Lovers Avenue

Old books are beautiful. I have bought them for years just because I like how they look but I very rarely actually read them. So to me they were already art. 

I bought them all for almost nothing in charity shops, but they were all specifically chosen for their meaning when I decided what to make in what book. There is 'In Praise of Sweden', a factual book about landscapes and customs. 'Charles Dickens Christmas Books', homely but witty stories for the holidays. 'Madame Bovary', the French novel about a trapped and heartbroken wife. 'Vanity Fair', where the destitute Rebecca flirts her way up the social ladder. 'En Skandal', a Swedish society novel about the "two types of women". 'Red Eve', a knights tale. And 'Anna Karenina', about how a woman who wants too much loses all.

I only used things from the books them selves to tell the stories, things I could find and my memories to illustrate the feeling.

It started as an impulse to make sense of an incomprehensible situation. I started to trace people and experiences from my past and present by focusing on them one by one and since I often describe parts of my life as chapters of books it made sense. I didn't know why I started making them, I just felt I had to. All the while trying to find the answers to why. Why these people? Why now?

Every book is in one way a person I have loved or an experience that has shaped me. But it's not about the people them selves but about my relationship to them. Some more personal than others. 

 It starts all the way back to 2003 when I fell in love for the first time and continues through my love affairs, the rise and fall of my married life and heartbreaks over 15 years. 

None of these are people I've had a normal relationship with. That was almost an unspoken criteria. As if I needed one..

It is all people I have lost. But love doesn't die. And people evolve. Love changes form and remains as the very underpinning of our existence. I would not be who I am without them. And as I put down the last one to let the blood stains dry I understood for what purpose I had made them. It was after all not them. It was parts of me, like puzzle pieces falling into place. 

And in that moment I remembered who I am again.

the Actress

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQuvPpS9_Fk

the Heartbreaker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guCv9OVKPAA

the Darkness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5avN2fhvEQ

the Rapture

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01wSaj2dLI0

the One

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHc-snDvq-Q

the Professor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm1BigJoK00

the Wolf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTevoUhDeoM&t=4436s

Good morning Patriarchy.

We are so good together but still there is something thats chafing. What is it that's chafing?

I'm going to tell you what I think it just might be. I know I should wait for years in painful accommodation, work with what is, make it seem real and appealing..but I have wasted so much time already. Like I've said before, men walk around in an empty cloud where they can not see them selves and certainly not anyone else but more than that they trust nothing. Nothing that doesn't come from them selves is real. Nothing. Everything is up for debate and scrutiny. Men trust women with their lives as much as capitalists trust the working class with money. I've never been trusted to take care of my self or anyone else, no proof will ever be enough, it can never eradicate that it's a fundamental corner stone of the patriarchy for men to not trust women. We shouldn't have to be micromanaged and mistrusted for another century by people who think of us as mysterious fairies and don't even have the faintest idea of how much we do or value our work until it isn't done, surely they need to do better than that. If you think about it, that's what all the petty little things really come down to. We need to be punished into submission for our own good..

 If I had one wish today it would be to be trusted like one trusts a man. Blindly. The possibilities would be endless.

All I want is time to heal.

Liberation does not lie in more explanations and justifications. It will never end. Liberation lies in cutting those losses and believing your self while he doesn't.

 http://www.arsinoe.se/tid-att-laka/

Early morning Objectification

One thing I have noticed in my many and relatively various relations and interactions with men is that a lot of you out there don't actually know what objectification feels like and therefore can not identify it amongst your selves. Men tend to think of objectification way too simplistic, as if it can be avoided by avoiding certain practical behaviour, but objectification is a way of thinking, not a way of acting. We all grow up in the patriarchy and boys are literally raised to think of girls as different, not quite as human, mysterious and difficult to understand. Of course you will all have objectifying behaviour. But let me put it like this: the two main factors of objectification is treating someone as not a whole, real person but just parts that can be used (not necessarily sexually may I add) and doing things explicitly against someone's will (quite likely because of the first one. An collection of parts has no will). If you think you might be objectifying someone that's a good check list! Now, I know that because growing up as boys you never learned to read silent language (body language, facial expressions,tone of voice, circumstances) and that makes it hard to know if you are wanted or not, but you can learn to and always ask if unsure.

Something technically objectifying can feel nothing like that in the context of being a real person with a will that's respected. 

Why erase when you can adapt. 

 And If you feel like these points of view of mine made no sense, here is some more explanatory words.

           "Half please." -  "BUT WHAT ABOUT ME?"

the power, and the glory,

For ever and ever.

Amen.

Picture taken from this new exciting blog I just found! (Swedish, I'll get back to you on that later)

A song For a Coin. (guest post)

It is no coincidence that as and artistic person I have other artistic people in my life. I believe it is an essential necessity of life to make connections with like-minded people. There is no feeling quite like reaching out and finding the hand of another in the dark.

A song for a coin

He said 

"God never takes everything"

He had a guitar with a broken string 

In the deathwish

of crushing night 

Ink spills lost hope, 

Paints lost light. 

He said 

"God never takes everything"

And that music was all that was left of him. 

Failure and grief 

Stain a canvass 

And something is left of this 

empty mess. 

He said 

"God never takes everything"

A page. A pen. A broken string. 

Jade Alcestis Hall 2017

Jade, 31, living in North London. Newly disabled and getting to grips with it. Bisexual, cis female, polyamourous, incurable lefty intersectional feminist. Also uh... Incurable, but let's not get too morbid. That's what poetry is for. 

My blog is thetensionandthespark.wordpress.com. 

Never before have I invited anyone into this space. But my world is not just me. I learned quite brutally that I am nothing without the people I love. My world is enriched by them and I am now putting my fence down, smashing the wall, and asking them in. 

My first guest post ever is written by one of the strongest most inspirational people I know.  With her Snow white- like beauty comes a clever, creative and resilient mind. There is something in her way of bringing things together and seeing the context that always impresses me. She is the dandelion growing through the cracks of the road. She is my first choice for creating a future feminist commune with. And I feel grateful to get to have her in my life. 

Through the good and the bad.

Tudor Child at Kentwell

And so he went off through the time tunnel and into the 16th century. As usually with soon to be 9 year olds it is a mystery what actually happened there but I imagine them running through the woods shooting small birds and rabbits with bows and arrows and spit roasting them outside a stone cottage, washing some clothes in stale urine and then ending it in true Tudor style with a visit to the executioner. Either way, he came home alive and smiling and that is enough for me.

The internet is a wonderful place sometimes and if it wasn't for the blogs about button making, Pinterest patterns and just one of the best named music videos of all times, Medieval hardcore party mix, I would have found this much trickier. I find it really interesting how in just small ways people did things differently, prioritised differently in other times. Aside from of course only having access to natural materials. The shirt is cotton, which is not impossible but quite unlikely in this context but I had to work with what I had (an old pillowcase). The rest though is wool and linen! The trousers and doublet is linen fabric imported all the way from Scandinavia, where the preference for synthetics never really caught on, and the hat is a woolly felt cap. Everyone in Tudor times did have to wear their woolly hats..

The little felt bag on the leather belt he made him self and wore proudly.

And I'm just going to pick up my horn and blow it for just a minute and say that I thought he was the most authentic Tudor child on the whole trip. They were all good, the whole class looked amazing, even the teachers were dressed up and I was just a little envious that I couldn't go, but..even if no one else had cared I still knew it was made out of linen, from an actual 16th century pattern and had buttons made in the medieval way. And even if my fingers and knees bled and it half stressed the life out of me I could never really water out the passion for these things. I think in a way, my addiction to details and historical obsession comes out of a want to connect. With every hand-sewn stitch I feel like I can reach out and almost touch the people that lived right here hundreds of years before me. Like their footprints are still in the very ground I stand on and if I can just replicate every step I can almost...

"Up to the present day Cambridge has 19 student houses, in addition to which 14 colleges have been built with such grandeur and magnificence that you might think they were royal palaces and not accomodation for students. In short, although I have travelled in many countries and seen many cities, I must admit that I have hardly ever seen anything comparable to this town and these schools, for everything is in such perfect order that nothing better could be imagined." 

 I'm half tempted to make my self a 16th century kirtle and cap now..

Luckily I have this book to help me on my way.

 

http://www.kentwell.co.uk/