The Style Rookie and How I Want to Go Back to High School

Today at my temp job I read an article about Nirvana's smash record Nevermind and how soon it will be the 20th anniversary of its release.  The article took me back to 1991 - the start of teenage angst.  I was still in junior high when the album came out - just discovering The Beatles and at the same time studying all of these rich classical composers because I was just starting to get really good at piano.  I don't really remember knowing much about Kurt Cobain until say my last year of high school, which was, sadly, two years after he died.  And the only reason I really ever thought about him was because the summer before my senior year I had been living in Iowa City - a college town - and found a kickass pair of vintage Levi's courdory bell-bottoms and these two grungy girls who were sophomores thought they were cool while my own contemporaries thought I was an idiot and pretty weird. But I digress.  The main article referenced all of the pop culture from that era that stemmed from a post-Reagan hatred by America's youth.  I'm not savvy enough right now to go into details, but it referenced Beavis and Butthead and the MTV cartoon Daria as well as Ghost World (which was a little bit later, I think, though not sure).  One of the items the article mentioned was the Grunge movement itself and how it made "thrifting" stylish; in fact, major designers like Marc Jacobs actually designed Grunge-inspired lines a few years later - I remember owning a Harpers' Bazaar issue that highlighted the fashion show and thinking how cool it was!  In this article, it also mentioned how Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain probably HATED the clothes because they were just replicas of stuff they had found at thrift stores - and mainly bought previous to their success because they couldn't afford anything else.  They referenced a website: www.thestylerookie.com and of course, because I was temping and didn't have anything better to do, I looked it up. 

So here's what I found.  Some freshman or sophomore high school student has this blog.  She writes every few days or weeks or whatever and she has crazy adventures that are highlighted with her choosing outfits that match the theme of the blog.  Then she takes a picture of herself in the clothes - a lot of which are thrifted or gifted.  In the blog, there are great collage photographs and pictures of cultural references - pictures from movies like Heathers and Pretty In Pink.  She is clearly fascinated by an era before her time, but I don't blame her.  It was so much fun going back into the life of a teenage girl - her blog about having a slumber party with her friend and reading aloud from "Are you there God, It's Me, Margaret" and sharing tiaras.  Reading this as an adult, I felt a little silly and guilty at the same time and a little annoyed at how precocious she and . . . of course, jealous.

I suppose I was jealous for two reasons.  One, this girl - whose name I either forgot or isn't mentioned anywhere in the blog - appears to live in Chicago where there are enough people who don't care to be silly and teenage.  I grew up in a town of 1,500 people where everything you do sticks out.  Secondly, her sheer unadulterated and unconcerned creativity made me miss my own from that period.

There was once a time when I spent summers watching soap operas and reading my dad's college textbooks.  I listened to the song "Hey Jude" over and over again because I had a crush on a boy with the same name (five years my senior I might add - I was sophisticated  like that!).  I had AWESOME creative art projects - like making book covers with collages from magazines and collected scraps on them.to put on my FAVORITE books.  I made my own notebooks from scrap-paper and vintage wrapping paper I found or new wrapping paper I bought.  I LOVED cutting off my jeans into shorts and wearing tights underneath with combat boots I was supposed to wear for Civil Air Patrol

I wrote ridiculous letters to boys I liked - mostly from nerd camp because they were the only ones I related to.  Sometimes I sent them, sometimes I didn't.Whole afternoons were sometimes spent just digging around our basement looking for weird stuff of my parents or old pieces from toys that I could use for something I was going to make. When I got old enough to drive, I would spend entire days at my best friend's house watching some curious movie like "The Birds" and rummaging through shit in her basement.  We did the most amusing things - like going to a mountain man rendezvous for our history class and then making a "professional quality" home movie on her dad's camcorder.  Once, after a speech contest, a group of us hijacked the mime makeup, donned black clothes and walked around the mall, Target and a few coffeeshops not speaking and freaking people out.  We didn't care - it was all in good fun.

Those years from 13 to 18 as horrid as they were on one hand, had to be the greatest on the other hand: mostly, because there was nothing to worry about.  My parents would give me $20 (which bought a lot then) every now and then and it was enough to get some gas, some food and something dumb at the mall which I would most likely later regret buying, 

Shortly after I started college, I discovered thrift store shopping and that just made life better.  For example, I had a roommate I really didn't like that much my freshman year.  She was a nice girl - I was just in a dark phase, so to freak her out I made a weird sculpture of old plywood and various-sized doll heads with toothpick cigarettes hanging out of her mouth.  She would go out late and I would go to sleep, but leave the halogen lamp facing on the doll head sculpture - all particles begotten at the thrift store.  I wrote ALL THE TIME - some of it nonsense, some of it good but CREATIVE all the same.

There's such a myriad of things in this whole time frame I could go into, but this isn't really a formalized writing so much as a little drafty thing (an essay in the works?) but this whole experience of reading this girl's blog got me wondering . . . 

What happened to that creativity, I wonder?  I used to just MAKE STUFF without thinking about it; I used to just WRITE stuff without thinking about it. I thought everything I did was great - and the funny thing is, a lot of it was - then I got mad at myself and threw it all away.  I suppose you grow up and you assimilate.  Things don't matter as much and perhaps you start to realize you're never going to be the best or people knock you down a few notches.  - you start to look for a professionalism in your creativity - i.e.  I pay too much attention to what my words mean in my songwriting; I worry that my knitting stitches aren't even.  I also live with someone else, which I think has a lot to do with it.  I don't have my own room and my boyfriend is a bit of a minimalist so all of that weird shit I used to collect - pictures from magazines, old fabric scraps, kids' ribbons I would find near the school bus stop - and used to put up on the walls for inspiration has taken the backseat for a meaningful relationship.  Still, I'm inspired . . .

So I want to start writing on this blog more often - I want to read things and comment on them.  I want to make things and take pictures.  I want to come up with crazy outfits and share them with the world.  I want to be self-important again like I was as a teenager (minus the arguing with my parents and snotty, arrogant attitude) and think my stuff is really COOL.  I can't guarantee this will go on forever, but I'm going to try and see what happens - it might give me a purpose again to be uninhibited and push the edges, like a teenager with less acne. . . .

Poems

Once upon a time I was a creative writing major.  I took courses in nonfiction, ficion and poetry.  So I've been attempting to rescue this skill and have decided to put up some poems.  I'm not saying these are good - no one else has read them, but it does feel good to be writing again . . .

Land of My Heart

Land of my heart, you are not

The place of my birth

You are hills of pines and mountains of broken rocks,

You are red-rim volcanic domes and curious cliffs

I will not dare peer from the edges of

In your sheltered villages, the people plant seeds;

They hold the husky shells between thumb and forefinger

And dig deep, aiming for some relief when the winter winds creep in,

Silently but securely.

There is a magnetic pull to this land – I swear to God

I am the only one who knows it – some live there, they know the land

Some visit – they take snapshots and go home,

But I am torn like some hide off an animal:

Wanting to be reattached to the spirit of things.

Happy Lucky Lost & Free -- HOORAY!!!

Melanie Devaney Christmas Promotion!

The Christmas season is on its way and it’s almost time for another string of weeks listening to the same old holiday tunes .  . . unless of course  you cash in on the opportunity to be a part of the

Melanie Devaney Christmas Download Special!!!

From now through December 24 I will be offering 100 special fans only the opportunity to download my original composition “By Christmastime.”  When you purchase the song, you will also be pre-ordering my next song release “See You In the Spring” – a track from the full-length “Happy Lucky Lost & Free”album I plan on releasing in 2011.

The song is now available at http://melaniedevaney.bandcamp.com/  for $5, BUT you will also see the option to name your own price.

“Super Fans” who donate $20 or more for the song will receive a hand-crafted personalized Christmas ornament from me! AND, in keeping with the holiday spirit, any amount over and above the cost of releasing “Happy Lucky Lost & Free” will be donated back to the Marine Toys for Tots program as a “Fans of Melanie Devaney” charitable contribution.

Do good!

 Get great music!

Celebrate the holidays in style! 

Purchase “By Christmastime” today!

Happy Halloweener

So another day of ghosts and goblins and ghouls comes to our bright metropolis.  This will be my second year in Hollywood for Halloween and I feel slightly more prepared for it this year.  That is not to say that I have gone crazy at the Goodwill store buying faded feather boas and distressed leather jeans, but that I am now mentally ready to see a 300 pound black man in a Playboy bunny costume standing in the center of Santa Monica  Boulevard (this was the point last year at which Dorothy here said to herself, "Uhhh, you're definitely not in Iowa anymore!").  You also know you're not in Iowa anymore when the police warn parents to watch out for candy laced with cannabis.

The irony about Halloween in Hollywood is that everyone makes such a big deal out of the crazy costumes when on any given night in this city you will see someone or something scarier or more ludicrous with complete nonchalance or unawareness about how absurd they are wandering down Hollywood or Sunset Boulevard.  With all the actors in this city, it's not that uncommon to dress up, put on a frightening face and go about being a different person for a day - or every day of your life if you are some people.  However, I understand - Halloween is about the candy for the kids and the drinking for the adults and human beings will come up with any reason to celebrate and get candy and beer.

If I seem like a killjoy when it comes to Halloween, I have a good reason for it.  My first memory of trick-or-treating is running around my entire hometown of Epworth, Iowa (where the population is now 1,600) with my five older cousins, trying to keep up for two hours,  and losing half of my candy from the bottom of the paper bag my parents gave me (buckets were never an option with my parents).  This is bad enough for a five year old, but as we were all trudging up the porch steps of my aunt's house on Main Street, she came running around the corner dressed in a mummy costume with fake blood all over it and picked me up.  She stuck a fake knife to my throat and spun me around the yard all the while laughing in a deep gutteral chuckle.

I tend to think my aunt was drunk.

But I also have a theory that my father asked her to do this.  For a while as a child, I had a terrible fear of knives.  I had open-heart surgery when I was five, the summer before I started kindergarten, and naturally there was some subconscious trauma that made me associate knives with pain and death.  Go figure.  My father, an Army Reservist, a All-American dad kind of guy, graduated from the "Toughen Up, Soldier" School of Childbearing .  I'm sure he thought that if my aunt spun me around the yard with a knife stuck to my throat laughing demonically long enough I would come to some sort of rationalization and see that knives don't kill people: people kill people - which is what I would have done to both of them had I been taller than 4' 5," weighed more than 60 pounds, had a drivers' license and a bank account that would have allowed me to go to the sporting goods' store and buy a firearm.  Screw knives, five year olds know how to get the job done.

So that is my earliest memory of trick-or-treating.  In subsequent years I suffered the agony that most kids in the '80's did of having to wear those hard plastic masks with half-centimeter wide breathing holes and eye slits and wearing a sort of jumpsuit made out of the same plastic as they make tablecloths from that sort of resembled a HAZMAT suit.

Looking back on this, there is something sort of cruel about adults encouraging children to get dressed up in goofy ways and then laughing at them.  Like the time I wore the Puff the Magic Dragon costume with the green face makeup made out of Crisco (as did half of my cousins - the Puff the Magic Dragon costume will be an heirloom I'm sure if it's still around).  Sure, I won second prize at the costume party and everyone thought I was cute or something like that, but I couldn't do anything fun with that stupid long tail dragging around when the balloons that were supposed to hold it up popped.   All the adults laughed at it. I was mortified.   My mom was late to pick me up from the party and I couldn't even play on the swingset while I waited.  Thankfully, by the time I was in third grade we all got smart.  Daddy and us girls agreed that being an Army guy was the best option - he threw my sister and I each one of his green fatigue shirts,  helped us roll up the sleeves, plopped an Army baseball cap on each of our heads, got out the green war paint stick (it seems I have a history of painting my face green for Halloween) and away we went in our tennies and jeans bound for battle, on a mission for Tootsie Pops and little packages of Smarties.  By fifth grade I stopped trick-or-treating altogether.  I discovered that with the money I saved my parents on a Halloween costume they would buy me cool clothes or books or toys or something I would get long-term enjoyment out of.

I do, however, appreciate the spirit of creativity that goes into Halloween.  If you're going to do a costume, then you should do it right: really put some effort and thought into it, not just buy some fishnet stockings and glitter eyeshadow.  To that degree, I have to say, the last time I went out for Halloween in my hometown, some time in the early 2000's what I saw definitely had what I've seen in  Hollywood beat, (though I will admit I haven't completely embraced the Hollywood Halloween.)    For example, the woman laying on the cart in a hopsital gown with the bloody sheet over her and the bald on who popped his head up in between her legs.  The costume: "Giving Birth." Or the two kids' mattresses bungee-corded to a woman's front and back side wide single red stripe painted down the middle of the front. Just think about it for a minute.   While crass, still creative . . .

So we do this all in the name of beer and candy and some homage to the spirit of the dead who roam amongst us.  The way I see it, it's easier to just go to the liquor store on the corner, get a 12-pack and a bag of Hershey's miniatures and flicker the lights on and off a couple of times, light a candle in the bathroom, chant "Bloody Mary" into the mirror once or twice and call it a night.  If Bloody Mary does happen to show up and attempt to scratch my eyes out, I'll offer her a Coors Light and we can hang out and tell scary ghost stories.  Something tells me she might have some good ones . . .

And what will become of it . . .

I thought for a brief moment of starting this post with those classic words I remember from my college newspaper, "I'm not really sure what to write about."  You see, I haven't written anything I felt was good in ages.  Sure, there have been some song starts and a few poems, but something with real depth and challenge to it has been lacking for some time.  So I give the blog another try and wonder, what will become of it . . .

Truthfully, I have been giving a lot of thought lately to my interdependence on the internet and my computer for my existence.  Frankly, it frightens me. I wonder if this is why those terminal words "I'm not really sure what to write about" have entered into my vernacular. 

It is a phrase I detested as a college student when I would pick up our college newspaper, The Lorian, and read in the op-ed section (and still do).  I, too, wrote editorials, but I had a tendency to write about wacky topics, such as how to make your own home-made bird costume for Halloween and the benefits of looking at Playboy magazine as a means of improving women's self-confidence.  (In my youth, I thought the full hips and breasts of the young women featured in the magazine could change the world.  Despite the fact that I went to a Catholic college, I presented enough wry humor in the article for no one to take it seriously).  It seems back then I had no vacancy of topics to expound. But these days things are a little dry and I'm not sure if it's just that Southern California offers too much variety or if, in my technological brave new world, I've stopped looking so closely at the world surrounding my laptop computer screen.  There is so much to describe and yet I haven't the words . . .

SO I am vowing, right here and now, to begin again, this little adventure of script and thought: the Blog.  As often as possible, I will pick a topic and I will write.  I will write and then I will edit.  And then I will publish it for you to read in a way that makes sense, because I realize now that this just flutters about. I am a better writer than this, I promise you.  I have a degree in it, actually, but I need some creative fodder and so, tomorrow morning with zest, I will not awake, make a cup of coffee and begin to investigate the latest crap everyone has posted on Facebook - because let's admit, most of what we post on there is stuff no one else really cares about (probably including this blog) - but rather, create what I hope will be an interesting discourse on the world around me.  May you be entertained and thought-provoked in the days to come!!