Notes on a Thought

Spring is for the girls Spring has been gentle; Winter was hard. My body was in free-fall after a heartbreak in the cold. Too often I’ve let the season wash away in anticipation of Summer. But it is a period of coming back to life, and this year more than ever. I died in Winter, before April helped me to remember the feel of sun on skin and how warm rain smells like renewal. Spring has felt so gentle, so feminine; I remembered that I was a girl and that I could be alive again. Softer days are easier to live in. Femininity turned falling into floating - there is something so precious about being a girl. About the softness of dancing in underwear listening to pop music, putting on a pot of coffee and waking up waiting for it to erupt, lighting a candle before bed because the glow is softer than the lamp, drinking wine in London with sisters, collecting books, clothes, and little things that can fill my room. It is ok to love the clichés, they have been kind to me. They have held me like ...

At the Haute Couture shows of recent, Dazed asked attendees what was in and out for 2024. Lyas, @ly.as0 on TikTok, responded that ‘Indie Sleaze’ was in. A sentiment I have been very much aligned with over the past year or so. Summer 2023 was a summer of the early 2010s for my wardrobe. As Winter eclipsed the tank tops and ballet flats, I fell even deeper into the black (and gold and studded) hole of Indie Sleaze, as did the world of fashion. To me, there are some beautifully camp aspects of this era, and it is those that I see coming to the forefront in this modern revival. Whilst it may not be historically accurate, my image of Indie Sleaze pictures Serena Van Der Woodsen wearing Zadig & Voltaire, Ke$ha pumping through wired earphones, Lana Del Rey-Americana on tumblr, Allsaints spikes, pleather, faux fur, American Apparel, Isabel Marant trainers, chunky gold bangles, feather earrings, side partings, ripped jeans, Nicki Minaj Pink Friday-era, and of course, Gossip Girl. The era...

  Close reading family memoir - the psyche and the stage In this blog series, I want to share a few writings from my time at university. For the module, Telling Lives , we read selected family memoirs and wrote short blogs on our interpretations. Each piece was written along a certain theme, with the aim of highlighting a unique viewing lens for the text. Studying English in Leeds, it was apt that we read Armley’s Alan Bennett. A Life Like Other People’s conveys a difficult upbringing, swaddled in English politeness. Like many playwrights, Bennett’s history informs the drama he writes, but goes beyond just drawing inspiration. In the process of his work, he displaces traumatic events from the psyche on to the stage, and creates a coping mechanism.  Alan Bennett, A Life Like Other People’s (London: Faber, 2009): Alan Bennett describes ‘our lives’ as ‘our drama[s]’ (p. 155). In his memoir, he highlights how his family’s lives inform the dramas he writes. For example, he descri...

During my time at the University of Leeds, I studied a module titled ‘Telling Lives’. Our professor, Dr Jay Prosser, was in the midst of writing his family memoir, as he took us through the various forms of the genre. In the end, we were tasked with writing an extract of our own family memoir. This is mine. Water and Oil ‘When it comes to identity, names matter.’ Afua Hirsch Jeevan came from India, from two villages in the Punjab. From her grandmother being carried into her arranged marriage. Now, she only exists outside of India, with the colonisers. She is a stranger, but home runs, diluted, through her veins. She speaks the languages, Hindi and Punjabi (everyone speaks Hindi because of Bollywood), she understands the culture. She can use magic words to talk to her grandparents. She speaks in tongues. She knows the warmth, the smells, the colours of India. With exotic eyes she can see the faraway land. Georgina was born here, is from here. Her English grandparents met the normal way;...

    Close reading family memoir   - death and the photograph In this blog series, I want to share a few writings from my time at university. For the module, Telling Lives , we read selected family memoirs and wrote short blogs on our interpretations. Each piece was written along a certain theme, with the aim of highlighting a unique viewing lens for the text. On Chapel Sands explores the relationship between death and photography. In this extract I close read a photograph of the speaker's grandmother, Veda, taken by her grandfather, George. The physical image has outlived the both of them and will outlive the speaker. Laura Cumming, On Chapel Sands (London: Vintage, 2020):      On Chapel Sands presents the immortality of the photograph. Cumming describes a photograph of Veda (p. 114), in which George and Veda are ‘both there together, united, breathing the same warm air’ (p. 114). These two, now dead, are impossibly alive and ‘breathing’ in the present te...

  Close reading family memoir   - Culture and trauma In this blog series, I want to share a few writings from my time at university. For the module, Telling Lives , we read selected family memoirs and wrote short blogs on our interpretations. Each piece was written along a certain theme, with the aim of highlighting a unique viewing lens for the text. First up, a text exploring Chinese American existence through a captivating mesh of reality and myth, with a loving focus on the version of womanhood that it grows. Maxine Hong Kingston, Woman Warrior (London: Picador, 2015)      Woman Warrior demonstrates a struggle with separating Chinese culture and inherited family trauma. Kingston questions, ‘how do you separate [...] your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese?’ (p. 6). Both ‘No Name Woman’ and the ‘child born without an anus’ (p. 102) are inherited, traumatic ‘talk-stories’. Kingston writes, ‘My mother has given me [...] nightmare...