August’s Rio Olympics threw London 2012’s legacy into stark relief, hot days were cooled by gothic wonderings and wanderings eased by new Arche red shoes. Yet more reasons to cheerful were found in the story of Ian Dury, the mystical art of Georgiana Houghton, a photo a day for #AugustBreak2016, notebooks, and the female empowerment film Now Voyager - can we have it all? "Oh Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars…"
“Why don’t you cover a big cork bulletin board in bright pink felt, banded with bamboo, and pin with coloured thumb-tacks all your various enthusiasms as your life varies from week to week?”
The Gothic - on attempting to write a short story:
August and Stylist’s short story competition is ‘Gothic’. Yet Gothic is so full of marginal places, transitional time periods and uncertainty - is it, isn’t it a ghost? etc - that it’s hard to pin down. Professor John Bowen says Gothic shocks us out of the everyday into the seemingly inexplicable - consider me baffled.
Georgiana Houghton - an abstract pioneer re-evaluated at The Courtauld:
Victorian artist Georgiana Houghton produced water colour images under the guidance of a spirit called Henry Lenny and 70 Archangels. The result? Abstract pieces in kaleidoscopic swirls and lace-like tracery that one critic, back then, termed Turner meets fairies; another: “The most astonishing exhibition in London at the present moment.”
Why 21st Techies Love a Moleskine Notebook - The New Yorker
Technology and environmental concerns mean paper has been seen as passe. But the cloud, online or even on screen are intangible spaces thoughts slip in between. The only way to hold onto ideas, I find, is to write them by hand on paper. Even Silicon Valley is turning back the page…
Ian Dury - Sex & Drugs & Rock 'n' Roll biopic:
There was more to Ian Dury than Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick. Physically disabled he wrote Spasticus Autisticus, a protest song against the International Year of Disabled Persons - the BBC banned it, before it was ‘reclaimed’ at the 2012 Summer Paralympics opening ceremony: "I wibble when I piddle / Cos my middle is a riddle".
Olympic Legacies - opening ceremony co-creator Frank Cottrell Boyce asks what London 2012 did for us?:
It aimed to “put culture right at the heart of our national narrative” - an industry to go forth and flourish with. But post Brexit: “What. The. Hell. Happened?” Citing Humphrey Jennings’s Pandaemonium as inspiration FCB tells of a book bought and gifted: “giving - giving of time, of books, of ideas - is the metabolism that drives culture.”
August Break - a photographic journey guided by Susannah Conway:
Not a far flung journey but a route back to discovering the creativity, the beauty, the unexpected in the everyday #AugustBreak2016 saw an online group given daily prompts - ‘three’, ‘yellow’ or ‘my favourite taste’, say - and the results shared. Rediscovered: my love of window reflections and the resulting surreal feel.
Arche Shoes - my magical Traid red shoe discovery:
Roger Vivier said: “To wear dreams on one's feet is to begin to give a reality to one's dreams.” but finding a pair of cute shoes which facilitate a half decent walking experience is a bit of a nightmare methinks. Enter Arche: an elegant French brand with pure lactae hevea soles!?
Now, Voyager - a lesson in less is more?:
Bette Davis is transformed, Cinderella-style, from dowdy spinster to elegant sophisticate; navigating her new-found freedom aided by her psychiatrist and style notes pinned to her clothes. Empowered: she stands up to her mother, inherits a fortune, but accepts her ‘prince’ must remain unobtainable. Are we always asking for the moon?