Loves that make you kill or die

I find myself alone with an instant capuccino (blehh) and a list of favourited sites I haven't visited in a very long time: friends' blogs, sewing forums, facebook 'concept' albums, haberdashery online stores which make me cry etc. Alone because I'm back for a night at my parents' house.. in my old bedroom which feels alien to me now... and because the Mad Men series is saved on a laptop I have no access to.. but also alone with boxes of items I need to bring together, embroidery details which I always end up postponing. So it's a productive lonesomeness.. or rather, potentially productive.

I can't help being distracted by the vast network of sites a click away.. I know I could spend the next hour oogling through randomly selected pages from books I'm too poor to purchase like this one..

http://books.google.com/books?id=nUaCvWwkMNsC&lpg=PP1&dq=jane%20austen%20paper%20dolls&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false

someone sent me the link a while back and I've been returning to it ever since..

I've been obsessed with Erte's lines and general aesthetic for a very long time.. and if providence hadn't wisely provided me with only little more than the bare necessities in life, I'm quite convinced I'd be travelling the world on a secret mission to gather every lost sketch of his, every lost coat and gown by Poiret and Fortuny and the Callot Soeurs and Madeleine Vionnet..

I just look at this bejewelled tunic.. feel small and inconsequential.. sometimes cry .. and then I re-surface to try and work on something of my own. Something I could only hope is reverential enough towards something this divinely inspired. I fail, of course. But I'd be silly to expect more than that. I fail within limits though.. for, what I do is a reflection of the synthesis of influences working on me, a mix so divere it's bound to be unhealthy. I blame the enlightened forefathers.. they make it very difficult for me as a mere craftslady!

That coral encrusted band at the waist is a band of bloody tears I cry every time I .. (*cough* drama *cough*)

Here's an outfit I had encountered some two years back in the streets of Trieste. The best day of my life.. a Sunday following a Franco Battiato concert and in waiting for a Vinicio Capossela concert that very night.. I had to come across the best morning crowned with an outdoor antique market, kids in carnival costumes and relatively cheap prices. Save for this coat+hat, of course, but you cannot have everything. And that I realize and accept humbly.

Sometimes I also detour through other more obviously deterring sites.. because they're 'wishful thinking' sites when I should either be at my worktable or at least looking through 'how-to' sites. Look at what I end up doing on Polyvore.. damn you lady (you know who you are) who introduced me to this sinner's heaven! :)

This picture was saved under the name 'Rome with (insert friend name here!)' in my folder 'hwejjeg etc'.. I love that folder.. it's a poor lady's haven kind of folder.. and I also have it on my ipod for those sad moments when I feel like life's about to fall apart (like when I'm waiting at those dreaded bus stops)

How will I ever be able to bring together my loves..? my fetish with rococo church decor, the excessive fringing, tasseling, and chandeliering.. the sombre auras of room-fulls of ex-votos, b/w lino-prints and etchings, holy friday processions and jet black ravens.. the studied lines of an art-deco-gown which has had the power to starve a generation down to a T and an I, its minimalist of shape, saturated in detail and bursting with colour. The sheen of pearls, the mosaic Theodora, a Sicilian bride's lace, Turandot's headress, Our Lady's flaming heart and Louise Brooks' sleek bob n'all.

I don't know. I just keep feeling smaller and smaller.

This is the interior of St. Paul's Shipwreck Church in Valletta. My grandpa, George, who was a proud 'Belti' and a mariner himself, used to take me to his favourite church regularly... this is the stuff of first and life-long loves.

Holy Bones!!

I leave you with this song by Capossela*. I want those who outlive me to play it at my funeral. It's probably my favourite song. I think the singer-songwriter manages to do in song what I'd kill to do in my craft. I realize that this kind of grandeaur is hardly translatable across mediums but trying only ever killed the strongest and I'm willing to try. It'd be a worthy death indeed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmweqMMfqLE

*I always liked how, for a very long time, I simply couldn't help confusing Capossela with Compostela and how the symbolic baggage of both is to be forever intertwined in my head.