Practical Yet Exciting Like a Leather Mirror

I feel really strange because I don't know you anymore.

2012-01-26T10:10:00.002-05:00

Ordinary People and Disposable Objects...

2012-01-11T14:32:00.000-05:00

Love this Israeli artist!

Check out his sculptures below...

Works an aluminum by Idan Friedman

Wise words wise woman...

2012-01-10T05:52:00.002-05:00

V: "ARE YOU PLANNING ON BECOMING A CREATIVE GENIUS?"

C: "ABSOLUTELY," CAITLIN SAID. "WHAT ELSE IS THERE?"

I have come to believe that the ultimate power is a combination of the above.

It came when they least expected it...

2012-01-10T05:45:00.006-05:00

NEW YEARS EVE IN LONDON

HAPPY BIRTHDAY 2012

CHRISTMAS TIME!

2011-12-06T05:16:00.001-05:00

Christmas time has officially begun! Mmmhmmm

I managed to convince someone to help me carry the tree home from Broadway Market....although I think my insistence on stopping for photos may have been pushing it a bit.

xxx

Fabulous and Exhausted

2011-11-07T06:58:00.003-05:00

Hedi Slimane photographs Anja Rubik

Well,

It has been a long time coming...

Since I last posted there had been a whirlwind of changes going on.

In the past 2 months I have...

Assisted my lovely friend and stylist Nova Dando on a coke commercial featuring Mark Ronson and Katy B for the Olympics...

Started a new job as an ART DEALER for a contemporary art gallery in Knightsbridge

Visited Amsterdam for the first time for work

Had a multitude of friends over for Thanksgiving Dinner

Missed Halloween :(

Tried Turkish at Mangal on Kingsland Road for the first time!

Went back to 2006 when I stopped by to see Justice play at Visions Video on Kingsland road with an old friend.

Squeezed too many people into a mini

Developed a home office

Had my bank card stolen

Had my phone break

Had rats die underneath my floor boards

SOLD MY FIRST BIG PIECE OF ART!

I am off to Edinburgh on the 16th for another art fair, then Strasbourg, and then home for Christmas! BUSY BUSY BUSY!

xxx

Amphigorey

2011-09-27T09:09:00.003-04:00

IT JOINED THEM AT BREAKFAST AND PRESENTLY ATE

ALL OF THE SYRUP AND TOAST, AND PART OF A PLATE.

IT WOULD CARRY OFF OBJECTS OF WHICH IT GREW FOND,

AND PROTECT THEM BY DROPPING THEM INTO THE POND.

IT CAME SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO - AND TO THIS DAY

IT HAS SHOWN NO INTENTION OF GOING AWAY.

- "The Doubtful Guest" by Edward Gorey

Mr Jonathan Saunders

2011-09-20T07:53:00.000-04:00

Oooh how I covet every single piece in this collection. It spins me round on my Virgin Suicides heels - with a little futuristic brocade thrown in for good measure.

Please please please

2011-09-03T14:53:00.000-04:00

LET US LIVE FOR THE BEAUTY OF OUR OWN REALITY.

- Umberto Eco

If you ask me to dance, I will say yes.

Burnt to a crisp

2011-08-16T08:47:00.001-04:00

Image via The Fader

I got back from Portugal last Wednesday and have been developing a strong hatred for my fading tan ever since.

In order to cheer myself up, I have been putting my hard earned university degree to the test. I have called on my memory of semiotics, surrealist theory, and in-depth feminist readings of every single art work ever produced, but nothing has helped.

I guess thats probably because I didn't need to get an Art History degree in order to be paid to call 25 different hotels to try and find a last minute booking availability.

...

Pictures up soon amidst bitter attempts at a job hunt!

Sip Sip Sip Sip

2011-07-23T18:51:00.000-04:00

How do you know if you are making the right decisions?

I am back in London on Monday after having spent the last week in Ireland.

I missed you.

Get Into It...

2011-07-08T11:15:00.000-04:00

IF IT JAMS, FORCE IT; IF IT BREAKS, IT NEEDING FIXING ANYWAY

I'm off to the dog track tonight. Feel a bit bad...but I have a coupon for a £1 burger so can't really resist.

Wish me luck.

Back From The Dead...

2011-07-04T07:57:00.000-04:00

I narrowly escaped with my life from Glastonbury two weekends ago. You can read about it here: http://artwednesday.com/2011/07/04/glastonbury-2011/

Loads going on this week, i'll keep you posted!

Happy Summer!

Scraper Bikes

2011-05-27T08:18:00.000-04:00

- photograph by Matthew Reamer

"IT IS THE PERFECT CAMOUFLAGE, AND IT MUST BE REMEMBERED THAT PICASSO CONSIDERED CUBISM AND CAMOUFLAGE TO BE ONE AND THE SAME, A DEVICE OF MISREPRESENTATION, A DECONSTRUCTIVE TOOL DESIGNED TO UNDERMINE THE CERTAINTY OF APPEARANCES. THE APPROPRIATION OF PAINTING AS A SUBVERSIVE METHOD ALLOWS ONE TO PLACE CRITICAL AESTHETIC ACTIVITY AT THE CENTER OF THE MARKETPLACE, WHERE IT CAN CAUSE THE MOST TROUBLE."

- Ann Goldstein, "What They're Not: The Paintings of Christopher Wool," in Christopher Wool, exh. cat. (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1998): 255-264.

Sausage McMuffin No Egg Please

2011-05-21T06:14:00.000-04:00

Laughing at your attempt at normality.

Just do what you do best and serve yourself. No one else will.

The feeling that all hierarchical distinctions have been exhausted...

2011-05-19T09:32:00.002-04:00

"HE BASICALLY FELT CAPABLE OF HAVING ANY VIRTUE AND ANY VICE, AND THE FACT THAT A BALANCED SOCIAL SYSTEM GENERALLY, ALBEIT TACITLY, REGARDS VIRTUES AND VICES AS EQUALLY BURDENSOME DEMONSTRATED SOMETHING FOR HIM THAT OCCURS THROUGHOUT NATURE: NAMELY, THAT EVERY INTERPLAY OF FORCES EVENTUALLY STRIVES TOWARD A MEAN VALUE AND AN AVERAGE STANDARD, AN EQUILIBRIUM AND A RIGIDIFICATION."

- Robert Musil's Man Without Qualities

- Title - Clement Greenberg

Fading Fast

2011-05-19T06:46:00.001-04:00

"Something that once embodied a real belief in the benefits of technology, but which now seems as quaint as the Orient Express, Concorde is a relic of another age - the last thing from the era that still works, that we still want to believe in. It stirs up images of the international jet set, the space race, lip gloss and dry Martinis, the streamlined elegance of how we used to imagine the future. Now that we live in the future Concorde was intended for, it has become a nagging reminder of all the unfulfilled ambitions of the past."

- Dale McFarland in Frieze Magazine, Issue 48 September-October 1999.

Stopping time is my daily goal...

2011-05-18T17:53:00.001-04:00

WHEN LIGHT FALLS ON THE RETINA OF THE HUMAN EYE, IT HITS 126 MILLION SENSORY CELLS WHICH TRANSFORM IT INTO ELECTRICAL SIGNALS. EVEN THE SMALLEST UNIT OF LIGHT, A PHOTON, CAN STIMULATE ONE OF THESE SENSORY CELLS.

- Science Daily Folkert. Image by Stephane Vetter (Nuits Sacrees)

Miss you Meredith

DUN DUN DUN DUN!

2011-05-18T17:46:00.002-04:00

I'm Coming For You...

Image by acampadasol

thanks mere x

YOU YOU YOU

2011-05-18T09:15:00.003-04:00

YOU

YOUR MISLABELLED PERSONALITY SHOULD BE CORRECTED, AS IT ALLOWS FOR CONFUSION

YOUYOU

YOU

(YOU MAKE ME FEEL SICK)

YOUYOU

YOU

THERE IS NO NEED FOR YOU TO CONTINUE TO PRETEND THAT IT WAS EVER ABOUT ANYONE OTHER THAN YOURSELF.

...

THE CAT IS OUT OF THE BAG, BITCH. TIME TO FESS UP.

London Zoo

2011-05-07T14:42:00.000-04:00

Large

2011-05-05T09:45:00.000-04:00

PINCER PINCER PINCER

not

PINCHER PINCHER PINCHER?

Intonation, following my every pinch.

POOF

2011-05-05T08:07:00.000-04:00

CONSUMED WITH ASPIRATIONS OF UNATTAINABLE LIGHTNESS

HIGHER

GONE.

LET ME TAKE YOU AWAY WITH ME

I LOVE THIS QUOTE

2011-05-02T17:46:00.001-04:00

PREACH

2011-04-14T07:28:00.002-04:00

In spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody. The essential substance of every thought and feeling remains incommunicable, locked up in the impenetrable strong-room of the individual soul and body. Our life is a sentence of perpetual solitary confinement.— Aldous Huxley

Thanks Alex :)

So Canadian it hurts

2011-04-11T07:15:00.000-04:00

APPARANTLY I HAVE BEEN GETTING TOO MUCH SUN IN LONDON SO I HAVE DECIDED TO GO TO THE COLDEST PLACE ON EARTH FOR EASTER WEEKEND....MONTREAL, CANADA.

JUST KIDDING GUYS! SAVE ME A POUTINE

Time for a change?

2011-04-11T05:40:00.000-04:00

Having lost my third watch at the Primal Scream concert in London a few weeks ago, I am now thinking that perhaps if I wore it round my neck it would be harder to misplace?

PARK DAY

2011-04-09T07:43:00.002-04:00

PARK DAY PARK DAY PARK DAY

OI OI OI

2011-04-08T06:34:00.000-04:00

After a good two weeks of sun in London, a rare occurance which I believe has been brought on by my purchase of a pair of vintage red boots, I am completely knackered.

I have started summer early with champagne at 2am in London fields, disgustingly satisfying breakfasts at Mess cafe in Hackney Central, swimming dates at ditch house, loosing badly at music pub quizzes, and eating at all of my favourite restaurants.

There is no way I am leaving the house tonight, need to save my energy for day time hangs tomorrow.

Also, wish me luck as a new job has come up....I hope?

OI OI OI

oh and photograph by Jason Fulford. Awesome no?

Bring it

2011-03-22T05:11:00.000-04:00

As soon as my hair starts to get long all I can think about is cutting it.

Maybe its because it is 16 degrees ALL WEEK IN LONDON!

Spring Fever like a motherfucker.

rawr

2011-03-18T16:06:00.002-04:00

Hey guys! Much love from your fellow weekend warrior.

Thank fucking god that I don't have to do anything tomorrow. Now where is my dinner?

TOMORROW IS OUR PERMANENT ADDRESS

2011-03-14T14:47:00.001-04:00

"IGNORANT, UNCONSCIOUS, FROM HAVING SWALLOWED THAT DRUG ALMOST JUST TO GET RID OF IT, I STARTED THE WHEEL OF TIME TURNING."

- HENRI MICHAUX

WHATS THE DEAL? CAN'T I LEARN MY LESSON?

STUBBORN TO THE VERY END, I FIND MYSELF DISAPPOINTED THAT MY CHILDISH DEMANDS ARE NO LONGER CUTE. I AM SURE THAT THEY WERE NEVER CUTE, BUT PERHAPS I WAS TOO YOUNG TO NOTICE.

I AM NOW TOO OLD TO PRETEND THAT THEY ARE WELCOMED.

TIME FOR A FRESH START.

(TITLE - MARSHALL MCLUHAN)

Why don't you all just fffffffade away...

2011-03-14T14:39:00.000-04:00

"ALONE WITH MY DRY MARTINI, I HAVE MY DOUBTS ABOUT THE BENEFITS OF MONEY AND CULTURE."

- LUIS BUNVEL

Surprising I know, hard to believe that one can be upset with a martini in hand. Someone has to be the better person. Apparently that person is not me.

WANT

2011-02-27T12:52:00.002-05:00

I want these pants/shoes/cut so badly!

Mary Katrantzou AW11

Image via Style Bubble

Too Tired to Think

2011-02-26T08:55:00.001-05:00

LFW has really taken it out of me.

My sister got in on Friday and since then we have been going non-stop.

After a quick bite at Spurstowe, we headed down to Vivienne Westwood party at The Wallace Collection, and scooped up our mates before heading to the newly opened W Hotel where the lovely Nova was djing.

Saturday was Broadway market in the rain and coffee in Stoke Newington, before late dinner at Bistrotheque and a BOOTY BASS party in an underground shop on Kingsland Road.

Sunday we dragged ourselves to the flower market on Columbia road to have tea, and then stopped by Rough Trade to explore. My sister cooked us all supper to fuel us for the Mulberry party at Claridges. After stealing some of the fake birds that they had decorated the room with, we zoomed off to Charlie Le Mindu's party in Shoreditch (porn/stripper themed) and then ended the night zoning out to "Mind Games" and drinking apricot beer.

Monday was breakfast at the Electric Cafe on Portabello road before popping into the BLOW offices to say hello to everyone! Supper was at a tiny little French wine bar just off Carnaby Street with my friend Katie, and then the Love Magazine party with A.Wang and Beth Ditto, whose performance we sadly missed. Actually the Love party at Liberty's was the best party of the weekend!

The rest to come later....

DIFFERENCES DEFINE US

2011-02-22T04:49:00.001-05:00

NEITHER OF US ARE ANY GOOD AT BEING ALONE, BUT I SUFFER SURROUNDED BY TOO MANY AND YOU SUFFER SURROUNDED BY TO FEW

ARE WE EVER GOING TO GET IT RIGHT?

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY. WHO WANTS TO BE MINE?

2011-02-14T06:08:00.000-05:00

No Self Restraint Aint So Bad

2011-02-13T17:21:00.000-05:00

To the person who asked me to be less cryptic in my posts, here ya go:

Been super busy doing everything awesome and nothing responsible.

Have been living in the pub with friends for the past two weeks - stopping only for work.

I had an "away day" last sunday with a big group in Primrose hill followed by a trip to The Museum of Everything - the exhibition just ended, but was massively creepy...think taxidermy squirrels boxing each other.

I checked out the British Sculpture exhibition at the Royal Academy, jumped on a trampoline, had a M&S Valentines Day dinner for two between three, walked through a grave yard, listened to "I Can't Quit Her" - Blood Sweat and Tears on repeat, visited an East London version of the Bates Motel, tied up some loose ends, and ate a bacon cheeseburger for breakfast.

jeez...that was still a bit cryptic wasn't it?

Anyways...happy almost Valentines day. I'll be at the law courts being a witness to people getting divorced. :)

Realist FTW

Great Vibes...

2011-02-08T07:55:00.000-05:00

IF YOU WANT SOMETHING TO PLAY WITH, GO AND FIND YOURSELF A TOY

2011-01-29T14:55:00.001-05:00

GOOD VS EVIL

2011-01-29T14:52:00.000-05:00

FROM NEUTRAL

TO BAD

TO CALM

TO PURE FUCKING EVIL

...

WELCOME TO ALMOST FEBRUARY

...

STAND WITH ME?

If you are going to go somewhere...

2011-01-29T10:38:00.000-05:00

THEN GET A GOOD SLEEP

GET THERE FAST

GET OUT OF THERE AS FAST AS YOU GOT THERE

DESTROY THE EVIDENCE

BREATH EASY AS YOU WATCH IT CRUMBLE AROUND YOU

WHO IS UP FOR A LAUGH?

Voulez-vous partir with me?

2011-01-21T09:11:00.000-05:00

"IT DEPICTED PROLONGED SUFFERING FROM WHICH NO POETICAL ENJOYMENT COULD BE DERIVED, A CONTINUOUS STATE OF MENTAL DISTRESS IN WHICH THERE IS EVERYTHING TO BE ENDURED, NOTHING TO BE DONE."

- MATTHEW ARNOLD ON HIS POEM EMPEDOCLES

- EMPEDOCLES WAS WRITTEN ON ETNA AND QUOTED IN THE EVENING STANDARD AS PART OF A REVIEW ON BLUE VALENTINE

I AM GOING TO PARIS TOMORROW AND ALL I CAN THINK ABOUT IS FIGHTING THE JANUARY BLUES WITH SOME NICE OYSTER INSPIRED THOUGHTS

...

LOOKS GOOD ENOUGH TO TOUCH

Magical Effervescence

2011-01-16T10:00:00.000-05:00

MASSIVELY LATE RESPONSE

Back in London after a Christmas at home. New years here ruined me for a couple of days...or weeks....

Now full on until February!

Anyone else in Paris next weekend?

Where I would have graduated from had I been a better/richer person...

2010-12-13T08:52:00.000-05:00

KILL IT TO DEATH. THEN BACK TO LIFE

2010-12-13T07:57:00.001-05:00

INHALE ONLY

2010-12-11T10:10:00.001-05:00

PLEASE HELP ME.

I AM SICK, AND I DON'T KNOW HOW TO GET BETTER

DYE

2010-12-11T06:32:00.001-05:00

After a series of unfortunate days, I have decided to do what I usually do when I am restless/unhappy/avoidingresponsibility.

What colour should I dye my hair?

Going to BLEACH at Wah Nails in Dalston at 5:30...clock is ticking!

Visit their website here

Last time I went there to get my hair dyed "70s blond," the girl who did my hair told me she had never dyed a "normal" colour before.

My appointment also started at 4:30 and I left at 8:30, they sent someone out to buy me cigarettes while I was waiting for my dye to set, and I had the luxury of reading an archive of 1990s chick magazines.

SPLAT

2010-11-30T18:44:00.002-05:00

I HOPE YOU NEVER TAKE OFF.

SOS

2010-11-28T19:21:00.000-05:00

On the subject of surviving in London, this is what I have to share with you so far:

Pretend you are in Paris.

Don't think that just because you are standing on the sidewalk you are safe from huge puddle splashing buses

Arrive at Dalston Kingsland overground station thirty minutes early. That is how long it will take you to squeeze your way onto the train.

Don't ever eat at Greggs. They pump the smell of fresh bread in but really everything comes wrapped in plastic.

Don't go to Centre Supermarket on Kingsland road. People fight in there while you are waiting at the counter.

Don't ever go to anything that has "Hoxton" in the name. Generally filled with bridge and tunnel crowd looking for an "East London experience." The result is being locked into a place because there is a bomb scare and the only company is a large bucket of peacock feathers, someone playing "We Are Your Friends" like its 2006, and a potpourri of colourful polo shirts.

* Same applies for the Haggerston pub on Kingsland Road

Do not get roped into going to shows that promise an appearance by Wu Tang and free drinks. When you arrive it will be 99% of mid-30 to 40s men in leather blazers who never got to the "top" in the music business. Also, there will be no free drinks and the entertainment will be Vin Diesel playing acoustic guitar and ripping off Jack Johnson songs. You will make it out alive only because someone with you had the sense to sneak in a bottle of scotch.

WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU, DIES HORRIBLY

2010-11-24T10:28:00.004-05:00

Courage Wolf Forever...

2010-11-24T08:00:00.001-05:00

BRING A KNIFE TO A GUNFIGHT. STAB THEM WHILE THEY'RE LAUGHING.

"Nevermore" via Thisisn'thappiness. Shared by Alexander Girvan

Moon Child

2010-11-24T06:51:00.000-05:00

Photograph by Tracey Baran via BOOOOOM

STUCK IN A PLACE BETWEEN ANIMAL AND CHILD

BOTH ARE STEPS BACKWARDS

BOTH DO NOT HELP ME.

THE CHOICES ARE AGRESSION OR INAPTITUDE.

I HAVE CHOSEN AGRESSIVE INAPTITUDE.

I DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING VERY ANGRILY.

I'M HOWLIN' FOR YOU

GOOD LUCK

2010-11-22T20:24:00.000-05:00

YOU NEED IT IN EVERY ASPECT OF YOUR LIFE, ESPECIALLY THE PARTS THAT YOU THINK ARE OK.

Still

2010-11-21T07:12:00.002-05:00

WELL ACCUSTOMED

TO THE SOUND OF SILENCE.

COMFORTABLE WITH INVISIBILITY.

SAFE IN ONE'S FAMILIARITY WITH APATHY.

...

YOU NEVER TOLD ME IT WOULD TAKE THIS LONG.

Photographs by Mikaylah Bowman. I know about Mikaylah Bowman thanks to Kate Wong :)

HEY! GUESS WHAT YOU GUYS? NO ONE GIVES A SHIT ABOUT YOU!

2010-11-18T19:00:00.000-05:00

My Mistake

2010-11-14T09:42:00.000-05:00

IT IS THE CONFRONTATION BETWEEN WISDOM AND WISDOM'S OPPOSITE, WHICH IS NOT THE IGNORANCE OF WISDOM, BUT THE INABILITY TO ACT ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT ONE KNOWS IS RIGHT.

- ALAIN DE BOTTON

What IS too much?

2010-11-13T14:18:00.000-05:00

WHILE MONA LISAS AND MAD HATTERS

SONS OF BANKERS, SONS OF LAWYERS

TURN AROUND AND SAY GOOD MORNING TO THE NIGHT

FOR UNLESS THEY SEE THE SKY

BUT THEY CAN'T AND THAT IS WHY

THEY KNOW NOT IF IT'S DARK OUTSIDE OR LIGHT

OH MY GOD! LOOK AT THE SIZE OF YOUR FISH!

2010-11-13T11:57:00.004-05:00

IT IS THE ONE WHO IS NOT IN LOVE WHO MAKES THE TENDER SPEECHES.

- ALAIN DE BOTTON

The other person is all like "OMG I realize that you think you caught a really big fish, but actually it isn't that big and it isn't that cool."

Then they pretend to be all interested in it because they want to seem aloof but they are actually just looking to see if there are any other boats nearby that they can jump onto. Hopefully a boat where people don't smoke cigars next to their "big" fish.

ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

2010-11-13T11:54:00.000-05:00

Everything seems better when your eyes are half closed.

Who was at the Diesel party in London last night? Need to get my hands on some of those "eyes half closed" pictures before anyone else does...

I Have Flirted The Edge of Total Decadence My Entire Life...

2010-11-11T08:12:00.002-05:00

Having just been to Mick Rock's new exhibition in Shoreditch last night, I thought it only appropriate to post Mick Jagger's response to Keith Richard's new tell-all book . Stubbling between a mass of East-Londeners on Red Church Street, I managed to sneak some glimpses at the famed rock photographer's work. I don't have any photographs from the opening, but I am sure the internet will provide us with a few images shortly. For now, read the text below (via Purple Mag) and join me in my nostalgic ache for the London music scene during it's best years.

Mick Jagger responds to Keith Richards about his new autobiography

I am, I see here, marginally endowed, if I read Keith’s sniggering aright. I do not sing well, either. I am not polite to employees; indeed, I have even been known to say, “Oh, shut up, Keith,” in band meetings. I do not appreciate the authenticity of the music or the importance of what we do. I want to “lord it over” the band, like James Brown. I am “insufferable.” I slept with Anita.

Most of that is in just the first quarter of this overlong book, but a tattoo of my failings sounds all through it and culminates in almost 20 full pages of rambling invective near the end.

I don’t mind this, really, for reasons I hope are understandable and will get into later. This is all from a guy pushing 70 for whom gays are still “poofters” and women “bitches.” I think so many things about Keith. We were close, the two of us, for many years. We had known each other in grade school, if you can believe it, in the same undistinguished eastern suburb. Then we bumped into each other in a train station at 18 or so and started talking about the blues. We were different; I’d already been on TV with my father, who was a fairly notable expert on physical education at the time. Keith was … rougher, let’s say. For the next nearly 10 years, we were rarely apart. Even after we were famous, we lived at each others’ flats or houses. We were still very young, and, like puppies, we’d cluster together.

We were barely a band before our lives changed, but I think still of the time we spent, squalidly, before we were a group, in a very cold and small flat, more filthy than you can imagine. Our flatmate Jimmy Phelge was a veritable comic virtuoso with a pair of soiled underwear. Certainly we—I—wanted to be famous, but can I point out our road to it was not absurd, exactly, but unthinkable, in the sense that we couldn’t even imagine a way to do it? The London music scene was entirely insignificant, and we didn’t even play the trad jazz (Charlie’s métier), which dominated.

Still, we practiced day and night out of some unspoken impetus, innocent suburban boys abruptly living quite near the edge of a dark milieu. This brings me to Brian, who played guitar very well and was a brittle devil. We knew that because of many things, not least that he spent an inappropriate amount of time beating up his girls in the next room. I’m not proud of that. Keith gives himself (too much, I think) credit for rescuing Anita, eventually, from Brian; but that of course was years later. Earlier, we both listened to or watched his cruelty, in the bedroom and elsewhere; we paid no attention to the half-dozen kids he’d fathered and ignored the savagery he accomplished on tour. We didn’t know better; we were priapic jackals ourselves, fucking even one another’s girlfriends if they got left, as it were, unattended. But it was wrong to have let Brian do that, and Keith should have owned up to this in the book.

I supposed it is a karmic justice for Brian that we continued to watch as he descended from there to hell, harried by the police and increasingly incapacitated artistically, which further estranged him from us. Oh, that’s not true; we didn’t just watch. We ushered him along, ridiculing him, you might say, to death as he began to lose his ability to contribute. Again, we were young. What were you doing at 25? We didn’t know about depression, insanity, addiction, or what acid might have done to him. It’s unclear to me whether the drugs diminished his ability to contribute or whether the drugs were in effect a way to cover up something that wasn’t there. The first song Keith and I wrote was a hit single; Brian couldn’t write a song to save his life, literally. And let’s remember that he was a total asshole.

I’m digressing but I’m trying to explain where we came from. We didn’t have a template. Nothing against Steven Tyler, but there’s a difference. We felt around in the dark; we were famous within weeks; and, in the end, we left a body or two behind us. We did these things, good and bad, together; we were friends.

The second important thing is Keith’s talent. We took it for granted, in a way, as he says. We felt it was our duty to get together and write a song, one good song each day we worked. He is kind to say I could take what he gave me and run with it. But he is the one who gave me the actual song to write the lyrics to. He wrote a dozen Top 10 hits in five years, and, after the band added Mick Taylor and essentially grew up, he wrote most of Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed. Again: What were you doing at 25? It’s interesting to me how no previous song we’d recorded would have a respectable place on those albums; and any song on them would have seem out of place even on Aftermath or Between the Buttons. Keith’s lurch forward was amazing. As a pure rock (not folk or pop) songwriter, I think he is not just without peer. I think he is unrivaled in depth and growth, from “As Tears Go By” to “Satisfaction” to “Jumping Jack Flash” to, I don’t know, “Gimme Shelter. ” “Monkey Man.” “Street Fighting Man.” The primal feel of the chording. The musicality of the intros and breaks. The innovation of the recording—cruder, no doubt, but I will argue far more emotionally powerful than the Beatles’. The winding, intermixed guitars he almost desperately loved. Without him, what would I have been? Peter Noone? It is hard to use a word like integrity about a band as compromised, as self-bloodied, as we were. But for some years, unlike any other group, the Beatles included, we declared war on that silly, hypocritical, repressive, and arbitrary society in which we lived. The only ammunition we had were Keith’s songs. The lyrics, I confess now, may have been in their defiance just épater la bourgeoisie and in their poesy derivatively Zimmerman-esque. Even when they weren’t, no one would have paid attention if the chords weren’t arresting, irrefutable. The songs spoke primarily through their music, not their words. Keith’s doting fans nattering on about the ultimate avatar of rock ‘n’ roll authenticity irritate me, it’s true; but he may to this day be underappreciated.

So those two things I think, are important. Our bond; his talent. We blink at that point, and go 40 years forward, and he has written a book that says, essentially, that I have a small dick. That I am a bad friend. That I am unknowable.

The reviewers, who idolize Keith, don’t ask why this is all in here. We have rarely spoken of such things publicly, and tangentially even then. We don’t talk about it in private, either, and, no, he hasn’t been in my dressing room in 20 years. I thought we both learned that there is no point in sharing anything at all with the press, save a few tidbits for the upbeat The Stones are back in top rocking form! article that accompanies each of our tours. I think Keith never appreciated the tedious hours I had to spend with Jann Wenner to accomplish that.

But I know why it is all here.

In the book we get the stories.

Oh, the stories. The rock, the girls. The car wrecks, the arrests. You read them on the printed page, delivered in what, I must admit, is a pretty fair written representation of Keith’s slightly tangential, drawling, effeminate delivery, resting charmingly just this side of the incomprehensible.

I was generally made familiar with the stories in a different context. They were generally related by an assistant or a lawyer, tour manager or a publicist, poking their head into a room. Keith’s disappeared. Keith’s asleep backstage and can’t be roused for the show. No one will wake him because he keeps a loaded gun under his pillow and grabs it and points when riled. Keith fell asleep in the studio again. No, Keith isn’t mixing the album. He flew off to Jamaica, and, no, we don’t know when he will be back. Keith’s asleep. Keith’s asleep. Keith’s asleep. The scamp. Those are but one tier, and a fairly innocuous one, of the many times I was vouchsafed news of my partner. The next tier is more colorful. Keith (or his favorite sax player/drug runner/drug buddy/hanger-on) has slugged a photographer/destroyed a hotel room/gotten into a fistfight with the locals/fallen into a coma. Oh, yes, and the police are here. (Because police are whom you want backstage at a rock concert or at a recording studio.) Or: The bandmate Keith personally vouched for is freebasing again. This last was of some interest to me, because it meant that I got to sing at a stadium backed by not one but two guitarists falling over onstage. Keith likes to talk a lot about his getting clean from heroin. It is not correspondingly apprehended that he replaced the heroin comprehensively with liquor. Given a choice I select the slurring alcoholic over the comatose junkie as a lifelong professional partner, and I say this with some knowledge of the two alternatives. But neither is strictly desirable. And, yes, they do fall over onstage. (Or asleep on a chair in the studio.) I laugh at it now and blame no one but myself. Why, Keith gave me his “personal guarantee” Woody would not be freebasing on tour. And yet I was surprised when it happened. I take the point that professionalism, one’s word, rock ‘n’ roll merriment … these are fungible things in our world. It is a fair charge that I have become less tolerant in these matters over the decades. In our organization, inside this rather unusual floating circus we call home, I am forced into the role of martinet, the one who gets blamed for silly arbitrary rules. (Like, for a show in front of 60,000 people for which we are being paid some $6 or $7 million for a few hours’ work, I like to suggest to everyone that we start on time, and that we each have in place a personal plan, in whatever way suits us best, to stay conscious for the duration of the show.) So I will take that point. All of the forgoing was just … a little outré behavior on tour. Let’s go to the next tier—again, of matters one is informed of with some regularity, this not over months, not years, but entire decades. Keith’s been arrested with a mason jar full of heroin and a shopping bag full of other drugs and drug paraphernalia and is charged with drug trafficking. That was his baggage for a weekend in Toronto. It is hard to play a show with a catatonic guitarist, harder still when he is in jail for 10 years. I won’t even get into the fact that this came right when I had every record label in the world fighting to sign us, and in an instant my negotiating power was vaporized. Here’s a baroque bulletin from the archives: Anita’s 17-year-old boyfriend has accidentally shot himself, in Keith’s house—Keith’sbedroom—with a gun Keith left lying around. Young Marlon, then perhaps 10, saw Anita, covered in blood, coming down the stairs distraught, and God knows it could have been Marlon playing with the gun. Or: Keith’s driven his car off the road (again) with Marlon inside (again). In his book Keith stands back, amazed at the things that just … happen to him. He is frequently the victim of faulty wiring in the hotels in which we bivouac; a surprising number of times this phenomenon has caused fires. Ritz-Carltons are not built the way they use to be, I guess. Redlands burned down a couple of times as well, as did a house he was renting in Laurel Canyon. It’s a wonder Marlon survived his childhood. A third child Keith disposed of by sending her off to his mum back in Dartford I to raise. The second? That was another son, who was left with his paranoid, unstable, heroin-addict mother and didn’t make it past infancy. Keith says he blames himself, and on that at least I think we can agree.

It is said of me that I act above the rest of the band and prefer the company of society swells. Would you rather have had a conversation with Warren Beatty, Andy Warhol, and Ahmet Ertegun … or Keith, his drug mule Tony, and the other surly nonverbal members of his merry junkie entourage? Keith actually seems not to understand why I would want my dressing room as far away as possible from that of someone who travels with a loaded gun. And for heaven’s sake. No sooner did Keith kick heroin than Charlie took it up. In the book Keith blames me for not touring during the 1980s. I was quoted, unfortunately, saying words to the effect of “the Rolling Stones are a millstone around my neck.” This hurt Keith’s feelings. He thinks it was a canard flung from a fleeting position of advantage in my solo career, the failing of which he delights in. He’s not appreciating the cause and effect. Can you imagine going on tour with an alcoholic, a junkie, and a crackhead? Millstone wasn’t even the word. I spent much of the 1980s looking for a new career, and it didn’t work. If I had it to do over again I would only try harder. When I came back I resolved to do at least something well. Which brings us to money. We did not entirely mismanage our career in the 1960s, save for the calamity of signing with Allen Klein, who, with fatal strokes of our pens, obtained the rights and total control of our work throughout the 1960s. It was my responsibility. Keith downplays this, but the fact is we signed the thief’s papers. It was all done legally. Klein was a Moriarity, truly; he didn’t wait to sign us to steal. The signing was the theft, a product of a scheme so encompassing that in the end, he paid us a pittance and walked off with our songs. This is by far the single most important nonmusical event in our history, and yet it is rarely remarked on. I was not 30 and had lost us a historic treasure. In the 1970s, we worked very hard, and with Some Girls we eventually sold a lot of records, but in reality you couldn’t make much money back then, even touring. In the early 1970s we might play for a period of, say, two months, 10,000- and 20,000-seat halls at $6 or $10 a ticket. Back then, we were lucky to take half the gross home. You do the math. Then take out expenses and manager and lawyer fees … and split the remainder five ways. Nor did we live frugally. It got better over the decade, and Keith and I had the songwriting, of course, but compare us with Paul or Elton during the 1970s (who outsold us by many times, for starters, and among other things did not split their income with anyone) and our fame was entirely inconsistent with our back accounts. In 1981, I put us in stadiums and charged a more reasonable tariff and might have made us more money that summer than we’d earned in our entire career up to that point. And I’ve done it several times since—each time, I mean, to be precise, literally earning close to as much as we had the previous 30 or 40 years in total, including those previous tours. The Bigger Bang outing grossed more than $588 million—more than a million dollars a day for 18 months—and we pocketed the lion’s share of it. If the promoters didn’t like it they could raise price of the nachos, or the parking. And I’m not even mentioning the sponsorships, the ticket fees, the merchandise … I sound, now, like the accountant who earns my bandmates’ jeers. But I don’t remember Keith complaining about these sums, or, incidentally, that it took me 20 years to remember to give Ronnie a full share, just as we both pretended not to hear when Mick Taylor, or Ronnie, asked for credit for songs they’d written. Does Keith really sigh for the good old days on tour? Shabby theaters, shitty sound? Wound-up kids standing for hours in the hot summer sun in dreadful mid-American cities waiting for a chance to race recklessly for general-admission seats? Us enduring a day of hassle and travel to take home perhaps $3,500 each? I remember Keith asleep or not showing up until hours after the scheduled start time. Our feral fans running, fighting, throwing rocks at police. Today, the shows start promptly, there are video screens for the folks in the back, and we offer $1,000-a-seat ducats for the fat cats. Here’s the thing: I’m a rock star. What is the measure of my success if not the biggest rock and roll tour of all time? I know what you’re thinking. It’s what Keith thinks, too. What about the music. Isn’t it all, in the end, about the music?

I must note that the Stones rarely get a bad review, no matter how poor our albums. (Jann again, and so many wannabe Janns; how is it that we somehow manage, again and again, to record our “best album since Some Girls”?) But let me ask you to imagine yourself, as I was, unimaginably, partnered with the writer of “Satisfaction,” “Paint It Black,” “19th Nervous Breakdown,” “Honky Tonk Woman,” etc. And then imagine that your partner, seemingly overnight, lost some essential part of his talents. Not, as is commonly supposed, sometime perhaps in the 1980s, when the Rolling Stones’ decline in creativity was on obvious display, but earlier. A lot earlier. Like, say, 1972 at the latest. Those who like Exile on Main St. like its denseness, its mystery, its swampy commitment. Accidentally and amid no little chaos, we conjured up something dirty, impenetrable, and, in parts, compelling. But I think its murk promises depths that aren’t there. There are decent but no major songs on Exile. Let’s go back an album, to Sticky Fingers. I wrote “Brown Sugar.” Mick Taylor wrote “Sway” and most of “Moonlight Mile,” and made “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” his own. Keith and I together did most of the rest, like “Wild Horses,” but, in the end, he didn’t write most of the thing’s best songs. From there, there’s Exile. Some nice tracks— “Rocks Off,” “Happy”—but there is no “Gimme Shelter” or “Let It Bleed.” Chords that once threatened society in some significant now way rarely radiated outward. The next few years were difficult. I don’t want to say Keith wrote no songs. He did. But successively, in each album, the process became more difficult, as both his capacity for the job declined along with the quality of what he did write. He mocks the disco songs—”Hot Stuff,” “Miss You,” “Emotional Rescue.” But what would the commercial impact of those albums have been without those immediate hits? We were being outsold by everyone from Supertramp to the Doobie Brothers as it was. At the same time I had to come up with tracks and weasel promising material out of our cohort and not give up songwriting credit, which I accomplished in all but one or two cases. The resulting albums are, with perhaps the exception of Some Girls, flaccid and unconvincing. The aforementioned disco hits. A little lyrical naughtiness (“Starfucker,” “Some Girls”). The earnest ballad in which the incorrigible Stones display some unexpected touches of maturity (“Memory Motel,” “Waiting on a Friend”). Lots and lots of undistinguished filler, clavinet playing by Billy Preston, Motown covers … And for some of the good stuff Keith wasn’t even there. ForIt’s Only Rock and Roll I did the title single with Woody and Bowie. Taylor and I constructed the splendid “Time Waits for No One,” a fantasia, alluring to this day, for percussion, piano, and guitar. (I don’t think Keith has ever let us play it live.) (“Sway,” either.) I will testify that Keith was intermittently sentient during some part of the recording of Some Girls. Yes we were fully Manhattanized at this point, because I live here and that’s what I found interesting. The geographic location of Keith’s talent, being nowhere, wasn’t available for evocation. By the time of Tattoo You I was exhausted. Entirely drained of ideas. I told Chris Kimsey to ransack the archives. “Start Me Up” was a very old song, with some 20, 30, 40 takes as a reggae … and one with a real rock guitar. It turned out to be our last real hit, and the arc of our career would look a lot different if we hadn’t found it. With it, we could plausibly least claim to be hitmakers in the 1980s. “Waiting on a Friend,” that symbol of our new-found maturity, was, if memory serves, from a centuries-old session with me and Mick Taylor. About our work from the rest of the 1980s and 1990s, the less said the better. Can you sing a single chorus from Dirty Work? Name a single track? We certainly don’t play songs from those records in concert if we can help it. I go into such detail to describe the arc of our decline accurately but also note this sad corollary: Keith brought something out of me, way back when. Through Exile, I felt I had to rise to his songs. When he checked out creatively, I lost something important. While there is some spark, I guess, in “Some Girls” or “Shattered” or whatever, however contrived, I know most of the other songs sucked. In the 1980s and ’90s it got worse. I could conjure up only the most banal cliché or the most pretentious polysyllabic nonsense. Compare “Sympathy for the Devil” with “Heartbreaker.” One Godard made a film about. The other is a TV movie. I literally wrote a song called “She’s So Cold” and then, a few years later, one called “She Was Hot.” Now, Keith went through the same thing. I think this is why Keith lost himself with heroin and now drinks: to stave off the pressure to match himself and dull the knowledge that he can’t any more (and, back then, couldn’t). It’s trite, maybe, but there’s a reason a guy spends a decade in a haze, and the three decades since in a stupor. Keith’s rancor is almost entirely based on the fact that it was not, in the end, easy to keep the appearances of what in the public mind is the Rolling Stones, and the process wasn’t always pretty. But I did it, and, among other things, to this day it is hardly in the public mind that Keith Richards hasn’t written a significant rock ‘n’ roll song in nearly 35 years. For that I get Keith’s book. Why did he write it? Or, rather, having decided to write it all down, why did he devote so much of it to carping about me? Well, he’s not talking about me, really. He’s just trying to get my attention, I think, in the end. The remaining part of the rancor comes from the fact that he knows he lost me, many years ago. It’s funny—Keith doesn’t write good rock songs much any more, but what he does do, every four or five years, is craft a beautiful little ballad. Since Tattoo You Keith’s written and sung a couple of tracks per album. (We had a huge fight about his putting three on Bridges to Babylon; I didn’t like it, but didn’t have anything else to offer, even with three years since the previous album. Why one of the songs I did write is now co-credited to k.d. lang is a matter to be discussed on some other day. ) Generally, one of these is a throwaway, and the other … is something gorgeous. Put them all together along with songs he wrote solo and sang from the early years—”You Got the Silver,” “Happy,” and so forth, all the way up to “Thru & Thru” and “All About You”—and you have a CD of no little power and emotion. (I’ve done it.) These songs are more honest than his book. In “The Worst,” he says something about “I’m the worst kind of guy/ For you to be around.” That’s a song that might ring true for many people. It makes me think about how Keith lost me only after I lost him. In an older song, he explains a worldview I find a bit disturbing, and I would like to point out that since from most peoples’ perspective I have flirted the edge of total decadence my entire life I can make that observation with some authority:

Slipped my tongue in someone else's pie 
Tasted better every time 
She turned green and tried to make me cry 
Being hungry 
Ain't no crime

Again, the honesty is bracing. I think Keith puts just about any of his manifold urges on a par with hunger, and I think we can agree the world would be a dangerous place if that was the norm. It explains many, many of his actions over the years. In the book he tells the story of going to meet Patti Hansen’s parents for the first time—drunk, holding an open bottle of Jack, and with one of his fucktard friends in tow. You can imagine how the evening ended. I’m sure Keith thinks it’s OK. (“Being nervous ain’t no crime.”) (“Oh, shut up, Keith,” I think.) With that perspective—and the added benefit of being rich and famous and having most of his deplorable actions do nothing but burnish his image—Keith’s way in the world has been, in a certain way and ignoring, for the moment, the people who died, a blessed one. I certainly bless it. I stood by him and propped him up and didn’t fire his ass for many, many years. It would have ended the Stones, of course, so maybe I was being selfish. In a way, even comatose he had a marquee name; as my meal ticket, you might say, it suited me to let him doze. I took the reins until, when he finally woke up, he found that he had no place in the management. He’s angry about that, too. Yes, let’s let Keith Richards have a hand in overseeing an operation that generates $1 million a day in revenue. I don’t know what else I could have done. Later, one grows older and becomes more informed about such things, and I saw I was supposed to have held an elaborate ceremony called an “intervention.” Society could have effectively halted the upheavals of the 1960s simply by requiring all of us to “intervene” with one another. In any event, considering half our circle was on heroin and the rest were coke fiends, I think it wouldn’t have efficacious in our circumstances. He talks about me, too, in his solo songs, less subtly: “I’m so sick and tired/ Of hanging around/ Jerks like you.” People ask me why I let him put these on the album. I think: Oh, why not? It’s a great song, and he can sing it, and he can write the book, too. He’s trying to get my attention. To connect. To have it be how it once was. At our age, I think there’s no basis for it. Keith celebrates his own unchanging character, and I have had quite enough of that. But, still, when I think of Keith, I think sometimes of how someone different from the book comes out through these songs. Once in a great while he detaches and looks down at his corporeal self. “I think I lost my touch,” he sings on one of them; “It’s just another song and it’s slippin’ away.” Rock and roll is strange. When a song is beautiful—those spare guitars rumbling and chiming, by turns—the words mean so much more, and there, for a moment, I believe him, and feel for him. Or I think about “How Can I Stop” which may end up being Keith’s last great song. “How can I stop … once I start?” he murmurs, over and over again. “How can I stop once I start?” It’s about rock ‘n’ roll, of course, and playing guitar, and his tenure, and mine, in our unusual coalition. It’s also about heroin and everything else he can’t stop ingesting. But again it’s about Keith himself, who once started never did stop—through the fame, the songs, the concerts and the women and the drugs; and the violence and senselessness, the addictions and the deaths, the ruined lives, the petty and large-scale cruelties. At the end Keith got Wayne Shorter to do a sax solo that is itself almost an out-of-body experience, perhaps the loveliest moment on one of our records. It goes on and on over the last two minutes of a very long track, and the end is almost a … an exaltation, perhaps? I am lost there. It’s something I’m not sure I ever saw evidenced in real life, and something that isn’t in his book. It’s the sound—or at least the closest thing Keith Richards will ever admit to it—of a conscience.

But Gradually I Forgot...

2010-11-10T12:18:00.001-05:00

POWER WASHING

2010-11-10T12:12:00.002-05:00

Surprise is a reaction to the unexpected, but I had come to expect everything, and could hence be surprised by nothing.

- Alain de Botton

The overground was delayed this morning so i hitched a ride on a flying tiger. Was pretty cool, but no big deal. Anyone need a lift home from work?

Pears

2010-11-09T06:47:00.001-05:00

Sometimes things are nicer when done in pairs.

Things that have been nice in pairs recently:

buying sparkling water

escaping the rain

re-discovering old songs

seeing music things close up and loud

smoking in secret

wiggling on dance floors

taking alternative modes of transportation

laughing so hard you cry

shout out to Mr Alex Girvan for having the best feed for images that I can steal

Guilty

2010-11-08T10:47:00.000-05:00

The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely to live.

- Alain de Botton in Essays In Love

Classically beautiful women should be left for men without imagination...

2010-11-02T12:43:00.000-04:00

This is where I read

Bugged Eyed

2010-11-02T12:40:00.000-04:00

If you live in East London then you will have been to the Kingsland Market. I took my parents there on the weekend and completely shocked my mother, who proceeded to worry about all of the sheep skulls that I insisted on buying for our dinner.

Surprise Visits

2010-10-20T09:45:00.004-04:00

"Alle Von Denan" by Amira Fritz via BOOOOM

I thought that I was supposed to feel better not worse as time went on.

Its not an outward worse its an inward worse. I can talk to other people and pretend to feel okay but inside it is a dull, continuous, and indestructable ache.

The feeling of having the inability to change or do anything is the pits.Stuck in your own shitty little bed that you made. Just fucking lay in it.

To the 4am visitor who broke into my house last night: If you come back I promise to leave a saucer of milk. Sorry I was too scared to open my bedroom door last night, but I thought you were a robber. I didn't know you were a kitten until I saw a single paw.

DIY

2010-10-17T16:54:00.002-04:00

Nothing seems to be making me feel better except the thought of getting either the above or the below. Christmas is close non?

Other things that may make me feel better:

1. joining a gym and getting really tight buns

2. having good nails/toes

3. getting my shit together and making that phone call that i need to make to work where i wanna work

4. fixing my guitar string

5. learning to play the guitar

6. stop eating bread for every meal

7. spend as much time at the pub as possible

8. GET OUT OF THE CITY

9. delete the internet

10. I don't really think there is anything else except maybe if i could convince my landlord to accept cheques so that i didn't have to go to 100 different cash machines over 4 days to pay my rent

oh and could I also have a time machine so that I can go back and change 99% of my decisions and actions so that everything is ok again.

k thx bai

I'm so tired

2010-10-16T10:19:00.003-04:00

It is an interesting feeling to realize that you have no reason to wake up in the mornings anymore. You remember this at night when you are falling asleep and then in the morning you have forgotten, but before you even have a chance to take your first breath it all hits you again.

Death Becomes Her

2010-10-15T13:17:00.001-04:00

I am unhappy in a way that I never thought was possible.

Unable to breathe

To walk in a straight line

To pull myself out of bed

Turns out it was all just made of snow

Screw time I want to be happy now

Never gunna give you up...

2010-10-02T12:25:00.002-04:00

Going for a dance with some friends at the Bookclub in Shoreditch tonight. Think I should wear this outfit?

I heard that there is no such thing as "too much"

She refused to be bored, chiefly because she wasn't boring

2010-10-02T12:20:00.001-04:00

Finally the residents of Wilton Way have received internet! Perfect timing for a rainy London day.

Since fashion week has been over for a while now, I finally had time to scan these images from Craig Lawrence's after party at Vogue Fabrics. If you have ever been, you will know that it is a tiny little underground converted shop on Kingsland Road. It doesn't fit many people, but the people that does fir are usually pretty awesome. You can see some of them below!

P.S. I am now blogging on the BLOW Presents blog, so you should check it out here.

The Last Days of Summer!

2010-09-19T16:06:00.003-04:00

This post is a little out of order, but better late than never (why am I saying that so much recently...) Anyways! These are some images from when I went to my cabin on Vancouver Island! No explanation required except for maybe a little question mark as to why I have no photos of any of us in or even near the water...

Enjoy!

Taking the sea plane from Vancouver Harbour to Nanaimo

And just to make this post a little bit more out of place, look at how cute the babies are!! Charlie (my nephew) and his sister Julia (my niece) making cute cute trouble.

I WANT TO GO BACK TO HERE!

So so so late!

2010-09-19T15:37:00.000-04:00

I realize that I am an asshole and haven't posted in over a month, but I have been really busy and mainly without internet, so I think that I deserve to be forgiven!

Since I last posted, I turned 22 and got the beautiful bike that you see below and went home to visit family on Vancouver Island. I have now moved house and live East in London Fields! And I am half-way through surviving fashion week working at BLOW PR! Woop!

To celebrate my leaving party from Kensal Rise Miss Maddy Barry and I went to Nottinghill Carnival (back when it was still warm!)

The bike also had champagne in it!

And you can even ride it!

Major Lazer Party

Meg

Miss Naomi (check out her new show "Bitchin in the Kitchen")

Mr. Lee Skratch Perry

Fake Blood aka Theo tagging the wall behind the dj booth

Fire breathing robots at Major Lazer

I promise to continue updating NOW NOW NOW!

I can't get you off my mind...

2010-07-25T21:24:00.001-04:00

I adore this look from the Dries Van Noten F/W 2010 collection. It is a look that says: "Hey. I care about mixing things together in an interesting way. I like people to think that I am fancy but really I am a high productivity mama who needs the best of both worlds."

This outfit is the perfect mix between sassy evening temptresses and girl next door football tumbler with a little bit of naughty military thrown in for good measure.

Need. to. recreate. (on a much smaller budget)

Canadians do it best!

2010-07-25T21:19:00.000-04:00

Click here to see a sneak preview of Montreal genius Rad Hourani's video that will be presented at the Galerie Joyce in Paris.

June 24-July 22.

GET THEE TO PARIS!

Electric boots and mohair suits...

2010-07-25T21:11:00.001-04:00

Images via: Jak and Jill Blog, Knight cat, and Fashionising.

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, but I have been extremely busy in London and am now over at my cabin on Vancouver Island spending some much needed down time on the dock!

Internet is sketchy at best and phone service is non-existent, so I have been happily avoiding all responsibility! However, you can expect a new and improved me (and posting frequency!) when I return to London on August 1st. I will be in a new apartment and starting a new job, so I have decided to base my fall wardrobe on Freja...70s 70s 70s

Wishes

2010-07-13T04:50:00.000-04:00

Love this collection.

Check it out here: http://www.karlaspetic.com/
:

Bed time stories aren't always for kids...

2010-07-10T05:42:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time there was a girl who got on a tour bus in Brighton and ended up in Glastonbury.

This is a picture of the bed she slept in

there were other people on the bus too. They slept wherever they pleased.

When she finally arrived at the magic festival she found herself with some men from Versailles.

You can see Thomas sitting on the white couch below. He can sing.

This is Christian. He likes to play the guitar.

While she was sitting there, she noticed Branco's divine socks. They have a French name but she can't remember it.

All of a sudden she entered this place with a free bar and she found her friend Laurel there. Laurel likes to wear floral dresses.

But not everything was smiles and florals once they arrived at Glastonbury. There was a wicked witch who lived there. She always tried to turn people down the wrong path. Her name was wicked witch Jackie.

Jackie's side kick was the wizard Mattie. He made potions.

This is where they made their potions.

Slowly but surely, she started to realize that this Glastonbury place she had been taken to was not a land of fun, but actually a land of scorching sun and temptation.

The wicked witch Jackie put a spell on ToTo. He used to play the drums before he slept for a thousand years.

All of a sudden they found themselves dancing for what looked like the king of Glastonbury. His name is Kele. You may be confused because you can see the girl next to witch Jackie, but she didn't know that she was bad yet.

The festival also had other magic creatures. You can see a pixie dancing below.

Deck is the guardian of the right wing of the stage. He makes sure that no fairies get in or out.

After she finished watching the pixies perform, she fell into a deep sleep and woke up the next day to a white tent filled with people playing musical instruments. The person in the middle was the leader. Some people call him "the one"

This is Naomi. she is the keeper of fun. She works with witch Jackie to make trouble happen.

Here are some better pictures of King Kele. He can box.

This is the same man who played the guitar in the white tent. He led her and some of the other woodland creatures to a secret stone circle to discuss their plans.

This was one of the woodland creatures that guitar man brought along. He spent his whole weekend getting other woodland creatures to pass through certain fitness tests. He passed over 100 of them himself.

Yet another freaky woodland child.

This is Laura. She works for no one. Her partner in crime is Jaime the woodland enabler. She wears bright colours and made the girl in the white look at her dress a lot.

Some people arrived differently to the magical place. This is a picture of some people called Muse arriving in a helicopter.

The stone woman of question answering.

As night started to fall, things took a turn for the worse.

They slowly made their way back to civilization before things got scary.

All of a sudden she found herself separated from the others and stuck in a red tent of sequins with Sir Ben, Lady Tabitha, and the cray Laura colourful dress!

The sun set quickly thereafter and she knew she had no time to spare.

It was too late. She entered into a tunnel called "Shangrila" she called it the tunnel of utter madness and frivolity.

She must have fallen asleep at some point because she woke up the next day and found herself on a stage with these woodland creatures called MGMT. They liked fake smoke.

Sean is the man below. He takes care of business.

Just when it looked like she may never escape Glastonbury, this man on a big screen, little Stevie, told her to find the magic tennis racket pose with it a few times and POOF she would be back in a tiny van with the guitar man, his scottish dj, his two sisters, and the driver on the way to a little bed and breakfast. AND THEN, she would be home.

THE END!

I almost cut my hair...

2010-07-06T19:27:00.000-04:00

So sorry that I have been the lamest poster ever, but I have been working constantly! Anyways, despite the delay, here are a few photos from just before I left for Glastonbury.

I met up with Kinga and Karen and had some cocktails and snacks at Soho House before heading to Madam Jo Jos to check out some new young things.

We spent the other day walking around Portabello catching up at the electric and lounging in theatre seats big enough for five people. Too bad they stopped serving wine half way through the worst movie I have even seen in my life...SATC2 (i just barfed in my mouth a little bit even typing that)

I went to the taqueria in West london for Mexican food the other night and walked home through Notting Hill just as the sun was setting.

After dining at Polpo twice (the best Italian tapas ever! It is just on Beak street and Upper saint James), spending amazing nights with Miss Laurel from Montreal and her wicked sister Thalia, and eating at 1/2 price nights at Shoreditch House, I got the train to Brighton to see Kele perform!

The picture above is from people on the beach lighting candles in paper bags. They all floated into the air and made the most beautiful light display ever.

Kele, Lucy, Daniel, and Minh were amazing! It was the first time that I had seen Kele play since he started his solo tour and the crowd were off their heads. After sneaking a bottle of vodka into Jack's secret pocket in his Barbor (its the pocket where funny posh people who hunt put the dead birds) we hopped on the tour bus and started our decent into Glastonbury. 12 of us took the bus together overnight and arrived at 6am to 30 degree weather and trouble, trouble, trouble.

Hard copy

2010-06-24T06:30:00.000-04:00

The "Liberation" newspaper that Karl guest edited is out! Snag a copy to see what I was up to with Kele in Paris...

I can't wait to see how Karl drew him!

Glastonbury tonight...see you all there?