I wanna be in the room where it happens

So I finally got round to seeing Hamilton on Monday. I've listened to the OBC before and never really vibed with it, to be honest hip hop isn't really my thing which probably isn't a surprise to anyone. And so I kind of guessed that the show wouldn't really be my cup of tea either which is why it's taken me until now to get round to it (plus it's one of the most expensive shows on the West End!). But I still wanted to go and actually see it with my own two eyes at some point to give it a fair shot as listening to a cast recording is obviously no where near the same as getting the full context of a show. And yes I know there's the pro-shot on Disney+, but to be honest I don't really like watching recordings of theater. Watching something on that scale through my 15" laptop screen isn't really giving it a fair shot either, especially with my ADHD brain making me want to skip ahead. I need to be a captive audience member. If I can't see something in person, then I'd rather just not bother.

The Victoria Palace Theatre that currently houses Hamilton is right by Wicked, and it felt every shade of wrong having to walk straight past it.

I can't say I had a bad time and it was enjoyable enough, but as I guessed from the beginning it wasn't really my cup of tea and seeing it in action didn't really change that for me. I can appreciate that it's a good musical in that it's well paced, well characterized, it hit every emotional beat that it needed to, had some good melodies, and I personally adored the costumes, I think that was hands down my favorite part and I was marveling at the details every time they changed. I always felt the costumes didn't look particularly impressive in the photographs, but boy was I wrong! So I'm glad I got to see it. It felt weird calling myself a musical theater fan without having this on my seen list, so I’m happy to have crossed it off if nothing else. But it also didn’t change my mind on thinking Lin-Manuel Miranda is over hyped XD

I admit I’m far from the most knowledgeable about US history being European and all, but it has always struck me as a weird story to simplify into a Broadway show. I feel like I want to give it some grace as while I want to rag on the historical accuracy, it also drives me crazy when people do that with Anastasia because it's not supposed to be historically accurate and never once presents itself as that. I also do genuinely hate when people won't let anyone enjoy anything and use it as some kind of superiority complex, like no one is allowed to like flawed things and just accept that absolutely nothing is perfect. And I'm 100% sure I do not have any fresh takes here, but I just had the overall sense when watching it that I'm not sure colorblind casting the Founding Fathers is as woke as it thinks it's being, and it felt weird to me to see African American culture painted over these racist historical figures. I get Miranda wanted to modernize the story and make it relevant for audiences, but implying everyone in the US is an immigrant and shares the same struggle when at the beginning many were colonizers and those who weren't were either forced there through slavery, or Indigenous and being slaughtered, feels insensitive at best. There’s casual mentions here and there of the slavery that was going on behind the scenes, but it just felt a bit tone deaf and uncomfy and I guess I worry about how it's reframing history. Especially to foreign audiences who may not know any better.

I didn't get to do much else in London as I wasn't feeling great (it turned into full blown sinusitis by the next day and I had to get antibiotics, fun) but I did go back to Urban Outfitters for the vintage jacket I'd seen the previous week when I saw Wicked. I think it's a High School cheerleading jacket? It's not anything I have any knowledge of, I'm not even sure why I'm so taken with it, but I'd tried it on before and couldn't get it out of my head and was so happy to see it was still there.

I like that it has the original badges of when Krista competed in 1988 and 1990, plus a picture of I assume Krista herself. I think that's why I'm so charmed by it because this really isn't anything I've ever been drawn to before, but I can really see it has a history and I absolutely love that. I Googled 'Piner' and it appears to be a school in Santa Rosa, California. I bet Krista would find it absolutely wild that her old school jacket ended up in the vintage section of an Urban Outfitters on the opposite side of the globe.

I also ended up getting the blu ray of Elvis which is now the only movie I physically own. I used to have a pretty huge DVD collection, but probably like many gave it up for streaming (and pirating) which feels so much easier. But the past couple of years I've been getting increasingly fed up with just picking everything off of a digital list as nothing is tangible anymore. I started by buying my Switch games as cartridges instead of downloads, the odd physical book, and a couple of months ago I started buying vinyl again. More recently with all of the talk about how some movies and TV shows are being silently removed from streaming platforms like some kind of censorship got me thinking about how I really ought to start collecting my favorite movies too. As I'm starting from scratch I figured I'd go with blu ray this time as the resolution is better and they usually have more special features. Which is honestly another thing I miss from before, when we'd get DVDs with entire extra discs of making of documentaries and behind the scenes.

Remember a day before today

Since I've been getting into Elvis I've really been itching to go digging through the antiques stores. Unfortunately I live in Europe so there's not much to be found like I'd imagine there is in the US, but it never hurts to look anyway, and really I love any excuse to go antiquing. It's fun to look around and fantasize about what my future forever home might look like.

Bears like this always break my heart a little bit. Someone clearly loved him very fiercely once, and judging from how worn he is probably carried him everywhere for comfort. And now he's locked in a cabinet and will probably never have the chance to be loved like that ever again :(

I love weird oddities. A pig playing a violin, why not.


The one single Elvis thing I found. It's a clock and his legs swing from side to side for the seconds. I did not buy it.


I can never resist a frog.


The things I did buy. The dress is genuine 1950s and was cheap because it has a hole in it, but I think I can fix it up and it'll make a nice summer dress. Also some Donovan and Elvis records, and a tiny little porcelain Alice.

'Ah, but there are three hundred and sixty four unbirthdays!'

I traveled to London over the weekend for my birthday, and I know I travel to London a lot but I don't usually stay over so it felt like a real treat! It was all a bit last minute so I wasn't really sure what to do outside of shows I had booked, but I had a lot of fun.

I went to the Tate Britain a few months ago and absolutely loved it, and was kind of hoping to do something that would inspire me like that again and recapture that feeling, so I decided to go to the Tate Modern. I know, it's in the name, but I thought I'd been before and liked it, but I guess I got it mixed up with another gallery. There's some stuff that falls under the banner of 'modern art' that I really love such as surrealism (René Magritte is one of my all time favorite artists) and I guess that's the kind of thing I was hoping for, but it was predominantly the type of modern art that I really hate and I spent the whole time stomping through the exhibits and pouting. Modern art is pretentious, classist, ableist (and often racist) garbage, purely made so rich people can feel smug about how much smarter they are because they 'get it'. And it makes me genuinely angry as someone with an arts degree who is struggling to make it in the illustration industry, an industry that's becoming less and less viable even for my friends who are already well established within it and are having to get part time jobs to make ends meet because illustration is becoming more and more devalued. Knowing full well that I and many other illustrators pour hours and hours into a single piece, while some white person with a trust fund goes dumpster diving and applies some bs fake woke meaning to whatever trash they find and it gets lapped up by all of the other yuppies and they pay thousands for it. It makes me so mad because it's so unfair! And it just proves that art isn't about skill or hard work, it's about connections and class. So yeah, I don't like modern art and it ended up feeling like a big waste of time. They did have one Magritte and one Dali so that was nice, but definitely not worth traveling all of that way for!

Instead I decided to go back into the city center and spent my time browsing all of the book shops and record stores. I used to be really into record collecting and had almost 1000 of them at one point, but then I sold them all and it paid for me to go to New York and see 4 shows on Broadway which put the hobby into perspective. But for the past couple of months I haven't been able to walk by an HMV store without going in to touch the MCR records wistfully, and I kind of want to get back into it. Not like I used to, it became a really toxic part of my life where I was getting lectured and patronized by old men on the internet and I felt like I had to have the 'right' pressings and collect the 'right' musicians to be seen as a valid part of the community. Musical taste is something so deeply personal, and mine is kind of eclectic and not very expansive and I hated being made to feel guilty for that when I just wanted to hyperfocus on my favorite bands. Purging myself of that whole collection and the performance it had become felt so therapeutic, even more so by using that money to do something I'd always wanted. I never intended for my record collection and dress style to become my entire personality (and also why I barely post outfit photos anymore despite the fact I still love dressing up!) and I really came to resent absolutely everything about it, and it's only recently that I've been able to recover from that and rediscover some of these interests again on my own terms.

It's something I've been thinking about a lot recently, and now I'm getting into Elvis I just feel like it's time. I don’t even own a record player at the moment, but there’s just something so compelling about collecting physical media of your favorite things. And really it’s not just the vinyl itself, but the artwork and the sleeve and the whole experience. So I decided to just go for it on a bit of a whim, and it's honestly made me so happy and I'm really excited to get back into this, and just buy the stuff that means the absolute world to me. And these are what I got in London!

As for shows, I saw The Phantom of the Opera on my actual birthday (of course I did!), and I originally was hoping to see Wicked too but because it was last minute and a Saturday the seats were not good so I decided to do something a bit different and went for a play instead and saw Life Of Pi. I've never read the book it's based on, only seen the movie and that was so long ago I'd forgotten most of the gist of it but I really liked it a lot! There's a lot of puppetry and light effects so I really got lost in it. I did keep expecting them to sing though.

Time may change me but I can't trace time

I originally wanted to make a little 'photo a day' type post as they're something I really love looking back on, but then some days I kept forgetting to take pictures and other days I took too many, so I guess this turned into more of a 'random things I got up to last week' kind of post.

I've really gotten into Lego, but I'm trying to hold off of building my kits because of plans. But I figured two little flowers couldn't hurt, and I had a lot of fun putting them together. I really love a lot of the botanicals range Lego has been releasing, and as someone who really sucks at looking after plants they feel like a fun alternative. I also love how well these fit in with my decor, sunflowers are my favorite flower as you may be able to tell.

After I spent a few days with my sewing machine my room was covered in scraps of fabric and bits of thread as I'm always in such rush to hurry through it as quickly as possible because it takes over my entire workspace which is stressful. So giving my room a deep clean afterwards is one of the best feelings in the world, and I just love how cozy my space looks when everything is in its place.

After the machine sewing was done I had some final hand sewing to finish things up nicely, such as the buttons. So I spent an evening clearing some movies from my watchlist while I got it all done before I had a chance to procrastinate it forever. 

Hans arrived! Prince Hans in his coronation suit was the only doll I was missing from my Frozen collection, and because he's less popular and kids don't have taste enough to want him he's really rare which means expensive. I've had it on my eBay alerts for years so saw him as soon as he was listed. He was the cheapest I've ever seen, and described as "well played with" with grainy photos so honestly I was expecting the worst, but he's literally perfect and I couldn't be happier to finally welcome him. 

I saw Elvis at the cinema, and omg. I only really went for Baz Luhrmann as he's one of my favorite directors so I didn't know much about Elvis before going in, and learning about some of the history behind his career was quite shocking. I had no idea he was taken advantage of so much by his manager, and it was so sad seeing him be so emotionally manipulated and exploited. Elvis is such a legendary figure that it feels weird to say that he was held back, but he really was and I can't help but wonder what kind of status he might now hold if he'd had the freedom in his career that he so wanted. For example it absolutely boggles my mind to learn that he never even performed outside of the US - ever. So many times throughout this movie I was mentally begging Elvis to lawyer up, but then I had to remind myself that it was a completely different, more naive time and celebrity of Elvis's status was literally brand new and no one knew what they were doing. Although I've always liked old music and was aware of Elvis on a cultural level, I've never really taken any notice of him either and like a lot of younger generations tend to just associate him with bad impersonators and the tackiness of Vegas. Add to that how much he gets clowned in popular media and he never really felt like anything to take seriously so it was difficult to understand his impact. This movie is far from perfect, but it's made me really interested in the real Elvis, and I love that it showed the human side to him to introduce a whole new generation to his work. Plus I've discovered that his elder fans are some of the most patient and welcoming I've ever met, which is a lot more than I can say about fans of other classic rock bands honestly.

Anyway, I guess I get to have an Elvis phase now as he's occupied about 80% of my brain since seeing the movie. Stay tuned to watch a hyperfocus play out in real time!

I got a half year planner to start a draw everyday challenge. I felt inspired by a video where an artist used a planner and you could see where she'd skipped days because the page was blank which felt like a good way to keep myself accountable. I'm using the Hobonichi Techo Avec as it's small enough to carry round with me everywhere and nothing bleeds through the thin paper, not even watercolor. I'm trying not to be too fussy about what I put in it so long as I draw something, even if it's ugly. I've been in a real bad art block for over a year now, and I remember back when I did the whole of Inktober in 2019 it really opened the creative floodgates so I'm hoping this will have a similar effect.

I also had to break out and sharpen a brand new col-erase, which may not look like much but these pencils are really hard to get hold of in Europe so I bought a handful of them when I went to New York so they feel special and have a romantic attachment to that trip for me. And after 2+ years of a pandemic that romantic attachment has only grown stronger and made me even more determined to get back there someday.