Autumn has come early. On the colder days, I've been seeing people wearing vinyl trousers to school. My earliest memory of the look is from 2008, when I saw people wearing these sort of leggings on Portobello Road, where you could buy them at the market.
Laura Brannigan is cool.
I'm now doing double-spacing after full-stops. I don't know if you noticed. I can't believe I didn't know this formality until I found it was specified on my guidelines to writing History essays sheet a couple of weeks ago.
Sigh. I'm almost in a state of shock because the word I didn't know existed which I have been probably trying to explain/use has now been told to me. Apparently Internet memes are something that's just a, I wouldn't even say "second", nature to "this generation". Wikipedia is good. I didn't know that people of "this generation" are meant to be meme conscious and some sort of intellectual when it comes to the "concept" of a meme. So I've been told I don't get out enough - on the internet.
Yeah. Well, the thing is, the Internet is vast. So there's heaps of cultures, like, people who are feminist and Jewish and who love Christmas. (Yeah, that's rookiemag.) But it's true I have been Internet inactive. I haven't been watching the videos on Khan Academy in ages. I'm confused about subsets and proper subsets of cultures on the Internet.
The post that has cracked me up the most on The Teenage Construct yet is the most recent on the back-to-school experience. You could call it the story of my life. It's not about school life exclusively, because if being preppy and nothing-less-than-perfect is the essence your "school culture"and "social world" then it also drives your whole life. Considering how many hours of your life are devoted to affairs and thoughts of school...it's a big deal.
The word to sum up the vibe I'm being sent from my new school is quite the opposite - GRUNGE.
So funny, on the first day of school I overheard THREE separate conversations about how this school is "supposed to be 'Indie'" and how "apparently Indie people go here". And I swear someone said that they weren't finding it Indie. And these were people who don't fit the Independent Norm. And then they all went on about how Indie is now Mainstream and abusing the concept of "Indie".
Which brings me to this discussion I saw a few weeks ago on the World of Warcraft Forum titled "Hipsters". And there were pages and pages i.e. hundreds and hundreds, of people going on debating like this:
"Is Hipster here to stay, because I just wish hipsters would all die"
"Nah, I reckon there have always been hipsters"
"I can't believe people would label ... (e.g. type of sunglasses, shoes, jeans, books) as hipster"
"I always wore...and now that there are hipsters, I'm classified as one and people hate me for it."
"It sounds like you're a hipster because you're pretending you aren't..."
"Hipster is stupid. It doesn't even make sense."
"Hipsters are so stupid, they don't know....."
"I hope hipster goes away soon. I hate them. I wish they would ***** die"
AND I AM DEVASTATED THAT I CAN'T FIND THE PAGE ANYMORE!!!! Whatever. Fill in the blanks - you know how it goes.
For the past couple of days, I've been walking around and trying not to crack up. In Year Seven, my colour group, whom I spent most classes with, went through a phase of obsession with BONDS grundies. I SWEAR some of us (not me) presented a song to the rest of us for a group task in Music. Today I looked them up on the Internet and they weren't exactly the same sort of daggy underwear everyone told me they were. (These ones I saw had all these in-your-face kind of Australia flag designs...)
Yeah. And now to state the obvious - that I haven't been blogging in AGES. And also, I need to state that by saying this at the end of the post, I was trying to not be an ordinary person who states the obvious at the beginning of the post. If, like, you didn't get it.
Take More Photos: Everything around you makes for a great photo. It's just a matter of taking the photo. I need to take time to see the world I live in through a lens. This means not only the interesting shapes of the world but also relationships between people I know, and people I don't know. Every time I see my friends, we make memories. I don't want to grow old and forget. I dream to be an old person with heaps of photos who can bore kids with them (jokes, they wouldn't be bored, they'll be in awe of what my friends and I did in 2012).
Clear Out my Wardrobe: I just have so many things that aren't worth keeping, so many things that just don't work with me. And the less clutter I have in my life, the more 'zen' I feel and just so much more creative.
Blog More Often: I mustn't let great stuff pass by that I can share with my fans. Also, like my photography (which often appears on my blog), my Blog is a huge creative outlet for me. I feel really ill when I can't release the creativity that builds up/brews within me. Once I've put myself out there (ie being published to the world), I start feeling really inspired and the juices of creativity start to flood back in. I'm really looking forward to your comments!
Stand Up For Myself More: This is a really important resolution for me. I'm too nice to everyone, even people I don't like. And what happens is I get walked all over. I need to always get my point across and stop being walked all over by everyone.
Go On a Road Trip: I've always really wanted to go on one and I think I need to because they're such an important part of growing up and finding who you are. Normally, when you're driving around town, you have no thoughts. But not on a Road Trip. it's a perfectly designed time for figuring out things about myself - I select the music (maybe I'll also jam in the back) and I may or may not know which roads I'll be taking across this vast country.
Devote More Time to my Music: This resolution is really important to me. Music is not just a huge creative outlet for me, but working on it makes you better at it. Music makes us truly human, it connects us. And part of standing up for myself means not being afraid of people judging my own compositions. Music is great because it's in both time with others and time spent by myself.
Laugh More and Have Great Times: Spending every moment I can with my friends ensures this. Who doesn't want to have a good life? There are so many funny things out there, such as funny websites. I've really got to incorporate fun stuff into everything I do. It shouldn't be too hard if you've got a) a funny bone and b) can see potential.
Redecorate my Room: Their bedroom is where teens can really let it all out - their feelings, their personal style and their creativity. I really want to make my bedroom totally me, I mean, I'm not going to be a teenager forever! I'm really inspired by being a teen. The room really needs to be an explosion of "me". All sorts of childhood and thriftshop trinkets have stories and I feel a connection with them. And I find that crap chucked/strewn across my room really inspires me. I'll just wake up and see all this stuff which really gets me in the frame of mind for my day (before even doing my glam-rock makeup!)
Head scarves have been around god knows how long and same with turbans. Timeless pieces. What we should not fail to think about are the different types. There are gypsy ones, pirate ones, religious ones, Queen Elizabeth II ones, cancer sufferer ones, babushka ones, Paris Hilton ones, fifties ones like Audrey Hepburn ones and Grace Kelly ones, and of course "ethnic" ones, the list goes on. I've been a wearer of the Grace Kelly in my past. Let's just say many people with good taste have worn headbands/scarves/turbans and many people with bad taste have as well. Today, there are people who think the fifties was the ultimately ideal decade and try to make their 21st Century life into a 1950s one.
In my search for images for this blog post, I've noticed that Elizabeth Taylor is the queen of the headscarves.
Enough of the Elizabeth Taylor pictures, Billie!
Take note as I talk about the alternative headband/scarf, the topic of this blog post. The original one worn by modern alternatives is the one you see hippies wearing at markets. I bought one of those long ones that you scrunch up, but I wear it as a tube top. Unlike the Paris Hilton Band, these alternative ones actually hold back your hair and protect the ears from the cold. This makes them ideal for outdoor ventures. I've seen this great picture on Facebook of friends on school camp wearing those Indie bands that scrunch up with flannel tops. Where one must tread carefully is when experimenting with the second Indiest style. This is the headband turban like Ashley Olsen wears. The ready-sewn-together "silk" band that gives, as Americans would say, that "Oriental" vibe is quite inferior to the home-knitted variety or the nice silk scarf tied around the head.
An example of the essence of the alternative headband/scarf and its wearer? Well, take a look at Zaz singing Je Veux with her strong voice. Get the message.
What's up Homo? It's the Summer Holidays!! So much fun to have but also so much studying do get done. So, what will you be reading over the holidays? The last two books I read were Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park and Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua.
The previous (and first) time I read Playing Beatie Bow was in Year Six. I must have been the only person who liked the book. Every week we read a couple of chapters and over the weekend we had to write a couple of pages long reading response - oh! the tears shed getting it done! In retrospect, I think that when we were ten/eleven/twelve, we really didn't get the book, especially the main character Abigail, who was fourteen. She was super Indie, okay, she was into vintage things and was a "weirdie". Dude, you could so hate that book because no one says "weirdie", it's "weirdo". We were too young to understand Abigail throughout the whole book and also the journey she undertook. In retrospect, it's ironic because we now can see ourselves in Abigail and can see how teen-angsty she was, and also how like her, we thought we knew everything. Read it.
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother was so funny!!! I thought it would be really terrible because I first heard about it earlier this year in Singapore where they made a big hoo-ha about it and every review was negative. The author is this Chinese-American writing about being a Chinese mother to half Chinese children. It's Indie - the children were also Jewish. The story is crazy and her writing is honest. They must have hated the book in Singapore because she was hanging out the dirty laundry about Chinese parenting!!!!
What I will be reading these holidays (I've actually already started You'll be Sorry When I'm Dead by Marieke Hardy and it's funny) is Tell Me if the Lovers are Losers by Cynthia Voigt. Yes, the name is weird, but it's extracted from a poem. I guess this book is Indie because I've never met anyone who's read it. (Or maybe I'm just Indie?). The story is set in Stanton College in the sixties and is about the friendship between these three roommates. The three girls are very different in character and extremely vividly created. One really feels the changes in dynamics between the friends and all characters. I fall in love every time I read it, which has been every year, starting in 2007. If you liked Home Coming, you'll like Tell Me if the Lovers are Losers and if like me, you couldn't get into it, you'll like this book even more. Oh, and the book is so preppy.
This makes me reflect on friendship. I love my friends (yes, also the TV series) so much and now I've made new ones at my old/new school (weird feeling because I was only there for six weeks) (and I plan to make new ones at my new school next year. LOL.) At my old old school (I'm technically between schools right now, right?) we had a colour group, which was a class/group of girls having four subjects together. This spanned two years. Dude...so close...the sisterhood of Colour Group Four! We were always bragging about having the best colour group. This time last year (end of Year Nine) was emotional because so many of us were leaving the school.
Message of the story? Remember the ultimate girl-gang, better than all those mentioned on RookieMag last month. Last year, the colour group came together in song to this in the pool change rooms:
Now I will go and clean my room and stop being weird.
06 December, 2011
I'm starting a new section of the blog called "Dear Billie" (how creative am I?), which is where you can ask me a question and I might answer it publicly. I'm starting it off by asking myself a question and answering it, so that you get what it's all about if you haven't encountered this sort of column/post before. The beauty of it is that the readers don't have to know your true identity unless I sell it or anything.
Dear Billie,
I don't really know what to say so I'm just gonna say a lot. I've always been ahead of the trends. Other people are copying me and that's the thing, they aren't giving me credit. Like, I don't want to be rude or anything, but I was in to the Beatles before every other Tom, Dick or Harry. And they never tell their friends that they first heard about them from me. Also, I liked the Beatles before they got on to iTunes. I have always been into vintage stuff and the sixties and I have always known who Adolf Hitler was and about Ralph Lauren. Maybe people don't always know that I know things, like, is it because I have not been walking around in one of those t-shirts with the big polo symbol?
People don't appreciate what I appreciate. Seriously guys, you have a lot to thank Ralph Lauren for. Sometimes I have a great idea and don't do it or I have a great idea and do it and get "dissed" by the public. And then five years later (seriously), everyone's doing it, even the popular people. Is it just me or...oh my god! I'm getting all chocking up over this. Oh my god! I just remembered how when I was little, kids copied the way I tied by shoelaces with bunny ears. And then they all denied it being first done by me. Please tell me what's wrong. In the past twelve months alone, people have copied these things about me:
Wearing Doc Martens with a floral dress;
Taking photos with soft lighting. I was using Vaseline or thing cloth on the lens, but people are using this online programme...?;
Dip-dying. When I first did it, everyone thought it was called tie-dying;
Liking their mother's old clothes. Dude, and they all hated their mothers before!;
Reblogging on Tumblr. Seriously! I was the first to reblog!!!!!!!
And now people are calling things "Indie". But I feel they don't actually "get" Indie stuff. It's as though suddenly everything I liked has now got a label because it just so happens that my taste is "Indie". Only it wasn't called that back then, it was just me.
xoxo Your Only Fan, Australian teen, 2011
Dear You're only a fan so after I reply, don't reply.
Sometimes the world just isn't ready for things. Perhaps similar to your case, Mahayana Buddhists believe that during the Buddha's life, people were not ready for the deeper truths of the Mahayana Doctrine. Just remember, if you're ready but they aren't, it's okay. This is called wisdom. I think it's hard to be the right guy at the right time. But hey, look, it'll all come together. Jesus lead a difficult life but this was part of a bigger plan which we can now see. And we, the ones who nailed him to the cross, can now love and appreciate him.
I think there are several paths you can choose from for success.
Be assertive about your style. This will be positive if people already like you because you will become known and admired for your style and you will become famous. I don't think Plan One will really work if people don't already like you because they will not want to look like you and you will never be given credit. (I'm guessing people already like you if they follow your style);
You stop being Indie. I don't think people in Australia are into steampunk nor "popular music/culture", so that's always an option;
Do as my Year Eight Latin teacher told those who finished their work quickly and accurately, which is to sit back and feel/look smug.
Whatever. You go girl! Whatever you do, show the world your taste and creativity - don't confine it to your Moleskine Notebook! I think people on the Internet will get you, like they got Tavi Gevinson. Maybe you should get a blog like me.
Sincerely,
Billie
P.S. When I first described Indie style to mum, she was like what the hell, Doc Martens with a floral dress is a "classic look". ("What the hell" is the look I got off her face, not what she really thought/said).
P.S.S I think you should watch this episode of Lizzie McGuire where Gordo's retro style is ripped off by everyone at school
Chapter #6 of Stuff Indie People Like by Joanna the Friend. It has a bit of a personal backstory - our cool Year Nine Religion and Philosophy teacher telling us about how she notices girls in particular getting a new haircut when they go through a big change in their life. That was related to the lesson because we were watching a seventies movie about this guy who gets into a cult and consequently gets a new hairstyle.
The last time I changed my hairstyle was at the end of my time in Singapore for my return to Australia. I didn't manage to get a new haircut for starting at my new school. However, in the couple of weeks before school, my hair had grown out quite a lot and was looking like The Rachel. [What does that mean? That I wasn't into new beginnings/newness anymore; that instead I was going through a time of growth?]
Which reminds me about how I love watching the changing hairstyles on the TV show Friends. Starting at the beginning: Joey moves in and Chandlers gets rid of his beard (okay, that one doesn't really count because we don't know about that until a flashback occurring later). Rachel leaves Barry and her old life at the altar and goes to New York where she then undergoes radical change - so does her hairstyle after the first couple of episodes!!
Dude, I've been dying since my parents put dynamic lifter and blood 'n' bone in the garden. Sore, choking throat...
Anyway, last Sunday, I went to the fete day for the radio station ArtSound. There was a whole room full of LPs, CDs and cassettes. And by the time I'd finished packing up a box of stuff to buy, the whole box cost me just two dollars. This pristine condition Francoise Hardy record was my BARGAIN BUY!
The others I bought because they had what I thought were funny covers at the time (but not in retrospect). I haven't listened to any of them.
How does she get her hair so perfect?
No comment
I'm getting really into the curved square
I actually like this one. It's got the right amount of pretension.
the back - Is his name actually "Bob Dyland"?
Classic font for records! Definitely the colours of tranquility...
Maybe if I listened to this music I would understand the relevance of the image on the front
Hit Hits - seriously?
Why do they look like they're dying? Maybe it's a Virgin Suicides thing I don't get...
There was a lot of Hawaiian music
The back of Guava Jam
I actually like this one. I suddenly got this flash of a rookiemag photoshoot because of the rock and the girl's angle
Look at how the man is looking at those flowers in his hand!
the back
lowercase font - never ceases to be Indie
The new Indie way to do your eyebrows. At first I thought the one on her left was her eyelashes, though.
Okay, so this is the end of my third week of the third part of the year. And I am amazed at how quickly things become normal (and normal doesn't mean things aren't still interesting). I had come to the conclusion that it was now or never for experiencing a) a school system that is not the private all-girls one and b) the Real High School Experience. So I announced my intentions and started at my local school on the Monday (rather than continue my homeschooling). Okay, so this local school is pretty mild and you could call it Indie because it is funded also by the French Government. I'm in the English stream i.e. the non-bilingual stream, unless you count singing La Marseillaise in assembly as speaking French. I was really tired on the first week of school, not just because I was in a new system but because I was actually in a system. I met lots of nice people on my first day, so let's call it a happy beginning. Okay, I don't want to harp on about myself or anything, but I just don't know whether or not I'm the type who goes with the flow or not. I think stress makes one tense. Whatever. So what was bewildering at the start was not being in a different school system (see, I sometimes go with the flow), but that I couldn't identify the types/groups I had evolved with and understood like the ones at my private girls' school. On my first day, a girl asked me whether at my old school there had been "mean girls like in the movies". So I replied with stupid mixed messages saying "I don't know". I found that question funny because I certainly could not match either school to one in a movie.
I can't finish without telling you that I am not Esther Blueburger. On the weekend before I started at school, I had to tell it to my friends and that was pretty scary because I had no idea what their reactions would be (and it was all cool). Which reminds me of how in the first couple of weeks I kept thinking about how at my private girls' school, everyone banded together and hung in class even though their "groups" were pretty exclusive in the playground. And how at this public co-ed place, peoople kind of just stuck in their groups. Ha. So I guess the Indiest place in town is werever me and my homies are hanging this weekend. (I think I use brackets excessively.)
