Serigraph is a Pretty Word

Other pretty words with which I've fallen in love this week: quintessential, verisimilitude, caffeine.

I've been getting very much of that last one lately. I remember last year I had this strange promise to myself that I would stop drinking coffee. Perhaps I was concerned for my health, or I just needed to prove to myself that I wasn't some dependent. In the end though, I caved. It was exam time and I couldn't bring myself to keep purchasing energy drinks and caffeine pills. (As you can see, staving off of coffee didn't stop any other harsh substances.)

I toyed with the thought of going sober again this Fall. No such luck. The pumpkin spice lattes at Starbucks are too reminiscent of everything I love about this season. Also, the withdrawal period is terrible.

As I sit here in the afterglow of handing in my first big paper of the year, I present Eyvind Earle. A serigraph, as featured here, is basically silkscreen art. Maybe you'll recognize the style. He did many of the backdrops for Sleeping Beauty way back in the day.

These pictures make me wish I had enough artistic talent to prevent my room from looking like a barren wasteland. I need more things to put up on walls. MORE.

Distractions

I'm in that frame of mind where I always need to be doing something with my hands, with my mind, other than that damn studying. This is the product of yesterday evening's "studying" - a new addition above my little wall of necklaces. Hanging up my necklaces like that proved to be one of the best decisions I've made for my morning ritual. Now I can just grab and go. Sometimes I do end up tearing shit apart as I attempt to untangle all my unnecessary jewelry and then - oh, it seems I'm fifteen minutes late for class. That's not a new thing, unfortunately.

Today, I've gone on a bit of a downloading binge. I have the new Feist album as well as the Blue Hawaii album. Blue Hawaii is this little-known band that features the lead singer of BRAIDS, Raphaelle, as their resident songstress. She makes this album sound so beautifully beyond me. It's the little things.

Now I sit with a piece of cake, blogging and contemplating my next wall decor move. Maybe some more picture collages next to my gratuitously large calendar? 

Apparently, the quality of photos from my Blackberry isn't as terrible as I thought. Perhaps I shall upload more photos later.

And Another

Look, I know that growing up a child of the "hipster-is-more-knowledgeable-and-therefore-holier-than-thou" generation thing has disillusioned me from enjoying anything...mainstream. This isn't mainstream, though. At least, I don't think it is.

They're remixes and they make me kind of jollier than I was before listening to them. Maybe happiness is wrongful in the eyes of the hip portions of my generation. Are we all supposed to sit there mopey-eyed while some waif-like singer or another drawls out their pretensions and frustrations into a microphone? No? I didn't think so.

Given what I just said, however, a fair few of these remixes (okay, maybe all of them) are re-imaginations of the traditionally "indie" songs. Enjoy. 

Home (RAC Remix) - Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up) (Jamie T's Lionheart Remix) - Florence + the Machine

Helena Beat (Rather Red RRRemix) - Foster the People

When I was home for Thanksgiving, I finally got to watch my first episode of Saturday Night Live in months. Ben Stiller was hosting which meant that there was a Zoolander appearance later in the show. It was awesome.

My point here is that Foster the People came on. I don't think that they're that incredible. I may have just been stupid-tired at this point. Being in a post-secondary institution does this thing to you where if you absolutely want to stay up, you can't, but on the nights when you're supposed to catch up on sleep and stuff, you just end up pulling an all-nighter for absolutely no reason.

Insomnia's a mysterious whore.

Floating

Unfortunately, I have an assignment due tomorrow on this book. I read it not too long ago (I suppose around the late winter, just when things were thawing out) and, because of it, Didion remains as a terribly interesting writer in my mind.

I have this propensity to enjoy minimalism. There's always so much going on in my mind, or in other parts of my life, that I'm attracted to the clean, the simple. The clutter-free. If my immediate surroundings are clear, then maybe everything else will follow, y'know? I think that's my thinking every time I scrub the kitchen clean at 1 am.

Point is, I like Didion. I don't mean to nod my head fervently as she traverses through the tragedy of her husband's death. I really don't. I admire her resilience, which is something that way too many of us lack.

Or maybe I've just acquired this new taste for minimalism and simplicity after working at the paper for the past month or so. You can ask the gray walls of my bedroom or something.

And if my hard sell on Didion still hasn't worked on you, please read this essay. This is the piece that solidified her as one of my favourite authors.

Things became unreasonably busy unreasonably fast. "I'm tired dude," my friend just said to me. Same here, man. I can't remember the last time I just sat and did absolutely nothing. My mind is always preoccupied with something, and I'm always moving on to the next-next-next thing.

Right now, though, I have my pumpkin spice latte and my golden yellow coat. It's autumn, and that means that the landscape will have some colour injected into it. I can't wait until I'm home surrounded by the foliage again. And my cat.

In the meantime, here is a song with which I will forever be in love. The band is BRAIDS and I will be seeing them live soon. Yet again.

Listening to this, I feel like I could last forever.

BRAIDS - Lammicken from Mark Webber on Vimeo.