Let us go then, you and I

Found out about the wonderful comic book artist Julian Peters. He turns classic poetry into comic books and has recently begun to tackle one of my favorite T.S. Eliot poems, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.  It seems that he is going to turn the whole thing into a published book, and I cannot wait to get a copy, whenever that might be.

For your reading pleasure, the first 9 pages:

I've loved this poem since I was introduced to Eliot by one of my English teachers in high school. Now, I'm no artist, but back in college when I fancied that I might be, I made my own Prufrock art. Here he is:

I think I was going for:

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, and afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

  So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all --

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

And when I am formulate, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

   And how should I presume?

(via The Rumpus)

the sky is something beautiful

I just wanted to see something beautiful this morning.

(via The Awl, and here and here too)

More Truth from Alex Balk

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. In my opinion, there's no better person writing about regret and the general malaise and ennui of life on the internet than Alex Balk, over at The Awl. He hit me with another one this morning:

"Maybe the best bit about life—and I am setting an admittedly low bar here, but look what we have to deal with—is that although we are always tempted to pinpoint specific instances where the decisions we made had irrevocable effects on our trajectory from that moment forward, if we are honest with ourselves we can admit that, for the most part, we were going to wind up exactly where we did no matter what. We are who we are and the choices we make are the results of those immutable traits that add up to the person who, for better or worse and usually worse, stares back at us in the mirror each morning with a mixture of pity and astonishment. If we could turn back time we would mostly make the same mistakes, maybe at different moments but always moving us in the same direction. You've fucked up your life through an accretion of small details, not by one or two enormous errors. It is pointless to pine for a do-over; you would just do it over badly. That is who you are and at some point you will have to make peace with it." - Alex Balk making a long winded point about how it's Daylight Savings time this Sunday, November 3rd at 3 am. 

Old Love / New Love... Grand Theft Auto 5?

I knew that one day there would be a reason that I cared about video games, or rather, that I wished I cared about video games because in not caring, I am missing out on something. That day has finally come and it was today. Twin Shadow released a new song on (with? through?) Grand Theft Auto 5 and it is SO GOOD. I didn't even know that Grand Theft had music - like how is it incorporated into the game? Is it just background? Is it like bumping out of the speakers as you cruise around running old ladies over? Is that even what you do in the game? That is 100% my perception and understanding of the game. But I digress... I love this jam.

Bravado FFFRRANNNO Remix

Getting into remixes is a downward spiral, you guys. There are SO MANY. Also, thanks to Stereogum for writing an article about the new (maybe not so new...) synthetic sound and what I have been noticing more and more in my own Spotify listening preferences, as evidenced here and here.

But, I do love this remix of Lorde's Bravado. It's got a real Purity Ring vibe to it that I would like to sprinkle all over everything right now. Also, can her whole album come out now yet?

You choose yr sink-hole.

There's a whirling in yr brain, but inside every; whirling is a quiet, after the howl undoes itself. You can keep sliding down its spirals or you can sniff out the still spot and put yr toe in it & let it suck you in. Either one, loving or not; loving is a sucking in,. You choose yr sink-hole. knowing that always there will be more Whirlings & more absences stuck to those fragrant ribs.

- Baba Yaga

Ah, no nostalgia hurts as much as nostalgia for things that never existed

From #I am just living to be dying by your side, Darren Bader's most recent show at Franco Noero in Torino, Italy:

(via Contemporary Art Daily)

Shades of Eternal Night

When you're laying in bed at 4 o'clock in the morning waiting for the sun to rise, you can really see the shades of night - and eternity is real. Last night the shades didn't look like Mr. Cy Twombly's, but to each his or her own. These are beautiful anyway. Of course, the sun did finally come up and it turned the mountains all bruised and bluish-purple and the sky glowed pink and I let my body run with my mind and we all calmed down slightly. 

Fifty Days at Iliam: Shades of Eternal Night, 1978 

Fifty Days at Iliam: The Fire that Consumes All before It, 1978 

contemporary poetry

Ladies be writing poetry, you guys! And I am feeling it. Just two little snippets that I've run across in the past few months that, at the moment, spoke to me.

They spoke to me enough in the first case to take a screenshot of the poem on my phone because it was posted on facebook without a link (but really what is the world coming to - screenshots?), and in the second case, after absentmindedly reading it on my Feedly (RIP Google Reader) and then realizing hours later it was still floating around in my brain, I had to do random Google searches (like I said, RIP Reader: Feedly does not have a search function?!?!?!?) with key words that I remembered, like "Gonzalez poetry beautiful Rumpus" or maybe I tried Paris Review because it could have been that too? Honestly don't know how I found it again, but that's the magic of the Google machine.

Reading them right now, it's not like, HEY I AM FEELING THESE SAME FEELINGS AHORA MISMA, but more like: Hey, I have felt these feelings, and way to get them totally right.

I had been sad for so long that it shocked me,
by Ruth L. Schwartz


the enormous yellow moon
balanced like a honeydew

on the hill's knife-edge,
fat and implacable.

It wavered there as long as it could,
then started - and who can blame it - 

its slow slide.
As if it meant to show me what was missing.

As if the world were asking, Will you learn
to stand beside this pain?

No, I said,
I wish it dead.

I said no. But the world
said yes. 

(via The Sun)


untitled 5
by Mira Gonzalez

I am looking at people who are dancing and touching each other
I am drinking vodka with ice and feeling incredibly fucked
I wonder if anyone feels more lonely now than they felt an hour ago
when they were alone in their rooms looking at things on the internet

(via The Rumpus)

summer nights

The Sartorialist captured these two lovely ladies in Florence and they look just how I would like to look and be this summer: comfortable, happy, relaxed, and beautiful.

(via The Sartorialist)

Eduardo Sarabia: Tainted

I was hanging out at the MCA Denver a few weeks ago for their Summer Camp Orientation night and stumbled upon their Eduardo Sarabia gallery on the first floor, and holy yes, am I glad that I did.

If I had money money money (sing it, duh), you had better believe that I would be hanging one of these babies in my future home. These were some of the most beautiful paintings I have ever seen. The technical facility this guy has with oil paint is like yikes. It's one thing to paint a photorealistic painting of a person or a landscape, but to then paint splotches of paint that are giant and on top of said photorealistic painting and are also photorealistic? CRAZYTOWN. It looks like he was absentmindedly using old photos as palettes to mix his colors and then was like wait, these are gorgeous and decided to paint the mini-palettes, photo and paint daubs and all, instead. It was great. If you ever have a chance to see his paintings, or even better, buy his paintings, do it! 

is this how you do this?

There has to be no shame, right? No shame to putting on makeup, just to sit in your room. Just to take Photobooth photos. Just to turn them into your first GIF ever? I guess this is how you do this. 

no time to think about cronuts

do you know the reason i love making bread and croissants? because i create something and then it is eaten. it is destroyed. so i do not have to keep seeing it over and over again, picking it apart and deciding it it not worth anything. i was never gonna be an artist. no way jose. - lpr

Muted and Oversized and Floral and Perfect

Dries

Rochas

Dries

Rochas

Rochas

Rochas

Can someone buy me all these things to wear this fall?

(Dries via The Sartorialist, Rochas via The Sartorialist)

Your skin will turn into seaweed

When your friend says just the right thing and it makes your heart swell instead of sinking even further into its pit of disgust and disbelief with the human race, well when that happens, you can't not share her words with the world:

What a wang. I am so so sorry that people think they can be dicks and that it won’t catch up with them. Guess what, IT WILL. Even if you are handsome or cool or whatever it will catch up with you and wolves will bite your ankles or a bear will decide your house is HIS house OR your skin will turn to seaweed!!! THESE THINGS WILL HAPPEN TO YOU SHOULD YOU CONTINUE TO BE SUCH A SELFISH GIRLFRIEND HAVING PIG TROTTER!!!!!

so do yourself a good

Did I go at it wrong?
Did I go intentionally to destroy me?

It's one of the emo days, you guys, in which I am having so many feelings. They match up with this song pretty well. I particularly love the phrasing at the end of this song, where he's saying, I want to be well, but it sounds more like:

Well, I want to be. Well, I want to be. Well, I want to be. 

Like he can't even finish the sentence because he doesn't know what he wants to be. Or maybe he just wants to be. Also, he's not fucking around. Me too and me either, Sufjan.

protest

I used to paint things sometimes. This ended up in a trash bin somewhere, but lives on in the dregs of my email.

maybe it's time to let it go

You breathe, you learn, you lose

You take, you break, you choose

And as you learn, you cry.

You do your best, and try.

And as the days go by

It makes you wonder why

You try so hard, so hard

To mend what’s bound to fall apart.

Oh maybe it’s time

To let it go

Maybe it’s time

To take it slow.

- "Broken Chairs" Chris and Tom

dance models, dance

Awkward model dancing is the best.

Chum

I guess I'm officially jumping on the bandwagon. First it was Frank, then Tyler, now Earl. This is now playing: everywhere in my life.

Literally the best description of a hangover, ever

"When that ineffable compound of depression, sadness (these two are not the same), anxiety, self hatred, sense of failure and fear for the future begins to steal over you, start telling yourself that what you have is a hangover. You are not sickening for anything, you have not suffered a minor brain lesion, your family and friends are not leagued in a conspiracy of barely maintained silence about what a shit you are, you are not come at last to see life as it really is and there is no use crying over spilt milk."

- Kingsley Amis

IFHY

Pitchfork says this song is lengthy and adroit. I like it anyway! (I have always been a sucker for Pharrell though.) All in all though, they basically cosign the album, which I guess proves Mr. Gambino right. They do "only like rappers who crazy or hood man."

Forgiveness

"What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I'd done something I shouldn't have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I'd done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn't do anything differently than I had done?"

What if Dear Sugar aka Cheryl Strayed was able to express so succintly what I hope to feel so fully in the future? She already has in her wonderful book Wild. Read it!

Emails to My Sister #2: In which I discuss my feelings toward Coachella

So I'm probably gonna get a lot of flack for this retroactively when someone actually reads this blog in like two years, but what can I say? These are my grumpy, party-pooper feelings. And so, here's another edition of Emails to My Sister in which I am trying to make her feel better that someone she used to know is playing Coachella. Names and pronouns have been changed to protect the privacy of the innocent.... although after reading you can probably tell that I don't give a shit about "their" privacy.

Coachella is DUMB. That's all I have to say and all that I've ever said. Big WHOOP. They're playing a show that is mostly known for people wearing cutoff jeans, ankle boots (you are in the DESERT, people), feathers and fringe - ALL AT ONCE. Coachella is not an "either/or" situation.  

So yes. I guess I'm just not that impressed.  

However, if we ARE going to assume that Coachella is cool (which I will NOT concede), then we must consider how cool -------  is among those bands that are cool enough to be invited. Three criteria to consider: 

1) Was the band/group/performer mentioned in a major news article listing bands that people might be excited about hearing? (Who cares about them?) 

2) How big is the font for the band on the official Coachella poster? (ie. How well known are they?) 

3) What stage are they playing? (ie. How many people will want to watch them play?) 

So far, here's what I can find: 

1) MTV did NOT mention them in their release about the show. 

2) SO SMALL! On the fourth line! BELOW Lumineers, Gaslight Anthem, Portugal the Man, Japandroids and a bunch of people I've NEVER heard of. 

3) Their stage is "TBD" which means they're not big enough to have been a priority to have already been assigned a stage. 

So clearly, subjectively (in my opinion) and objectively (I just proved it scientifically in items #1,2, and 3) it is NOT a big deal that they are playing Coachella. 

Also, a new #4 I just made up: Like A MILLION bands are playing. Did they invite every band who has ever played to more than 500 people?! That's not very selective at all....

Love you!

So yeah. Everyone loves Coachella and I'm a crazy person for thinking it's not cool. No - I've never even been. I am being that judgemental. At least I'm being honest. 

I'm in the Milky Way

"I Love It (feat. Charli XCX)" by Icona Pop

Yup. I'm on this train, thanks to Girls. Although, to be fair, I did first hear about them from The Hairpin, which is where I get about 20% of my daily reading.

Where do I get the REST of my daily reading? SO GLAD YOU ASKED: I get another 30% from The Awl, 25% from Vulture, 15% from random Illustration/Personal/Style blogs [Hey, Boobs Radley, Nathaniel Russell, The Blonde Coyote, Cailin, and other people!], a shameful 5% from Red Carpet Runway, and then round that out with about 5% of Maru!

Alex Balk: Most Excellent Truth Writer

"I tend to vacillate between a) pretending that nothing really matters because our existence, no matter how highly evolved we like to tell ourselves we are, is essentially a meaningless and arbitrary journey through a course fraught with obstacles both external and self-made in which we think we are choosing our own direction when in reality we are being pushed along by a collection of chemicals whose only goal is to spread their own ingredients regardless of the damage it does to their current host and b) cowering in the corner when confronted by the certainty that there's no actual need to pretend, because it's all true."

Seriously. Balk's the best. 

Emails to My Sister #1: In which I discuss Macklemore's arms

Some of my most honest writing/the only writing I do happens in emails to my sister, so I'm just going to start posting that shit here....

Some quick background - we've recently become big Macklemore & Ryan Lewis fans and have been listening to and watching a bunch of their stuff. This is in a response to an email where she confessed: "My crush couldn't be bigger... on Macklemore." If you're interested, I myself go for Mr. Lewis (as Dave calls him). Anyway, without further ado, entry #1 in Emails to My Sister:

So, that was a MUCH better performance than either of his Ellen performances (Editors note: My mother has turned us into Ellen fanatics). The lights made a huge difference. Without them it's just like, him.... standing, hopping and jumping around on the stage? Which I guess is not that much difference from every live rap/hiphop/rock performance ever, but in the past, it's just felt a little flat. This time though the song had a TON of energy. So on Ellen, I didn't expect it when they did Same Love but I did expect it from Thrift Shop and he just didn't deliver!! Also I love that he always has other people there to DO what they actually DO in his songs (guy who sings the hook, guy who plays the trumpet). 

This performance was also probably your favorite because DAMN, look at those guns. I'm with Dave, PUT A SHIRT ON, Macklemore. 

Dave himself was a great addition to this performance. It was funny that at the end he was so clueless, because as he was introducing them, I was like, it must be weird for David Letterman to have to introduce all the "new, hip" acts every night when he's totally at a different stage in his life and probably couldn't care less. And then he demonstrated that he COULDN'T care less: he didn't even know who Ryan Lewis was! It's not like he maliciously doesn't care about these things, he just seems to be older and sort of like, "Yeah whatever, I've seen it all. Good for you, but you're the thousandth new act I've had to introduce in my lifetime..." 

In conclusion.... Ryan Lewis came out from behind his DJ station!!!!! 

xo

Kitty and Angel Y'all...

In January, I had this moment where I realized I wanted to be putting more Vibes out into the Universe, but the Vibes were a little different than what I had normally conceptualized as the vision of this blog. So I started another blog. An EVEN MORE SECRET BLOG. Less secret now that I just linked to it. But  recently I have realized it is silly to have two blogs. It's pretty similar to how I've been in the past: there's School-Sarah, Home-Sarah, Sporty-Sarah, Arty-Sarah.... and the list goes on. I think this is pretty dumb. I'm trying to have more of a ZFG attitude toward life, which so far means I get arm tattoos if I want to and now I'm going to post all my favorite aggregated content in ONE place, not two. Also, I'm gonna repost highlights from there, over here. Starting.... now:

This post started one of those internet black holes. Apparently Grimes tweeted about it. Then I had to watch her new video. And then I started thinking about all the female rappers I like these days...

Which meant I had to re-listen to Angel Haze's New York. I love that she totes channels Andre 3000 on one verse (starts around 2:22). And THEN....

I had to finally read all the tweets and listen to all the songs from 2013's first Twitter brawl.

It was your typical internet black hole. Loved it.

Ice Dreams

Spring is right around the corner here. Walking out of the house this morning it was drizzling, the birds were chirping and I can feel that I'll be riding my motorcycle this weekend. That doesn't mean I can't still have dreams of beautiful blue ice falls.

(via head due north)

Surfboards and Sand

Missed this campaign a while back, but I am no less taken with it. 

Things that I love:

- Bird of Paradise print all over everything

- Color and proportion of Mariacarla's outfit

- Black pickup truck

- Gisele's posture (that is how I sit!)

- Murdered out surfboards

What's really bringing it all together for me though, in both pictures, is the lighting. In the first one, there's an unnatural pinkish glow that is highlighting all the right things. In the second one, everything is muted and bleak which balances the natural garishness of the clothes. Garish, in this case, of course being a compliment.

(via Materialiste)

another era

If this is what is to be found in Las Vegas over Easter, then next year, my darling, you will find me there too.

(via The Sartorialist)

You'll never be Manhattan

Missing this, hard. 

(via The Awl)

to be and to have

Can I simultaneously covet him and his wardrobe? Stopped off at my favorite local bookstore, Tattered Cover, on Colfax and the photos were even better in person. Charlie Hunnam is a dreamboat supreme.

(via rackk and ruin)

embrace your weird

Grimes seems to have taken all her favorite things and best ideas and decided that they all should reside in one music video... and it is this one fascinating, mesmerizing, and utterly indescribable video for the song Genesis. Not promising you'll enjoy it, but I sure did.

more palm trees in 2013

via 29b-lady