German Expressionism

Welcome back to school and ordinary life everyone. How are we all holding up? I sincerly hope you are all doing better than me. This Monday was so horible I had to come home and paint my nails chrome to make myself feel better… Im not a nail polish person, much, so this should tell you how bad it was.

Seriously, from waiting for the bus for half an hour, to lugging all my stuff around school… why do even the light books seem heavy after the dog days of summer???

Anyways, I think it’s just that I’ve got a really bad monday schedual… come to think about it I don’t htink I’ve got one good day. I mean who want’s to start off the week with a two periods of Chemistry and then another two periods of Geography (which would be fine if we didnt have the teacher we have… snooze FEST! except you can’t snooze cause he’s HYPERACTIVE!!!) then I have double Art… which could be ok except for two things:

1. The Harpies

2. The Expressionists

Ok so the harpies are a group of girls I have in my class, some of whom read this blog, though its no secret that I call them this and my teacher has actually agreed and started as well… Seee… if you know ancient greek mythologyu and know them, then it makes sense. Because they are so loud and screachy and then shit all over your food.

Ok so maybe thats a bit harsh… let me explain… So there’s this group of girls, who I have no hard feelings against, and can get along with each of them individually very well… but one of them alone is able to reach the decibell capacity of my ears, so I dread having them all together. Ok so four teenage girls. Sociallites, which we all know I’m not, who love to spend their time TITTERING away. Seriously, they even admit it, when I say they screach, they SCREACH!  So I’m in a bad enough mood by the time the first bell rings with a head ache and ringing ears, and then one of them or the other comes over and leans over my shoulder for half an hour before screaching “OMG i LOVE IT!!!” seriously, without fail, those words. Or else, it might be ‘OMG THATS AWESOME! ITS LIKE SO AWESOME!” which, sure thanks for the praise and all, get on my nerves. Or as my favourite Greek saying going “Kanei tsourekia ta nevra mou!” (braids my nerves). Not only is it the lack of elloquence or the invariability of the “compliments” or if its the high pitched tone of the voice or the colloquial manerism in which it is said… I dont know which but all to gether they make me feel as if its not such a compliment. It certainly doesn’t feel sincere, though I don’t know if it is, so who am I to say? That’s the shitting on you food when your starving bit. Because whether you think what you’re working on is utter crap (which for me it is alot of the time) or if you think its actually pretty good for once (which it can sometimes be) it just makes me feel more crappy about the work. Either that they’re taking the mickey out of me by sayin that something that is crap is good as though I don’t know the difference, or by saying that something is “good” (air quotes= not so good… crap) when I actually think it’s half decent for once and not fully worthy of the garbadge can… 😦

Maybe worst of all though is how horrible they seem to know me, after all these years… I mean they KNOW I’m clausterphobic, and I make a point of telling them that and how that’s why I don’t want them to lean over me… Instead all they do is take a step back, which in a way makes it even worse, knowing that their there but not RIGHT there… you know when not knowing is worse than knowing… and second of all… they KNOW that I HATE Compliments because they all seem insincere to me. oK not all… I can tell some real ones, but they still make me feel really self conscious… so all in all I end up feeling like they are attacking me… making me feel bad about myself…  which wouldn’t be entirely possible seeing as there are only about 8 girls in the class and two boys and the boys are both quiet and the harpies make up about 5 of the girls… And incase anyone should read this, you know, I shouldn’t even have to say, that I don’t feel that way about you guys… I just can’t stand being in a room where I’m supposed to be expressing myself but end up feeling oppressed anyways, for two and a half hours a week with you guys…

I don’t think you read this anymore though. I’m not interesting enough. XD

Have you guys ever felt personally assaulted and attacked by a group of people that you used to consider friends? Silly question, I know. How about having been attacked and not having known why? I odften get callled out when I actually voice my oppinion. Any advice on how to deal with people when they treat you lik that? I try to just keep my cool rather than blwoing my top, but then my indifference to their oppinions on my oppinions get me called out as an emo, even though, my love affair with bright vibrant colours and desire to keep my hair out of my face would depict me as anything but…

ok so what makes art lessons even worse right now is that we are studying German Expressionism. I mean, I like seeing it sometimes. I like how it can make me feel what the subject felt, which is moer often than not despair and greif and hunger and such… but I just don’t enjoy doing it. I mean who likes doing something that they know they aren’t very good at and don’t enjoy? As an exercise we took pictures of ourselves in a german expressionistic pose and printed out many copies, tapped them to the windows and drew on the back with bold black lines to eliminate the details and lines we didn’t want (cause our final aim is to transfer the image to a piece of lino and do a lino cute of it, which you know I love…) And so I started off with some pictures of notme 😛 One was this indian woman which I thought was really interesting, though the printer faded the ink on the most interesting section so I couldn’t really do it well, and a piece of Mother Theresa, I think it was… So these two wrinkly old women (no offence…)

And one of them actually looked pretty good… but then one of the art teachers ruined my finally lifting spirits (I had to sit on a desk too, to get to the window 😛 ) by saying that I couldn’t use those in my lino cut because I didn’t take the pictures… And when I told him I really didn’t want to do one of myself, he said, well then go and find someone in the room and get them to pose and take a pictuer of them and do that… NO BLOODY THANK YOU… I’LL SUFFER WITH A SELF PORTRAIT THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!! lot of bloody help he was! I’m not about to ask someone in my art class to pose for me, especially when I’m the one with the camera phobia. I mean its just mean to not like something and so inflict it on someone else… Would you?

So for the time being, since there were only another 30 minutes left in the class and it would have taken longer to take another picture and print it in the dodgy printer… so I stuck with the others that had been printed already. The teacher who had told me off though, had been working on a picture of me since the begining of the lesson. See how come his turned out so good and mine turned out like crap? I’ll have to put up a pic of mine and his. His was much nmroe expressionistic than mine. Mine was just fail line drawing…

Does anyone have really strong feelings on post WWI german expressionism? It’s kinda love or hate so who loves it and who hates it?

Any ideas, other than earplugs, to improve the art lessons?

sigh…

I can’t stand writting such a wholly negative post so Imma change the topic.

Has anybody read the book “Shiver” or any of the “wolves of Mercy Falls” series or any other book by Maggie Stiefvater? I really love her writting. She’s great. I loved shiver. It really touched me. Ten times better than the twilight craze. I actually cried durring the last chapter, and I don’t normally cry for movies… and even though it was just comfortably predictable.

Well even if you haven’t please go on Amazon and read the first few pages and then join the page on Facebook that is trying to get it made into a movie. It really should. It would be an awesome movie, though the book was just plain incredible.

Are there any other books that you would like to see made into a move? I normallyu refrain from wanting a book to be made into a movie, if its good. otherwise i the idea is good but the writter wasn’t all that great, then I say sure, but normally the movies just ruin it. With shiver though, i just think it deserves to be made into a movie! It was so great it deserves the publicity! Kudos Maggie!

Meet Missy!

Well hello there everyone!

I promised you all a link to my friend Missy’s new blog and here it is:       http://missymoooonstar.wordpress.com/

She has made it her purpose to prove that teenagers CAN think. When you were a kid, didn’t everyone always look down at you and tell you how much you had left to learn? Tell you how you thought you were so smart… when you weren’t (even if you WERE right and they were wrong)? Well the two of us both love reading. And I love writing poetry. No haickus and meaningless limericks for me. I like the deep matter. Life, Love, Happiness and Death. Oh sure there are a few more. Human rights, animal rights, illness, injustice, frustration, prejudice and so on. Some people read them and are supportive, or give praise even. Congratulate me on my vocabulary, on how I presented my ideas and so on.  But of course there are those odd few that are utterly bitter and say how I’m only biting off more than I can chew and making a mask of my writing. They think that just because I’m 16 I can’t write something deep, or have my own, unbiased views on the meaning of life, and beliefs about what’s important, or what makes me happy or so on without them being stereotypical. THOSE are the people I think are living their life with blinders on. THOSE are the people who people who are shallow, and hypocritical and just plain ignorant to the fact that yes, teenagers can think, do have minds, and personalities and do not all just go with the pop culture stream…

Anyways, that’s why I’ll occasionally put up a poem or two, or a recipe I like or anything of the sort, to show you guys out there what teenagers can be like, and that is why Missy is trying to get input from the world and come up with a big theory of the meaning of life. We each have some parts of our own, and like I said before, I will (hopefully) be contributing to her blog quite a bit.

Her most recent blog was on music, the universal language.

My mom always said that there were only three things that not even cultural, appearance, or even class differences can separate from person to person. Those are maths, love and music. Because no matter what no matter where you are even, 2pi r squared is the area of a circle, and you can’t do anything about it if you like someone. These things have been programmed in us, Mathematics into our brains from our early childhood, and love and attraction from adaptations, its in our genes. Music on the other hand, goes beyond that even. I think that when you dance, or you sing, or you play music, you are praising God, life, the world. Your fellow people and inhabitants of it, the tree outside your window and the flower blossoming down the road. Music is something, like magic that resides deeper than our minds and hearts. Its more than instinct and a textbook. Its something unimaginably powerful and unsurprisingly is the base of the two other universal languages. What came first, music or love? Trigonometry or music? What came first, the lyrics or the song, the dance or the beat? Its hard to say. But they are all each other. There’s a reason why all great mathematicians are somehow, even subconsciously musically gifted. Two of the three math teachers at my school play music. My oldest brother, a musical prodigy, and exception to the 10 year rule, is a great mathematician when he applies his whole mind. Music is all about expression, as is love, as is dance. Dance is all about expression and love. Love is FULL of music and dance! Why do you think newlyweds’ first dance together is such a big deal? its their first act of trust, unison, expression to each other while wrapped in the music (no formulas floating around visibly and cornily, but they are there).

If you want to hear some absolutely amazing lectures on music and everything I was just talking about you should go to the New York City Lincoln center and hear some of Branford Marsalis’ workshops “Jazz at the Lincoln Center” are full of great music and profoundly deep lectures.

Sadly, though I love escaping from the world and writing here, I must return and start revising and doing homework and all the horribly standard things that await a teenage girl when she re-awakes into the world.

More Later,

Mirella Rose

P.S. picture credits to my dear friend Mike in Canada. He took and allowed me to use the picture you see above. I know it might be a bit random, but I thought it was beautiful and might remind us all that spring always comes round at sometime or other, its just waiting for when you will most appreciate it. Enjoy it while it lasts, soon it will be too hot and after that too cold. Embrace the grey area, the No man’s Land.

sorry dear readers

My plans have been kinda messed up lately. Less homework last night than I’d planned and more tonight than we were supposed to get. Oh well Ill post a longer note tomorrow right away, but this will have to do for now, just so you all know I haven’t forgotten you.

till next we meet
Mirella