Showing posts with label thought. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thought. Show all posts

Thursday 2 February 2017

Moments

Got a review today that made me think...

"Needed this to attend a funeral. Suits the moment. Thank you"

Let's go back a bit. When I was brainstorming for a shop name, I wanted something that sounded happy and carefree. I settled on 'One Sunny Afternoon' because, who doesn't like warm sunny afternoons right? I did wonder if it was too long but anyhow, there we are.

Writing the shop story for my profile, I said that it means a lot to me because of how it pulled me out of an unhappy place after leaving my old job, and that every piece I make is special to me, that I want it to go on and become special to someone else and be part of their story. At the time in my mind I was thinking of happy moments.

And there have been. I've helped make things for weddings and birthdays and special anniversaries. But life comes with the sad moments too.

This will be the second time I've been told that something I made was worn to a funeral. It makes me sad but also happy at the same time. No. Happy is the wrong word. Honoured? Heartened. Heartened to know that something I made did something for someone else at an important moment. At lease I hope it did. I hope it helped them.

So it should be me saying "Thank you." Thank you for sharing that with me.

Friday 22 January 2016

{卷珠帘}

卷珠帘 {'Raise the pearl curtain'}, a beautiful traditional Chinese style song by young talented singer songwriter 霍尊 Huo Zun (also goes by Henry Huo) who came to fame on a Chinese singing talent contest a couple of years ago. The lyrics are written in old Chinese prose and describes a woman wistfully thinking of the person she loves as she sits by a window on a moonlit night.


I'm really loving the 古風 'gǔ fēng' ('style of the antiquity') and 中國風 'Zhōngguó fēng' ('Chinoiserie') art and music that can be found everywhere now by Chinese artists and musicians. Maybe it's just me getting older and that urge to look at your roots, but I'm rediscovering a great interest in all these traditional Chinese arts, the music, the dances, the clothing, the history and the folklore. Especially the 古風 aspect, which describes a style that conjures a Middle Kingdom of a time long ago, of myths and legends, when gods and spirits roamed, warlords clashed, heroes fought, and everything was that little bit more epic...

Sunday 6 December 2015

Be the Good

With so much sadness in the news recently, I've been finding it difficult not to feel helpless and a little despairing. I really liked this quote; it made me think that even though each of us on our own may not be able to do very much on a grand scale to change the upsetting situations we are seeing, I find some hope in the thought that each of us can still do good everyday in small ways. And lots of these little bits of good add up and spread and grow, and all will not be lost.


Friday 18 September 2015

Things to give up if you want to be happy...

I love this, words to remember and a state of mind to strive for...

15 Things to Give Up If You Want to Be Happy
1. Give up your need to always be right
When given the choice between being right and being kind, choose kind. - Wayne Dyer
2. Give up your need for control
By letting it go, it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. When you try and try, the world is beyond winning. - Lau Tzu
3. Give up on blaming others
A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else - John Burroughs
4. Give up your self-defeating self-talk
The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. - Eckhart Tolle
5. Give up your limiting beliefs
A belief is not an idea held by the mind; it is an idea that holds the mind. - Elly Roselle
6. Give up complaining
You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses. - Alphonse Karr
7. Give up the luxury of criticism
Spend so much time improving yourself that you have no time left to criticise others. - Christian D Larson
8. Give up your need to impress others
Don't try to impress others. Let them have the fun of impressing you. - James R Fisher Jr
9.Give up your resistance to change
Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be. - Joseph Campbell
10. Give up labels
The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don't know anything about. - Wayne Dyer
11. Give up your fears
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. - Franklin Delano Roosevelt
12. Give up your excuses
99% of failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses. - George Washington Carver
13. Give up the past
Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. - Christian D Larsen
14. Give up attachment
The wise individual doesn't get too attached to any of life's pleasures, knowing that wonderful science is hard a t work proving it's bad for him. - Bill Vaughan
15. Give up living your life to other people's expectations
The world is a mirror and reflects back your expectations. What you get is what you see. You create your own reality. - Denis Waitley


Original article by World Observer Online
Original Image via Pinterest

Monday 3 August 2015

So much to learn, so little time

You know, when I was younger, I used to wonder how I was ever going to be able to read all the books that had ever been written.

We have access now to so much information and knowledge via the internet, never mind 'fear of missing out', I think sometimes I have 'fear of not having enough time to find out and learn about it all'.

Reading about a random topic on Wiki that leads to a marathon onward link trail; finding that one picture or article or video on Facebook or Youtube or Pinterest that leads to discovering a new hobby, travel bucket list destination, singer, artist or just really interesting fact...anything! I love that.

I'd watched the odd video link posted by National Geographic before, but only recently realised that they were from a whole Short Film Showcase of videos from around the web. I'm working my way slowly through them - it's a great Sunday morning contemplation exercise. And I want to share the ones I love the most on the blog. One at a time, short little nuggets of thoughts and ideas. Hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

How about this beautifully mesmerising clip of the process of traditional hand egg painting in Bukovina, Romania, to kick things off? 


The Art of Egg Painting: Ciocanesti, Romania from Jungles in Paris on Vimeo

Ornamental eggs are a signature craft of Eastern Europe. The jeweled Fabergé versions once coveted by the Russian nobility are really just a high-end take on a humbler, older, and perhaps even more remarkable Easter tradition. See the full story.

Credits: Directed + Shot + Edited by: TITUS ARMAND NAPIRLICA

Wednesday 8 April 2015

Let it Go

Ok, I know it is possibly one of the most overplayed song ever... but it's a little special to me.

Just to make it more interesting because it has been played so many, many times, here it is in Mandarin from the Taiwan version of Frozen. Beautifully sung by Shennio Lin, and with a translation of the lyrics that capture the feeling of the original the closest I feel, when compared with the Chinese Mandarin or the Cantonese versions.

I went to see Frozen whilst it was still in the cinema last year and heard Let it Go for the first time. When Elsa sings at that point in the movie, she's feeling very alone in the world and the lyrics are reflecting that. I found myself relating to them so much that when she's singing '..no rules for me, I'm free!' and starts running up the ice staircase she's just created, I was starting to well up.

Five years ago I decided to leave medicine, leave being a doctor, and I was really scared. I'd never imagined that I wouldn't be staying in it when I was going through medical school. Six years at university and two years of training later, I found myself hating what I'd thought would be my career. I saw how some others were so enthused by the stressful nature of the work, whereas I found it a struggle. And how some thrived in the competitive environment whereas I couldn't understand the need for a lot of the politics. I didn't feel like I belonged -  the way I am, the way I work, just didn't seem to fit in there. So when I had to decide what do to whilst waiting to get a specialty training post, I realised that actually I didn't want to pursue it anymore. My heart wasn't in it.

The most difficult part though was after I left. Looking back now, I was really quite low for a few months before and after the official last day. Was I depressed? I'm not sure, but I certainly had periods where I was very tearful, couldn't sleep or slept too much, and had episodes where I felt a horrible hopelessness. I was grieving, definitely, for having left something that I'd planned and based my life on for so long. I am a typical introvert in that I normally don't enjoy large group gatherings and often have to take a few days of being on my own to recharge after a spate of socialising. So for a while I found it particularly difficult to face parties and meet ups because inevitably I had to talk about what I was up to and then explain, and sometimes be asked to justify, my decision, often to people I hardly knew, when I hadn't even fully accepted it myself. I found it difficult when I got negative reactions where people thought I was making such a throwaway decision when it was anything but, and I could see they didn't understand how horrible the whole thing had been for me.

In truth I was judging myself. 'How could you just throw it away?' and 'But you've wasted those years at university!' were things that went around in my own head too. I wasn't sure if it was a brave or stupid decision. But my instinct was screaming for me to leave. Having been away from it for long enough and really enjoying what I'm doing now with my own thing, being my own boss, I am more sure that I made the right choice. It hasn't been easy and it is still difficult, but I am far, far happier now. There is this wonderful quote "You know you are on the right path when you become uninterested in looking back." which is exactly how I feel. I know a few others who left medicine for a career change and are much happier for it as well. I also know some who left but went back again. I know for sure that I don't want to go back to it.

So, back in that dark cinema last year, when Elsa was in the last verse, throwing her tiara away and singing "I'm never going back, the past is in the past!" I was a blubbering mess. But it was a happy mess. It felt quite cathartic. Everyone has their own interpretation of the song. For me, Let it Go is about self-acceptance and how powerful it is when you stop hating yourself for being you. It doesn't matter if others understand why I did it anymore, because I'm happy that I did.

I still can't sing the whole song without getting a tad emotional.

Thursday 12 February 2015

A beautifully expressive short ballet

I keep saying this, but I just love discovering a new piece of artwork or music and artist or singer through randomly clicking on a link somewhere. Today this video of Sergei Polunin dancing to Andrew Hozier's 'Take me to church' was trending and I clicked to see why.


Wowee! I had heard of Polunin before, I think probably from coverage for when he unexpectedly left the Royal Ballet, but I hadn't seen his work. On just this performance in the video - I think he really is incredible. The power in his leaps and turning jumps is just awesome, and I love that you can see his emotions through his movements and in his body, particularly his face and his hands, as he interprets the music.

I love dance and ballet in particular. I love the discipline and the form - the training gives ballet dancers that elegance and poise and those very particular shapes and extended lines that are really pleasing to look at. The thing is though, I'm not actually so keen on classical ballets. Yes, they're very pretty, but maybe they're too pretty. I always feel they're dancing with masks on because they can't show their effort on their faces. And it can't be messy - it has to be very neat, and precise. I feel that, dance, at its simplest, is expression. Expression is messy; it's visceral and spontaneous. So I love this way of ballet dancing. The movements are not completely tidy, in fact I feel they're quite unrestrained, in that he's not censoring himself - he's not just aiming for a picture perfect pose but to actually describe a feeling.  Yet, you can still see that he is technically brilliant because he can execute those difficult, powerful moves and look absolutely exquisite as he hits those lines.  And it feels very raw and emotive because he's showing effort and emotion on his face. What an astounding dancer. All the more impressive because I know a little of how difficult it is!

Wednesday 7 January 2015

Assassin's Creed

All right, a little fan-girl geeking out coming up. You have been warned.

I'd always known of the Assassin's Creed games, but had never played them or really known about them in depth.

And then a couple of years ago I came across this really cool video of parkour/free-running inspired by the Assassin's Creed game style.



I loved it! But still I didn't attempt to get the game itself at the time. There was no particular reason; I guess I've just never been a massive action game player.

And then last year I played the most recent Devil May Cry, DMC, and really liked it. My little sister and I started working our way backwards through that franchise over the summer and it got me playing games again (we played quite a bit of video games growing up - Pacman, Super Mario, Bomberman, Sonic, my favourite Ecco the Dolphin ^_^...)

Anyway, so Assassin's Creed Unity was launched just at the end of last year and the guys who did the original parkour video did another one with 4 people, to tie in with the new game's multi-player co-op capability.


Talking about how cool it was with my other sister's boyfriend over Christmas, he said he had Assassin's Creed Black Flag on his Xbox and let me have a go on it. I have to say I didn't get into it so much on first play because I found the gaming style quite complicated, the controls confused me somewhat. But I was on board now, and after finding Assassin's Creed II on special offer on Steam over New Year's (=D) I gave it another shot. And I'm really glad I did as I was very impressed with the whole world and back story that they've built up for it - warring factions, Templars and conspiracy theories, sci-fi crossed with historical drama! The intrigue! The sense of adventure! I'm a really clumsy assassin though; I keep walking into walls and falling off rooftops (unintentionally)... and my brain's inability to realise that it's not really me climbing up those high places is a bit of a problem (I'm scared of heights) but it's definitely a great game. I really like how detailed the locations and historical information are, it's almost like going on a virtual tour of the time periods the games are set in - currently I'm still rampaging through Renaissance Italy.

I also can't stop re-playing the cinematic trailer for Assassin's Creed Unity because I love the song - Lorde's smokey cover of 'Everybody wants to rule the world' - and the action is so brilliantly choreographed to every beat. Very neat.


Word is that the next one is to be set in Victorian England. That'll be interesting. But the one I really hope they develop is the short side game China Chronicles that they've already released. Not only would the backgrounds and graphics plus the martial arts influences that'd be in there be so awesome, the main selling point for me is that the assassin in that story is a woman!

Saturday 19 July 2014

The Drowned Man

Way, way back in January, one of my friends treated me to an evening out to see immersive theatre company Punchdrunk and the National Theatre's most recent offering, The Drowned Man. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before. Seriously. It was mind-blowingly awesome. I loved it so much I couldn't stop recommending it and took my sister and her boyfriend, and my youngest sister all to see it to make sure they didn't miss it. My youngest sister liked it so much we went back to see it again, just a few weeks before it finished its run. If it hadn't wrapped, I suspect we might have gone again. Yes it really was that good, and no, that is by far not the most times people have been.



The Drowned Man is set in a 1960s Hollywood film studio, Temple Pictures. Inside the studio where stars and starlets chase their dreams, two lovers struggle to make ends meet. Tragedy strikes when infidelity, scheming and betrayal drive them apart, leading one of them into ever increasing delusion and paranoia until eventually it ends in a horrific death. Strangely, a similar story unfolds in parallel outside the gates of the studio among the people of the town. Even more mysteriously, something happened to Temple Studios itself, which we are told was shut down overnight for an unknown reason...

Do you know Punchdrunk? They made their name through pioneering large scale immersive theatre where audience members are free to roam and interact with the sets, the story and the characters.

I'd been to an open air promenade play before (based on Lords and Ladies, the Discworld book by Sir Terry Pratchett) which was staged in a park and where the audience followed the actors around the various scenes as the story unfolded. But we were still only watching in the background. Punchdrunk's productions are truly immersive. They convert huge disused buildings into unbelievably detailed sets and you are allowed to go wherever you want as the actors enact the story around you. There's no right or wrong way to go about it, you choose what you want to do and see. Though, 'seeing' doesn't describe the complete sensation, it's more 'experiencing'. You don't just watch as a passive audience, you have to work for it by choosing what to do. Very often you have to chase after the characters (up and down stairs, through narrow corridors, across forests and deserts...) as they go about their business. You can stand right next to the actors in a fight, sit at their desks, eavesdrop on intimate conversations, read a note they've read, look through cabinets, walk into their homes, riffle through their belongings... the amazing sets, the sounds, the smells, the music, the lighting, and the actors, all catapult you into the world that the story creates. It is as if you are watching from inside the story, beside the characters. It's like a live-action computer game. There are some rules though - all audience members have to wear a mask, talking is not allowed, and you are encouraged to explore on your own. A lot of it is practically in the dark, with only strategic lighting to guide you through the huge maze of rooms and sets. The more you search, the more secrets you uncover. And if you are very brave (and very lucky), you might find yourself rewarded with a special interaction.

For The Drowned Man, four floors of an old postal sorting warehouse was converted into Temple Studios and its town. The scale and detail of the sets were just incredible. To give you an idea of the sheer size, it played host to around 40 cast and 600 audience members at full capacity, with lots of space still left over. There was a working cinema inside. Yes really! You could have gotten lost in there. Each show ran for three hours but that was still not enough to see everything. You could easily have spent it just exploring the sets and rummaging through the details. And if you decided to follow the characters, there were multiple story lines happening simultaneously all over the four floors and it was impossible to follow everything. My friend and I missed a whole floor on the first visit and even after seeing it three times I hadn't followed every character.

The story itself is inspired by Woyzeck, a fractured, unfinished play by George Buchner, about a soldier who is driven crazy by his lover's affair and ends up killing her. It also draws on ideas from other works including short story The Sandman, and novels The Day of the Locust and Something Wicked This Way Comes. To quote Punchdrunk's own description, Temple Studios is a place where '...celluloid fantasy clings to desperate realism and certainty dissolves into a hallucinatory world' as we '..[follow] its protagonists along the precipice between illusion and reality.'

For me, it very much gave a sense of the dark underbelly of the Hollywood dream - voyeurism, exploitation, obsession and corruption. I loved the air of menace that ran through the whole story, the allusions to the malevolent and the supernatural that played with the mind and made everyone very jumpy. I loved how, as the audience, we wandered around this world in eerie white masks as if we were ghosts - we could see the characters but they couldn't see us (or could they...?). The freedom to roam everywhere and be so close to everything completely blurred the fourth wall and, in a crazily beautiful way, brought full circle the very idea of fantasy/reality that was being played out.

I also loved that each person's experience was completely unique to them - only I saw everything the way that I saw it, even though we were all watching the same thing. And because of the story-within-a-story, multiple layered nature of the game that we were playing, we could all be seeing a different layer of the story depending on how deeply we were looking for hidden clues and trying to unravel the secrets. Oh how things clicked into place when reading spoilers afterwards.

I can't wait to see more of Punchdrunk's work. I'd first become aware of them a few years ago when they turned railway arches at Waterloo station into the setting of an immersive play for the launch of a sci-fi horror game for one of the big consoles (found out too late, didn't see it T_T). Their Sleep No More, which has located the story of Macbeth inside a 1930s hotel, is currently running in New York. Will they bring that back over to the UK? Or will their next production be something completely new? I wait with bated breath! Here is Punchdrunk's founder, the genius that is Felix Barrett, to tell you a bit more:


PS. All the scenes you see in the trailers are from the actual sets that were on location.

Saturday 1 March 2014

...the audience still sleeps


Sunrise on the beach, Rhodes, Greece | 2008


“When you do something noble and beautiful and nobody noticed, do not be sad. For the sun every morning is a beautiful spectacle and yet most of the audience still sleeps.”

~ John Lennon

Friday 23 August 2013

Little President Man

Have you met Robby Novak, aka Kid President?


He is adorable and I'm a huge fan. His videos are so funny and uplifting. This incredible little boy living with his own illness inspires a lot of happiness.


You can't help smiling and he has the most infectious laugh.


Only 10 and he's met the President at the White House and been invited to the United Nations!

Wednesday 7 August 2013

Visit to a lavender farm

Went to visit some friends who live in Hertfordshire over the weekend. They took us to a lavender field in Hitchin which is part of a working farm. Hitchin used to be one of two major lavender growing areas in the country.


It was really sunny in the morning when we arrived and as we came off the road into their car park we could see this purple hill in the distance. It was so pretty!


My friends had been a couple of months before and were disappointed because the lavender had not yet bloomed. This made up for it I think.


The rows of lavender stretched out over the low hill and even though the sun did then decide to play hide and seek behind huge clouds, it was just wonderful.


There weren't too many people around just yet so it was perfect for photos.


There were so many bees buzzing all around, with butterflies and ladybugs...


The farm harvests the lavender to make essential oil and lavender products for sale in the 17th century barn. There's a cafe and an outside area to sit and enjoy the view. You can also take home plug plants of lots of varieties of lavender. I was very tempted to buy some to join my pink Little Lottie lavender, but seriously, there's no room left on my balcony...


We each picked a bag-full of the lovely purple stuff and the rain didn't start until we were safely indoors again. So now all I have to do is decide what to do with all that lavender once it has dried. There's no such thing as too many lavender sachets, right?

Friday 17 May 2013

Baa says Hello

Once upon a time when I was still at school, I used to draw little sheep. Often doodling them in my books and drawing them all over the Christmas and birthday cards that I gave to my friends and teachers.


I can't really remember how I started drawing them but I liked to use them in my doodling because they were really simple (like the sheep equivalent of stick men) and I could draw the sheep in various guises without needing to think too much about correct proportions or lighting or anatomy etc.


There was a phase where I drew the sheep digitally, named her Baa, and uploaded the pictures to my deviantART gallery, but it's been a while since I last drew her.


I might just start again...

Thursday 8 November 2012

The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid...


"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear."

~Nelson Mandela

Wednesday 3 October 2012

...the thing which you think you cannot do




"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face...You must do the thing which you think you cannot do."

~Eleanor Roosevelt

Monday 1 October 2012

One Sunny Love

Two years ago I was feeling pretty rubbish because of my job. After deciding to leave something I'd known and worked towards for 8 years, to say I was terrified would be putting it mildly.

I didn't know what would happen when I listed those first items in my shops. It was something I'd always wanted to try and I needed to do something to keep me motivated.

It's been a slow, steep learning curve and I'm not anywhere near a success story yet but I made my 100th sale on Etsy last month and lovely shop owners in Canada and now London have taken a chance on me to stock what I make. It's really a wonderful feeling.

I've been keeping a pin of where I've sent orders and consignments since I started, just for my own record. I love this image of things that I've made travelling to all these places.


I am truly grateful to every single one of those hearts, and to everyone who encouraged and believed in me (or just didn't say out loud how insane you thought I was!). Whatever happens next, I will feel glad that I gave it a go.

Friday 31 August 2012

Strawberry Love

I planted some alpine strawberry seeds for my balcony garden last year. They were teeny tiny and the seedlings looked so fragile when they came out.


Well, they grew and grew of course...


This year they flowered and, with a little help, pollinated and bore fruit!


The strawberries are so small, but they taste amazing, really sweet and bursting with strawberry flavour.

Friday 10 August 2012

The colour of home


'Earthrise', from NASA, taken on board Apollo 8 by astronaut William Anderson on the first ever manned lunar orbit in 1968

"For most of history, blue was the colour of the beyond. It was the colour of the horizon, the colour of the thing that so many of us were aspiring to and hoping to escape to. But in 1968 that dream finally came true. When in 1968 we finally went beyond that horizon, we discovered that blue was actually the colour of home."

~Dr James Fox, The History of Art in Three Colours: Blue

Tuesday 7 August 2012

Do As Infinity / ブランコ



Do As Infinity was one of my favourite bands during my teenage years. Buranko (meaning a playground swing, in Japanese) was one of the first songs I heard from them. I fell in love with the melody first but when I read the translation of the lyrics, it became even more poignant.

It's a song about growing up, rebelling, leaving home, chasing dreams, losing dreams, reminiscing about childhood, and wanting to return to those simpler times.

It's so full of bitter-sweet nostalgia... I feel, as my friends and I get older, and pass through milestones both happy and unhappy, I can appreciate these sentiments. But I also like to think that, whatever happens now, there will come a time when we will look back and feel a fondness for where we were and who we were at this moment too.


Buranko ga yureteru
Warau youni yureteru
Tsukiakari terasu kouen de
Ano hi no watashi ni deau

Saishuu densha ni
Hakidasarete wa
Utsumuita mama de kaeru michi

Nagai saka no tochuu
Furui danchi no
Shiawase sou na
Mado akari

Watashi no yume mitai
Hitotsu zutsu
Kiete yuku

Buranko ga yureteru
Warau youni yureteru
Tsukiakari terasu kouen de
Ano hi no watashi ni deau

Haha ni miokurareta
Inaka no eki o
Kogarashi fukeba
Omoidasu

Kekkyoku chichi to wa
Hanasanakatta
Ikikata ga chigau to
Omotteta

Sonna tsuyogari mo
Ayamachi mo
Kizukenai

Buranko ga yureteru
Warau youni yureteru
Osanai watashi wa hitori demo
Kogeru no da to shinjiteta

"Kaasan nakaseruna"
Hitokoto ga
Rusuden ni

Buranko ga yureteru
Warau youni yureteru
Osanai watashi no se o oshita
Ano hi no anata ni deau

Ano hi no watashi ni modoru

Ano hi no watashi de itai


A swing is moving,
Moving like it's laughing...
In the moonlit park
I see the person I was that day.

After the last train
Spits me out,
I go home hanging my head.

On my way up the long hill,
In an old apartment estate,
I see happy-looking lights
From the windows.

Like my dreams,
They disappear
One by one.

A swing is moving,
Moving like it's laughing...
In the moonlit park
I see the person I was that day.

When the cold wind blows,
I remember
Being seen off by my mother
At that country station.

In the end,
I didn't speak to my father --
I thought
Our lifestyles were too different.

I didn't even notice
How I was pretending to be strong,
And the mistakes I made.

A swing is moving,
Moving like it's laughing...
When I was little,
I believed that I could swing by myself.

"Mom, don't make me cry" --
I left one sentence
On her answering machine.

A swing is moving,
Moving like it's laughing...
I see the person you were that day
When you pushed me.

I'm going to go back to the person I was that day.

I want to be that person.