Fire or Fear

I'd like to begin this post by declaring myself the true champion of the Procrastination Games. Thank you, thank you - I am not proud. Sorry! 

Now onto the new post - today I will be writing about Authenticity. 

A quick Goodle search will tell you that the word “authenticity” means to be authentic. Why, thank you, Google, that’s exactly as profound and comprehensive a definition as I was hoping to find. Not one to accept defeat easily, and after a quick brainstorming session, I discovered that the definition of “authentic” is “to be honest or real”.

Ah, real…a word thrown around so aggressively these days. Often in order to put something or someone else down so that everybody else can know that the user of the word is in possession of a lot of depth and character. Or simply to hide behind social justice while actively disenfranchising everybody else because #insecurities. You can easily identify these people because they’re always going on about real music and real women and real whatever else, forever damning everything outside their definition of real to the realm eternal non-existence.

But I digress…

What I am interested in is my decision to dedicate the rest of my 2016 to the pursuit of authenticity, aka the pursuit of complete and total honesty in my dreams and intentions. I want to make choices that are true to who I am as person, what I believe in and what I stand for. I want to like the things I like because I like them; I want to do things because I want to do them; and I want to say things because I mean them.

So, in order to be as authentic as possible, I have created The Manifesto on Being Authentic.

This list could easily be ten times longer, but ultimately, my pursuit of authenticity will depend on my ability to be unapologetically myself. 

I wanted to say that this isn’t a review but then reviews, when you think about it, are just well-structured opinions. I don’t think this is particularly well-structured but this is my opinion on a musical matter.  More specifically, this is the part of the blog where I share artists/musicians/bands I love and why I love them. And hope that you might love them to – or at least listen to them.

My first feature in The Artist Spot is Billie Marten. Billie Marten is an English artist that I only recently discovered but she is already one of my absolute favourites. She is only 16 years old but you’d never guess from the depth in her lyrics and the melancholic, folk-y melodies in her songs. Are melancholic folk melodies even a thing? I don’t know, but they will be for the purposes of this post. She is the perfect artist to listen to on an overcast and rainy day, especially with a voice as soothing as hers.

I reckon her sound probably fits under folk…but the alternative and moody side of folk. It’s the kind of music that puts you in a contemplative mood. I found her through her song Bird, which has a delicate melody that goes perfectly with the sweetness of Billie’s voice as she sings, “Nobody's watching/drowning in words so sweet/mild is the water/caught as a bird once free”. The song is quite sad but it is undeniably beautiful. I know a good thing when I hear it so I immediately went and downloaded her EP As Long As, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Her song Heavy Weather is one of my favourites off of the EP and it speaks of lovers who are fearless in the face of the elements. The song builds beautifully as it involves a subtle drumbeat reminiscent of the rumble of thunder and is carried right through with beautiful guitar strumming...picking...playing (I promise I will learn proper guitar terminology in future). Roots is another favourite of mine where Billie sings about finding her place in the world and I’m pretty sure every human ever in the history of existence knows this feeling and will likely relate to it.

You can download her EP here.

You can find her music on YouTube here. 

M

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Darker Side by Rhodes

I was listening to Darker Side by Rhodes when I started thinking about what the song means. The obvious conclusion is that it is a love song about loving someone and all the worst parts of them. But I like to think of it as a kind of self-love song. “Oh, my darker side/ I’ll find your light/ I know you better than them”. My thinking is that at the end of the day, nobody knows you like you know yourself and I don’t think that anybody will ever understand the darkest parts of you better than you can yourself. 

So it is up to us to find the light, to look at the darkness and deal with it and try to heal it. In a bid to love ourselves, I think many of us think that the only way to do that is to celebrate the good parts and neglect the bad parts – treating them like they do not exist. However, I think the point of loving yourself is to love yourself completely, warts and all. By sending love to the parts of ourselves we like least we may transform them into something better. We can nurture the ugly parts so that we can grow beyond them, so that they can become less ugly and so that they can learn to take in some light.

If we keep being hard on ourselves for how jealous, petty, unforgiving and whatever other negative words we ascribe to ourselves, we can only add to the negativity and make it worse and ourselves more bitter. But I reckon if we can love our entire selves more completely, we can shed enough light on the ugly parts so that they are not so ugly anymore. These parts may always be with us but because we will have chosen self-love over self-loathing, they will be stripped of their power and they may blossom into something good. That jealousy will turn into appreciation and that lack of forgiveness will turn into empathy. Like weeds we cannot completely get rid of, they will bloom into a forest of flowers on the side of the road that contribute to the scenery on the journey we are on. Maybe not in the way that was anticipated but maybe in the way that it was intended. My point is that nothing and no one is perfect but denying the bad parts to make is seem that way, will not make it so.

I realise that this post is probably riddled with mixed metaphors but I hope you can understand what I was trying to say.

M

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Darker Side by Rhodes

"If fashion be the food of life, style on!" I’m pretty sure that’s what Shakespeare meant to write. I jest. I do love fashion, though. 

I was a bit slow to realise this but once I started paying attention to the things that are constantly on my mind, I noticed that fashion was one of those things. I am always putting together outfits in my mind and putting myself in different scenarios where I would wear them. It’s really not as weird as it sounds. Plus that’s one of my favourite things about fashion: that you can be a different version of yourself depending on what you’re wearing. I’m not at all under the impression that humans are one-dimensional and that the truest version of a person can only exist in one form. Fashion celebrates how dynamic human beings are and allows us to explore our dynamisms. I also love how when someone is dressed well and they know that they look great, you can see it in how they carry themselves. The shoulders are back, the chin is up, the swagger is in the step…it’s pretty awesome. As long as that person isn’t behaving like a colossal asshat, of course. I (mostly) jest.

I’m still getting to know myself in terms of my personal style. I think I’ve narrowed it down to something between minimalism and prep, but leaning more towards minimalism. I love the minimalist trend because it’s clean, polished and looks effortless. Also, everything in your wardrobe is bound to match – a definite bonus.

Two of my current favourite trends at the moment are miniskirts and white/off-white clothing. Miniskirts are great because they are so easy to dress up or down and they add a kind of youthful classiness to a look. I love the trend of white clothing because a) it looks great; b) it’s a very refreshing colour, especially as hot as it’s been in Gauteng lately and b) I’m bored of the navy, black and grey that dominates my wardrobe colour scheme.

Beyond just enjoying wearing, looking at, or buying clothes, I am quite intrigued by the fashion industry and its many happenings and goings on. So I hope to keep whoever’s reading updated on more than just fashion looks and trends, but also the fashion industry in general.

M

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