The Month in Mood Board - the creative shot & affirmative horror

Remember, remember. This November things got darker. And deeper, as I began to ponder my grandmother’s love affair with horror legend Boris Karloff. I tried to NaNoWriMo it, and spent a cosy afternoon with my shadow...

“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?”

— Diana Vreeland

My Grandma Loved Boris Karloff

My mum’s mum is a woman of mystery. How she went from being a petite, chignoned blonde to a Les Dawson-in-a-dress-look-alike is not so much mysterious, as evidence of what life and 12 (actually 13-but-that’s-another-story) kids can do to you. Beyond this, however, we know very little.

One of the few things we do know for sure is - she loved Boris Karloff.

She would have been 10 when his seminal film Frankenstein came out in 1931. And by the end of the 30s she was an usherette. So, I asked myself a question: could the films of Boris Karloff help me to know and understand my grandma a little better?

Watch this space…

Why Kids Should Watch More Horror

Imagining my 10 year old grandmother going to see Frankenstein at the pictures got me wondering: is horror bad for kids? Or did they know stuff we didn’t way back?  Because in the early days of cinema there weren’t really kid-specific films.

Cue Spirit of the Beehive where a young girl gets fixated on Boris Karloff’s creature when a travelling cinema showing Frankenstein comes to town.

According to Greg Ruth - NY Times bestselling author and comic artist - by over-sanitising what children watch:

“We deny to our kids the full measure of what we experience and suffer as adults, but they aren’t idiots and know something’s going on, and what we’re really doing by accident is robbing them of the trust that they can survive.”

Ruth says, as a kid, he wound up finding:

“[A] great sense of trust in scary movies I never got from my parents, who tried to comfort me by telling me ghosts weren’t real. Horror told me they were, but it also taught me how to face them.”

Me & My Shadow - an afternoon with Hanna Ehlers-Bond

Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung had a theory: we all have a shadow self.

Jungian analyst, Aniela Jaffe described the shadow as the:

“[S]um of all personal and collective psychic elements which, because of their incompatibility with the chosen conscious attitude, are denied expression in life.”

And Jung said:

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

And, so that’s what we were doing one Saturday afternoon shrouded in candlelit darkness...

NaNoWriMo November

November is dedicated to that bucket list of a To Do - write a novel. AKA National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo). You can join a global and local community of writers all aiming to get 50,000 words written in 30 days.

Sounds crazy, but it’s doable. Think: 1,666 words a day and it sounds better, right?

Inevitably, stuff happens and you’ll get behind. But NaNoWriMo has solutions - one of which is Twitter Sprints. Basically live prompts of varying lengths where you write as much as you can for 20 minutes, 10 or 5 even.

NaNoWriMo gets you started and over your self doubt. Like Bird by Bird author Anne Lamott wrote:

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft.”

Because your first draft won’t be Dostoyevsky or even Dr Seuss, it will be shitty. I wouldn’t even call mine a first draft, but more a massive, grammar-absent, spelling error-infused stream of consciousness. Embrace it, and maybe there’ll be the odd gem glinting amongst the rubble...

SEVEN Do Twenty One’s Pecha Kucha Night - #PK125

Pecha Kucha anyone? Turns out it’s a time-limited way of presenting initially imposed on talkative architects.

For me and the SEVEN collective it meant 3 minutes for two of us to present something on our sketchbooking project. Three minutes meant forty (odd) Southend-based creatives could get to speak about their stuff in one single evening.

Which meant we heard about everything from Wild Essex to contemplations on ageing and death, learning to tap dance, and, of course, TV censorship across the globe - which wound up in a Cinema Paradiso-esque montage, but instead of kissing there was a lot of swearing and a guy having his face minced up by a handheld power tool...

Notes to Strangers - affirmation, schmaffirmation

I discovered the artistic phenomenon that is Notes to Strangers (NTS) earlier this year. And ever since I’ve been thrilled to stumble upon NTS posters across London. Then this month Andy Leak (Mr NTS himself) displayed a selection of his posters at the newly opened Browns East.

A rainbow array of posters were suspended like flags across the entrance to the showroom: words of advice, inspiration and sometimes just plain silliness upon them.

One of my faves so far:

“Everyone is winging it.”

Secondhand Style First

TRAID’s #Secondhandfirst Week is dedicated to celebrating the power of reusing the clothes and other resources we already have.

According to WRAP - a body dedicated to delivering “practical solutions to improve resource efficiency”:

Clothing has the fourth largest environmental impact after housing, transport and food.

TRAID goes onto say:

Sourcing more of our clothes (and other goods) second-hand is a practical way of immediately adopting a more sustainable way of living.

Plus, personally I still get a thrill from discovering a charity shop gem.

The Month in Mood Board - dark stories, lessons on perfection & Salvador Dali

October, the gold, amber and ruby leaves are falling, revealing skeleton black branches beneath. Winter is coming. But before that it's time for whodunits, macabre fairy tales, stories from Hollywood's first century, and little teeth...

“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?”

— Diana Vreeland

You Must Remember This…

I stumbled on the YMRT podcast when Googling Carole Landis, an actress I heard mentioned but wasn’t all that familiar with. Thank you internet.

Because without that serendipitous search I wouldn’t have found Karina Longworth - who  writes, narrates, records and edits this fantabulous podcast:

“...exploring the secret and/or forgotten histories of Hollywood’s first century.”

From the Dead Blondes season - wherein I found Carole Landis - to the career-wrecking communist witch hunt which was the Hollywood Blacklist YMRT is more than just stories about 20th century films and those who made them - which to me would be interesting enough.

It’s tales as old as time too. Tragedy and comedy are everywhere. And so too are themes of self-sabotage and hubris, just writ large-r and enacted with more drama (natch) and in better clothes than regular folks could generally muster in real life.

Oftentimes YMRT tales highlight socio-political issues too. The Jean & Jane season, for example, explores:

“[T]he parallel lives of Jane Fonda and Jean Seberg, two white American actresses who found great success (and husbands) in France before boldly and controversially lending their celebrity to causes like civil rights and the anti-war movement.”

Join her, won’t you?. (That’s a riff on Karina Longworth’s kinda catchphrase thingy). And if you love film or are interested in American history, then you definitely should.

Little Ashes - Dali, Garcia Lorca + Spain’s fascist past

A charity shop find, I’d never heard of Little Ashes. Turns out it stars a pre-Twilight Robert Pattinson as a pre-Dalí Dalí.

It centres on the lives of three artists: Salvador Dali, poet Federico García Lorca and filmmaker Luis Buñuel.

The story: An attraction between Dalí and García Lorca. The location: 1922, the School of Fine Arts, Madrid. What happened? Well, not that much is really known about it. But as the Roger Ebert website says:

“[I]n the conservative Catholic nation of the time, and given Dalí’s extreme terror of syphilis, it seems to have been passionate but platonic.”

While all three would go on to achieve fame. It was Dalí and Buñuel who wound up working together on the famous Surrealist film Un Chien Andalou - you know, the eye-slicing one.

García Lorca - whom I know little about - on the other hand went on to achieve acclaim with Gypsy Ballads (1928). According to the Poetry Foundation:

“His lyrical work often incorporates elements of Spanish folklore, Andalusian flamenco and Gypsy culture, and cante jondos, or deep songs, while exploring themes of romantic love and tragedy.”

Tragically Garcia Lorca was arrested and killed by Spanish fascists in 1936, aged 38. Although the whereabouts of his body and exactly whodunit are still largely mysterious.

Artist Descending a Staircase - now listen carefully...

Also featuring three artists and a whodunit, Artist Descending a Staircase (ADAS) is a radio play by Tom Stoppard. What’s more it’s a play which uses “a whodunit to frame metaphysical questions” on art and perception.

The three artists - Donner, Marbello and Beauchamp - are flatmates. And, when one, Donner, is found dead at the bottom of a staircase it appears his last descent was caught on tape...

“[T]the meaning of these aural clues ... depends entirely on the radio listener’s interpretation of them. Beauchamp and ... Martello, assume - quite understandably - that the recorded clues can only mean that one or other of them is a murderer.”

says the BBC blurb.

The answer to the whodunit isn’t really whodunit at all, but howdoyoudoit. As the NY Times says ADAS is:

“Mr. Stoppard’s larger inquiry into how people, and artists in particular, see the world (or fail to see it).”

And, we haven't even mentioned Sophie, a girl who haunts them still, a girl who happened to be blind...

Justine Leconte’s little teeth - a lesson on perfection

Of course in the world of social media appearances - both lifestyle and physical - are much debated.

Personally, sometimes I like nothing better than to think about clothes and I can often be found foraging on social media feeds for new-found inspiration.

To be honest I find much of the apparently unedited monologues on many a fashion vloggers output to be irksome to say the least. But then there is Justine Leconte.

Justine is a French fashion designer based in Berlin who talks in English on design, ethics, production, style and so much more. She’s knowledgeable, passionate, non-fluffy and accessible.

But guess what?

“At least once under every video I upload, everyone, I get a comment saying that I have small teeth. Do the people commenting think I didn’t notice? By the way “Justine Leconte teeth” is the second most Googled thing about me. Why does it matter so much? Truth is it’s a part of me and I embrace it. I don’t care. But imagine a 15 year old girl…”

She goes on to address who has the right to talk about low self esteem - err everyone. And she says her solution is always to:

“Try something new.”

A must-see vlog for anyone worried about putting themselves out there. In short: It happens to the best too.

SEVEN overcome perfection anxiety with rapid sketching

As former New York  art director Steven Heller writes in his piece on drawing and doodling for The Atlantic notes:

For most people, the big question isn’t “when did you start drawing?” but “when did you stop drawing?”

Something some of the SEVEN collective - have asked themselves. I, personally, gave up drawing when I felt life had gotten on top of me.

It wasn’t till much later that I found my natural inclination to draw was also something I needed - soul food, if you will. I find the process calming. It takes me out of my head - usually. And it’s grounding.

“When you draw an object, the mind becomes deeply, intensely attentive … And it’s that act of attention that allows you to really grasp something, to become fully conscious of it.”

designer Milton Glaser has said.

Skill is not the preeminent concern here. In fact Heller goes on to share a discussion he had with children’s book illustrator John Hendrix, author of Drawing is Magic:

“As a kid you draw without any thought to enjoying it. Enjoying it is assumed! Then we get to art school and learn there is a right way and wrong way to make images. ... But, then after that, we have to be trained to learn to play again.”

As Heller notes Hendrix believes:

“[F]inding enjoyment [in drawing] is an essential first step to finding good ideas.”

Tanith Lee reimagines Red Riding Hood with more bite

Long dark nights call for even darker books. This Halloween I reached for Tanith Lee’s Red as Blood (Or Tales From the Sisters Grimmer).

“[N]ine devilishly twisted fairy tales as the Brothers Grimm never dared to tell them.”

I picked Wolfland. A reimagining of Red Riding Hood, who is here called Lisel and could give Veruca Salt a run for her money. While the once dowdy grandmother is the Matriarch, Madame Anna:

“[A] weird apparition of improbable glamour.”

Because there is something a little off kilter about grandma. Oh my, grandma, what very blonde hair you have... And, oh my, grandma what long discoloured nails you have...:

“Grandmother’s eyes … were not so reassuring. Brilliant eyes, clear and very likely sharp-sighted, of a pallid silvery brown. Unnerving eyes, but Lisel did her best to stare them out … .”

Read on if you dare...

The Month in Mood Board - creative adventures, being enough & Margaret Rutherford

Midsummer came to a hot head with the Leigh Art Trail - where I exhibited some of my artwork along with the SEVEN Collective.

This was promptly followed by a mini break, in the protective darkness of the living room, featuring Some Like It Hot and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - aptly enough...

“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?”

— Diana Vreeland

Some Like It Hot - or how to avoid the heat

For those who don’t know…

Dressed as women to escape the mob Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis soon see how the other half live.

They hot foot it to Florida with a girl-band featuring “Jell-O on springs” ukulele player Sugar Kane - aka Marilyn Monroe shimmying in some eye-popping dresses.

Lemmon is soon pinched, then picked up, by a serial marry-er millionaire.  While Curtis is courted by a bull-headed bellboy who looks all of twelve and sees ‘no’ as a challenge.

"That's the way I like 'em, big and sassy," 

he says. Agghh...

The funniest woman [not] alive?

Eccentric and dotty are words oft used to describe actress Margaret Rutherford. An original national treasure famed for playing ‘older spinster aunt’ types even Time magazine called her the “funniest woman alive”.

To me her on-screen self acceptance and quick wit makes her irresistible. As Miss Marple in Murder, She Said she deals deftly with misogynistic comments from young and old alike:

Alexander (a teenaged boy):

"You know, it isn't just that you don't look like Jayne Mansfield. You're not *my* idea of a maid, either."

Miss Marple:

"Well, quite honestly, I don't think *you're* everybody's idea of a boy."

This month she turned up on TPTV in The Smallest Show on Earth (also featuring Peter Sellers). I’m not sure that film made the best of her though - try Blithe Spirit or The Importance of Being Earnest for a glimpse of her greatness.

Choose your own adventure

Adventures conjure up Indiana Jones style quests. Or man-size discomfort in far flung places.  But Morwhenna Woolcock (aka the Creative Adventurer) writing in July’s Psychologies magazine, says:

“Adventure is everywhere - if you know where to look for it.”

The trick, she found, was to make “the adventure wrap around my life.” This year she’s visiting one British island a month. She also went off on a 21 day pilgrimage following in the footsteps of her namesake saint.

All this is food for thought:

“Start by following the crumbs of curiosity and see where they lead you,”

she says.

In fact anyone who’s been Alain de Bottoned (or is just really well read) will know that Xavier de Maistre tailored his adventures to fit within the confines of his bedroom - because, well, he was literally confined there (duelling apparently). So, really there’s no excuse.

And, even more helpfully Morwhenna gives us some creative prompts to get us looking at everyday things through the eye goggles of adventure. Why not step into nature and create a sound map for starters? The whats, whys and whatyoumecallits can be found on the Psychologies website.

SEVEN did Leigh Art Trail

Our starting point: the sea. Our destination creative adventure. (There seems to be a theme here…).

This June saw the SEVEN Collective’s first creative journal exhibition at the twentieth Leigh Art Trail.  LAT sees selected local artists - and some out of area guests - apply to show their work in participating shops and businesses.

Situated in Planet Leasing visiting Trailers were invited to get interactive with our creative journals, consider using the creative prompts we used for themselves, and even dabble in our community sketchbook.

‘Stage fright’ and blazing sun aside (I must have vampire ancestry) it wound up being a real pleasure to meet interested people and talk creativity.

See what people said in the #LAT2017 piece I wrote on the SEVEN website here.

Marisa Peer says: you're enough

“In my 25 years as a therapist, I’ve discovered that the root of so many modern problems — hoarding, excessive drinking, compulsive shopping, and overeating — come right back to a need to fill the inner emptiness of not feeling “enough” with external things. The more you tell yourself you are enough, the more you’ll believe it. It sounds so utterly simple—and it is—and all you need is the commitment to do it and the belief that it will work.”

Watch Marisa in her talk The Biggest Disease Affecting Humanity: “I’m Not Enough" here.