going out

tonight, it's time to hit the town and fall under the spell of the night. i'm looking forward to it, as i haven't had a night out in months.
are you familiar with barney stinson's get psyched mix? i too have a couple of songs that really get me into that ecstatic mood of going out.

1. florence and the machine: hurricane drunk
2. billy idol: shock to the system
3. guns'n'roses: night train
4. amorphis: sky is mine
5. van halen: jump
6. billy ocean: lover boy
7. queen: don't stop me now
8. him: vampire heart
9. ac/dc: born to be wild

i'm sure i've left some out, but these are really my favourites. and you? are you heading anywhere tonight? it's gonna be legandary.

amazing artist: oleg dou

this week's amazing artist is a mysterious russian photographer oleg dou. he combines photography with digital techniques to create eerie and meaningful pieces, mostly focused on the human face. i think their eyes are especially captivating. here's some of his work.

wanderlust: the road goes ever on and on

the sky is high today and my mind is in terrible need of some rest, so i figured it's high time to begin with the wanderlust series of posts. clearly, there's a lot of ways to escape reality, though one of the most efficient ones is definitely to literally escape somewhere.
i have not always liked the usa, but i've always wanted to travel the route 66. even the name has a certain mystique to it, doesn't it? i dream of hiring an old red corvette or maybe hijacking a truck and hitting the road, with wind in my hair and sand in my shoes, never returning home. for me, route 66 is a symbol of youth, freedom and america at its best.
now listen to this song, close your eyes and dream, dream away!

/photo above by witold skrypczak

early spring

just a poem by rainer maria rilke that made me hope today, when hope was almost lost. early spring.

Harshness vanished. A sudden softness
has replaced the meadows' wintry grey.
Little rivulets of water changed
their singing accents. Tendernesses,

hesitantly, reach toward the earth
from space, and country lanes are showing
these unexpected subtle risings
that find expression in the empty trees.

cold beauty

for a couple of days now i have been working on a school project for which the inspiration had been crystals. and before i knew, they mesmerized me with their geometric beauty once again.
don't you think this cave of crystal giants in mexico would be a great place to escape reality for a while? i can already imagine the cold glassy sensation of crystal suface on my skin.
which reminds me of the beautiful jewlery over at mossiere. i need this necklace!

the end and the beginning

did you know that the word 'carnival' origins in latin 'carnum levare', which means 'to let go of meat' or 'to let go of flesh'? this meaning is very chatolical, though it is believed that carnival is a much much older holiday. it marks the time of the year when just a moment of crazy, ecstatic happiness is allowed, because the winter is slowly coming to an end, but there are still several cold months ahead. it's the outburst of hope that has to be quickly tamed again, as spring is still far away.

in slovenia, we have quite some interesting carnival traditions, but the most intriguing of them all is the 'kurent', a monstrous creature from another world, dressed up in sheep skin, with big horns and colourful ribbons, jumping from side to side, ringing five cowbells. a group of kurents is often accompanied by a devil dressed in red. the arrival of kurents always announces the beginning of a new life, a new season, and the end of old winter.

in the old days, only unmarried men were allowed to dress up as kurents. they are the manifestation of life force and fertility, similar to bakh or the satyrs. kurent is not a god, more of a demon, but two-faced, good and evil at the same time.




we also have several modern stories about kurent, who has obviously inspired a lot of writers, one of them being slovenia's best known literate ivan cankar. The stories are all very similar: kurent is a protagonist, differenet from his people, who therefore despise and exclude him. his is a sad existence until he meets a girl and falls in love. but the people are jealous and do not approve of his happiness. they kill the girl. kurent starts to play the violin, leaves his home town and travels the world, enchanting people with his music and then killing them as revenge for the death of his beloved.

and there, i think, we have the main characteristic of carnival: happiness mixed with saddnes, mercy mixed with cruelty, good mixed with evil, life mixed with death. carnival celebrates the opposites, winter and spring, the end and the beginning.

freedom and summer

just a pretty picture for us to enjoy on a sunny, but wintery friday. i don't know the author, can someone help me out?
right now, i'm dreaming of freedom and summer and heat and humidity and the sea and the feeling when you jump into the water and in the middle of the jump time just stops for a little while.

amazing artist: jacek yerka

i found yerka just the other day, and was immediately enchanted. his paintings are detailed, naturalistic and rich, but also dreamy and fantastic. they remind me of those impossible places you see in your dreams, or maybe of some garcia marquez novel.
they're also fun because you can just look at them forever and picture the imaginary scenarios that could happen there. pure eyegasm. here's some of my favourites.

winter is coming

i've always been a sucker for fiction, an lately i'm kind of obsessed with martin's a song of ice and fire book series.
i know it's kind of popular all over the world at the moment, but there are still a lot of people who disapprove of it, as it's supposed to be 'childish and unaware of the issues of today's world'. since i work in a literature house, where mostly 'serious' literature is discussed and read, i hear a lot of that. however, i think that martin has much more courage that many of the so-called real writers. he's not afraid of taking giant turns in his plot, or killing the characters the audience loves most, or revealing every dark side of their personalities there is. the chapters are written from a selection of characters' points of view, and that really gives the reader the opportunity to see them in full specter, not just black and white. he generously describes their motives and succeeds in keeping them very alive.
i'm not saying it's gold, i still prefer some other pieces of fiction, but it's quite alright. it has some loose ends, i don't deny it, and it's set in a medieval-ish magical world, wich sometimes makes it really hard to believe, but martin's skill of character buliding is just awesome.
fiction is really one of the best ways to escape the real life :)

as the years go by

it's been a while. how are you? right now i'm feeling ready to bring this blog back to life. it wont be easy though, as there's just so much going on in my life! since july 2010
i got that summer job, and it's not even summer anymore
i developed an obsession with lists
i cut my hair really short
i started singing in a rock band
i founded an improv group
i still haven't made that appointment (procrastinators, unite! ...tomorrow)
i finished two years at architecure school - two and a half to go!

yes, i think that's about it. it's been quite busy, but also very nice. i'll try to keep up with you a bit more often from now on.

xx
a.