Sorolla

The rain in Spain

Today I went on a tour of the more obscure places of El Retiro, one of Madrid's most important parks, if not the most important one. It wasn't as awe-inspiring as I'd imagined, but it was a lovely 2 hour walk around the legendary park, filled with interesting stories about it. It's one of Madrid's free cultural activities, which I think is awesome. I went with my mom and her friend, and, even though it was raining for the most part, that just made everything more beautiful. Really gorgeous. I leave you with a few photos of the expedition. (By the way, I have a new camera! Expect lots of pictures of everything from now on! :)

On our way.

Weekend Soundtrack

Lykke Li - Melodies and Desires

Daughter - Smother

Bon Iver - Wash.

It's cloudy and rainy today and I'm very contemplative. This music keeps me in trance.

xx

Inspiration Saturday

As probably a few of you know, I'm in the process of making a 'film', which is more like an existential experiment in which really wonderful people from my life appear and who let me direct them in my weird stories. I can't lie. This is actually the most interesting thing happening in my life right now. I started thinking that the fact I'm so involved with this might be a response to an overwhelming sadness and unmotivation which has been sleepily creeping on me. But then I decided that it doesn't matter what this might be a response to, because all I really know is that I get so much joy in creating things only for myself. I then leave you here with a few of the sources of inspiration for this project that I have handily around the house. They are my favorite things to come back to. They make perfect before-bed stories, too. Whether it be dreaming of mythological monsters, of having a beautiful soundtrack to your life, or sitting under perfect lighting, all these elements of my life make me pensive and peaceful and wondrous.

From the valley to the stars

This song reminds me of not so long ago, when I first heard it and I lived, for a week, blissfully enchanted by it's lightness and simplicity. It literally has six words as lyrics. But it's beautiful. Now, the bliss I feel when hearing this song is merely a memory of that. It's the worst and most amazing feeling, when you fall in and out of love with a song. When you discover it and it overwhelms you, throwing your sanity out the window for the period of time you are constantly repeating the song, you literally are a purer version of yourself, enchanted by something as sublime as a song that touches your heart. When you grow out of it, it becomes a part of you, a limb, and it's useless until you need it, and when you do, it's there with you, and that security and peace you feel when you remember that is also overwhelming.

I think it was this song the one that sparked the idea. I am starting a project which I'm very excited about. It's a personal one, parallel to schoolwork but I guess also related? Video is probably my favorite means of expression, and I'm not really good at it, but I do feel like I want to be, so practicing with concepts I love I think will help me evolve... It'll be completely amateur but with a cast formed by some of my best friends from uni, who have graciously accepted to be featured in it. I don't want to give a lot away because there's a lot to consider, but it will be a film based on 10 different characters who are connected only in the way they feel about life and death. They'll be ten different parallel stories which will be tailored to each of my friends. I'm actually interviewing them tomorrow, and recording it for a kind of 'Behind-the-scenes', to create completely unique characters with their essence. If it all works out I will be involving myself in making an actual video of MYSELF (so outrageous) to explain the concept, because it's one I've had on my mind for a long time.

Just so you get an idea, the aesthetics which will probably feature in it will border on what I like to call 'sepulcral, subtle, semi-gore', which in my head is a mixture of The Shining by Kubrick and Lost in Translation and The Virgin Suicides by Sofia Coppola (three of my favorite films right there hehe).

I don't want to bore you with my incoherent thoughts about this any longer, but I'm very excited! If you want to see any of my other videos you can check My Youtube Channel, and I'll leave you with the first one I made last year, one of my favorites.

<3 xx

To muddy death.

'Ophelia' by John Everett Millais

There is a willow grows aslant a brook,That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream; There with fantastic garlands did she come Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them: There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death 

(Hamlet, by William Shakespeare)

Ophelia is such an amazing fictional character. Upon my fourth and definitely most enthusiastic reading yet of Hamlet, I have found myself holding on to the image of Ophelia like my personal religious icon, martyr even, memorising every word she speaks on paper, analising every reinterpretation made of her. A symbol of Romanticism, her death, brought by her own hands, is possibly the most beautiful to exist. In the play, her death isn't scened, only spoken of by the Queen (above), which allows a more creative and personal approach to her death. There are a million representations of that and of her life, always with the mystical aura of a water nymph, and always very solemn and pensive. In Shakespeare's play, Ophelia goes mad after a series of unfortunate events which attack to her precious, innocent, undeserving (of cruelty, that is) soul. But, in my heart, Ophelia simply begins to exist on another plane parallel to ours, to everyone's, where looking for logic is illogical and, where if your heart asks you to sleep eternally in the river, you'll lay there and wait for nature to play its part and make you a part of it. 'Ophelia' in Latin means 'help'. But I think the only help she ever needed was the one to get her out of the world she didn't belong in.
That is why Ophelia is my everything, because she didn't succumb to the world, but to nature, which should be the natural thing to do, no?