is there anybody out there?

My boy just died... II BW by ~borissov on deviantART 

 This photograph is proving problematic. I found it on Deviant Art and liked it instantly but then i read it was taken while the man was grieving for his son. Having been a mourner far too often of late, i don't know how i would feel having my photo taken during the experience. No, i do, it'd be shit and i wouldn't appreciate it but then a photo like this wouldn't exist and i don't like that one bit. Being an artist, i'm completely insistent of not denying any subject, no matter how painful/vile/disrespectful because then what would i have to study? Bunnies? I do like bunnies but then they're being slaughtered in Germany! Poor Thumpers. But, i guess it's easy to document when you're on the outside. My brain is conflicted, i do not like it. 

Something nicer!:

God by *Tenteri on deviantART I started drawing again today, nothing special so it may not be posted but i started! Forgot how much i love drawing people and their bones, much love for the ribcage.

twin atlantic - audience and audio

the company of wolves

"Little girls, this seems to say, never stop upon your way, never trust a stranger friends, no-one knows how it will end!
As you're pretty, so be wise!
Wolves may lurk in every guise!
Now, as then, it's simple truth, sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth!"

I saw an advert for The Company of Wolves in Empire and it's one of the best reminders i've ever had of a film i'd long forgotten.
I remember watching this as a little'n, half stuck to the screen, half hiding under my duvet.
I've always been like that, but i'm not a fan of horror, more, fantastical creepiness.

I found that it's based on Angela Carter's book of short stories, The Bloody Chamber, which i have read half of!
Happy accidents.
I shall have to buy this little beauty.

the lazy eye

Not mine, unfortunately.

Found on The Lazy Eye

khonnor - cantelopps

ghost

"I have been known on occasion to howl at the moon."

- Crash Davis

Bull Durham

Finished up Dorian Gray and i have to say, i was pretty underwhelmed and i don't even know why! Maybe because it was a tough read, not to understand but the language was so dense and you couldn't miss a single word or you'd be wondering what the hell happened. I liked it though, with its insane theories and despicable characters. Youth is fleeting? Yes, well, i guess so.

I've been listening to Radical Face's podcast for the past few days and i can't actually stop listening. He talks about his album Ghost and how it's based on old houses and the stories they bear. The houses with floors that creak and walls that feel almost soft, as if it has seen a lot more than you have. He speaks of how whilst you live in a house it absorbs your story and how inevitably when you leave, you leave your ghosts behind to haunt whoever lives there after you. So the older the house, the more history you have to deal with.

I love that way of thinking, that a house could be alive and brimming over with stories to tell. I wonder what kind of stories my house would tell. It's got me thinking about my last project, about 'the moment of death' and this reminds of that...where exactly do you go after? Can you get stuck? If you are taken suddenly, do you get confused and cling onto the safest place you know? This got me thinking to the way we preserve the life of the deceased. I got an email from the uni about a magazine called Antennae which is involved with taxidermy, i find the whole process rather grotesque but i am interested in why we do it. Why we go to great lengths to preserve what's gone. There are longstanding traditions of memento mori and death masks, which seem to serve some purpose of remembrance.

I think i'm going a bit off track.

I'm just interested in the stories behind things, inanimate objects that seem to breathe and give comfort or even disturb, like the picture of Mr Gray.

Ucht, why can't i be interested in fluffy bunnies and rainbows like normal people?

I think i'd like to illustrate this song by Radical Face, he talks about it in his podcast:

"...the song 'Winter Is Coming' is the story of a man and his family. Uh, in the story the man discovers that the seasons are people, winter, spring, autumn and so on. Sensing a bad winter coming, which he and his family aren't prepared for he decides to kidnap summer and he chains him down in his basement. Uh, the song begins with the wife looking out the window and seeing winter, uh, marching up to the house and she's destroying everything in sight and the song follows them as they try to run, they try to get away."

I really want this album.

Enough rambling nonsense, i'm sleepy and i have more of Perfume to read!

Good day.

the ankle grabber

When i was little my Dad gave me a book called, The Ankle Grabber by Rose Impey. It is quite possibly the reason that at the impending age of 21, i am still incredibly aware of what may be lurking underneath my bed, readying itself to 'ankle grab' me' and gobble me up. ('gobble's such an appropriate word for referring to bed monsters).

The above photo is probably the best depiction of the absolute terror i have of what is below my mattress.

Perhaps it's a 'misunderstood' beastie, with big eyes, blunt claws and a gummy mouth?

I can but hope.

teacups

I like finding little things to adore and never tell anyone about =]

stefan noons - unlucky

happenstance

"There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamoured of death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled with the malady of reverie. Gradually white fingers creep through the curtains, and they appear to tremble. In black fantastic shapes, dumb shadows crawl into the corners of the room, and crouch there. Outside there is the stirring of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down from the hills, and wandering round the silent house, as though it feared to wake the sleepers, and yet must needs call forth sleep from her purple cave. Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern."

- Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray

It took me two days but i finally finished watching the epic Casshern. Think The Matrix being slapped in the face by a stupidly pretty Japanese man =]

You know when you hear a piece of music that just screams 'car chase' or 'fight scene', like Explosions In The Sky or Feeder's 'Shatter' and you instantly start to imagine these grandiose scenes of immense violence...well, you don't have to imagine at all with Casshern. There are actual jet-pack-hip-things. That makes it sound ridiculous but it's very much not. The story was a bit sketchy at points but i can forgive that because of the score and effects and the general mouth-gaping goodness. If the soundtrack wasn't 25 quid i'd by it right now!

Speaking of which, we got broadband finally and i got me an iTunes account. I'm going to be poor, oh so very poor...ucht.

[Hello to my mum, i promise not to forcefeed iTunes all my money even though i really really want to!]

I will post a new drawing at some point, i swear!

olafur arnalds - haust