i thrive best hermit style

...with a beard and a pipe.

05:05

04:21

05:17

These are all wildly different in style, but I feel they're united in general feeling and purpose by other things. In each of them there are moments where it doesn't require the listener to focus on an individual aspect to the sound but rather let the whole wash over them.

sonnet 73

My close and extended family on my mum's side make at least two pilgramages to Tywyn in Wales every year (though none of us have ever lived there) and have done for nigh on sixty years. I was just looking through these photos I took during the autumn holidays in 2008 and missing the traditional October half-term activities of wildly wind-swept beach walks, hikes up Bird Rock, traversing floods, carving pumpkins, playing quidditch (don't ask) and attending the bonfire and fireworks at Rhydyronen. Right now my family are in Tywyn as usual, enjoying all of the above, while I'm here in Southampton translating Anglo-Saxon poetry. Badly. However I'll not be disheartened, pumpkin shopping is on the cards for tomorrow and I need to plan my Halloween costume!

1-6 taken using Ricoh X10/Fujifilm Superia 400 35mm
7 with digital Kodak DX6490

insomniac, take an original tack

Stills from Christiane F

give a girl the correct footwear

and she can conquer the world.

Cheers Bette Midler, I'll use that phrase as some sort of rationalisation for my shoe love. It started with my first pair of 'real' shoes when I was a toddler - apparantly I was so enamoured with my feet that I kept falling over because I stared at them constantly. Basically, I blame my recent extravagant online purchase on my parents, because they bought me tiny patent shoes all those years ago. When I first saw the studded Chloë Sevigny ankle boots above (from the Pre-Fall 08 collection) on the Jak & Jil blog I fell head over heels in love with them, and started to make elaborate savings plans though I knew deep down it was unlikely that I'd ever own a pair myself. Then just when I'd given up hope, Office came to the rescue and put an almost identical pair on the market at 10% of the price. I bought them, delirious with happiness and student loan.

SO BEAUTIFUL. I wore them for the first time today, to Sainsburys. It wasn't a particularly glamourous outing but at least they've been introduced to the outside world. Their wonderfulness is such that it actually made my feet feel happy.

Puritan dress - Uniqlo, leaf necklace - 50p from a clock shop in Tywyn, ankle boots from Office.

I was feeling particularly nun-like today, so wore my puritanical but lovely Uniqlo dress. The material is really nice, as are the bell sleeves. It could do with a belt really but I can't find any thin enough - where sells skinny plain brown leather belts these days? I haven't worn the leaf before now as it didn't feel autumny enough. 50p!

cut adrift

It is a very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel itself quite alone in the world, cut adrift from every connexion, uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by many impediments from returning to that it has quitted.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

awake from dreaming

I've already written about the new single "Whole New Way" by The Horrors, due to be released on 2nd November, as being my absolute favourite song right now. The video debuted online yesterday, and I thought it deserved a post. Aesthetically I think it's a great concept for a video, as essentially we see the rising of the sun over 3 minutes in time with the gradual crescendo of the music; the colours move from the twilight spectrum of blues, purples and greys to the pinks and oranges of early dawn. Add some steam punk-esque goggles and some very good 'mood walking' and you've got yourself a music video.

Loathe as I am to link to Pitchfork, you can see the video here!

as time goes by