you, fall away, from your past, but it's following you...

Do you remember the raw excitement in my eyes? Nowadays it's laced with caution, apprehensively awaiting the denial, the rejection, the coldness. Why are you so afraid? Why are you trying to tame me?

Not just when you feel like it. Not just when you want to. Not just when you remember.

Like a little lost child I am desperately clinging to your sleeve, and every time you look at me, I can feel you slowly prising my fingers apart.

I just want you for my own, more than you could ever know, what more can I do?..

Gilded Cages

It's the same everytime. I always end up thinking the same things when I visit my beloved Camden. I feel like I'm going home. I feel like, just for a moment, everything is ok. Not fine, not perfect, but somehow bearable. It soothes me. Now as I ride the rickety black thread I am a little anxious. I am embarrassed. I am ashamed, because I am no longer fearless. I can no longer claim to care nothing for the opinions of others. I have become someone else. I am no longer my own person. I am losing my identity. I do not have the energy to be wild anymore. I disappoint myself. Sometimes I try hard to regain it, but even if it comes back to me for a little while, it is soon gone. I am no longer fierce. I am no longer savage. Gone are the days when I couldn't be tamed. I have been caged.

Green eyes through bars of a golden cage...

I can't talk to you anymore. You only see the outside, you don't look past the golden case. Oh so pretty you're too normal for me. So pretty. Not inside. Bursting damaged twisted distorted warped  s c r e a m i n g.

Here I go again,
Dancing in the pouring rain,
On the road breaks are screaming,
Headlights flashing,
My heart is dreaming.

Mona Lisa, I'd pay to see you frown.
You seem a bit down.
Crashing down.
I don't feel like joining in with the parade today.
Clowns all around me, it's a cross I need to bear, all this black and cruel despair...
Contemplate or wish away IF I ASK YOU NOT TO STAY

What is the point of pretence?
Tears softly falling onto the stone tiles of your en-suite bathroom...
I feel your hesitation in each embrace. I hold you tighter to crush the pain.
You are way too normal to handle me.
Perhaps I am self-destructive. Either way you are oblivious. How can you not see?
My Immortal, what do I do? We've fallen away, but I still need you. There is no one like you. Only you feel my pain. I wish I could help you. I wish you could help me. Hold me for eternity.
So normal. So calm. So ordinary. Will you ever awake? What can I do to make you see? Please open your eyes. Why so serious?

WHY SO SERIOUS??!!

I was just trying to run away, to forget if only for a second, an afternoon, a day. I just wanted to escape and remember how it felt to smile. Really smile. To not have to fake it. Now I have tasted escape I want it again. I want it more. As it gets worse I need it again. And it's getting worse. You are no longer my escape. I can't run away with you. You are becoming just another thing to run from. Every time I run to you you push me away. Soon I will be running away and you'll be chasing me.

You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man!

In the night as I sit and watch you sleep, you know I cry but you never want to see...

Stay with me Evelyn...

That day. Such a powerful memory, so potent.

Stay with me Evelyn,
Don't leave me with the medicine,
I'm more afraid than I've ever been,
So stay with me Eve... lyn...

Such a whirlwind of chaotic thoughts engulfing consuming sufforcating. A ficticious see-saw, almost useen to the eye, swinging playfully (maliciously) to and fro, to and fro. Listen. Drown out the voices, mummy's not coming home tonight baby.

Spin.

Come on come on, turn a little faster.
Come on come on, the world will follow after.

Broken hearts and torn up letters,
Girl you just can't dance forever.

A letter written in black sealed with wax. Red and black.

Sufforcating. Let me breathe a different kind of air.

We both suffer but we don't talk about it. What is there to say? We both sit there not really listening but hearing every word as they gently pierce our skin and poison our blood. Blood. Why does having the same blood matter so much? Our blood isn't healthy. It's tainted, clotted and congealed. It's turning on itself and we have only our own bitterness to blame.

Public is Private

People like to know that you are the person they think you are. If you do something they consider to be 'out of character' it unsettles them and confuses them. People don't like being confused. This is where the judgement comes in, because you are not conforming to their idea of 'you'. It is therefore so much easier to be open and truthful to people who have no idea who you are. They are judging you soley on what they read. They do not have any presuppositions or presumptions; they will not discriminate against you as they have no foundation for their prejudices. They have no 'previous experience' with you. Unfortunately they too form a person in their minds, this time based on the words you write, and if chance should decide to bring you together they are then subject to an unrestricted compulsion to compare their image of you to the 'you' they meet. Again if these do not match, you are in trouble. Until the two meet, however, you are safe. Until this happens, you can write what you want and they'll either love it or hate it. Until then, public is private.

The future of fashion: are we travelling backwards?

Vintage. Retro. Original. A timeless classic. These describe many things we desperately crave in this world of rapid technological advancement. Visiting a friend and noticing a mock 60’s dial phone perched atop a rococo-inspired coffee table can instil a sense of nostalgia, envy or disgust. Depending on when we were born and our own unique tastes, relics from the past can affect us in many different ways. What puzzles me, though, is not the way in which our tastes develop to embrace certain styles from the past, but why.

 

The neat notebooks with faded yellow pages and little wallets bordered and dotted with stamps labelled ‘by air mail’ which are crammed onto shelves in department stores and boutiques are not souvenirs of the present. They belong to a world we never knew or at least no longer revolve in. Raiding grandma’s closet for a silky rayon blouse with an open-neck collar is considered more fashionable than hitting the shops. Why the obsession with old items? What do they have that modern versions don’t? The simple truth is that we cannot keep up with ourselves and our own rapid advancement. We yearn above all to connect; to keep a fragment of ‘the good old days’ alive, and whether we do this through a photograph or an old perfume, it helps us to stabilise and find our place in the big wide world. Snatching at anything we can find, items from the past help to build our identity and through them we become our own unique person – something which is becoming increasingly difficult in a place where ‘unique’ almost no longer exists. From Dolce and Gabbana’s baroque prints to Gucci’s Edwardian-inspired gowns for the Autumn/Winter 2012 collections, fashion brands delve deeply into the dusty archives of our past to bring us a ‘new take’ on an old model. Is there no such thing as ‘brand new’ anymore? They say that history repeats itself, but are we digging too deep that soon we won’t be moving forward at all?

The ease with which we can send a text or an email adds weight to a posted hand-written letter. Old methods have become something special, something with a superior level of meaning, something to treasure. With technology and fashion increasingly crossing paths to create possibilities of instant purchase and live streaming, will we soon stop bothering to attend the physical catwalks? Or will this advancement cause the same patterned reaction of heightened interest in things considered out-dated? Will we relish in watching first hand the rows of cloth-coated limbs flowing gracefully down the runway because they will be part of a world we no longer know? Fashion takes inspiration from tradition, old trends and classic pieces invented long ago. If ‘new’ is no longer accessible, which way is forward?

Requiem for a Dream

Flames. Bright, unquenchable flames flickering in the distance. And a girl. A beautiful girl standing, watching. My eyes rotate and the image shifts. A car speeding into the darkness. It is a red Ford Fiesta called Alice with tinted windows and a lowered front bumper. Propane Nightmares and smoke from Pall Mall cigarettes escape from the half opened glass and remain floating over the tarmac of Totteridge Lane after we are long gone. We are laughing. We are drunk and laughing. Shaking my head in time with the music I lean my head backwards out of the window and look up into the night’s sky.

“Faster!” I yell, giggling at the adrenaline rush as he laughs and obediently hits the accelerator.

Come Josephine in my flying machine, going up she goes, up she goes!
Balance yourself like a bird on a beam in the air she goes, there she goes!
Up, up, a little bit higher, oh my, the moon is on fire!
Come Josephine in my flying machine, going up, all on, good-bye…

I feel the wind in my hair and I never want this moment to end. I feel so alive. I feel so untamed. I feel so free.

“Faster.” I murmur, knowing that the word will get snatched up by the wind before it reaches his ears.

“Faster, faster, faster.” My lips only mouth the words, and my brows furrow as I try to recall what this moment reminds me of.

Now we’re flying to the moon and back, if you’ll be, if you’ll be my baby…

I sit up suddenly.

“What’s wrong?” he says, but he’s not there anymore.

Got a ticket for a world where we belong…

I smile a little at the beauty, but my eyes are sad. Such devastating beauty. So horribly pure and wonderful. Deadly, but how can you not love her? How can you not want to be her?

My eyes flicker under their lids and the image changes again before I see her. This time I am in a dark room. There are posters on the walls. A hundred nameless faces looking straight at me but avoiding my gaze. This time it is only a matter of seconds before I am clawing at them and laying them all to rest in tatters on the cold stony floor. My nails close around the face of a young girl with dark hair and a gaunt, pallid face. She is standing on a ladder wearing a dress made of paper. I tear her to shreds and find what I want in the space she once occupied. My fingers push to reveal a hidden door. It gives way and opens. Blinding lights pour out and it is several moments before I am able to step out into the next scene. The noise hits me. It is the sound of applause. Clapping hands dance around me as I take the stage. They echo around the vast theatre. I look out at them and slowly I bow low. The crowd erupts. I throw a sideways smile their way as I playfully skip off the stage. Behind the curtain I break into a run. I run past tall buildings and men in suits until they become blades of grass and strands of wheat. A chestnut horse with a white star on his forehead runs beside me. Floating onto his back we gallop into the distance, and my body rises and falls as I dream of Celia…

thirsty?

they say they are evil

      because they hunt at night
       because they walk in the shadows
        because they drink blood from the vein

but it's just a kiss...

with fangs.