magazine – and so she thinks

The Empath – Exploring the link between high sensitivity and eating disorders

admin — Sun, 23 Jul 2017 16:53:49 +0000

Until I saw The Empath, I’d never heard of Highly Sensitive People. I had however met many. Sensitive to change, a complex tangle of emotions, highly conscientious, easily overwhelmed, feeling a need to withdraw, needing to avoid upsetting or overwhelming situations, highly attuned to other people’s feelings, often emotional, shy and self critical. All of these are characteristics familiar to anyone with an eating disorder.

But is correlation or causation? As with a lot relating to the field of eating disorders, no one really has a clue. But it’s worth a thought. You can read more at The Empath.

Stepaway Magazine – Train Directions

admin — Mon, 10 Jul 2017 11:56:09 +0000

I went on a walk with Inua Ellams and Side Story, wrote this poem, and it has been published in Stepaway Magazine. Cool.

An interview with….98 Wounds

admin — Wed, 19 Nov 2014 17:20:00 +0000

Magazines tend to be filled with words, but they say that a picture speaks a thousand of them. 98 Wounds is a magazine which embraces that, focusing upon music photography rather than reviews and articles. The first issue was produced in March 2013, but the real story goes back earlier than this.
A photographer by trade and having plenty of photos being printed in NME and Sounds, it was in 1978 that founder Neil decided that he wanted to create an outlet for all of the photos that just sat gathering dust in his cupboards, resulting in a photocopied fanzine called The Poser. ‘In those days you couldn’t just upload them to Facebook. For various reasons it petered out after 7 or 8 issues, but John Peel described it as ‘worth getting hold of’ and we were selling out the 500 copy print run.’
Although it was short lived, its influence is felt on Neil’s work. In 2012 he decided to produce a book of photos from that year, a sort of yearbook. It was around 450 pages, and turned out to be a little too large for software, publishers and readers. Breaking it into three parts, and then four, 98 Wounds has eventually become a quarterly featuring the best new music in London. ‘In a sense 98 Wounds is what I wish I could have created back in 1979. A reasonable quality book about bands who are happening now in London.’
It’s not that pictures are considered to be superior to words, but quality is important, and much of that seems to come from the photographer as well as the band’s performance and the gig atmosphere. ‘I’m not really interested in shooting bands at big venues with silly 3 song rules and lighting which any idiot with a camera set to auto can take ‘good’ photos.. Whilst I was at the planning/concept stage I came across Keira who was another gig photographer with a similar desire to capture the energy of a gig rather than just turning out passable shots with no soul, of bands the photographer doesn’t care about. If the photographer clearly doesn’t care about the band, why would their readership care?’
98 Wounds is a phrase in the song Privilege (set Me Free) from the album Easter by Patti Smith, and the title was chosen artistically illustrate a certain amount of struggle as well as the practicalities of it being ‘short enough to write big.’
Music today often seems to be about fame and notoriety, but when discussing his heroes John Peel, Joe Strummer, Malcolm McLaren, he says that those ‘worthy of admiration will have a greater vision than just making cash, they need to care about something, to at least believe they can change things. Maybe even make some sacrifices for their art. These days there don’t seem to many people who stand out with these qualities. Today I find well known bands politically anaemic and their music bland and pointless. Who is fighting austerity for the poor and cash handouts for the rich ? I find plenty of enthusiasm and originality amongst smaller bands, but will they be swallowed up by the crushingly dull music ‘industry’ ?’ It’s not all bad news – as one of the first to share words and photos about Savages, Fat White Family and Slaves, it’s certainly a publication that supports new music.
If you want to know who the next enthusiastic bands are and the ones worth watching, you know where to go. ‘Let me just say that we don’t put bands in 98 Wounds if we don’t think they are worth seeing, so look in 98 Wounds… and get down to some shows.
Going back to Patti Smith, he recites the lyrics:
I see it all before me:
the days of love and torment;
the nights of rock-and-roll.
That is what the magazine is about…..

Doll Hospital – a place to be oneself

admin — Sun, 16 Nov 2014 18:19:00 +0000

On some recent travels across the world wide web I came across a brilliant new magazine named Doll Hospital. A print journal, it is creative and inspirational collection of art, poetry, words and wisdom that explores mental health without prejudice or preconceptions. I caught up with creator Beth Lamont to find out more.
Why did you decide to start Doll Hospital?
I created Doll Hospital because I felt frustrated with the limits of online spaces to sufficiently express and explore personal trauma and mental illness. Just before I started D.H. I wrote an essay for Rookie on my experiences as a survivor, an essay I’m super proud of and have no regrets publishing. But nonetheless the experiences got me questioning whether that model of online publishing is always the best fit for vulnerable people to share their stories. I mean if I’ve just written an essay on my experiences of abuse do I really want to deal with the comment section and a ton of twitter messages? Probably not. That stuff makes me anxious at the best of times!
Don’t get me wrong I love all those online magazines! And I feel proud and honoured to have my work published in magazines like that. But I think when it comes to such painful subject it’s good to offer people different options, different mediums and platforms to explore and present their stories, and their work on their terms.
What are the plans for the magazine?
Well we’ve now raised enough money to print 100 copies and cover international shipping and stuff, which is awesome. But I really want to get to a point where we can pay our contributors. That is so important to me. The devaluation of creative work is gross, and each and every one of our artists and writers deserve to be compensated for their work! Particularly in a publication like this, where our contributors, many of whom are from marginalised backgrounds, are honouring us by sharing such difficult subject so they may help and heal our readers. I hope we can raise more money on Kickstarter for us to achieve this goal.
In terms of Issue One, I also really hope we can go beyond the 100 copy run, as that is actually a teeny tiny amount, and I know so many people want to read it and I’d hate for anyone to miss out! When the pre-sale copies ran out and I got so many sad emoticon messages from interested readers it kind of broke my heart. So I hope we can expand this print run considerably!
Beyond that I’m interested in collaborating with a publisher so our journal can really thrive and reach as many people as possible. Like I’d love it to be one of those free magazines you can pick up at galleries and community centres and stuff-that would be so cool.
Why did you chose to use Kickstarter?
I chose Kickstarter as it’s such a great platform for independent media start-ups. So many interesting and innovative projects have been launched there. I love how gloriously strange and unexpected some of the successful campaigns are! There is so much belief and love there, it’s amazing. Stuff that some business dude may not see potential in, but something one person and their online community do, I love it!

Many of our greatest artists are known to have suffered from mental health problems – do you think there is a distinct relationship between the two?
Oh man! This is a subject I think about a lot, and definitely something that I, and Doll Hospital as a publication, actively pushes against. To present mental health struggles as something creative and ‘unique’ is damaging and derailing, and prevents people struggling from getting the help they need.
As a writer and artist I thought that I shouldn’t get help for my chronic depression because it would prevent me from being a ‘good’ writer. That is absolutely ridiculous! Because when I’m suicidal, or having a panic attack, I’m not casually whipping up a manuscript on the side. Nope! It’s the total opposite. When my depression is bad I can’t work at all! It was only when I got help for this stuff that my work could actually thrive.
I think to truly foster honest and accurate conversations on mental health we need to actively challenge these sterotypes of tortured geniuses and tragic muses. We can do so much better than that, and we owe it to all the amazing artists we’ve lost to mental health struggles.
The funding available for the support of mental health is something that has been getting plenty of coverage recently. Why do you think it has been neglected for so long?
Mental health support continues to fail the most vulnerable in our society, coupled with the outrageous treatment of disabled people under austerity measures. Any improvements, particularly in terms of funding is surely a good thing, but we need to examine how this change is carried out, who benefits and how. After all, when creating ‘mental health’ awareness campaigns it is easy to slip into self serving PR that offers little to those truly suffering. In this sense, I do not think that mental health has been neglected exactly, rather grotesquely misrepresented and mishandled.
Read the

Alan Hollinghurst – The Stranger's Child

admin — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 07:45:00 +0000

Glory Days – WWII Book Reviews

Issue seven of New Zealand’s premier vintage lifestyle publication coincided with the start of the World War I centenary, so, in the spirit of remembrance, they focus on stories related to both World Wars this issue. One of which is a little book review of Alan Hollinghurst’s The Stranger’s Child.

Collaborative Creativity

admin — Tue, 05 Aug 2014 17:13:00 +0000

I went to the pub, met some random people from the London ‘Zine and Self Publishing Group, ate some chicken, drank some wine, and made a collaborative ‘- in under 2 hours! Poet Sarah Dawson has written all about the evening on her blog.

It was acceptable in the 90s?

admin — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 19:43:07 +0000

Are you ready to party like it’s 1999? Or 1995 for that matter? How about 1992? Any will do, as it seems that that the nineties are the decade da jour, if that’s not too much of an anachronism. Of course plundering the archives of the past for inspiration is hardly a novel idea but does the fact that a the vast majority of those partaking in the trend remember the decade that makes the nineties revival seem significant, or is it just another spell of looking back to ‘ye olden dayes’?
Whilst I hate to use the recession as an excuse for everything, and would rather not be accused of lazy thinking, it is well acknowledged by scientists to social commentators alike that we lean towards familiarity in times of discomfort. Change makes people uneasy and comfort is found in easy ways. You’re as likely to find bangers’n’mash or Spotted Dick on the menu of a fancy restaurant as you are on the tea tray of any Yorkshire family. People complain about the over reliance on technology and the intangible nature of much of our pastimes, such as listening to mp3s rather than a physical release, or spending hours on facebook rather than down the pub. The craze for mix-tapes or album clubs is then something that allows people to react against something, make a stand, but in a way that is easy and does not require too much of an adjustment of their ways of life. Of course this too is nothing new – the irony of the fact that in 1977 the Sex Pistols topped the music charts with ‘God Save The Queen’ and the book and merchandise charts were whipped by the revival of Edith Holden’s ‘The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady.’
Rather than the nineties coming back, it seems that people are going back to the nineties. Think about it, it is not people who have never known the nineties suddenly looking for inspiration from the decade and taking their own millennium twist on it ( although my thirteen year old sister’s friend has been posting Supergrass lyrics as her Facebook status. Like. ) The guys at the gigs are paunchy balding men taking Born Slippy’s ‘lager lager lager’ refrain verbatim. The front rows of Take That’s concerts are predominantly middle aged women who now feel that it’s not verging on the cradle snatching to fancy Mark Owen. In the music, the memories, the history books, it is clear that the nineties were meant to be some kind of zeitgeist that changed Britain for ever. With a Tory government, a rise in VAT and spikes in the unemployment rate eerily reminiscent of late 80s and early 90s Britain, is it any wonder that those who have the feeling that it all went a bit Pete Tong are seeking solace in the easier days, when all they had to be was mad for it and the rest fell into place.
If today’s twenty somethings are facing a futile search for employment, the practical impossibility of ever owning their own house, and mounting student debts, it is perhaps understandable that they seek solace in the easier times of their youth. Unable to do any of the standard things that mark the threshold of having made it to adulthood, there is almost no choice but to remain in the teenage years – the 1990 years.
Nickelodeon are bringing back the teen shows that made them famous, like Clarissa, Kenan & Kel and Sister Sister, but if the teens and tweens of 2011 don’t end up drooling over orange soda, it won’t be a failure. As Nickelodeon acknowledge, it is not today’s children that they are targeting. Keith Dawkins, senior VP and general manager of TeenNick, speaking to Entertainment Weekly said that “At the time, we were completely devoted to that audience ages 9, 10, and 11. It was ground-breaking and for the young viewers, a powerful and pivotal time in their lives. Those kids who are now 22, 23 and 24 want to bring that back.”
A look through the listings may lead you to believe that you have opened Time Out and slipped into the past. Pulp, Blur, and Suede have all reformed, and are taking to some big stages. What does it say about current music when Pulp and Blur are the preferred headliners of Isle of Wight and Glastonbury. It’s not even that bands are recording new material – Suede have remastered and reissued all five albums, and will be playing the entirety of 1993’s Suede, 1994’s Dog Man Star and 1996’s Coming Up this May at Brixton Academy, and if reports are to be believed Primal Scream’s Screamadelica gigs in which they played the seminal 1991 album out were a rather raucous affair. Take That’s 25 date Progress Tour was the biggest in UK history. Blue, Spice Girls and all have singles out, and even Let Loose are back this year along with audience that they were never a boy band… Much of the hype surrounding new bands seems to suggest that the 1990s were some kind of musical utopia to which we must lean again. Brother are the ‘new Oasis’ we are told. Why do we need a replica? Reading, a festival patronised by 16 year olds enjoying post exam and no parents freedom was last year headlined by Blink 182 and Guns’n’Roses, neither being hip young things.
Fashion has had plenty of nineties moments, with velvet, lace et all being donned on the catwalk and in our high street shops. Neon is the new black according to some commentators, and festival chic everywhere owes more than a passing nod to grunge, floral dresses and boots adorning female punters. There are also horrifying rumours that the bum bag is to replace the Alexa as the new ‘It’ accessory on every fashionista’s arm. Or bum.
Turning towards a time that a lot of people can remember is also more wallet friendly in a lot of ways. To be bang on trend you don’t need to pay over the odds for vintage wear from a hipper than thou boutique, but rummage in the back of your wardrobe for the greying bodysuit, fraying jeans, or adidas jacket, and hey presto, bang on trend. Either this, or the fact that entertainers are running out of ideas may help to explain our media channels. The BBC has been slammed for their schedules featuring, in 2009 screening a record level, equivalent to 530 full days of repeats and shows that we thought had disappeared seem to be being resurrected – Red Dwarf: Back to Earth, broadcast over the Easter weekend of 2009. More than one in five of films made in Hollywood this year will be sequels of 90s box office big sellers, and I have already seen posters and trailers for Titanic: Two The Surface and Scream 4. With smaller wallets, either in reality or made to believe so by the recession craze, companies are unwilling to take a punt and invest in new formulas that may not be successful and pull in the pounds. Although it seemed to be a social movement, a sort of uprising in the world of confectionary, Cadbury’s also must have realised that surely it was a better monetary bet to bring back the Wispa, harnessing the viral and social media as support.
The gap between the past and present is also being squeezed. It is now possible to study 1990s as a period of history, to do cultural studies of Cool Britannia. 2004 saw the first ‘I love the 90s’ television reminisce and Absolute Radio earlier this year launched Absolute Noughties – over for 3 months and yet we are still calling back for its familiarity. This may be because technology has enhanced the speed at which developments can be made, and indeed, some aspects of life in the final decade of the twentieth century do seem to be archaic – you just try explaining to a ten year old kid with an iPhone the sheer wonderment and allure of Snake on a Nokia phone. Rather than it being that we are looking back too soon, the pace of change has been such that this is viable.
Of course, as with any nostalgic look back, the view is somewhat hazy and the glasses smeared with the fingerprints of selective editing. 1997 may have been a buoyant year of optimism, the rising wave of Cool Britannia seeing the labour landslide election victory, Oasis made history in 1996 playing to 250,000 people at Knebworth, and British music once again flew its flag on both sides of the Atlantic. But what about the Rwandan mass slaughters that shocked the world, the pound’s economic decline, as it dropped out of the ERM for the second time in 1993, and the largest ever IRA bomb to hit the British mainland exploding in Manchester injuring at least 200 people in 1996…not to mention that, football did not come home.
But, why not focus on the good? Taking George Santayana’s famous quote for our own ends, we know that the value of history and knowing what has happened in the past is to ensure that we learn and do not make similar errors. So, perhaps this is exactly what the 1990s revival is – people taking what they loved, what made them happy, and sprinkling a little of this nineties magic into 2011.
See the original at the wonderful Who’s Jack http://issuu.com/whosjack/docs/wj50/72