The Final Push

After a lengthy absence (due to Exams and Things), I'm ready to get back to work on creative things and get some things done before I leave the country on the 28th. That gives me about three weeks, and that's convenient, because there are three big things I've worked on here that I'd like to do a bit more on yet. That's the Eric-Lydia story, the Chelsea story, and the Olle-collab. So I'm thinking one per week. The collab is up first, so look out for new pieces of that by next weekend :)

Glowsticks Unite Update (I'm not going to call it that btw).

Well, Holly Golightly was a roaring success. I won a prize for being the 'most true to the theme' female. The prize was a couple of books penned by university staff :P But I was happy just to get recognized. I was also the only girl dressed as something other than a fairy or a... girl... so I'm pretty proud of myself for that.

Here's a photo.

Also, here's an update on the story from last week. I'm not totally sure where it's going, but I'm really happy with the prose and the beginnings of characterization.

I met Chelsea in a café outside a train station in downtown Manhattan. It was still early in the day and we were the only two customers in there. She’d ordered black coffee and she was stirring it slowly, looking up to the door every so often like she was waiting for someone to arrive. She had long hair pulled back in a ponytail and wide impatient eyes, the kind of eyes that made every man pretend it was his face they were looking for and that when they finally settled on him she would blink a couple of times and say ‘there you are’, with a sardonic smile and maybe a wink.

            I asked the waitress for my flat white and took a seat a couple of tables away from her. I spread my papers around me like I always did, but it was purely customary. I couldn’t have concentrated that morning. For some two weeks by then my mother had been coaxing me back home in calculating hints about her health, and it seemed the more I determined to stay in the sin and squalor of my current milieu, the more arguments she had to draw me out of it. That morning it was cataracts. The world was going fuzzy at the edges, she told me. She was worried she’d fall down the stairs.

            The waitress brought me my coffee and I sipped it immediately without waiting for it to cool, burning my tongue and causing me to cry out. I saw Chelsea staring at me across the room with a curious expression that she turned to a self-conscious smile when she briefly met my eyes. She looked down again, as did I. But I could still sense her eyes on me after I’d looked away. I could see the slight movements of her head in the corners of my vision.

            When I sipped at the coffee a second time and found it still too hot, inhaling sharply, I heard her chuckle, a soft noise like a confirmation of a suspicion to herself, not genuine amusement at all. I looked up at her sternly but she raised her eyebrows and smiled.

            ‘You know what they say about flat white drinkers, don’t you?’ she asked. The event of her voice startled me and I stuttered something meaningless in lieu of replying. She waited a moment for me to offer something more profound, and when I didn’t she smiled again and said ‘flat, white people.’

            I must have looked affronted because she laughed then and picked up her cup and came and sat across from me.

            ‘I’m just kidding, sweetheart,’ she said, crossing her legs and leaning back in the chair. ‘Don’t look so serious.’

            I watched her for a minute, expecting her to ask something about my papers, or at least acknowledge them with her eyes, but they never left my face, even to look down at her own coffee, which she still stirred.

            ‘What do they say about people like you?’ I asked. I was quite proud of myself for a moment, until I saw a flicker of something like indignation cross her face and I realized what she thought I’d said.

            ‘I meant your coffee,’ I said hurriedly. ‘Black, is it?’

            ‘That’s right,’ she said, regaining her cool demeanor so quickly that I doubted I’d seen it crack at all.

Yez. More to come shortly.

Glowsticks Unite and Wall Art

Hey guys :) I was meaning to update last night, but I got caught up in Skype and a couple of other things and I didn't end up getting round to it. But it's okay, because now I have things to share.

So there are about 49 days till I leave the country now, I think, and since 50 was a nice round number I thought it would be a good time to start on a longish term project I've been imaging for a while. Basically the idea I had was based on the idea of creating some kind of progressive mural for the walls of my room, which would also be a documentation of whatever's going on in my life and a way of remembering things. I figured I would start with a small piece of paper each day and use that space to create some kind of representation of a cool thing that had happened that day. Over time I figured it'd build up to something quite nice.

This is the first one:

It references a lyric I particularly enjoy from this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=a4QQ7HYYdWw which I tried to learn with my sister last night. The full lyric is 'so wide is the river, the horizon a sliver, the artist has run out of paint', which I enjoy because I originally misheard the last part as 'the artist has run out of pain' and thought that was weirdly sadly beautiful, and then on learning the actual words I saw that it was happily beautiful too. Megan and I struggled with it a bit because neither of us can confidently sing the lower part - it's a bit out of range for me, and she just hasn't had much experience with holding a harmony (and this one is especially tough). Nonetheless we had fun.

I'm not super happy with the painting. I felt like there was too much white space to begin with, and then when I added the squiggle up the top I instantly regretted it. But no matter! It's not about perfection. The main problem is that with the time I took to figure out what I was doing (in a broad sense, not just with this painting) and to botch up my first attempt, creating this took over an hour. And I'm obviously not going to be able to devote that time to this every night. But even if I just make two or three of these a week, or something, that's still kind of nice. I look forward to seeing the project grow on my wall.

In other news, I have a new writing project. I'm taking a little time off from the Olle-collab to work on something of my own I've been meaning to get to since I started the blog. It's a really interesting discovery because I have no memory of writing it. It's called 'Glowsticks Unite' (again, no idea where the title came from) and it was in my Creative Writing folder from last year.

Chelsea’s philosophy changed in the tunnel under the park when she was nine. The other girl was twelve. When she got out it was dark and she decided she wasn’t going home again.

Now she rides round the city on buses looking for lines to do and lives to change. She turns tricks in alleyways and makes the men’s eyes roll in their heads like marbles. Breaking hearts over her bare thighs, she runs through the night and sleeps till noon. She sleeps under bridges but she never goes hungry.

I like it. There's a lot of Belle and Sebastian inspiration in here, especially the first line, which comes from this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RShI_-85os. Belle and Sebastian are one of my very favorite bands, and I've often thought that some of their songs could be turned into whole novels. But the ideas I had running through my head when I reread this were quite different to the songs it came from. I have a vague idea of what I want to do with it, and a strong feeling it's going to take more than a week to accomplish, but I'll do my best to have an updated version of it up by the end of the week.

Leave comments please :D I look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts on this one.

Holly Golightly Hell Yeah

And here, a week or two later, are the collected pieces:

Sorry. I don't know how to rotate it.

The dress is shorter than anticipated, obviously, but I think it works. After some adjustment it fits fairly well. The shoes are not very Claire but fun for one night. Not sure what I'm doing the pearls at the moment; may wear them just as they are or may try and shorten them and throw some kind of broach in the middle. I'm going for extravagant. The tiara is damn cute and so are the gloves. I even found a cigarette holder! (Which, according to its packaging, is going to make me look 'way cool'.)

Not a bad haul! Tune in this time next week to see photos of the stuff in action.

Because I'm feeling kind of downcast about my writing output lately, I think I'll try and do something extra next week. Will be updating on monday with those goals.

And Now for Something Completely Different

The Arts faculty at Auckland University has long been deprived of a ball because we have simply too many people for it to work, but this year somebody came up with the idea of having one just for English students, which a lot of us really really liked the sound of. Even though we knew the theme would probably be Pride and Prejudice or something ridiculous.

As it happens that didn't really work out either, but what we have now is actually (in my opinion) much better: we're going to have a mass party at Shadows. This is better mainly because the tickets are between ten and fifteen dollars (depending on how many people you can get together into a group) instead of, like, a hundred. Also because it's at Shadows and not somewhere fancy and silly and it just seems like it's going to be a lot less pressure. The theme is A Midsummer Night's Dream (dumb), but you can come as any literary character.

SO. I wanted to come as someone recognizable, but unlikely to be repeated, and also somebody fancy, because I want to dress up :P I decided on Miss Holliday Golightly, of Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Here she is.

So my big creative project for this week is to collect all (or most) of the pieces for my costume. I currently have none of it. Here are the big things:

-Dress (black, fancy, optimally long and sleeveless with a high neckline)

-Gloves (black, long)

-Necklace (thick and chunky and ludicrously extravagant. May make this myself, depending on how ambitious I feel and what I find at save mart.)

-Shoes (black, heeled)

-Some kind of hairpiece (this is optional, I guess.)

I'm aiming to do this on a pretty tight budget, so I'll be hitting up a bunch of op shops over the next few days. I'd also like to get another piece of the drawing collab up, but I do have two essays due as well, so we'll see how we go. This is going to be super fun.

Never Give Up on a Good Thing

Hey guys!

Sorry about my two-week absence. Shit got hella hectic. But I'm back now. I have two essays due next week, so there's not going to be anything else up till the weekend, but I have big plans. New post coming on monday with a quite different project.

In the meantime, here's the new installment of my Olle-collab. I'm not as fond of it as the last one. It was much harder to write and I'm still not sure that it... works. Feedback would be muchly appreciated.

Never Give Up on a Good Thing

‘Good to go, hon?’

‘Yes, dad.’ Janelle slid into the passenger seat of his car. She crossed her arms around herself and uncrossed them again. One of her hands reached over to the plastic armrest and started to tap discontentedly.

‘What’s on the agenda for today, Nellie?’

She was looking out the window but she knew he’d be looking at her as he said it. She wished he’d keep his eyes on the road.

            ‘I don’t know. The usual.’

‘You still impressing your teachers with those poems?’

‘I don’t really show them to them anymore.’ I’m not still in eighth grade, she wanted to add.

She kept quiet as they move through the backstreets of the neighborhood and into standstill traffic. Her dad tapped his own fingers on the steering wheel and eventually turned on the radio. Janelle sat in agitated silence while he flicked through four different channels of ads and finally turned it off again.

‘So what about that party tonight? Your mom said you might be going out.’

‘I don’t know,’ she muttered.

‘Whose party is it?’

‘Hillary’s.’

‘Hillary as in Hillary and Jono Mathews?’

‘That’s the one,’ she said, thinking about the Hillary-and-John-Matthews he was imagining, with handfuls of each other’s hair and hers, and mud and bits of grass stuck to their clothes.

‘I think it’s great that you’re still spending time with that boy.’

‘It’s not like that, dad.’

‘I know that,’ he said. ‘That’s not what I mean. I just think it’s good for you to be keeping up your friendships.’

‘Mm.’

Another silence fell after a slow sigh from her dad. Janelle stared at out at the traffic, waiting for it to move, wishing she was outside. She would still be early, even if they kept moving at this pace for the next five minutes. He always made her leave before she was ready. Then she ended up standing outside class for ten minutes waiting for the bell to ring and for the other girls to show up. She’d been the only one getting there on time every morning for the last two years. Maybe she should start walking. It would give her more time to herself.

In the night, when they thought she was asleep, she heard her parents worrying that she was becoming too moody and detached and wondering if she would lose friends for it.

Her dad finally broke the silence. ‘I think you should go, hon. You always have a good time there, don’t you?’

‘I guess so,’ she says.

She saw his ‘You okay, honey?’

‘Yes, dad, I’m fine,’ she snapped. It felt bad even before it left her mouth, like the lie had grown feet of its own and was stretching her jaws with its own long legs. He wouldn’t say anything else to her now.

She didn’t mean for things to come out sounding so mean. It was like she was possessed sometimes, she felt, like she didn’t have control over it. But she didn’t apologise either. Sometimes she thought maybe something really was wrong with her.

The traffic cleared and they drove the rest of the way to the school in silence. Janelle’s head was cleared of everything now except the quiet guilt, and she thought about ways of apologizing without saying the words ‘I’m sorry’. Maybe she would stay home tonight and make dinner or something. Although, actually, it would probably mean something more to him if she did go out.

He slowed as he drove up to the side of the school and stopped by the gate.

‘Um,’ she said, searching for something meaningless to say, to clear the air before she left. Anything would do. ‘I might just have my dinner early tonight then, or something.’ Dammit, that wasn’t what was supposed to come out either.

‘Okay,’ he said.

‘Is mom going to be home this afternoon?’

‘Probably not.’

‘Okay.’

They were both looking past each other out the window, at the dozens of students ambling slowly towards a common center. Suddenly one of them looked back. Hillary smiled at her through long black bangs and nudged her brother to do the same. He did, and waved her over.

‘Is that Jono?’

‘Yes,’ she said, but that wasn’t who she was looking at. Hillary was laughing loudly now at something Jono was saying and Janelle was furtively wishing for something to say to make her face keep that open, easy smile.

Her dad paused, gripping the steering wheel and frowning. ‘I know I’m not supposed to say anything, but if you did want to, uh, make some kind of move in the general, uh, Jono direction-’ he glances over at her, anxiously– ‘I’m just saying if – you know, your mother and I would approve. That’s all I’m saying.’

Janelle smiled in spite of herself. ‘Well, thanks dad.’

‘You should never give up on a good thing, hon.’

‘Yeah,’ she said, pulling on her backpack. ‘I know.’

Thanks for reading everyone! Leave me comments!

Project Three: Collaboration

One of the most rewarding parts of being creative is when you find someone else who is like-minded, and your ideas bounce off each other until they start sticking and turn into something bouncy and sticky and wonderful. My extremely talented boyfriend Olle and I are in this situation. We're blessed to be able to endorse our currently distanced relationship with mutual creativity.

Earlier in the year the two of us did a verbal scavenger hunt around the sky-tower one night, at the end of which we each had a list of interesting words and phrases we'd spotted or overheard around the city. We thought about writing a poem together or something but never really figured out what to do with them until two weeks ago when Olle sent me these preliminary character sketches, with the idea that I do some kind of written pieces to go with them (and he would then make a more developed image based on that). I've already done one for 'Free: Please Take Me', but that's it so far.

Our very vague ambition is to have completed word and image pieces for several of these, and to have some kind of connection between the characters. This is my creative focus for this week (at least in writing terms. I've also been picking up the ukulele again recently). However I also have to read two history books and write an essay on them, and knock out some Shakespeare and some Arthurian rubbish so I'm not going to go overboard. If I could do four more of these to a good standard, I'll be happy with that for the time being.

And here is my interpretation of Free: Please Take Me.

Elton stood behind the barrier with twenty or thirty others like him. They were mainly men, wearing suits just like his, with their hair combed back and their mouths in tight lines. Elton touched a hand to his own hair. It was messy from the wind, from when he got off the bus and the sudden rush of air and dust and noise splashed at his face and made him splutter.

            His sign was different from the others, but good different, he thought. All the others had three or four words in black pen like on the whiteboard at school. Which he never liked because it made squeaking noises if you weren’t careful and sometimes the pen had nothing left inside of it and barely made a mark on the board at all so there was no point. Elton’s sign just had one word – ELTON – in purple crayon, which never squeaked at all. He had clutched it tightly on the bus and all morning at school, with the side with the letters at his stomach so nobody else could see. They didn’t ask him anyway. They had stopped asking him things, mostly, except for jokes sometimes. Elton didn’t understand the jokes but the things he said always made them laugh.

            Now he held the sign proudly with the blank side to his chest and his name facing outwards so everyone could see it.

            The doors on the other side of the barrier opened and people started coming through in crowds, dragging noisy bags in one hand and little children in the other. Their appearance was sudden and startling and Elton rocked back on his feet a bit, glad he was on the side where nobody would shove him or shout something too close to his ears.

            The first people passed through with their children and their bags without looking at any of the signs, but Elton knew somebody would soon. A few more went off in the same direction as the others, all with the same urgency, and Elton watched some of them find their families and give them awkward hugs around the luggage. They were the people coming back from somewhere. But there were other people who were coming somewhere new, and they were the people who needed signs.

            The first one, a lady in high heels and a tight skirt, looked around for only a minute before she found her sign and walked off with the man carrying her bags behind her. He left his sign on the floor. Elton hoped he wouldn’t be expected to leave his sign on the floor.

            Then they started coming quickly, men and women in black, and they walked around in tiny steps while their eyes lagged a second behind them until they saw what they were looking for. Soon there was just Elton and a few other sign-people left. He stayed where he was, holding his sign high so everyone could see it. Soon enough, he figured, somebody would see it and know they had found what they were looking for and they would come to him and they would know each other just by looking, just like in movies. And they would go somewhere different, somewhere fun. He would wait around for however long it took.

            ‘Elton?’

            He blinked. He looked around to identify the source of the noise, but none of the people coming through the gates were looking in his direction.

            ‘Elton.’ He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned around and saw Hester.

            ‘Why are you here?’ he said, and he heard the irritation in his voice before he felt it.

            ‘Why are you here?’ she asked. She pulled the sign out of his hands. ‘What the hell is this? Did you just walk straight out of school?’

            Elton felt the suddenly empty space in his hands where the sign had been and felt his fingers twitching and tightening now that they had nothing to hold onto. He felt himself towering over Hester and his head drooping down like an overripe fruit. His breath was loud and fast in his ears.

            ‘Elton,’ he heard again, and he saw Hester’s face changing. ‘I’m sorry. It’s okay. I’m sorry.’

            ‘It’s okay,’ he repeats. ‘I’m sorry. It’s okay.’

            ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Let’s go home.’

And gooo.