In which theatre is evil

For the last two weeks I've been really down, perhaps even since the wedding. Not about being married, but so much of my energy was put into it that there wasn't time to dwell on anything else, and I always had that happiness to look forward to. Now I keep feeling really forlorn about who I am. I am especially worry that my work isn't good enough and feel like I am stupid, or losing intelligence. I look back on my first class degree as some vague achievement of the past, even if it was a few years ago, and question how on earth I did so well. Whenever I find my work difficult I instantly start to feel like I am a failure. Now that I've been in the job for a while, I should know more than I do. Instead so much is still a challenge. I always have to prove myself, to myself. I want to know everything, and I'll at least settle for a lot more than I know now. And then because I am feeling down about my own intelligence I don't work as well, and then I am sad because of my own sadness! How silly eh?

When I feel down I try and listen to this one Amanda Palmer song, In My Mind. It's about wanting to be the person you are now, not wanting to be the person that you wanted to be now when you were 15. Well, you just have to listen to it. If you aren't going to bother with any other, please give this a go.

However, there's a new one that leaves me feeling both sad and strengthened. Yes, perhaps it is appropriation of Doctor Who, but telling yourself 'I am bigger on the inside' is also uplifting. This one is pretty raw with emotion though I warn you.

I have written about my admiration for Amanda Palmer many many times on this blog. I wrote about the recent gig of hers I went to see just 2 weeks ago! I even have a special tag on the blog just for my love of her and Neil Gaiman who are the dream pairing of my world. I have liked her music since I was about 13 and that liking slowly grew to love. Her songs have power. A lot of bullshitis  thrown her way, but she is always a source of calm and joy in my life, and album after album I have loved them all. As a result I also have a wardrobe of Amanda Palmer t-shirts! This is just one of them.

Oh and if you like unusual fashion in any way, go to one of her gigs. People wear the most awesome things.

Confused? Theatre Is Evil is her latest album title. Just go with it.

There's one last song that is making my life happier at the moment. It's a bit more twee perhaps than any others, but having just got married - a song that really believes that 'there's nothing love can't do' is pretty damn good to dance around the kitchen to.

In which I am Death and ComicCon rocks

Confessions. I haven't blogged in a whole month. I haven't actually looked at anyone else's blog in that whole time either. All of sudden I felt weary of blogging and then I was caught in a little guilt cycle. The shame I felt at abandoning my blog for so long made me afraid to look at it again. But here I am? And the worst thing I found on return was a pile of spammy messages. Not sure what I imagined - disappointed letters? A huge backlog of things to read? Well, yes that one pretty much.

So what has been happening in my life? THIINGS! I tell you, many things have indeed happened. I went to Edinburgh and got my wedding dress and some fabulous shoes, had a crazy throat infection for a week that involved blood tests and a paramedic, went to comiccon and saw some sharks. These things did not all happen at once.

ComiCon London was amazing! I am going to share pictures of that here and now.
I dressed as Death from the Sandman in the fourth time I have worn that dress, but it took bloody ages to make and taked up lots of room so I want to get the most use out of it as possible. This time was the best yet though. I went all the way with black lipstick and darkening my eyebrows and whitening my chest. I absolutely loved being Death, but the standard of cosplay all round was incredible! We watch the parade at the end of the day but all the things we saw across the day were blow away impressive.

 

I took some photos of other cosplayers but I didn't like making strangers pose for too long and the lighting was just awful in there, so most of them aren't even passable. However the two below were amongst my favourites. 

 Jareth and Sarah from Labyrinth, one of my all time favourite films!

And then this cosplay. Seriously. This is a person, not a model. I don't think I should say anything else.

 And I bought lots of things, including the best soft toy ever. Here he is tucked up in my bed:

This totoro toy has barely left my side since I got it. The softest thing ever and works as the perfect cusion, acompanying little mini-totoro who I have had for years.

There were many other cool things, like meeting the author of one of my favourite webcomics and seeing Nel and Eric from NCIS LA, but that's probably enough words for now.

I will try and blog a little more now, although it is a month till the wedding so life is a little busy. :)

In which I am not afraid of the 'Fraud Police'

 

(These photos were taken last week, the morning before I dyed my hair. However, after dying it I was too impatient to celebrate the new hair, so the snowy pictures got put up first. This is why it may appear as though my hair can travel through time.)

 

Sometimes I feel like an impostor in the world of fashion. I love clothes and dressing-up, but the little things make me feel small, like I'm not really a grown-up, like I don't belong:

• I don't really know how to wear make-up. I sort of guessed at putting on lipstick and am only slowly improving with it. 

• I only own three pots of eyeshadow. I only wear them to go clubbing.

• I hardly ever pluck my eyebrows and when I do it hurts and I whine and they never ever look even. I actually have a scar under one eyebrow from an operation I had when I was a kid so I don't think they ever will be even. I don't have the pain-stamina to pluck them into a thin neat line so I just do an approximation of how I think they should look. 

• I can't walk in heels very well. I wear little heels, never more than 3". I had a friend who always said I was a 'wuss' about heels. In total there are only own 2 pairs of going-out heels in our shoe rack. They are both oxford heels, nothing strappy at all.

When I go clubbing I go in the kind of clothes you see me in on these pages. I wear patterned dresses with my gold brogues and a mini satchel bag and my level 1 of make-up. There are these other girls there who I look at as though they are from another world. They have sexy white dresses and 6" heels and I know that they are probably the same age as me, yet miles apart. They are so tall (and I am so short) that I feel myself wither away into insecurity.

I make myself a little clubbing box where I dance like mad, check out the hot girls and pretend like I am a nearly a normal adult.

There are a lot of new year's resolutions about losing weight or getting fitter. These are great goals for the right person. However, I am victim of a fear of the Fraud Police.

Amanda Palmer has this great commencement speech on the fear that the Fraud Police are going to show up in the night and knock on your day and say,
"We've been watching you. We have evidence that you have absolutely no idea what you are doing and have been accused of making-shit-up-as-you-go-along."
She says that everyone has that: brain surgeons, teachers, psychologists.. They all fear that they have no idea what they are doing, but the Fraud Police don't exist and they won't get you.

All of these insecurities are not really about fashion at all. It's just about me being afraid of failure and not believing in myself.

But I'm really getting better.

So part of my new year's re-set is to like fashion without worrying about not fitting in, or on the flipside worrying whether trying to fit in makes me fail as a feminist; not to worry whether I can put lipstick competently on or whether I look too young without it.
I am going to be confident about myself wearing and doing things exactly the way I want to, exactly the way I am.

Outfit details

This is an outfit I actually wore to work, fulfilling one of my new year's goals. I'm determined to ''glam" up a little this year and to wear more of my wardrobe. I have a casual dress workplace which allows for a lot of creativity that I don't make enough of.

I've worn this dress twice before on this blog. It is one of my 'go-to' pieces as they say. It tends to go with pretty much everything in my wardrobe and I have dressed it up enough to be interview wear and worn it with sandals on the beach before. 

Dress: Camden market, Shoes: Blowfish, Belt: New Look, Jacket: H&M, Beret: present, Necklace: present

In which I meet Neil Gaiman

 

I have had one of the busiest weeks ever at work and so every night I said I would do some blogging, but I just watched Criminal Minds instead... oops. It's a shame because there are so many things to blog about, so much stuff to photograph and to share.

Last weekend I watched Skyfall, did our declaration of intent to marry (it's a legal thing) and bought some new Lego. In the week I worked my socks off, made some delicious food and played lots of games. This weekend I met Neil Gaiman at his Camden residence to interview him, had a pumpkin carving party and made an Other Mother (from Coraline) pumpkin face, ate lots of party food, went to a firework display and played a Lovecaft-ian board game. So it's been a pretty good time since I last did a blog post.

And yes, you did read that right. I interview and filmed Neil Gaiman. If you know me, you know I have been pretty obsessed with him for a long time. Own most of his books, read his blog, wrote my dissertation on the Sandman - that kind of thing. I should be absolutely utterly over the moon about it -and don't get me wrong, it's a pretty darn cool experience- but I just feel like I was so awkward. It turned out he'd been up really late and was sleepy, we hadn't prepared for the interview/filming as much as he would have liked us to and I was a shy bean. It was the first of a set of films we were doing for work and I really hadn't expected Neil Gaiman to be our first. I was also incredibly nervous. This was someone I admire immensly, but in a situation that was not appropriate for fan-girlism. I fidgeted with my scarf, chewed my lip and stood around thinking 'why don't I know more stuff?'. And Neil Gaiman himself was very nice, but he did not put me at ease like Mike Carey did. I even mentioned my Mike Carey experience to him in a kind of hint that I was feeling super-nervous. I think he is just kind of intimidating, even at 11am on a Saturday without any socks on. Perhaps he doesn't intend to be, but it was defintely there, and I just felt so young and inexperienced about it all in the face of his potent Neil Gaiman-ness. I'm still pretty new in my job so I just found myself wishing I knew so much more on my topic and could have actually impressed him. I managed to slip some stuff about fairy tales and suchlike into the conversation -I was even at a talk he had done earlier in the week so getting to talk about Cupid and Psyche with Neil just for a moment was wonderful.

But funnily enough I found myself worrying far more about the work aspect -was the video good? Did we get good content? Was the camera angle right? I'm proud of myself for that. Because Neil Gaiman can have a bad impression of me if he wants, but I don't want him to have a bad impression of the organisation I work for.

The other thing is, despite meeting my hero and getting to chat to him, I had more fun just carving pumpkins with my friends and eating prawn toast in the afternoon.

I couldn't find my camera last night so I could take any pictures of the pumpkins, but I'm going to take some photos again when it is dark now I've found it.

In the mean time here are some photos of me in my second-favourite dress:

Ok, so you can see the car in the background which possibly ruins the shot but I do love my little bows poking out of the booties. :)

This is the first dress that appeared in this blog, when it wasn't even a fashion blog at all. It become one entirely because I love the dress so much and wanted to share it. Back then I was in my Origami Girl hero persona and didn't show my face. It also had awful photographs. However, my love for this dress has not abated.

In which I meditate on meeting your heroes and like elephants

If you are just here for the fashion and prancing you can read the first paragrpah, skip the rest and go to the pics because all the rest is meditating on meeting your heroes. Which kind of happened this week. 

The outfit I am wearing in these photos went through several developments before this look was chosen. I originally wore the dress with a skirt over the top and then whined that I looked a bit too hippyish with no straight lines in my look. My boy did not get these complaints. Then I took the skirt off and wore shorts and little socks with bows on and a blazer and then accused myself of looking like a Chalet School on the weekend. Then I added my new scarf! On my birthday post I said I had four new scarves which I will be showing you over a steady period. This one is my elephant one and is super soft, like cuddling to send you to sleep soft. And after all that I was ready to set off into town for some photographs!  

This week I got to meet Mike Carey which was a fascinating experience for me. He is a graphic novel/comic book writer, although he has also written a successful prose series. If you are into these things he has written Lucifer and The Unwritten. These are big deal Vertigo comics that I have read and loved. This guy is a big deal. And there he was opening a library collection in Hertforshire, reading a story out loud, and chatting to me about myths. 

See, I'm quite a shy person really. When I meet new people I try and cover up the shyness with humour or controversial opinions but I am always an introvert pretending to be an extrovert. So when I met Neil Gaiman I crumble away in nothingness. Neil Gaiman in my favourite author (or Dianna Wynne Jones is, depending on my mood) and I have been to a number of events with him present. I wrote my dissertation on his work. I have most of his books; read his blog and tumblr; follow his Twitter and quote him in conversation. Yet, whilst I believe him to be a nice person, the overwhelming awesome of his person makes me mumble and run, or on the last occasion look at the signing line and say like a quitter "to even queue would make me sad because nothing I can say in the sixty seconds together will let him know how much he means to me", so I just walk out. 

Back to Mike Carey. I was not only was front of the queue (second to the boy eager to use this as an opportunity to get into comics), I actually talked about my favourite work of his and we actually discussed Neil Gaiman's Sandman a little and why Lyta Hall was such a great character. He told me I was clearly his key audience for his book The Furies. I had to let the next person through, but he said he would like to speak again if I hung around and, as I was getting a lift back with the event organiser, I did. In all this I didn't feel my usual shyness or crippling insecurities. I didn't worry about whether he would respect me or understand that I was somehow special. I just felt like me. Talking to a person. About books. 

And that's the kind of thing that makes me happy.

What's the difference between them? I'm not sure there is one. Gaiman is more famous than Mike, it's true. But Carey is by no means obscure, as I said. I think the difference is in me and my attitude. I just refused to let myself be awed-out of myself. I think maybe next time I see Gaiman (in October at a talk on myth: booyah!) I will stand in the queue, take my books and let those sixty seconds just exist without having to mean something. And hey, maybe Neil will respect me anyway.

Dress: ebay; jacket: New Look; Short: present; Hat: charity shop; Socks: some random little shop; Shoes: Matalan

There are always several photos where I just laugh at it all. This is where it begins.

Elephants are not Irrelevant.

Woa. It's my face! HUGE. Looks kind of weird, but I like my little freckles.

We do so many photos these days! Andy is getting trigger happy!

In which I should be making art

I have been thinking about Art a lot. These thoughts have been mostly along the lines of I’m not good enough/I don’t do enough of it. I have been dwelling, in a fairly meloncholy way, on jealousy and a sense of failure. I used to do a lot of art in a structured way: art lessons at school, creative writing lessons or projects, running my jewellery business, or even the way my degree inspired writing. All of these creative outlets have dropped off along the way and I am really in need of a new kick. I need to make things and share things and just see how it goes.

I have lately found myself surrounded by good advice on how to do just that. I think everyone with an interest in creativity should be following Brain Pickings, one of the most beautiful blogs on the internet. It is a well of inspiration, but amongst the thoughts it reaches out with (of love, Lego and lost letters) are words about writing and making. There are so many snippets of advice about originality, audience and self-doubt.

The advice is generally: just do art.
Like Neil Gaiman says in so many ways.
Sometimes like this:
“When people come to me and say, ‘I want to be a writer. What should I do?’, I say, ‘You have to write.’ And sometimes they say, ‘I’m already doing that. What else should I do?’ I say, ‘You have to finish things.’ Because that’s where you learn from; you learn by finishing things.”
(Sometimes like this)

Like Vihart says:

 
Like Tanya Davis says:

.

I find myself humming
‘Art, art, art I want you.
Art you make it pretty hard not to.
And I’m trying hard here to follow you,
but I can’t always tell if I ought to’.

A few months ago I left a job and bought a sketchbook. For me a new sketchbook is a world of possibilities. So I wrote a couple of poems and sketched some maps, designed some Lego figures. Then that little burst of energy was gone. So I am going to do my best to take all this advice and just sit down and write. Me and the boy are going to set aside some time every week to do out Things. His with his viola and me with some writing or crafting or drawing.

 I hope it works!

In which I am excited about Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra

I almost feel silly for mentioning it because, being the Most Funded Music Kickstarter of All Time, you have probably already funded it. But, I am incredibly excited about Amanda Palmer's new album and I shall do my portion of squeeing in this space all the same. If you have funded it, then you perhaps share my love of her and, if you haven’t, perhaps you might want to go look up some Dresden Dolls and Amanda Palmer creations.

I have been a fan of Amanda Palmer since I was about 14. At a sleepover a friend showed me the video for Coin Operated Boy. I cannot lie –at the time I think I was watching a film or something and did not instantly say ‘Oh delight of my ears. Indeed, at last I have heard the music of heaven’. No, I actually paid a vague amount of attention and went back to what I was doing. However, it did stay in my head long enough for me to look it up the next day. And look up the Dresden Dolls (the band she was originally in). Listen to Girl Anachronism on repeat. Then copy my friend’s album. And buy the others. And the t-shirt. And all the subsequent albums. And go to see her. Like that.

(Completely independently this same thoughtful friend was the one who first gifted me a Neil Gaiman book around the time I had picked up my first Sandman book in the library. They had a spin-off to Gaiman’s originals, but that led me to search out the rest of the series. Bit by bit I became Sandman-and-Neil –Gaiman-hooked.  You may recall that I wrote my dissertation on the Sandman and a critical essay on the Wolves in the Walls. When the two got together my mind was blown. I actually phoned friends to tell them. People I hadn’t spoken to in months…)

So here she is with a new album at last! I do like some of ‘Amanda Palmer Goes Down Under’ and her ukulele album, which were her two most recent outputs, but not as much as ‘Who Killed Amanda Palmer?’. This new album has had similar time, energy and a coffee table book as that fantastic set of songs and I CANNOT WAIT.

Here are the specific things that make me happy about this kickstarter success:

1.       Her happy face

2.       Gigs in London now that I actually live in the South

3.       New music

4.       New artwork which is accompanying the album

5.       Getting a new vinyl could be the encouragement to actually buy a new needle for my record player

6.       The power of the community and success of Kickstarter is exciting

7.       My happy face

Also, it you haven't heard of Kickstarter prepare for amazement! It is the most beautiful thing about the internet and modern culture. It is the revival of the patron and proof of the value of the arts and I would go as far as to say proof of the goodness in humanity. I really think it is fascinating on an anthropological level. Look what we can do. Kickstarter.com -go and see what people are creating and what magic is coming into the world. : D

In which I talk about books and comfort

I have been known by most people to have a remarkable obsession with all things Neil Gaiman. There was a time, when I was first reading The Sandman, that I quoted him on everything. Every moral dilemma could be related to some situation in The Sandman comics. I went through a similar stage when I found relevance in every conundrum in life in Battlestar Gallactica, but with Neil Gaiman’s blog as well as his books to provide me with material I have been quoting and collecting his works for years.

Yet I have made a big decision this week. I think deep down Neil Gaiman is no longer my favourite author. I have not found a new greater replacement. I have simply decided that the author I loved most in my childhood, who I have recently been re-reading provides me with even greater satisfaction.* I am talking about Diana Wynne Jones.

Reading her books about ‘The Worlds of Chrestromanci’ are like coming home. For my birthday my sister bought me two of hers I had never read, set in that same world. I felt so instantly comfortable and familiar with them, whilst at the same time enjoying the thrill of having them for the first time. In an Oxfam bookshop this week I found ‘The lives of Christopher Chant’ –one of hers I had not read for about ten years. I read it on my commute to work and then on the way back, rushing back after I got off the train so I could get on with it.

I made the outrageous claim at work the other day that I believe there is far greater originality in children’s writing than there is in adult’s. You are welcome to disagree (as everyone generally did), but I still find that teen writing is refreshing and interesting where adult writing, particularly of the contemporary general fiction sort, is fixated on themes of guilt and shame and written with far too much self-awareness.

Dianna Wynne Jones writes wonderful fantasy that is full of plot twists that never feel like they are there just for the sake of it. It has fascinating characters and never feels like it is straining to achieve something. It all just flows. Sadly she died earlier this year. Along with Dick King Smith, Brian Jaques and Anne McCaffery who were somehow passed over in favour of Steve Jobs and Amy Winehouse. This bewildered me as Dick King Smith at least must have entertained a greater percentage of us in our childhood than Amy Winehouse did in her lifetime. I think the most authors get is an obituary in the Times –and a life-long love from people like me who never tire of re-reading them.

*Those of you who are used to the obsession –don’t expect me to stop mentioning Neil Gaiman!

To combine the two together: here is Neil Gaiman's blog about Dianna's death

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2011/03/being-alive.html

Hope you all had a good Christmas!

In which I talk about the Edinburgh Fringe

I had a beautiful four day holiday with my boyfriend. It was perfect in so many ways and only slightly tainted by the knowledge that I won’t see him again for about a month, maybe more. I experienced so many things that I don’t really know what to blog about. I thought I could talk about the outfits I wore as I did get him to take a few photos of me. However the last thing I did was an outfit post and I don’t believe that my clothes were anywhere near the most interesting thing in Edinburgh. I considered talking about the city itself, the strange point architecture of Edinburgh. The most obvious thing to talk about is of course the theatre. I was there for the fringe: to see a multitude of amazing theatre and comedy. It certainly provided that. Instead I’m going to mingle it all up and talk about some of the things I thought about and throw some awesome buildings in at the end.

I also thought a great deal about the world. I saw some of the best theatre of my life: a performance of three of stories by Edgar Allan Poe (suitably called Tales from Edgar Allan Poe).

It was beautiful and blood curdling and so so impressive. They did The Raven, The Fall of the House of Usher and The Tell-Tale Heart. They are all told in the first person and so they maintained the story, it wasn’t turned into a play but rather into a dramatic monologue with parts of it acted out but keeping the original words. The Fall of the House of Usher off by heart! And it felt so real. I was truly blown away. I wanted to shake the performers hand and hug them all when it had finished. There was also a trapeze and puppets but done in a way that fluidly melted into the storyline rather than being jarring and confusing.

My boy and I came out of that well and truly impressed and more than a little terrified. Poe really is scary when you hear every word felt.

During all that I was thinking. I had a revelation: This is what life is about.

For me all the rest of it, the jobs and the stress are about those moments. About watching perfect art with the man I love.

Then I thought -this is what humanity is about: Our ability to create great art. In that moment I felt perfectly content.

It all sounds a bit grand and pretentious perhaps. Yet I really believe that things like the fringe are the key to being human.

I also went to see Amanda Palmer and heard Neil Gaiman on stage. They were as fantastic as ever. I thought about them too. About how strange it is to see your heroes, to have them walk right past you and I just stood there. What was I going to say? When the gig was finished they stood in a line to sign things and this time we didn’t bother. Not because I don’t want to but because I find it all a bit awkward. I could say ‘Hey Neil! I wrote my dissertation on you! And maybe a piece in a book! I have everything you have written nearly!’ but what would that get in response? I doubt that he would have a lot to say. Standing in a queue with 10 seconds to talk is not how they will get to know you. I used to think that what I want out of life is to be the kind of person that these two heroes of mine would want to hang out with. I have come to a certain realisation that it is hardly likely that they will ever invite me to a crazy art party where we all dress up as mermaids and play the lute. I’m not even musical. However I do want a life which is filled with creativity and art. I want friends who are as cool as those two (and I think I have that). I want to throw awesome parties (and when I have my own house I will). I can be inspired by my heroes but although I quote Neil Gaiman once a day I want to live my own life that isn’t standing in a queue and hoping they will like my dress. I want to be inspiring not just inspired. I want to be magical

There we go! Some musings on hero worship!

To finish it off I will give you some photos of the amazing architecture of Edinburgh.

I took these pictures as evidence that Edinburgh is the pointiest place around! So many spires and gothic architecture. I love it.