September, second chance saloon for new beginnings, especially for the stationery lovers and the constant self-improvers (or, ahem, procrastinators) amongst us.
This month the SEVEN sketchbook collective began a new term, I re-pondered the power of the uniform, took a ‘lesson’ in history-meets-science-faction, learned a bit about the School of Doodle, and discovered the most dangerous word in the dictionary… .
“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?”
New Room New View - the peril of muddles
For months my stuff has been stacked and stored against the wall. My bedroom felt like a stockroom. Only it looked over the woods. I loved all those leaves. It was peaceful. But I felt a bit disconnected. And a bit stuck.
A move to the front of the house and things feel and look different. And I got to thinking of A Room With a View. I reckoned on finding an insightful view-themed quote. But wound up with these words of wisdom on the terror of ‘muddles’ instead:
“Take an old man’s word; there’s nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror - on the things that I might have avoided. We can help one another but little. I used to think I could teach young people the whole of life, but I know better now, and all my teaching of George has come down to this: beware of muddle.”
A uniform - it may look easy, but...
Speaking of muddles I’m still forever trying to capsulise (have I made up a word?) my wardrobe. Clothes alone do not maketh the stylish. Effortless style seems to be the answer to a tricky equation which entails - cheesy as it sounds - knowing yourself.
Here’s what a 1978 edition of the Washington Post reported French designer Sonia Rykiel as saying on the power of the uniform:
“It is most important for a woman to find her own form, her unique form … It is not uniformity. It is the place of a woman. Like her house, her bed, the street where she lives, the shop where she buys the food she eats. It’s a mixture of all this. And it is a unique place where she is completely herself.”
“The trick to discovering your ‘uniform’,” they asked?
“I can’t help. You must find it alone. She must try many things, look in the mirror. And keep doing it till you find your unique form.”
No shortcuts. Dammit!
The Boys From Brazil - a uniform project?
Just what does a fugitive Nazi war criminal wear in order to operate under the radar in ‘70s South America? Well, if you’re Gregory - Atticus Finch - Peck playing Josef Mengele in TBFB it’s a too white suit offset by too black hair.
I’m pretty sure the first I heard of Nazi SS officer and physician Mengele was in a book on vampires in film. Only thing, unlike Nosferatu, he was real…
His assignment to Auschwitz gave him the opportunity to continue his pre-war genetic research. Famed for his particular brand of camp cruelty he became known as the Angel of Death.
Cold and sadistic, the candy-carrying ‘uncle Mengele’ had no regard for the lives of his victims - who were mostly children and mostly twins.
The Boys From Brazil - a novel by author of Rosemary’s Baby Ira Levin - imagines what he did next. Because Mengele got away.
Hunted by his own Van Helsing - Yakov Liebermann played by Laurence Olivier in the film - Mengele plots to kill 94 men aged 65. But what nefarious experiment could he be conducting now? Could it be anything to do those sneery, ice-eyed doppel…, no, triple-gängers perchance?
New Moleskine New Me? - plus that dangerous word...
It’s one thing for someone else to foil your plans. But what if you’re a self saboteur?
To me the ‘T’ part of SMART goal-setting stands for ‘trouble’. Work deadlines - fine. Personal deadlines? Not so much.
And, so it was while watching Cruise-Cameron action comedy Knight & Day that I had what Oprah Winfrey calls an ‘aha’ moment.
“Someday. That’s a dangerous word. It’s really just a code for ‘never’.”
Says Tom Cruise’s overzealous ‘I’ve got this’ agent Roy.
Thus, my trusty new Moleskine academic diary has become, not just a way to refresh my year before, well, New Year, but an instrument with which to plan and create a future, which right now, I guess, is pure fantasy.
It’s back to the drawing board. Watch this space.
The White Bus Project - animation recreation
A truly smart person may not try to take young kids to the cinema. Staying the distance can be a feat of endurance. But what if they’re autistic, and have a meltdown over a small and relatively unobtrusive black hole in the floor? Yes, that happened.
That’s why my sister and I love the Southend-based, community-focused The White Bus project, which dedicates part of its programme to a season for children with disabilities:
These allow [the children] the opportunity to experience a 'big screen' film show while allowing parents and carers to relax, safe in the knowledge that, if their children are a bit boisterous (or even want to leave halfway through!), it doesn't matter at all.
Free (yes, free!), friendly and informal, the front seats are bean bags and there’s even a before-the-animation animation - in September it was Mickey’s Garden, a cartoon which seemed to be championing blanket-bombing gardens with insecticides. Ah, the good old days, eh?
The School of Doodle - connect, create & kick ass
Worried about our internet-addled youngsters? Maybe you should think again. Because Generation Z - teens roughly 12-19 - are making their creative mark. And it’s surprisingly sophisticated. Because of the internet.
As this intriguing article in the Creative Review said:
“After all, if the legendary stylist Grace Coddington talked about the inspiration of receiving Vogue by post as a child to her remote Welsh hometown, this group have grown up with entire universes of global culture to mine.”
What’s more:
“...Generation Z also loves to cut and paste, collage, and layer images, both online and off, using decoupage, pin boards and stickers. From fanzines, to hand drawn political slogans, cartoons, Gen Z also loves the aesthetic of hand-drawn, penned, or designed images. They love doodling dense detailed canvasses, with words integrated – and for the textures and gestures of the tools they use (crayon, felt tip) to make it feel more hand-drawn, imperfect.”
Which brings us to the School of Doodle an online ‘learning lab’ - whose strapline is 'create, connect and kick ass'. In other words it aims to support Gen Z girls and gender non-conformers to bridge the ‘confidence gap’. Here ‘doodling’ means ‘exploring’ and ‘leaning in’ means ‘standing up straight’ by learning to find your own ‘voice’.
I wanna join!
SEVEN Collective - a new term
In the space between SEVEN collective ‘terms’ we were supposed to create something inspired by our #LAT2017 sketchbooks. Summer came and went and well, surprisingly, my SMARS - ‘someday’ - approach to goal-setting wasn’t working out.
So I wound up throwing around a few magazine pages. Played with random collage. And then used good old carbon copy paper to transfer the images onto plain paper. There’s nothing like a deadline to get you started...