to colour - unless it's my hair - and my wardrobe consists almost entirely of black, white, grey and navy blue, so this is pretty out there for me.Coat - Topshop, top - New Look, jeans - Topshop, shoes - Salvation Army
There are not many benefits to having size 9 feet, but buying men's charity shop shoes is certainly one of them - they always seem to be size 9. I got these from the Salvation Army opposite my uni for the total sum of a one pound coin.

Just while we're talking about this coat, I'll mention that I wore it when I went to meet Gordon Ramsay at his book signing in York a while back, and he told me that he loved it. So just FYI Ramsay fans, wear leopard print fur if you ever meet him. He digs it.
I was very blonde back then.

Inspire #14 - Laena Geronimo

She plays about ten different instruments, she is one quarter of The Like, and she has the perfect hairstyle that I want but consistently fail to achieve. I want to be her.

Also, her last name is Geronimo. WHY IS MY LAST NAME NOT GERONIMO? I know for a fact that I would be a superhero by now if I had such a fabulous surname. How unfair.

I Still Shoot Film

NylonBlogs' site of the day today was I Still Shoot Film, a really beautiful site of a photographer who still does things the good old fashioned way, and processes all the pictures in a darkroom. She (I think she's a she) uses vintage cameras and long exposures, so all the photos are incredibly dreamy and romantic. Go and have a look. It really makes me want to buy film for my dad's old camera and try something like this myself.

Photos from I Still Shoot Film.

Weekly Review: 11th - 17th October 2010

I'm going to start off with something which, inexplicbly to me, may not sound like an especially 'cool' thing to say. But I don't care, because it was one of the best gigs I have ever been to.

ON WEDNESDAY I WENT TO SEE BRYAN ADAMS.

Yes. That's right. Bryan Adams. And it was good.

I have been listening to old man Bryan since before I can remember. My parents raised me on a quite possibly toxic mix of Bryan Adams, Bon Jovi and AC/DC records, mixed in with the ubiquitous 90's 'music' of the Spice Girls (still love them) and Backstreet Boys (still love them, too). The first gig I ever went to was Bryan Adams when I was about six or seven years old, then again when I was about eight years old. So seeing him now, at the age of 20, made me feel both very young, and astonishingly old. It also made me fall in love with him all over again.



It is ridiculous to me that I can love a man entirely because of his voice, but then again I do have a proper crush on Charlie Sheen, and it certainly isn't because I find his personality charming. It's because when he talks he sounds like melted gold. Pretty much the same thing with Bryan. When he sings, I feel all fluttery. So imagine what I was like on Wednesday, while he played, just him and his acoustic guitar, in a theatre in Bradford, and I was probably about 20 metres away from him. I almost peed my pants.

The concert was incredible. He just sounded PERFECT. I was worried that he was going to sound old or that he would have lost his touch or something, but he seems to have gotten better with age. The whole show simply blew me away. Just how talented he is was insane; to be able to stand there, on your own without a band, and sing and still fill the whole space with your voice...it was beautiful. A beautiful night.

The venue wouldn't let us take photos, and my camera is about as inconspicuous as the sun, so I only managed to get a few blurry shots on my phone. Instead, I'll give you this:
Obviously I got home the next day, still singing (Everything I do) I do it for you and I had to watch Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. Depressingly, I know every single word to this film. But, you know what, I'm not ashamed. I should be, but I'm not. I love it. I LOVE IT.

Moving swiftly on...

Nothing much else of note went on this week, really. We started painting in my art class, but I had a difficult time concentrating because the model was an absolute BABE. He looked like Andrew Garfield. Tricky to concentrate on painting when a very naked Andrew Garfield-a-like is sitting in front of you. I'm definitely not the mature student that I'm hoping the other art class attendees are taking me for.

MUSIC THIS WEEK

This week, I have mostly been listening to very loud, very fast, very dirty punk music. Partly to gain back some respect after the Bryan Adams thing, but mostly because listening to Sick Of It All makes me feel like I'm venting some of my fury out on society, even though in reality I am just sat at home shouting obscenties at BBC news. Everyone's heard about the fantastic new ideas that the Cameron/Clegg Twat Factory have churned out, right? Let's not go too deeply into it, but I'll just say fuck you if you think I'm paying £12,000 a year for university. I resent paying what I do now, never mind having it tripled.

FILM THIS WEEK

I really wanted to go and see The Social Network when it came out on Friday (was it Friday?) but I have absolutely no money, so it'll have to wait. Has anyone seen it yet? Reviews? I will admit that it is only because of Andrew Garfield that I want to see it (oh, we're back on him again. Sorry.)

BOOKS THIS WEEK

At the moment, I'm trying to force myself to get through Moll Flanders, which I have to study at uni, and while the story is great, the writing style is so boring. To escape from that, I've been reading Death in a Strange Country, the second in the series of Donna Leon novels about a police detective in Venice. I love reading series novels, because it's like returning to an old friend without having the pressure of a contuining plotline to deal with.


NEXT WEEK: There won't be a weekly review post next Sunday (it'll probably come about Tuesday again) because I'm going to see My Chemical Romance in Manchester (aaand there goes my street cred again).

An actual outfit that I actually wore - Chanel, and a Highland cow.

I like to use my weekends to catch up on sleep, as I get so little of it during the week. Today was no different and, despite having a dissertation proposal to write, I slept in until about 1pm (pretty early for me on a Saturday). This afternoon, me, my mum and my brother (who is home from uni for a couple of nights) got the bus up to York to meet my dad after he finished work, and we went out for tea and then to the theatre. What a cultured family we are.

Umm...ok, maybe not that cultured. But it was grand all the same.

Today I wore:
Jumper - vintage, jeans - Topshop, bag - Chanel, scarf - given to me by my dad, shoes - Office.

That bag is one of my most prized possessions - I have actual physical loving feelings towards it. I don't like to use it all the time, just in case something - anything - happens to it, but sometimes the urge to show off that I own a Chanel 2.55 bag becomes so overwhelming that I simply have to use it, even if I am only wearing jeans and a woolly jumper that I bought from a stall at Leeds Fest.
I bought this jumper entirely because it features a Highland cow. How could I resist?

Homage

Inspire #13 - Black & White

"There is no black-and-white situation. It's all part of life. Highs, lows, middles." -- Van Morrison.

This makes me think of what Florence Welch would have looked like in 1912.

Photos sourced through Google.