a girl is a gun

School has started and I feel like with this new beginning has come a drainage of creativity. I have come to terms with the reality that my time will now be full of essays, tests, and studying with an extreme lacking of creation. My favorite class right now is AP English and I hope my days don't turn into cloudy perceptions of hackneyed desire.

david bowie, a.k.a the king to I the queen

shrooms

sky ferriera i think

dana boulos i think

some awesome crank

more awesome crank

flash with passion

bang bang

psychedelic and AWESOME KILL ME NOW I LOVE IT

wow

thought provoking so think

Andy Warhol the other king

rocks by an artist

art my an artist

art that rocks and is nice

i aspire to create this

ginger & rosa

I woke up at 8 am this morning to bad cramps and period-related dry heaving. So to null my pain I decided to watch Ginger & Rosa, a movie starring Elle Fanning, the red head from Mad Men, and some other people.

To put it quite simply, it was amazing. Beautiful sets, amazing cinematography. It was really captivating, but also rather empty. I felt like it was an instrument missing some strings, preventing you from playing the entire piece. But I'm not really bothered by that. I think it was perfect just the way it was. To be honest, I liked it more than Moonrise Kingdom. Mood wise/aesthetically, I felt it was a hybrid of The Virgin Suicides and Lost and Delirious. 

It takes place in 1960s London during the Cuban Missile Fire. Two best friends, Ginger and Rosa, are similar yet different yet united yet divided. Both precocious but in entirely different ways, the movie highlights the maturation experienced in teendom, as well as the growth that ultimately can lead to two united souls to split off, running from each other, perhaps unconsciously, and somehow, perhaps, perchance, finding their way back to each other. Elle was fucking awesome no shit and the girl that played Rosa was great as well. I related to both characters in many ways.

I found it interesting how while Rosa seemed so precocious and mature, her desires really seemed to highlight her vulnerability and naïvety as a character. Ginger, while precocious in her own way, was also naïve, but in the way that we all are as teenagers. I related to Ginger almost entirely and completely (besides all that dad drama). Her activism kind of inspired my life and mirrored my life all at the same time. Protests are rad. Her passions, fears, and demeanor seemed to mirror my own existence and her interests in things that nobody understood, even her best friend, were basically my life made into one single line said while in a bathtub in blue jeans.

This movie is definitely one that is extremely important to me. It is probably one of my favorites. Despite something seeming empty, I think it needed to be that way. It needed to have missing strings in order to be complete. Ginger is literally me. This movie basically defines me. I just want to put on my glasses and see it over and over again.

I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it.

I watched it on TV, so I couldn't get any screenshots, but I found some pretty ones online and on tumblr.

Pow Wow.

quixotic explorations

Summer is almost over. I don't really know what to think -- I'm disappointed because there is so much I want to do before school starts but I feel I have very little time left. For some reason it's so much harder to be creative and do things during school because there is always something hanging over my head - homework, tests, projects... it's just a big ball of stress that I hate.

Exploration is a theme I try to keep ever present in my life. My aspirations are often quixotic and seemingly unattainable, but I credit my drive to explore and take risks to my determination and curiosity. To me, exploring is creating, whether it's in my paintings, photographs, or attempts to make everyday life into what feels like a movie scene. Perhaps all of that is superfluous, but it keeps things interesting, new, and my heart racing. 

Sometimes I feel like all the stress that comes with school robs me of my curiosity to explore. It seems there is never enough time to take a deep breath and delve into a project without suddenly remembering a test I need to study for or an essay that needs to be written. School forces you to constantly live in the what's to come rather than living in the now. It's as if you're invariably running a race where the finish line keeps moving further and further away from you, forcing you to keep running faster and faster while inadvertently ignoring what you could discover and create if you simply took a moment to stop and walk through the unfamiliar.

School makes you rush through life. You learn to ace the test, and then you learn some more to ace the next one. There is no time to understand, explore, or question the information presented to you. Everything is incontrovertible. Respect is demanded rather than earned. Teachers are far from impartial. Sometimes it seems that schools are more corrupt than government.

These are a selection of photographs that have been saved on my desktop for quite some time. I've kept them because they intrigue me, excite me, and inspire me. To me these photos and artworks represent what is out of my reach, but something I soon hope to grasp. 

My favorite Gustav Klimt piece

Marie-France Pizier

Matto Cocci

I think this is a vintage photograph of New Zealand

Lina Scheynius

Lina Scheynius is a photographer living in London. She was born in Vänersborg, Sweden, but grew up in Trollhättan. Lina began taking photos at ten years old, and has since then made what was a hobby into a career. Her photographs illustrate an honest portrayal of young adulthood. I love the honesty and truth in her work -- she captures moments, and is able to showcase the beauty in the everyday simplicity  of life. These are some of my favorite photos that I've selected from her various series'.

My favorite one of her photos.