"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."
— Oscar Wilde
''The bottom of the world is gold and the world is upside down'' freedom - fernweh - films - boho - beatdom - bob dylan - drinks - records - sixties - coffee - poetry - summer nights - jazz
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Friday, July 29, 2011
'The New Craft' - Iris van Herpen
You better keep your eyes on this Dutch girl. Iris van Herpen is her name and she's extremely talented. Her work is an incredible mix of futuristic and organic designs. She has done an internship at Alexander McQueen (I recognise his influences very well, since I've seen his exhibition 'Savage Beauty' in the MET last May) and she has famous fans like Lady Gaga. On top of that, she's a guest member of the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture, which only has 11 members, among who Dior, Chanel and Viktor & Rolf. Yesterday, I went to see her exhibition in the Central Museum in Utrecht: 'The New Craft'. The quality of my photos isn't great because my lovely brother (ahum) took my camera on his Europe trip, so I had to use an old one.
As a kid, I used to hate museums. Art was so boring and it didn't attract me at all. Nowadays, I actually like to go to museums. Well, some museums. Okay, some exhibitions. Especially fashion exhibitions. As I said, I saw Alexander McQueen's 'Savage Beauty' recently and I was dying to see the works of Iris van Herpen for real.
I had already seen some of her work in magazines, for example the 3D dress which was printed by a 3D printer in Belgium. Layer for layer the dress was made and the result is astonishing. We got to see the actual dress and a 3D printer, so we had an idea of the process.
Besides works of Iris van Herpen (there were about 10 dresses and some other designs for a dance show), there was also a lot of old art. Silverwork of the 17th and 18th century, furniture, gold leather, wallpapers and more. That was part of her inspiration. Other influences were the people she worked with: Nanine Linning, Kris Kuksi and Stephen Jones (the famous hat designer). So we also saw beautiful hats, the craziest wigs and short films of dance performances.
The masterpiece of the collection were a pair of shoes for me. They were designed by Iris van Herpen for United Nude and looked like the crab shoes Alexander McQueen once designed. Only these shoes were black with golden layers. A-MA-ZING. Seriously, I would consider buying them, even though they cost 1000 euros..
Unfortunately, the exhibition wasn't very big. We had seen everything in a half hour, I think. And what we saw was only for 50% made by Iris van Herpen. We received little information about her pieces. I saw designs with feathers, leather and all kinds of materials but I didn't know anything about it. Whereas we did receive a lot of information about her influences. Regretful...
But I have to say, what we saw was gorgeous. You can't really imagine someone would actually wear her designs, it's more like art to me, but she did make everything flexible. She followed the curves of a human's body and made it very futuristic. Chapeau.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Sunny Beach, Bulgaria
Wish I was back there, for the weather was absolutely amazing and everything was so relaxed and nice. As the entire Dutch population has said at least 5 times, it's almost as if our country skipped the summer. Let's look at the bright side (I have to persuade myself to say this, everyone knows, an optimist is an ill-informed pessimist. Or was it the other way around?), I have plenty of time to work and to earn back what I spent on cocktails in Bulgaria.
Anyway, here are the best pictures from our trip.
Anyway, here are the best pictures from our trip.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Back to Black
They say only the good die young - look at Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison. They all died at the age of 27, and so did Amy Winehouse.
Can you believe it? The legendary Amy Winehouse - who will become even more legendary from now on - dead?
I know we could've expected something like this would happen. I mean, she was addicted to drugs and alcohol and it has been a while since she'd written any new songs. But still, what a loss...
Amy was a magnificent singer, her song had so much power and personality. The soul just drips from her voice. Amy, amy, amy...
In rehab, out of rehab, as I said, it had to happen sometime. She's gone too soon, just like Michael Jackson was, and just like any other legend that died young. Cruel idea that she was actually sober the last time she performed.
It's so true people are already saying that it's weird that 100 people in Norway were shot around the same time one person died, and the last story seems to hurt people a lot more. I'm not trying to justify anything, but the chaos in Norway is even more surreal than Amy Winehouse's dead. You can't even imagine the disaster because you can relate a lot more to one person. My dad gave a good example: he heard on the radio that someone asked French people why the loss of thousands of Jews in their country wasn't such a gigantic issue as it was in the Netherlands. And they said that they didn't have Anne Frank, so it was harder to imagine the pain.
In short, my heart goes out to Amy's family and to all the families in Norway too. So hard to imagine, so horrible..
As an ode to the former superstar, my favourite song of her:
Can you believe it? The legendary Amy Winehouse - who will become even more legendary from now on - dead?
I know we could've expected something like this would happen. I mean, she was addicted to drugs and alcohol and it has been a while since she'd written any new songs. But still, what a loss...
Amy was a magnificent singer, her song had so much power and personality. The soul just drips from her voice. Amy, amy, amy...
In rehab, out of rehab, as I said, it had to happen sometime. She's gone too soon, just like Michael Jackson was, and just like any other legend that died young. Cruel idea that she was actually sober the last time she performed.
It's so true people are already saying that it's weird that 100 people in Norway were shot around the same time one person died, and the last story seems to hurt people a lot more. I'm not trying to justify anything, but the chaos in Norway is even more surreal than Amy Winehouse's dead. You can't even imagine the disaster because you can relate a lot more to one person. My dad gave a good example: he heard on the radio that someone asked French people why the loss of thousands of Jews in their country wasn't such a gigantic issue as it was in the Netherlands. And they said that they didn't have Anne Frank, so it was harder to imagine the pain.
In short, my heart goes out to Amy's family and to all the families in Norway too. So hard to imagine, so horrible..
As an ode to the former superstar, my favourite song of her:
Friday, July 22, 2011
Back from Bulgaria!
Yesterday I came back home after 8 incredible days in Sunny Beach.
I'll tell you more about it later, once I have all the photos but let me ensure you: it was a crazy week! The average day was filled with swimming and relaxing in the sun until about 7 o'clock, getting ready and having dinner in Sunny Beach and then we got the party started ;) Some days until 7 o'clock, it was awesome. And very cheap as well..
But more about that later!
I'm glad to post again, but I definitely would've loved to stay for more days. I hate this country, the weather sucks and life is very boring over here. Can't wait to go away again...
I'll tell you more about it later, once I have all the photos but let me ensure you: it was a crazy week! The average day was filled with swimming and relaxing in the sun until about 7 o'clock, getting ready and having dinner in Sunny Beach and then we got the party started ;) Some days until 7 o'clock, it was awesome. And very cheap as well..
But more about that later!
I'm glad to post again, but I definitely would've loved to stay for more days. I hate this country, the weather sucks and life is very boring over here. Can't wait to go away again...
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Saturday, July 9, 2011
North Sea Jazz 2011 part II: Janelle Monae, BB King, Robert Randolph, Larry Graham and Prince
Janelle Monae is an American singer, you can't describe her, she has a new sound. I'll try to describe it anyway: soul, funk, indiepop, punk, hiphop and synthetical. Her album is called 'The ArchAndroid' and she is an androgyn android herself as well. Her album has a magical story, she turns into her alter ego: Cindy Mayweather who wakes up in the year 2719 in a world without love and freedom. She has to rescue us.
Our goal was to stand in the front and of course we managed it. Then I looked beside me and I saw Giovanca. Right there, standing in the audience! For the ones that don't know her, Giovanca is a Dutch soul and jazz singer known from 'On my Way' and 'Drop it'. Since no one paid any attention to it, we were too cowardly to ask her to take a picture with us. She did blink at Ramai, who was head over heels ;)
The beginning of the show was already mind blowing. Janelle's band was disguised in black and white. Three people with black hoods and caps came on stage and the background music was like a fairy tale. A scary one.
And then suddenly Janelle showed herself and the music began. It was terrific. She was wearing the usual: a black and white suit and her hair was very high like she always wears it. I especially loved the uptempo songs like 'Cold War', 'Tightrope' and 'Come Alive'. The first ballad she sang was a bit disappointing because the volum was extremely low, you could barely hear her and her voice wasn't very strong. But at the end she began to scream and that sounded awesome.
Janelle also did a few covers like Stevie Wonder's 'My cherie amour' and The Jackson Five's 'I want you back'. During a quite song she began to make a painting on stage. She really was crazy, in a good way of course. Later on she wanted to make everybody sit down on the knees. And she managed it, the entire audience sat down because she said so. To thank the audience she crowdsurfed a round. Suddenly she was coming our way, I was like: OMG, I should make a picture! And then I helped putting her back on stage. The audience went wild.
After 1,5 hour the show was over. We were very thrilled and went to BB King. Unfortunately, his show was almost over as well and it was so crowded that we could hardly see him.
Other artists we saw were 'Robert Redford and the Family Band' and 'Larry Graham and the Graham Central Station'. Larry Graham, like BB King a very old man, was the bass guitarist in Sly and the Family Stone.
And then the waiting began. We were already lead to the 'Maas' but we had to go outside the Ahoy to came back in the stadium. Prince was about to start. We weren't very happy with our seats because we sat like a mile from the stage. In the upper seats in the stadium, so I had to zoom my camera 40 times to actually get a good photo of Prince.
Prince, also known as 'His Royal Madness' or 'His Royal Badness' came on stage half an hour late. Jimi Hendrix's 'Foxy Lady' was his first song. The show was more like a jamming session than like a real Prince show. Maybe it was because he was performing yesterday and today as well, so he might have divided his songs over the three shows.
Esperanza Spalding, who we missed that same day because we were at Kris Berry, sang a beautiful version of Marvin Gaye's 'Let's get it on', one of my favourite songs. Janelle Monae and Larry Graham also came on stage, so it was a little party over there. Prince almost sang none of his popular songs like 'Little Red Corvette', '1999' or 'Kiss'. Around 3.30 o'clock we decided to go because we thought the show was over. The next day I read that he actually did perform 'Purple Rain' at the end, so it was pretty dumb we missed that.
But we had to catch the subway. We did catch that but we missed the next train, so we had to wait for 80 minutes on the Central Station of Rotterdam before we could go back home. We were in Den Bosch at 7.15 in the morning so my body was completely confused when I got home. Fortunately, I slept another 4 hours so I'm back on track again.
I'm so sad the North Sea Jazz adventure is over again. At least, for us. Next year I'm definitely saving enough money to go three days because there's nothing better than music and a festival. Nothing.
Our goal was to stand in the front and of course we managed it. Then I looked beside me and I saw Giovanca. Right there, standing in the audience! For the ones that don't know her, Giovanca is a Dutch soul and jazz singer known from 'On my Way' and 'Drop it'. Since no one paid any attention to it, we were too cowardly to ask her to take a picture with us. She did blink at Ramai, who was head over heels ;)
The beginning of the show was already mind blowing. Janelle's band was disguised in black and white. Three people with black hoods and caps came on stage and the background music was like a fairy tale. A scary one.
And then suddenly Janelle showed herself and the music began. It was terrific. She was wearing the usual: a black and white suit and her hair was very high like she always wears it. I especially loved the uptempo songs like 'Cold War', 'Tightrope' and 'Come Alive'. The first ballad she sang was a bit disappointing because the volum was extremely low, you could barely hear her and her voice wasn't very strong. But at the end she began to scream and that sounded awesome.
Janelle also did a few covers like Stevie Wonder's 'My cherie amour' and The Jackson Five's 'I want you back'. During a quite song she began to make a painting on stage. She really was crazy, in a good way of course. Later on she wanted to make everybody sit down on the knees. And she managed it, the entire audience sat down because she said so. To thank the audience she crowdsurfed a round. Suddenly she was coming our way, I was like: OMG, I should make a picture! And then I helped putting her back on stage. The audience went wild.
After 1,5 hour the show was over. We were very thrilled and went to BB King. Unfortunately, his show was almost over as well and it was so crowded that we could hardly see him.
Other artists we saw were 'Robert Redford and the Family Band' and 'Larry Graham and the Graham Central Station'. Larry Graham, like BB King a very old man, was the bass guitarist in Sly and the Family Stone.
And then the waiting began. We were already lead to the 'Maas' but we had to go outside the Ahoy to came back in the stadium. Prince was about to start. We weren't very happy with our seats because we sat like a mile from the stage. In the upper seats in the stadium, so I had to zoom my camera 40 times to actually get a good photo of Prince.
Prince, also known as 'His Royal Madness' or 'His Royal Badness' came on stage half an hour late. Jimi Hendrix's 'Foxy Lady' was his first song. The show was more like a jamming session than like a real Prince show. Maybe it was because he was performing yesterday and today as well, so he might have divided his songs over the three shows.
Esperanza Spalding, who we missed that same day because we were at Kris Berry, sang a beautiful version of Marvin Gaye's 'Let's get it on', one of my favourite songs. Janelle Monae and Larry Graham also came on stage, so it was a little party over there. Prince almost sang none of his popular songs like 'Little Red Corvette', '1999' or 'Kiss'. Around 3.30 o'clock we decided to go because we thought the show was over. The next day I read that he actually did perform 'Purple Rain' at the end, so it was pretty dumb we missed that.
But we had to catch the subway. We did catch that but we missed the next train, so we had to wait for 80 minutes on the Central Station of Rotterdam before we could go back home. We were in Den Bosch at 7.15 in the morning so my body was completely confused when I got home. Fortunately, I slept another 4 hours so I'm back on track again.
I'm so sad the North Sea Jazz adventure is over again. At least, for us. Next year I'm definitely saving enough money to go three days because there's nothing better than music and a festival. Nothing.
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