On Crushing All Over Taylor Swift

 

So I realised today that I have developed a full on eleven year-old fangirl obsession with Taylor Swift, I am literally obsessed with everything she does and everybody she hangs out with and I am sure it is NOT NORMAL for somebody my age. The thing is she's just so cool and so supportive of woman and lovely and wonderfully dressed and yet she is also a bit of a - what the Americans would call - a dork. I'd say a loser, geek or weirdo. If we're talking a American Pie / Mean Girls world here, she's definitely not the cheerleader, she's the band geek or the art freak. And that I think is why I love her, because she's interesting and slightly odd as well as having super cool clothes, great songwriting skills and a crew of BFFs that I would kill to hangout with. As a fellow former loserish kid who liked learning, I can feel it. So it's ok to be in your late-twenties and love her... Right?

Here's some of evidence of why I do

1) Clothes

Ok, the girl can dress, but she couldn't always. Back in the early days of T, it was all Cinderella white lace and little house on the praire and all a bit "Y'all coming to milk the cows on the farm and then Jim-Bob's taking me to thr prom..". Now, though she's found her groove and she's ice cool without having to be "LOOK AT ME" which so many other female celebrities are. 

Also, she doesn't have a tendency to carefully curate her cleavage or let her arse enter first which other young women do (not that I am against this, gurl can do what she wants). But I like the fact that Taylor turns heads without needing to compete for nudity levels.. except those famous legs of course (see below).

2) Songs

Look, I'm a fan of Country music, so I've pretty much liked all her albums but 1989 is just so good. So catchy and with clever lyrics. I mean the tumblr generation freak out about them, because they feel like she is WRITING THEIR LIVES OMFG, and isn't that what the best songwriters do. 

Even my 21-year-old DJ brother admits to thinking it's "a really great pop album"... Watch out for the upcoming premiere of the video for new single Bad Blood, which features many of her equally rad BFFs Cara, Ellie, Lena et al.. speaking of which...

3) Her Woman Crew (& Ed)

Taylor's friendship circle causes me to feel 80% "Go Women" and 20% seething jealousy that I will never get to hang out with them. From supermodels like Karlie Kloss and Cara Delevingne to other popbaes like Ellie Goulding and Lorde, to my idol Lena Dunham and loads of Americans that I know vaguely from reading Sugarscape (sue me). She seems to be constantly hanging out with achingly successful young women. And it seems it is often she who extends the hand of friendship through fangirling over them herself, with no need for a "cool" face on it. And who wouldn't want to be her friend tbh, who wouldn't want to be part of that kind of ambitious, supportive, whirpool of women power where everyone is -like- free to be themselves -you know.. 

Plus there's the fact she's got Mr Sheeran - the nicest and most talented man in Britain (and the world probs) on speed dial as her best man-friend. (I'm mean I'm hoping they'll get married tbh)

4) She's So Bloody Nice

Taylor's treatment of her fan's is legendary, from throwing pre-album launch parties to "Swiftmas" to surprising them out of the blue. She also was also named the "Most Charitable Celeb" of 2014 by DoSomething.Org for her work for feminist causes and New York City public schools. She has, as Glamour recently wrote, made Nice cool again.. and thank goodness for that.

5) Legs

She has the most enviable legs in the business. Full stop. And she's over 5'10, which is so refreshing in the celeb land of minature people.

6) Her List of Ex-boyfriends and How She "Deals" When it's Over

I really don't think women should be judged by who or how many people they date. However, Taylor's got an enviable list of exes and the fact that her relationships with famous men are splashed all over the papers and then when the relationship ends, the lovely media seem to relish in her heartbreak is part of her journey. This is because of how she deals with it, rarely mentioning it in interviews and instead pouring it out in her songs, which to be honest is how we'd all like to get over relationships if we could isn't it... purge the issues and all. Her song "Shake it Off" says it all really, "I go on too many dates, but I can't make 'em stay.. At least that's what people say mmm, that's what people say mmm." People are currently saying that she's dating super star DJ Calvin Harris. Good luck to them; it takes a real good man to keep up with her.

7) Haters Gonna Hate

A lot of people seem to hate Taylor online and off and she has dealt with any hate in the most decourous and graceful manner. She has even recently made up with Kanye West after he stormed the stage at the 2009 Grammy's to claim Beyonce deserved the award and not her. When Lorde called her "too perfect" in an interview, she proceeded to make her her best friend.

Mostly she says, she avoids reading most things that are written about her, because it is not said by her fans and it is not relevant to her life.

"The little I am exposed to hurts my feelings. The only things I can really control are my songs and my behavior. The rest? If I focused on it, that would lead to insanity."

8) Business Woman

Nobody should underestimate Taylor, for all the sweet words and the niceness and the cats, she is one of the most successful women in the world right now. She is a steely business woman, but she has done it without trampling all over other people, another score for feminism, she is destroying the belief that women must fit into the patriarchal definition of success to make it.

Her net worth is estimated at $200 million dollars. She has made shrewd moves like not only copyrighting her entire lyrics but also key phrases in her songs like "this sick beat". Her music is not available through free-streaming powerhouse Spotify as she believes it is unfair on the musicians and artists who make the music to give it away. When her record label were unsure about her making a pop record, she went ahead an made 1989 anyway, because it was what she wanted to do. She is also a social media powerhouse. She has cultivated her own brand and her own business and stayed true tp herself whilst doing it. (*high five emojis).

9) She's a bit of a "Loser" Really

Another example of staying true to herself is that she doesn't try to look cool or change her natural enthusisasm for life in order to fit in to some sexy-starlet stereotype. Half her instagram feed is videos of her cats.Of course she is a beautiful, successful woman and that brings with it a certain status, but she is always willing to be the geek.

She loves cooking and making things and staying in and she has never been pictued falling out of a club. There's no whiff of drug or alcohol rumours and she loves her Mum, who prior to her recent Cancer diagnosis has been on every tour with her. The thing is with Taylor, she's not anti-cool, she's just made it cool to be nice, to be inclusive, to support others, to love a lot and to have an open heart. And this most of all, is why I bloody love the girl. If only we were all this wise at 25.

"Well, I just don't place much priority on looking cool, and I think at 25, I'm finally OK with feeling that. I've said this before. I think there's this priority on having this persona of being edgy or cool or bored. And those things are all sexy. All those things are chic, when you seem not to care about anything other than yourself. And I just don't buy into it. I'm really excited by lots of things. I think enthusiasm is the best protection. It can protect you from anything. And I don't feel bored by any of this, so I don't strive to look bored by any of this." (c) Glamour 2015

Day 8 of #The100DayProject #100DaysofWriting

None of the photos are mine.

On Fear Defining Us...

 

I didn't want to have New Years resolutions this year. A list of tick boxes that defines how I feel about myself when I read them the following year, older not wiser, still growing. Yes I'm still too fat and I haven't fucking read War and Peace OK

I thought of only two things that I wanted. Two words that don't have a Yes you have achieved or No you've failed, but are part of how I want to live better, every day. Nourish and Fear. (insert sarcastic comment here)

Nourish is about faking it till I feel it. Nourishing myself, my mind, my body, my self-esteem. I often struggle to love or respect myself, being the constantly self-critical yawnsome type that I am. My heart often beats to not-good enough, not good-enough, not good-enough.

It's hard to fake self-love is the thing because no matter the look you direct to the outside world, the little voices inside still chatter away. Irritants that they are repeating ones own shortcomings to ourselves, drowned out only by hard cardio, hysterical laughter or vodka.

The 12 Best Presents

I was going to write a post about My Forever Christmas Gifts; a typical seasonal salivate over "things I have always wanted" or would feel better and more valued as a person if I had. The list was a lusty, lingering, drooling dive into every Christmas gift guide produced by every single broadsheet, glossy magazine and/or blog/Instagram account of whatever twenty/thirty-something is stripping their unattainable life bare this week and making us all believe in the magic of the x-brand-life. The beautiful list included things like a Burberry Mac or monogrammed scarf, huge bottles of Jo Malone perfume (plus matching candle), Chanel bag, Liz Earle's entire range.. Alex Monroe jewelry. There were more considered forever items in there too... Books, flowers, art... (My one most favourite thing ever would be a personalised art piece from God's Own Junk Yard- just in case you wondered)

But I didn't write that piece because recently I have been thinking about what this blog is meant to be and how to make it better and more true to me and the place it came from when I started writing it. And really despite the title, it was about life-enrichment and happiness - mine and hopefully those reading as well as wider issues in the world that would affect those things. So whether I'm writing about a play, a bar or off on some feminist rant. I want it to be for a good thing; to make people happy, to make them think or just to make myself think.

So that decadent post.. That wouldn't be me thinking about anything except things I cut out of magazines in my early teens. It would also encourage my inclination to sheath difficult considerations and decisions with retail blow outs and getting high on NEW NEW NEW. Plus there are other blogger who do it farrr better than I would.

So instead I'm writing a different kind of gift list. This list is what I think humans really want for Christmas and for life. I've though about what I want, what I think my friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances and just general humanity would really want if they looked deep inside and weren't afraid to ask. Best of all, to give these things are mostly free or if not the cash cost is minimal. Mostly it's your commitment. Also, perhaps try to give the ones that don't come most naturally to you.. Because then it is a true gift, an effort made - there's a reason they give a prize for that at school. Let me know what you think and if there is anything you would add... I hope, sincerely that it is not too much of schmaltzy, American vibe.. But sue me if it is as it is Christmas and I love Miracle on 34th Street.

1) #LOLs

The Internet is awash with things that people have created to make each other laugh and ask anyone and one of the qualities that they value in others above all is a shared sense of humour.. So why do we not make the most of that EVERY day.

I'm not talking about the brash laddish humour performed in a group situation to win banter points, but the deep hearty laugh, the shared giggle that we can bestow on those we know the best.

One of my best friends has this gift, she always just wants to make people laugh, even when it's just the two of you and she laughs more when she sees that lift in another, plus she thinks about the individual and what they'd find amusing. 

I don't think about this all the time, I've never thought it my duty to lift the spirits of another in that way. I am more of a dry sarcastic comment type and if I have a day where I feel the bloody world is on my shoulders I wait for another to pick up the humour. 

But give the gift of a LOL or two and you'll find that you're lightened too.

2) Time

Who has enough of it, really. I don't, no one I know seems to. Every one would like more of it.

Help someone with a task so that it takes them half the time or offer to do something for them, so they are gifted some time to do something else that they really love to do.

Babysit, do their laundry, take a pile of work off their desk. Because giving your time really, sweetie, it's the most powerful currency you have. Realise that, for you and others.

3) A Conversation / Listen

Some people are good listeners in life, they have the knack to sit back and let someone else really talk without interruption or fear or worry that you've used up all your time on this round. Become one of those people, listen, think and consider what someone else has said without waiting to put your two pence in about your hella-fucking day or how you COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND BECAUSE YOU'VE BEEN THROUGH/FEEL EXACTLY THE SAME. I'm not saying don't consider it offer your opinion, but really listen trust yeah, what are they actually saying to you...

4) A Skill

We all have them, whether we know it or not, yet how often do we give them to others without waiting for a payment or a favour in return. Without giving our "gift" because we know we'll get something back.

Some people know everyone and chat well and can introduce people to others who may help them/love them/employ them.. Some people can build or restore or fix things. Some can write, some can paint, some can occupy children for hours on end. Maybe you know about gardening or you've travelled to a destination they are going to. Or you can organise or file stuff or clean, you take great photographs, can shape eyebrows, play the guitar or wrap presents like they've been done professionally.

Whatever you can do. I'm sure someone else can't and would be grateful for it.

5) Ego Boost

Browsing Pinterest the other day I came across an affordable present hack board and one of the things on it was a series of sealed letters. There were six I believe.. alll for one person and each of them had something written in the address field. Open me when you feel lonely/when you don't like yourself/when you are tired/when you hate the day. Someone had carefully constructed each letter for an individual ready to make them feel better, to appreciate themselves and praise them for their decisions when they most need it. A beautiful thing for someone you love..

Yah, you London hipsters might have trouble with this one, thinking it the most distinctly non-British of things, to put out onto the page. But it is your voice remember and you can include as much sarcasm and fucking swearing as you want as long as it does the job...

Or you don't have to do this. But just boost someone's ego in some way. You'll know the best way I'm sure if maybe they'd fucking laugh at you if you gave them a bunch of letters. Trust them with a task, ask for their help or say nice things about them to someone else. Anything that tickles their inner human spirit, maybe focus on something that they're not often told.

6) Sleep...

A duvet day, an extra couple of hours. A more peaceful way to fall asleep. A candle, a playlist, a story. Use money or don't. But anyone is grateful for extra sleep.

7) Pay Attention to What They Care About

I know we do this with bought gifts once a year but maybe it would be better to do it more regularly with though and small actions. A conversation, an extra question, a photograph, a link, time out of your schedule to learn about something/someone that to be honest you couldn't really give a shit about. Let them talk, go with them to something or organise a trip. Remember the names they told you about, the boring situation, the new thing that usually you would glaze over during in conversation. Make an effort to care.

8) Reliability or Routine

A much underestimated gift is this. People think about it mostly in terms of older people or jobs, (Must visit Granny every last Sunday of the month etc) but it is a powerful thing. The sheer stability and therefore joy we can feel when we can count on something is immeasurable. Many people don't have it, if you know someone who doesn't, maybe try to give them that.

It is easy to promise and cancel, harder to commit. Think about what you in your life know you can rely on at all times and think about how you can give that to someone who has less.

9) A Chance

Harder to define. Some sit on the edge of the maybe or the someday or the it might happen, waiting for a chance. Some have no chances and never have. If you have any power to give someone a small chance in life, whether that is a job, a room, a place on a team or a chance as a friend or lover. Life can be made on the little chances babe.. It can.

10) A Little Push.. / Encouragement

You Know those people who always seem on the edge, who don't get off their arses and fix their problems or somehow definitely can't on their own.

If you have any strength to be a bossy fucking bastard and make them or the patience to be a sensitive attendant who can gently guide them in the right direction, then do it. Because if they get anywhere or feel like they've achieved anything, you will reap the gifts right back.

11) Respect

Sometimes I think we forget to respect the people we care about. If they have been in our lives for a long time, it is easy to box them and to dismiss their little quirks and opinions. But respecting someone else for who they are, for what they say or do is such a dual pleasure and people bloom under it. If you find someone difficult to respect sometimes, take a step back, breathe and think about where they are coming from and what you can respect them for.

None of us are better than anyone else, even if we all have different gifts.

12) Consideration / Love

Perhaps the most saccharine of the list and the hardest to define. Consideration is not simply how we would want to be treated - for we are all different are we not - but how they would.

Love is unconditional, but if you love someone, it's the time of year to consider if you are doing all the things on this list for them. I love a lot of people, but I can be a selfish dick sometimes, far too concerned with constantly assessing my own happiness and life goals. So I'm making it my mission over this festive period and into 2015 to consider those I love and if I'm doing everything I can to show them how fucking grateful I am to have them in my life.

Merry Christmas Internet, hope I didn't choke you with the maudlin sentimentality of it all...

Six Things to Learn from Maya Angelou

A week ago last Sunday, I went to the Royal Festival Hall to attend an event put on as part of the London Literature Festival; Maya Angelou: A Celebration. It was a beautiful evening with actors, speakers and notable guests reading parts of her autobiographies and poems, as well as talented musicians performing some of the hymns and songs that she did.

For an English Literature graduate, with a minor in history including a lot of the American Civil Rights movement, I came very late to the gifts of Maya Angelou. I first discovered her through my incessant love of other peoples soundbites - namely quotes- about two years ago and just loved everything that had been attributed to her, so I read up and I read her and it's safe to say she was a word and mentality guru.

Her biography reads pretty stark and also shows incredible resourcefulness and talent.... Born Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4, 1928, she was raped aged eight by her mother's boyfriend, was then mute for almost seven years and went on to work as a cook, madam and sometimes prostitute, nightclub dancer and performer, opera singer, coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and journalist in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonisation of Africa. She was an actor, writer, director, and producer of plays, movies, and public television programmes. Today we talk of multi-tasking, but she was a pragmatic polymath, a Renaissance Woman of the highest degree. Here is what we can learn from her life, work and treatment of others

Eight Online Gurls Worth Stalking

I've been working so much recently that my evenings haven't been filled with the sort of sparkling shenanigans that usually grace these pages*. So I've decided to write a post that I've been meaning to for a while on the beauteous women of the internet. The fiercest tribe of womanhood wit, repartee and just damn humour that keep me clicking, liking, scrolling, tweeting and just generally abusing the www until my thumb aches. These gurls inspire me to write better, banter quicker, live more and just generally be the types that they are. They all blog or write to some degree (though some are also marv on twitter) and they're 90% Brit, because I'm patriotic like that. Generally though they just put life into succinct snippets that are digestible over your lunch hour or during a particular dull day at your desk. So subscribe, like and follow etc etc and I promise your life will be rosy.. Or at least you'll feel that someone else says it like you may think it. 

Superlatively Rude
@superlativelylj

Laura Jane Williams is my soul girl. She writes from the heart. From her sex life to her job situation all of it flows with warmth warmth warmth. She's cynical and sarcastic and talks about vaginas, yet the most earnest person ever and totally not afraid to say how she feels. Totally my kind of woman. She recently did a whole fitness body makeover kinda thing after being a "fat" girl for years... All of it was documented and she never lost her voice. 

On Instagram she posts pics of her enjoying London and heartfelt quotes that somehow she never makes corny- how does she do that!

She also gave up a regular job to go traveling round Europe recently. I mean, the fire! <3 

60 Postcards

@60Postcards

Rachel, Rachel- actually started her blog for a reason and with a big project and then less than a year later she got a a book deal. And she bloody deserved it. It's unusual for blogs I read to actually have a point. Rachel lost her Mum to cancer, very quickly and she left her a ticket to Paris and she used it and started the 60 postcards journey. It was an admirable feat that left her leaving postcards (60) with messages around Paris and then waiting to hear the response. It became an international journey where she made friends and inspired people along the way. And obvs got a book deal.

These days she writes about other admirable ideas or causes as well as updates on her own life. 

I dare you not to get involved in the 60 postcard journey once you read about it...

It was Against Her Better Judgment

@Blonde_M

I'm not sure what Blonde's name is I just know she's bloody cool and she writes in that succinct, observation of life kind of way that I so admire and so can't do.

From stories about her life to what she reads it's all with the controlled loquaciousness that perhaps Bridget Jones would of had if she had a few less Chardonnays and channeled a smidgen more Anna Wintour/Beyoncé.

Horses, courses, men and novels. What more could you want. On twitter she's dry as fuck. How I lurveee that. 

Girl Lost in the City

@girlostincity

It's hard for me not to put the entire Debrief staff on this list (there's two(ish) of them on it) because quite frankly, they're all fucking fabulous. But Emma Gannon (Social Media Editor at Debrief) writes one of those to-the-point blogs that you just gotta read. Whether it's on social media, the pay gap or marriage, she talks about it, like you'd talk.. you know. 

Bloody amazing on twitter too. To the point and not too up her arse to fangirl Zoella, cos that's what we all wanna do really. We want to talk about serious shit then get excited about what we're having for lunch. Biggggg stalking love. 

Marawilsonwritesstuff

@MaraWritesStuff

Otherwise known as Maltida and the little girl from Mrs Doubtfire and Miracle on 34th Street, Mara is now a fiery, smartcastic writer with an attitude. I'm new to her musings but all know is she's hilarious on twitter and the bits of her writing I have read are to the point yet really intelligent. Take her piece on OCD, as an on-and-off sufferer, it's really impressive to me that she write about it with such clarity and no hysteria. 

Also she's just one of those girls who dismisses the haters with a cool, clean nonchalance. 

LLG
+Liberty London Girl 
@LibertryLndnGirl

I feel a bit bad putting Sasha on this list like she's a newbie because she is the one who introduced the concept of blogging to me. I've read her blog since I basically knew what one was and despite her immense success she still does it with calm class. Writing on fashion, events, cooking, her life, her friends it's all casual and engaging. Unlike some lifestyle bloggers who seem to live the life of dreams  with no awareness or gratitude for what they are so lucky to have, you know with Sasha that she's working her arse off, but she loves it. Also she always says when she's been guested or comped by someone.

And she's bloody stylish and I just wanna go for a glass of champagnne with her and talk about how she did it. My idol.

PandoraSykes.Com
@PINSykes

Pandora Sykes should be one of those girls that jelly bitch girls hate... incredible wardrobe and figure, good haircut, oh so fashion forward and yet bloody intelligent, but she's not. 

She was Fashion Editor at the Debrief (there's the other one), but has moved to Sunday Times Style as Fashion Features editor, big hurrah. She bloody deserves it (not at all simmering, I'm all gal power me).

The thing with Pandora is, it's more than one read. Because basically she's a wordsmith too. Fucking love her instagram pics and her satirical comments on life.

Love London (Formerly This Little Lady)
+LOVE_LONDON 
@Love_London

JJ Miller know lots about London and she tells us all about it with ease and modesty. She just your mate, you know. I'd always take her restaurant and bar reccs. And the fact that she has lived with CFS and Fibromyalgia (look it up it's bloody horrendous to live with and basically means chronic pain) for the last few years is just an additional fact. Because she writes about well-being and happinesss from a place that really understands and values it. Her posts make me happy and appreciate my life and then she chucks in a sample sale or an unknown London event and I love her even more.

Big kisses to JJ.

So these my gurllllssss yeah. Go and stalk them and read their bloody amazing writing, because they're all class.

PS: Hope none of them are too offended by my stalker tendencies... I'm just a fangirl ya know

On Still Being An Inbetweener

Firstly I'd like to point out that the original series of The Inbetweeners started in 2008 when I was neither a teenager, nor male, however certainly identified with that late-teenage claw through life. Time was when everything was a potential embarassment or fuck-up and you really didn't know whether you were coming or going. Whether it was cringe-worthy encounters with the opposite sex, the endless quest for "cool" or the feeling of being slightly out of place in every possible situation.

I also identified greatly with the sentiment of the "Inbetweener", halfway between childhood and adulthood and not really sure if you want to be either. The thing is now in my *cough late twenties, I would have assumed that my "Inbetweener" stage was over and I'd be well into my adjusted adult phase where everyday life was a breeze and my problems were only important, real things like death and taxes.

I have since discovered that is not the case.

July Lust List

It is summer and so I shouldn't really think about shopping, more about sunning and lying and reading. Why do more people not have outside beds? Anyway, this is a new series - the monthly Lust List. Basically, just things I want... a wide variety of things really.. Here we go

In Praise of Americana

Friday was the 4th of July, Independence Day, a celebration for Americans across the world. Generally as a fastidious cynical Brit there's plenty of things I like to criticise about our friends over the pond notably language, faux-positivity an geographical ignorance. However really the United States of America is a complex and astounding country that has given the world a lot of impressive objects, laws, celebrations and notable figures. In honour of the 4th July, here is my personal and current top 10 brilliant Yank things or people:

1) Attitude

Yes, yes, yes. Well done. You can. Congrats. The yanks are streets ahead of us in celebrating success. The clichéd and much maligned American dream is still woven into the fabric of the country. Every small town gal and guy can make their dreams come true and America praises them when they do. They're proud of their countrymen's success. 

Whilst there may be a lot to criticise about the American attitude towards various things, they rarely tear down and scorn the successful as we often do in Britain. Surely success should be encouraged (ungrit your teeth).

2) Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Country Music and Hoedowns

Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, the man in black, drug addict, lover, prison reformer and epic songwriter and singer. I pine for his dark tones and languid lyrics. I do not recognise his world and yet I lap up the emotion he conveys. I want him.

Dolly Parton and her hoedown contemporaries are part of a genre that we will never have in GB, despite our recent bout of nu-folk bands. Oh how I yearn to journey to Nashville and dance in cowboy boots all night...

3) Denim

Levi's were the first, hard wearing clothing for the workers which have since become an international unform for hipster teens, weekend dads, chic oligarch wives and everything in between.

God bless America for making our lives easier...

4) Teen Drama TV

Not sure if I would have got through the relative vanilla-mess of my Home Counties adolescence without Dawson, Jen, Joey, Pacey, Ryan, Marisa, Brooke, Lucas, Chuck and Blair. Well in to my early twenties these kids had my heart and the wardrobes I wanted. Why did public school boys from Guildford not have the rippling abs of Ryan or the deft wit of Seth, the sexiness of Chuck. Why didn't we have jocks and keg parties and incredible vocabularys...

In "teen-drama" land if you drunk a few drinks every Saturday, you were probably an alcoholic, the boys next door were cute (they NEVER are) and it was quite normal for close friends to die or have sex with your boyfriends...I bloody miss them and their prematurely 30-year-old acerbic wit...

(*side note: also weird how the actors playing their parents were probably about five years older than some of them)

5) ScarJo

Yes, I know her parents are Danish and Russian or something similar, but she is seen as the modern classic American sex symbol, and she is. At the top of my #girlcrush list... there are little who rival that blonde bombshell look. She makes some good films too... but to be honest I just stare at her face.

6) Hollywood and Films

This could be seen to be a tad wide perhaps.. but the USA is the centre of the film industry, the championer of the Talkie, the location of the famous Hollywood Hills. Some of the best movies in the world ever have been made there.. and some more of the best have been funded by money that comes from there.

I can't really write too much about films without being terribly sweeping and I love too many. So I'm not going to, but you get my point.

7) Martin Luther King

 “You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid…. You refuse to do it because you want to live longer…. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you, or shoot at you or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand.

Well, you may go on and live until you are 90, but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.”

8) New York City

  There is something in the New York air that makes sleep useless. Simone Beauvoir

I lived in New York when I was 19 in 2005 for three months with one of my best friends. 

We had a tiny apartment in East Village that was infested with mice, we had no TV and lived on Chips Ahoy and Reeses Pieces. By day we interned at an advertising company and a photography studio. At night and at the weekend, we walked and shopped and explored. We only walked though, we had no idea how to use public transport.. occasionally at night we'd shell for a taxi. We blagged our way with terrible fake ids and the most British accents we could manage into clubs: Duvet, Marquee, Bungalow 8 and then stood silently staring at everyone, impossibly glamourous American everyones. And there we were in our peasant skirts and coin belts weighed down by beads, as was the way.

We snuck into gallery openings and drunk all the free wine. One time we stayed up all night dancing in the W Hotel basement and then later in The Coffee Shop with some boys from New Jersey who bought us club sandwiches and champagne. 

Us in NYC, 2005

We stalked the Olsen Twins, devouring US Weekly and the like to try and guess where we could run in to them. We bought so many clothes that we couldn't afford. We stared at ground zero sadly. We watched live music in little dive bars in Greenwich Village and skipped down the street at midnight singing Downtown by Petula Clark..

The thing is... we just weren't aware. We knew we were lucky, but we weren't aware how lucky.

New York is beautiful city, an impossible city, a city that deafens you and hurls you around. It is in your face you see, but it's also layered and witty and clever. And small enought to really know. And big enough to hide. And you can just walk everywhere, which I love.

9) F Scott Fitzgerald and His Contemporaries

20th Century American literature has always been one of my favourite eras. I just loved what they were searrching for, Fitzgerald, Williams, Salinger, Miller, Walker, Kerouac, Lee and then later, Palahnuik and Morrison etc etc etc. It was so different to everything I ever read before when I started reading it at 16. It was so about the now and the future and little to do with the past... It was so about the pressures of success and who belonged. What made one acceptable or a decent person. Racism, Sexism, Capitalism it was all so exciting it burned me up inside and kept me searching for more from over-the-pond.

This may be another too-wide reaching paragraph. But it's true.

10) Computers and Social Media

Bill Gates; Steve Jobs; Marc Zuckerberg; Jack Dorsey... I salute them all...