dress of books
yes please
EDIT:
Update on this photo. I added the link to a blog where the photo originated. It was taken (by Lori of Katies Rose Cottage Designs) at the Dallas Home and Gift Market in July of a random display in a showroom. She is going to look for more details on the dress when she goes back to the market. i’ll keep you updated.
P.S. I don’t think the dress is made out of Harry Potter books :( Sorry.
MEGHAN DAUM
on Joan Didion’s Blue Nights.
The Los Angeles Review of Books gives its pages this week to discussions of Joan Didion on the occasion of the publication of her latest book, Blue Nights. Didion, an icon of literary L.A. despite living in New York much of her life, wrote in 1976 that “[t]o shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed.” That attention to style, structure, perspective, and meaning animates these essays by Matthew Specktor, Susan Straight, Amy Wilentz, Amy Ephron, Richard Rayner, and today Meghan Daum, who recounts a life of reading Didion and getting a haircut in her kitchen in 2003.
¤
Joan Didion
Blue Nights
Alfred A. Knopf, November 2011. 208 pp.
When I began seriously reading Joan Didion, in my early twenties, my response was less “this is amazing” than “this is allowed?” As is the case with many young writers, early encounters with Didion felt to me like a revelation, a shocking and delightful window into what it meant to forge an intimacy with one’s readers while remaining duly mysterious. You can do it like this, the pages seemed to say. “This” meant the jagged, labyrinthine sentences, the unashamed brandishing of personal demons, the perennial list making. Moreover, that such stylings were permissible, that the work appeared in the most prestigious places and had made its author not only a success but an outright star, felt like a victory not just for words but for sound. To me, reading Didion’s prose has always been an aural experience as much as a literary one, as much about rhythm and intonation as whatever she’s talking (or in many cases not talking) about. It’s been about those long, earth-orbiting sentences that are almost always followed by short, decisive ones that let you catch your breath. It’s also about wondering, for those of us too young to know, what a cotton shift is. Or how she wants us to pronounce “detritus.”
Blue Nights, like 2005’s The Year of Magical Thinking — and in some ways like the 2003 essay collection Where I Was From — has the hallmarks of relatively recent vintage Didion. That is to say, it’s sparer and more elliptical than the 1970s-era works — Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, Goodbye To All That — that are often described as seminal and that have had generations of young writers copying her style by eschewing commas and throwing in references to cigarettes or prescription opioids wherever possible. An almost incomprehensibly tragic coda to The Year of Magical Thinking, which chronicled the sudden death in 2003 of the author’s husband, John Gregory Dunne, Blue Nights takes on the demise of her 39-year-old daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne Michael, who died 18 months later.
This spring and summer MEET students in Y3 will have the wonderful opportunity to work for a real startup client called MuseTrek, a unique web and mobile culture-sharing platform.
MuseTrek emerged out of the Idea Translation Lab at Harvard University, and is an application…
I’d like to start by saying that these are solely my thoughts on the November issue of GQ and the controversy that has surrounded its release. I am not a representative of the three of us, the show, or Fox, only myself.
In the land of Madonna, Britney, Miley, Gossip Girl, other public figures and shows that have pushed the envelope and challenged the levels of comfort in their viewers and fans…we are not the first. Now, in perpetuating the type of images that evoke these kind of emotions, I am sorry. If you are hurt or these photos make you uncomfortable, it was never our intention. And if your eight-year-old has a copy of our GQ cover in hand, again I am sorry. But I would have to ask, how on earth did it get there?
I was a very sheltered child, and was not aware of anything provocative or risque in the media while I was navigating through my formative years. When I was finally allowed to watch a movie like Grease, I did not even understand what on earth Rizzo was talking about!? I understand that in today’s world of advanced technology, the internet, our kids can be subject to very adult material at the click of a button. But there are parental locks, and ways to get around this. I am twenty-four years old. I have been a pretty tame and easy-going girl my whole life. Nobody is perfect, and these photos do not represent who I am. I am also not the girl who rolls out of bed with flawless makeup and couture clothing. I am most comfortable with my hair thrown on top of my head, in sweats, laughing with my friends. Glee is a show that represents the underdogs, which is a feeling I have embraced much of my own life, and to those viewers, the photos in GQ don’t give them that same feeling. I understand completely.
For GQ, they asked us to play very heightened versions of our school characters. A ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’ version. At the time, it wasn’t my favorite idea, but I did not walk away. I must say, I am trying to live my life with a sharpie marker approach. You can’t erase the strokes you’ve made, but each step is much bolder and more deliberate. I’m moving forward from this one, and after today, putting it to rest. I am only myself, I can only be me. These aren’t photos I am going to frame and put on my desk, but hey, nor are any of the photos I take for magazines. Those are all characters we’ve played for this crazy job, one that I love and am so fortunate to have, each and every day. If you asked me for my dream photo shoot, I’d be in a treehouse, in a wild costume, war-paint and I’d be playing with my pet dragon. Until then…..
I’d like to start by saying that these are solely my thoughts on the November issue of GQ and the controversy that has surrounded its release. I am not a representative of the three of us, the show, or Fox, only myself.
In the land of Madonna, Britney, Miley, Gossip Girl, other public figures and shows that have pushed the envelope and challenged the levels of comfort in their viewers and fans…we are not the first. Now, in perpetuating the type of images that evoke these kind of emotions, I am sorry. If you are hurt or these photos make you uncomfortable, it was never our intention. And if your eight-year-old has a copy of our GQ cover in hand, again I am sorry. But I would have to ask, how on earth did it get there?
I was a very sheltered child, and was not aware of anything provocative or risque in the media while I was navigating through my formative years. When I was finally allowed to watch a movie like Grease, I did not even understand what on earth Rizzo was talking about!? I understand that in today’s world of advanced technology, the internet, our kids can be subject to very adult material at the click of a button. But there are parental locks, and ways to get around this. I am twenty-four years old. I have been a pretty tame and easy-going girl my whole life. Nobody is perfect, and these photos do not represent who I am. I am also not the girl who rolls out of bed with flawless makeup and couture clothing. I am most comfortable with my hair thrown on top of my head, in sweats, laughing with my friends. Glee is a show that represents the underdogs, which is a feeling I have embraced much of my own life, and to those viewers, the photos in GQ don’t give them that same feeling. I understand completely.
For GQ, they asked us to play very heightened versions of our school characters. A ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’ version. At the time, it wasn’t my favorite idea, but I did not walk away. I must say, I am trying to live my life with a sharpie marker approach. You can’t erase the strokes you’ve made, but each step is much bolder and more deliberate. I’m moving forward from this one, and after today, putting it to rest. I am only myself, I can only be me. These aren’t photos I am going to frame and put on my desk, but hey, nor are any of the photos I take for magazines. Those are all characters we’ve played for this crazy job, one that I love and am so fortunate to have, each and every day. If you asked me for my dream photo shoot, I’d be in a treehouse, in a wild costume, war-paint and I’d be playing with my pet dragon. Until then…..
dbox:
I recently did a google search to see if anyone had “converted” instagram filters to photoshop actions. After not finding any results, I decided to see if I could do it myself. I didn’t get a 100% exact match, but it’s pretty close.
Im starting with “Nashville” then will add more soon. Let me…
