Personal/impersonal

Both and neither

After agonizing for months because looking for a job is a job in itself that only pays in stress and embarrassment, I felt the urge to get back to writing my beloved articles in my fake magazine on the internet. Because I might as well use the time I have while being unemployed doing something enjoyable.

Is this optimism or what?!

Legacy

The 2000s revival in fashion and culture as a whole has inevitably brought back the army jacket.

And if you see this bad selfie you will think that I also got caught in this trend. That’s far from the truth.

That jacket is not only vintage, that jacket belonged to my maternal great-grandfather. He died at almost 90, when I was 2 or 3, so I only know stories about him, but I was thrilled when my brother found this piece of history at our grandmother’s house.

My great- grandfather was a lovely man, charming and kind who lived in a poor village in southern Romania. And as many people of his time, he led and extremely difficult life.

I know very little details but here are the highlights: he raised his baby siblings by himself, because their parents died when he was something like 8 years old and was the oldest. When the time came, he enrolled and went to war, somehow survived, then worked at a provincial mill where at one point he was wrongfully accused of stealing and got sentenced to prison.

He got out when my grandmother (who was their only surviving child) was still pretty young and didn’t really recognize him. He separated from his wife sometime after and moved out, but he came back each Sunday for lunch with small gifts for his daughter or granddaughters.

After all this, he managed to keep his joie de vivre, to be kind and respectable within the community. I also know a story about how one day someone saw him riding his bike and asked if he could borrow it to a village nearby; he evidently gave his bike away. He waited until nightfall, when he realised he was tricked and went home on foot. When confronted by his wife about how could he be so naive he said something along the lines of: He asked for help, how could I not give it to him?

I shared his story because it’s fascinating to me how if you take care of an object it can go and live through many lives and pass on from person to person. His life sounds like fiction, if there weren’t real people to recount it, I would also have thought it was a novel. But the world was very different in his time and people were inevitably different too.

So yeah, I don’t care about any trend, I’ve been wearing that jacket for 8 years and I am wondering how long did he wear it for before me. It still has rust stains on the collar from where it was hung.

I wanted to alter it in some way, paint something or cut it, but I think I will leave it for now.

Photo by Rebecca Hausner on Unsplash

Shell of a person

I read an impeccable article (linked below) about how taste has lost it’s meaning and purpose in the internet age.

And among other things, it answered a very personal issue i have - the point of contributing or adding value when things are devalued and people create their personality strictly based on social media.

The best example is the whole Carolyn Bessette Kennedy insanity that lasted only 6 months. I’ve loved her style since highschool (aka 15 years ago) when I discovered their tragic story and was searching for inspiration as I believe any young woman does or should do when trying to figure themselves out. It was my instant affinity towards simplicity (which should not be confused for easy) and clean lines and a rigor of the silhouette that is difficult to achieve, the nonchalance and the studied effortlessness in her demeanor and presentation that made me add her to my style benchmark.

15 years later, and everyone has gone beserk online. Wearing stupid satin skirts that only work if you are XS and obnoxious school girl headbands, just because they saw a paparazzi photo on IG and a fictional tv show. Of course i automatically refuse to say i like Carolyn’s style now because there is an army of influencers copying her looks. You can’t be interested in fashion if you don’t research about it’s history (and it’s not like we are talking about the 18th century), so why do we need a tv show to remember we need a personality?

Serif ou sans serif

A few weeks ago i read something on Linkedin that broke my heart. A retired copy/writer (whose name I forgot unfortunately) went on a rant about how he hates designers for their shallow tendency of preferring sans serif fonts to serif ones. Guilty as charged. He said that all his career he pleaded for the readability of the serif font (at least for the body text), while butting heads with the graphic designers who (obviously) preferred the minimalist, no nonsense sans serifs.

The man said that he recently had surgery for his cataracts but it was unsuccessful and that his vision will only decline with time, and therefore it was extremely difficult for him to browse the internet and read articles and so on. Heartbreaking. To say the least. I think it’s one of my greatest fears, losing my sight.

So now I obviously started thinking I should make the switch towards serifs. I always avoided them, probably because I loathed Times New Roman and all the typing rules for sending in a school paper. I don’t know, I like rules but just non rigid ones, you know? Anyway.

This story really got me thinking about switching stuff a bit.

Photo by Fabio Santaniello Bruun on Unsplash

Dance

I recently bumped into this scene from The Little Prince, a movie I’ve never heard of until then and where you can clearly see where Michael Jackson got his inspiration (in part, I mean) - Bob Fosse playing The Snake. It’s very MJ coded.

Can you miss someone you’ve never met?

It’s been 9 years since Chris Cornell died.

I am not a relative, he was a complete stranger to me. But I actually miss him.

I remember clearly that day, where I was and with whom.

When I heard the news on the radio, I was in complete denial: “What the fuck is wrong with these guys? Sharing fake news about someone’s death? Inexcusable.”

I was so certain it wasn’t real. And then… the news got picked up more and more, and then the official statement was released. It impacted me (again, a stranger) to such a degree, that I can’t imagine how it felt for his close ones.

He was one of my favorite voices of all time.

No one really sings like you anymore.

Epilogue

Walter Benjamin wrote a book about the aura of the piece of art that differentiates it from any mechanical copy. A very real feeling you can only test by going to museums. You can’t fake an original :)

And basically, this is how i want to live my live. Having the things around me marked by my finger prints. A chair, a lamp, a cushion. Even vintage pieces that got a whole life before me, therefore other fingerprints. I think that is more important than having many things or expensive ones.

I want stuff made by people who had an idea, a feeling and a skill they perfected in time. You don’t only transfer your prints, there is also an exchange happening when you are creating somethin that it’s difficult to explain. It is almost like giving life to the thing. Whatever it is.

I recently learned crocheting. I don’t know if I am going to do anything with it, but I loved working with my hands again.

See you soon. I hope!

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Here is a great read on taste in this millennia.