Today

Today I'm 25.  I'm theoretically quarter life,  and no longer 'post teen'. Today I am at a 'firmly in your twenties' age.  

Today my Grandma was cremated. I only realised at 2pm and it made me feel really sad. We'll take her ashes to be with my Granddad's. She looked so nice at her funeral. They didn't do her up too much. 

Today is 18 days till I move to Japan. I am so nervous and excited. I dream about Japan a lot.

 It's been such a strange day. I had office colleagues awkwardly sing me happy birthday and I got so embarrassed I turned and faced the door slightly. 

Chocolates were left on my desk and I got lots of kisses and hugs from my friends at lunch and tonight they're coming for dinner so we can drink wine and eat good food cooked by my boyfriend who is better than me in the kitchen although I don't like to admit that. 

It's been a nice day. Birthdays make you feel like putting on your shiniest pair of shoes or a ribbon in your hair. If today was a song it would be 'new slang' by the shins. I think that's the only way i can fully explain it.

Pizazz

I wish my life was a technicolour dream, much like old children's movies. I watched the 1940 version of Fantasia the other day and it blew my socks off.

Monsters in the night

"Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.”

Dark and morbid with monsters creeping in the night, I love Goya. He was the first artist to paint a totally profane life size female nude in Western art. With that, the man was marked for fame and controversy. Originally painting well respected works for the Spanish Royal family he presented the sunny side of life, always a carnival or a sunny day. Eventually his work became more politically charged and he gained fame notoriety. Goya contracted a high fever and cholera mid life, he ended up deaf. During his final years, reclusive and disillusioned, he created some of the most frightening and deranged works ever seen. He looked to fantasy, the mentally insane and darker elements that existed in the world. Goya was one of the first artists to successfully portray the mentally ill without agenda or misrepresentation. He would sit in the locked off courtyard for the mentally ill taking in as much loneliness, sadness, fantasy and madness as he could handle.

Whether his art drove him mad, or his madness drove his art, I'm not quite sure. Goya stopped seeing the world as a bright cheerful place peeling away all the bright colours to find endless layers of black.

Grey gardens

If my fate was to be a posh batty old lady socialite with eccentric style, no hair and a dazzling array of headscarves I wouldn't be too alarmed. Then again, if I had to spend this time living in a dilapidated mansion in the Hamptons with raccoons, fleas, trash and my equally crazy mother, I may reconsider the offer.

Grey Gardens is the 1975 documentary following mother and daughter Edith Beale (big Edie and little Edie). Once beautiful American socialites, the cousin and Aunt of Jackie Onassis,  and all around privileged woman, big Edie's divorce saw the duo slowly spiral into ruins clinging to their once majestic mansion, their grand memories and what could have been. Simultaneously hilarious and sad it shows one of the oddest and intimate relationships I have ever seen on film.

Cat attack!

Most cats are sassy assholes but they're irresistible all the same.

Friday playlist

On and ever onward - Dirty Projectors and Bjork

Now that I know - Devendra Banhart

Dearest - Buddy Holly

Too young - Phoenix

Out on the weekend - Neil Young

A - Maybe not - Cat Power

Out of action

Sorry to those of you have been checking the blog and to find no new posts. My Grandma died this week so I have been feeling anything but creative and inspired. In the interim I am trying hard to remember fragments of her. The little sighs she often did, the way she smelt, little notes with beautiful handwriting and her spectacular house filled with trinkets. She lived to be 86 so I can be happy that she lived a long and wonderful life full of adventure, but of course it is so so so sad. I will miss her immensely. I'm still a bit shocked that it happened. I'll be up and running with posts again in the next few days, hope you've all had a wonderful week in the meantime.

Gemma. x