EMO

PUNK

I found this great Magazine "i-D" and they do some fantastic articles. I loved the November 2007 issue about Punks because, they didnt demonise them or make them out to be crazed freaks - they have been portrayed as cool, fun-loving, gutsy people.

The !*#? Issue.

PUNK IS AN ATTITUDE - "Punk is so much more than rude words and spitting in someone's face. They stand for the opposite of their shaven-headed, extreme -tattooed, frightening look. They believe in anarchy, they're warm-hearted and tender in a way. With so much style culture around, there's a refreshing 'freedom to be yourself'. Punk is, after all, about smashing the barriers of embarassment. They never make fun of each other. This style isn't a passing fad for them, it't not a weekend thing. A two foot Mohican is a choice never to be rich - normal jobs aren't an option. These punks have rejected society's uniform and created their own. They're striving for a different world."

PUNK IS FREEDOM - Do it just the way you want to.
When I'm hungry, I eat.
When I'm thirsty, I drink.
When I feel like saying something, I say it.
- Madonna.

PUNK IS REBELLION - Punk is all about being bored in the suburbs, skulking by the park benches and hanging out with a gang of friends who make your life worth living.
Punks are usually 'style-scavengers'. Old studded belts, old T-shirts. The staples are still spiky, 30 years on from the punk jubilee. Leather everywhere - in jackets asking to be painted on, boots, watches etc. Studs, are in full-on revival. And ofcourse, a punk pooch 'who does the snarling for you'! Hiking inspired boots are really popular - especially the huge, chunky ones.

PUNK IS ORIGINAL - Black is back, slap on the eyeliner and don your new LBD.

PUNK IS A STATE OF MIND
Too fast to live
Undermine their pompous authority, reject their moral standards, make anarchy and disorder your trademarks. Cause as much chaos and disruption as possible but don't let them take you alive. Sid Vicious.

Too young to die
You've got to walk and talk with God to go to heaven...I have the devil in me! If I didn't have, I'd be a christian. Jerry Lee Lewis.

Be Reasonable. Demand The Impossible.
'I like to see young people who are brave and who are trying to move boundaries - but there are only a few who are doing that kind of thing.' Walter Beirendonck

The Filth and the Fury
Hit me baby, one more time. Britney Spears.

Paradise Garage
If clothes are going to mean anything they've got to threaten or challenge. If they have that edge they should provoke people into thinking. Leigh Bowery.

Let it Rock
I think I'm a natural born leader. I know how to bow down to authority...if it's authority that I respect. Tupac Shakur.

'Regrets, I've had a few.
But then again, too few to mention.'

'If Factory and The Hacienda were'nt afraid of fantastic failure, why should we fear it?'

Interview with Malcolm McLaren who supposedly 'invented' punk. I love his love of life and his general attitude...so here are a couple of lines -

I didn't regret one moment - and would purposefully mismanage everything wrong, because I didn't want to do anything right. I never wanted to be good; I don't want to be good at all. I wanna be bad. 'You think I'm bad at doing my job, well I'm going to be even badder. I'm gonna be the worst manager you can imagine. You will cry at my absolute destruction.'

"And this was the beginning of punk, theses two walls and the door of that store. It was out bridge from art school into the real world, and we were going to do it as bad and as cruel and as mechevious and as manipulative as humanly possible"

Walter Van Beirendonck
"I like to see young people who are brave abd who are trying to move the boundaries - but there are only a few who are doing that kind of thing. It's harder than ever for young designers to establish themselves and remain independant though, isn't it?"

"I was fighting and defending, and talking about the world problems and making all these slogans. But I feel now that is becoming almost commercial and mainstream - more and more people are talking about global issues, which is good, but for me I want to move forward to something else."

In conclusion -
'Ain't nothing more punk than a guy in a dress. To walk down the street in heels, full make- up and beard is the ultimate up middle finger to conformity, the biggest 'fuck you' to conventional discipline. More rebellious than a Mohican, more daring than a studded jacket, it takes a whole load of balls to walk this catwalk. '

P.S - I really like Agent Provocateur. Stockings esp. are delicious.

The British Monarchy

I recently read this book called, 'Kings, Queens, Bones and Bastards'. And lets just say I want to share what I learnt -

Of Paulo Coehlo's Alchemist

Dorian Gray

As with all great books, I identified with one character so completely. Only, in my case there was no picture and hence all the marks of my 'unspeakable sins' drew their nasty lines on my face.

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY was Oscar Wilde's first and only novel. It was first published as the lead story in "Lippincott's Monthly Magazine" on 20 June, 1890. The success of the short-story lead to its being made into a novel. Althogh Wilde wrote a couple of plays, a books of poems, and essays, it was this book that established him as the most successful society playwrite of that time.

Just recently there was an article in the Times Of India which said that Oscar Wilde was officially the greatest literary genius. What honor! Like all geniuses his personal life was a mess. He lived pursuing the pleasure of his senses and constantly mocked the standards of his society. There were whispered rumours of homosexual friends and telegram boys. However his love for mysteries and secrets made sure that noone could point a finger at him. He used this as a technique in The Picture of Dorian Gray where, (as he himself put it) “what Dorain Gray’s sins are no one knows”. This helps the reader identify with the character of Dorian Gray(if they want to). However, he was brought to trial and the opposing coulsels believing the book to have autobiographical parts used the book in the proceedings.

CRITICAL REVIEWS

“Mr. Wilde has brains, and art, and style; but if he can write for none but outlawed noblemen and perverted telegraph boys, the sooner he takes to tailoring ( or some decent trade) the better for his own reputation and the public morals”
- SCOTS OBSERVER, 5TH July 1890

“We need emphasize only once more, the skill, the real subtelety of art, the ease and fluidity withal of one telling a story by word of mouth, with which the consciousness of the supernatural is introduced into , and maintained amid, the elaborately conventional, sophisticated, disabused world. Mr. Wilde depicts so cleverly, so mercilessly. The special fascination of the piece is, ofcourse, just there – at the point of contrast.
- WALTER PATER in The Bookman

The novel would seem like something he worked all his life to put together - it had a part of himself in it. 'It aimed at blurring the distinction between high and low, respectable and outcast – suggesting duplicity is an essential part of existence.'

I have put down some lines from the book below -

“ He grew more and more enamored of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul.”

“It was the creation of such worlds as these that seemed to Dorian Gray to be the true object, or amongst the two objects, of life; and in his search for new sensations that would at once be new and delightful and possess that element of strangeness that is so essential to romance, he would often adopt certain modes of thought that he knew to be really alien to his nature, abandon himself to their subtle influences and then having as it were, caught their color or satisfied his intellectual curiosity, leave them with that curious indifference that is not incompatible with a real ardor of temperament, and that indeed according to certain psychologists, is often a condition of.”

“..and I hear all these hideous things that people are whispering about you, I don’t know what to say. Why is it Dorian, that a man like the Duke of Berwick leaves the room of a club when you enter it? Why is your friendship so fatal to young men? There was that wretched boy at the Guards who committed suicide. You were his greatest friend. There was Sir. Henry Ashton, who had to leave England, with a tarnished name. You and he were inseparable. What about Lord Kent’s only son, and his career...”

“I should have to see your soul”
“Yes, I shall show you my soul. You shall see the thing that you fancy only God can see.”

“It is too late, Basil,” he faltered
“It is never too late, Dorian. Let us kneel down and try if we cannot remember a prayer. Isn’t there a verse somewhere, ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, yet I will make them as white as snow’?

“The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought, and sold, and bartered away. It can be poisoned, or made perfect. There is a soul in each of us. I know it” – Dorian

“ Was it really true that one could never change? He felt a wild longing for the unstained purity of his boyhood.”

“ He knew that he had tarnished himself, filled his mind with corruption and given horror to his fancy; that he had been an evil influence to others, and had experienced a terrible joy in being so; and that of the lives that had crossed his own it had been the fairest and the most full of promise that he had brought to shame. But was it all irretrievable? Was there no hope for him?"