Ta too or not ta too

A while ago, I got this thought into my head: Wouldn't it be kind of nice to get a tattoo? They've always sort of fascinated me, especially the old-school pin-up ones etc - there's this makeup artist in MAC in Magasin du Nord with fantastic red hair and sailor-ish sleeves; her I kind of admire (I saw her often in the period where I worked there). But those wouldn't really fit me I think...

          There are also those very 90s/gang member type ones, which are abstract but in all black with lots of pointy corners and stuff, which makes you look very agressive or at least as if you'd like to come off that way - not really my style either.

No, what entered my mind was what I've tried to make a collage of to the left; three strands of pearls with some kind of 'clasp' on each shoulder. I came up with some years ago, and I've actually done quite a bit of research to try and find someone with something similar - but so far without success. I've only found pearls as a part of a pirate-themed tattoo or the temporary Chanel tattoos as on the picture to the right (I by the way think I came up with the idea before I saw those - but I'm honestly not 100% sure). But what I think I want is still different - I don't want it quite so stylized as the Chanel ones, I want it to look more realistic. 

But then comes the ever present questions: What if I don't like it? Won't it look stupid when I'm old and wrinkly?

Well, the last part doesn't worry me too much - I sure would think it was cool to have a tattooed grandma. But the first part sort of does; because it is permanent I need to be sure that I'll want to keep it - and judging by how dramatically I fell I (and my tastes) have changed in the past few years, I don't feel certain. It is a quite big tattoo, so even though covering it up with clothes wouldn't be too difficult, it's still different from a dolphin on the ankle. 

Decisions, decisions. I want the tattoo, but I'm afraid I'll regret it in a couple of years - on the other hand I've thought about it for a while.. how long do I need?

(P.S.: Going to see Wicked at Det Ny Teater tonight - so expect a review within the next couple of days ^^)

Growing up is hard to do...

Codie Young by Nicole Bentley for
Vogue Australia April 2011
(from fashiongonerogue.com)

I've always felt quite old of heart - at 12, I was sure I was as mature as I ever needed to be. And sure, I read newspapers every day when I was 11, went to Thailand for a month on a summercamp without my parents, and in many ways felt more at ease when talking to adults than people my own age - but of course, I was still a child. And once in a while the last couple of years, I've noticed just how much I've grown since last I checked; not measured by my political interest, my independence, since that's really always been there - no, by how much more comfortable I feel in my own skin.

Last week, I read through my personal statement from last autumn, when I was applying to British universities - realising how much I've grown. I wrote about aesthetics in business management, and even though the essence of what I wrote still holds, I would probably have expressed myself a bit differently if I'd written it now. Having received a bit more experience with the actual experience of 'management' when we did the play was a very important part of me growing since last fall - and if I'd written my PS now, I would probably have been able to write thing which were slightly less commonplace ..

I've never really idolised neither childhood nor youth - rather, I've always been busy growing up, annoyed whenever there was something I couldn't do because I was too young, unappreciative of the advantages that comes with the rest of the world regarding you as somewhat of a child. I spoke to a friend about this, and she told me her ideal age was 17 - old enough for people to respect your opinion, too young to have to deal with the full responsibilities of adulthood. For me, it was in a way opposite; ever since I was 5 or something, my ideal age was 19 years old; old enough to not be limited by age in any way (at least by the laws of Denmark), young enough to, well, still be young. 

         But recently, I've begun realising some stuff about childhood that I will miss - or at least that I'm perhaps not as busy growing up as I used to be. Today, I have a total of 10 school days left at Nørre G - then exams start, and then we'll be done. Although being finished is an exciting thought, it is also terrifying to move away from something you know is good - for what if what comes next somehow isn't as good? I guess this worries me especially since I'm hoping to move to St Andrews where I most likely won't know anyone - it wouldn't be as rapid a change if I stayed in Copenhagen. I also realised Monday that I've never actually contemplated not moving away from home - a classmate asked me a question about accomodation if you went to Copenhagen University, and I helped her figure it out. In the process, I saw some different student housing, and started looking them through, comparing location, prices etc - realising after 10 minutes that I could actually just keep living at home. Which scared me - that it hadn't entered my mind before. And suddenly, I felt like the whole process of growing up was happening just a bit too fast.

Fashion Gone Rogue

Nimue Smit by Sebastian Kim for Numéro #122
(from fashiongonerogue.com)

One of my favourite places on the web is the blog Fashion Gone Rogue. There is posted mainly editorials from fashion magazines from all over the world, USA to China to Russia. I do read some magazines as well, but having found this blog means I don't have to buy Italian Vogue to see their amazing pictures - at 120 dkkr (≈$24), it feels like a bit of a waste to buy it when I don't understand any of the other contents of the magazine. 

          I like the idea, not only of accessing many of these pictures for free, but accessing them at all. I am not limited by my magazine-budget or by what they choose to sell in the Magasin du Nord magazine-department; and I gain access to the international fashion world, rather than merely what Western editors choose to show me. There is for example always a marked difference between Asian editorials (which again vary between countries) and e.g. Danish; even if the photographers might be the same, and the model European, the influence from the Japanese or Korean magazine makes the final result entirely different. And just as I enjoy the cultural diversity of my IB class, getting to either confirm or affirm prejudices on my own, I like to be able to get a truly international sense of fashion :)

And speaking of international - I shall now be off to my job interview at SOS International, which is a travel insurance company I will hopefully be working at this summer. Which means, if any of you get hurt while you're on holiday, I might just be the one arranging your flight home ^^

Art, Poetry, Spring shopping

Last night, I had a long discussion about different kinds of creativity - and the different kinds of art produced by it. I really admire people who need nothing more than their own imagination to create beautiful and thought-provoking pieces - paintings, sculptures, music, litterature etc. I find, however, that I myself work better within some kind of 'frame'; as for example creating the costumes for A Midsummer Night's Dream. The play and characters are already there, and the creative process has the set task of somehow enhancing the audience's understanding of both - this I did by using different colour schemes in the different 'worlds' (fairies, lovers, mechanicals), and make variations within that to show the personality and function of the individual characters. It did once in a while lead to some silly situations, where I could hear myself forbid someone to wear red shoes or whatever, exclaiming "NO! You can't, that's Titania's colour!"- luckily, in the end, it worked out. But I'm not sure if I would be any good at designing clothes as haute couture designers etc do - because that you make completely from scratch, coming up with a vision, deciding what you'll be inspired by, all beginning with a blank piece of paper.

We also talked about poetry in this context - I've never written any just for myself, but my discussion partner seem to write a lot, and the ones I heard were beautiful. We did however not so long ago receive a task in our English class, where we were to write a poem based somehow on the movie Whale Rider; a task I actually ended up enjoying, although I wasn't completely crazy about the movie. I like to read poems with a rather complex structure and with a set rhythm, so I tried to create that. The title ended up simply being "Whale Rider":

          Whale Rider

                     Waves breaking

                     Worlds shaking

                     Silently.

                     But tide life, tide death,

                     the tide rolls in most

                     Piously.

                     Silent weaping

                     Habit's reaping

                     Fruits of sons.

                     But the un-dead half

                     is greeted by the 

                     Olden Ones.

It was fun to do, and there is some of the same litterature-puzzle to writing a poem like this as there is to reading Shakespeare, only reversed. Starting out with a couple of lines, then trying to build a structure and rhyme scheme around them, making sure you end up with something which actually makes sense can be a bit complicated - and fun. Not sure how easy the poem is to understand if you haven't watched the movie, though ^^

Spring has finally come to Denmark! And even if it's still a bit below 20 degrees celcius and quite windy, I have stubbornly (and once in a while shakingly) been sunbathing in my garden for the majority of the afternoon. But aside from the steadily improving weather, spring also means lots of new summer clothes to buy everywhere! So far, I have limited myself to a cottoncoat and a dress from H&M - plus a Rossi leather bag I found in Time's Up Vintage in Krystalgade yesterday (I have been searching for one I liked in which my computer could fit for 2 years now - have only found the Mulberry Bayswater, which for the moment is sadly a bit out of my price range). Finally, I bought the DVD of Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky to save for some day when the Danish spring/summer does not show itself from its best side, and I need a break from studying :)

Buying beautiful things makes me happy :)

Postponing the Stolen Spring

Spring is finally arriving to Denmark - and this year, with it comes IB exams and university-decisions. I'm still waiting for an answer from one of the universities I applied to in the UK, and it's driving me crazy.. You could probably say I'm the kind of person who likes to be in control, and not knowing even which country I'll be living in half a year from now is a bit unnerving!!

I've been missing doing "A Midsummer Night's Dream" terribly (pic left) - the costumes, the directing, the horrible busy-ness was way more fun than preparing for exams! 

This week, I got a bit back into my theatre-state-of-mind, though; thursday, I went to Krudttønden with a friend to watch David Mamet's "Oleanna" (pic right), and saturday my family and I went to the Royal Danish Theatre to watch their production of "My Fair Lady". The play thursday was really, really good, and very intense; a two-character play, with a total of only three scenes, concerning a student who completely destroys a professor by accusing him of amongst other things sexual harrassment and elitism. We spent a lot of time discussing the play afterwards, and it was interesting how differently one might view the play depending on cultural standpoint. Accusing him of those things based on the actions we saw him perform would be ridiculous in a Danish context - but probably less so in for example the US, where the play was written.

My Fair Lady was also a really good production. Especially the sets and costumes were amazing, and the actors were also good. I did get a bit annoyed with the translation to Danish at some points - but a translated version is practically impossible to make as good as the original, I guess, because the language will always be a bit clumsy. Not surprisingly, Cockney-english can't really be translated because the dialect-variations in Danish are smaller than in English, but Eliza (Cecilie Steenspil) instead spoke a kind of 'ghetto'-Danish with a lot of misinterpreted 'sayings' such as "Jeg er ikke den der slipper en halv vind" and "Man kan ikke både blæse og have rent mel i posen" which were brilliant. 

I especially adored the costumes and set of the Ascot scene; all females had elaborate headpieces relating to 'tea', such as teacups, saucers, trays with tea sets etc. It must be difficult to reinterpret costumes to a so iconic scene, but in my opinion they fell nothing short of the Audrey Hepburn movie-version.
          One costume which didn't quite live up to the standards set by the rest were Eliza's ballgown - it was not a very flattering design for the actress, made her look all boxy, and all the flowy pieces of fabric made it look like a bundle of chiffon-rags - nothing like the simplistic Givenchy gown it's in my mind supposed to be.
          Still, it was a visually beautiful production, which did a pretty good job of overcoming the language problems. The actors were good; it was much less emotionally intense that Oleanna, but that has more to do with the script than anything else. The two plays were very different, also in size; Krudttønden is such a tiny, intimate stage, that in comparison the Royal Theatre's Gamle Scene is huge - that also makes for quite a different experience. I'm very happy I watched both plays - and I definitely have to keep up the habit of watching a lot of plays!

Aside from watching theatre, I also twice this week practiced my directing skills - I helped a friend who was also in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" prepare for an audition at a drama school. Coincidentally, she had found a monologue from Oleanna, which we then rehearsed for her modern part; it was an excerpt from the first act, where Carol (the student) protests when the professor questions the purpose of higher education. It went really well, and I personally think she turned out to be much better than any of the versions we could find on youtube ^^

          For the classical pieces we rehearsed Ophelia's "O what a noble mind is here overthrown"-monologue from Hamlet, as well as Puck's "Though the forest have I gone..." from A Midsummer Night's Dream. I have missed doing Shakespeare! We've had some good times watching the 2010 David Tennant version of Hamlet, which is by the way brilliant, and laughing at the ridiculous acting of Kenneth Branagh in his 1996 version. I found it difficult to give directions on Ophelia - it is difficult to make it anything but static, and the emotions have to come by themselves in order to seem real. Puck was a bit easier, and we managed to redo the scene so we didn't just copy Puck from our school play (which was played by a different actor) - ending up with a good result. Her audition was today, and I can't wait to hear about how it went. I've been crossing fingers and toes and whatnot all day, so now we'll just have to wait for the results --

Good luck to her, and good luck to me with universities!