Sleepless nights with Mcullin

I wake early.

To fill the space between then and finding the energy to start my day I sometimes read and I sometimes watch iplayer.

Today I discovered a fascinating documentary called McCullin.  You see, I have an immediate like for people with passions.  For people who set aside what they should do and stride along the paths they want to.

All pictures are taken by Don McCullin.  I hope you don't mind me using them on my website.

The sun rose whilst photographer Don McCullin with great honesty recounted his days covering wars and conflicts in Cyprus, Cambodia, Vietnam and Northern Island.

He captured moments that didn't need words or explanation.

He said plenty, but it's the pictures I remember.  I thought I'd like one of those to grace a space on a wall where I call home.  

His work is honest, powerful, beautiful and raw.   He makes me want to go out into the world and do better and do my bit.

He said he stopped working for the Sunday Times when its new owner Rupert Murdoch decided he wanted to move away from "this kind of harsh realism and concentrate on the pleasures of life." 

But I figure we are surrounded by so many delights that such stark reminders are needed to prick our bubbles and burst them more often than once in a while. 

Nowadays he takes pictures of landscapes and is spending his time trying to erase a lifetime of horrors.

The documentary ends.  

And I start the day a little more grateful for it than when I awoke.

The love affair I've had 

with photography

 has been total 

commitment 

and I've not taken any 

short cuts to do it.

- Don McCullin

Hardly speaking a word

I heard this song whilst watching a crime drama on the beeb today.

I'll set the scene for you.

A father drives miles to pick up his young daughter from a bus station because she got the wrong bus and didn't have enough money to get home.  

She'd spent all her money on stuff and a present for her dad.

At first he was mad. Why didn't she call?  Why did she wait for him to check on her?

Then she tells him she was trying to be independent and explains were all her money went.

So they both hug and she says she's sorry and he says he's sorry and then this song starts to play.

Then I thought I like it.  Who sings it? Then I found it.  It's by a lady called Lori Mckenna.

Happy listening.

Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe.

I just stumbled on this picture a few days ago and thought WOW.

Have you seen the film my  My week with Marilyn? 

I saw it a few years ago and fell in love with Marilyn and thought WOW. 

Then I read so much about her, googled her until I thought it was time to read something else and read a list of quotes that shattered the perception of her being a dumb blonde.

How can someone be such a superstar and be so vulnerable.  Be so adored and yet seek to be so loved?  But I guess she's no different from any of us. I suppose. 

Just wanted to share this pretty picture.

Before Sex After Love

Picture taken from before sex after love blogspot titled Keep it Cummin.

Mavis delight.  That is the contact name in my phone for one of my very dear friends.  Mavis is her name and delight because I've always thought she was delightful.   

We got talking about blogs a few weeks ago and she promised to send me the links to her favourite sites.   There was one night my mind wouldn't rest so I had plenty of time to read one of her recommendations www.beforesexafterlove.com

She's sassy.  She's brave.  She's honest and she's called Candice.  Some might say her blog is vulgar, brash, not a delicate read on a Sunday morning, but I'm open to her thoughts about sex, love and relationships.  If you're a little squeamish then don't bother taking an online wonder to her site. 

Here's a few gentle excerpts from beforesexafterlove.

One million lovely letters

"Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a sucker for handwritten notes.  After my fathers passing, my mother gave me some love letters that he wrote her when she was my age.   Unmarked and crisp with age, at my lowest I re read them, just to feel closer to him."

On turning a delicate 25

"My heart is in the right place so poop toot to all those who tried to rid of it.  My advice thus far is this; you need only see two hundred feet ahead.  And if like me, your compass fails, follow your heart.  She takes a while to kick in, but I promise she will be selfless enough to forgive yourself infliction and by any means necessary, will be sure to get you home."

Last love letter of 2012

"Me sharing this letter is encouragement to all those little girls like me, saw fucked up marriages.  Those little girls who swore they would build walls around their hearts so high, that no knight could penetrate that muscle.  To the women that still cry when Denny dies in Greys Anatomy.  To the women that think they are a little "too much".  To all the females that still, beneath the snide comments, one night stands and drunken cries; believe in happy endings."

When I am old, I shall wear purple

Ben and me driving the train to the beach, so we can buy old things that no one wants and find a home for them in our hearts. 

My housemate aka landlord read me this poem last night by a lady called Jenny Joseph and I loved it.   It made me think about my Pins x Needles purple winter coat and a random cheap red beret that I've been wearing for two winters now.  I know the colours clash, but I simply don't care.

Warning

When I am an old woman, I shall wear a purple

with a red hat that doesn't go and doesn't suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

and satin candles, and say we've no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired

and gobble up samples in the shops and press alarm bells

and run my stick along the public railings

and make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain and pick the flowers in other people's gardens and learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow fat

and eat three pounds of sausages at a go

or only bread and pickles for a week

and hoard pens and pencils and beer nuts and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry

and pay our rent and not swear on the street

and set a good example for the children.

We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practise a little now?

So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised

When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

An honest model and designer who creates love

Photographer: Greg Kadel

Cameron Russell says "looks aren't everything."

She's a model.  She's beautiful, so it's easy for her to say that isn't it?

I saw this TEDTalk on my way to climbing class.   I was a little cynical about what she had to say.  But when I got off the bus, the walk through the park was slowed down a little by my baby steps through the snow.  I also insisted on walking and watching the piece to the end.  

I didn't notice the trees drizzled with fluffy flakes and the tiny bird footprints dotted on the white washed grown.  I took this pictures on my way back home.

Palmerston Park

I let Cameron's words melt away my cynicism just a bit.  It does take courage for someone to admit they were "genetically gifted" and being "the biggest beneficiary of a legacy of gender and racial oppression."  Find her here on TEDTalks.

Picture from TEDTalk

I also listened to Ronny Edry's talk about his love story Israel hearts Iran.  He's a graphic designer who accidentally started a peace phenomenon on both sides of a war zone.  Israelis and Iranian people are not supposed to be friends - that's the unofficial rule.  Edry's simple poster created after an innocent impulse, cuts through beliefs and has stimulated amazing reactions he never intended to happen.

"This is a courageous thing to do: to try and reach the other side before it's too late."

                                                                                                                - anon

 At the end he whips away a tear and so did I.  

A twenty minute walk passes easily and I get to my climbing class in time and inspired.

The beauty that is Grey Gardens

Picture from Indiewire.com article Best Documentary's that never got an Oscar.

"I only cared about three things: the Catholic church, swimming and dancing and I had to give them all up." (Little Edie)

The documentary Grey Gardens follows the lives of Jackie Onassis' aunt and cousin.   For six weeks directors Maysles & Maysles entered the wonderfully wacky life of "Big" and "Little" Edie - both formally known as Edith Bouvier Beale.  

The mother and daughter combination is magnetic.  They are two soul-mates who could have done so much more with their lives, if they had resisted the need to be together.

"I didn't want my child to be taken away.  I'd be entirely alone."

Set in East Hamptons in New York, their decrepit mansion sits alongside beautiful wealthy estates that glisten in the sun.  For the two ladies they are the sun shines in their own destruction that is Grey Gardens.

I wish I could have spent time with them - absorbed their cackling squabbles, rummaged through their memories covered in cobwebs and cat's piss.  Their bickering made them sound mad.  They had been moulded by their own realities and to them it it was the world beyond their front door that was crazy.

Big Edie: 'The cat's going to the bathroom right, right in back of the portrait.'
Little Edie: 'God, isn't that awful?'
Big Edie: 'No, I'm glad he is.  I'm glad somebody is doing something he wanted to do'

They are frustrated, but yet content by the ram shackled world they call home.

"I went to cocktail parties to stop the gossip about me being a recluse.  Most of them looked at me like I was from Mars.  I shouldn't have gone.  If you don't do what everybody else does out there...you're written off as crazy."

Now in her late 50s, Little Edie is still very much the twenty year old starlet that replays in her mind.  Never allowed to really grow up, the ageing beauty entertains us with her innocent, formidable, yet poetic intelligence.

Her home is her stage.  The camera is her audience as she dances on the stairs, whisks herself across the veranda singing with a voice her mother disapproves of.  At one point she recites a poem by Robert Frost were she gets it wrong, but yet it still sounds so right.

"I came upon a yellow forest with two paths. In pondering one, I picked the other and that made all the difference."

Video footage lets us relive Little Edie's days as a beauty queen.  Black and white pictures make you

yearn for her yester-years as much as she does.  Rich men wanted her, she wanted them, but she left it all behind, to live in splendid squalor and isolation.

"Here, I'm mother's little daughter.  In New York, I see myself as Edith."

I talk about Little Edie, because it's her I remember the most when I think about Grey Gardens.  I've watched Hollywood's version with Drew Barrymore's playing may favourite character.  It fills the missing gaps and I see the glitz and glamour the women once stepped in.  

Grey Gardens should never have been the end of their fairy-tale.

"To my mother and me, Grey Gardens is a breakthrough to something beautiful and precious called life.  We're proud of it.  It's us!"  - Little Edie