art

Here are a couple of images from an art project I have on the go at the moment. They were created using dying and dried flowers, berries, leaves, sentimental household objects and a scanner :--)

In these images I'm exploring the way beauty gets distorted when captured by technology. I like the idea that the beauty of some things has to be experienced in life, rather than seen in a photograph or in a film.

(Please don't take take these photos for any purpose, I am just a poor art student with no livelihood to spare)

Lots of love again today x

just a diary entry by a girl

Today was just a great day. 

I spent it learning, which is something I really enjoy when I care about the thing I am learning about. 

I had a driving lesson, and although it wasn’t really revolutionary, and I made a lot of mistakes, I do just like the feeling of moving around and the prospect of the freedom that's coming my way when I properly know how to do it. 

I had a nice visit from a friend I don’t usually connect with, and we spent lunch-time lounging around and it was relaxed and nice. 

In the afternoon, I got to meet up with a great bunch of friends for a jazz choir practise and we had the most lovely evening. We sang our hearts out, although it was challenging for me because I have a lot of work to do on my voice now that i’ve realised. We had indian take-out for dinner and our singing teacher played us a dvd of Kirk Franklin’s gospel choir on the TV and they were so incredible. We had brownies and macaroons and chocolate and had some really great chats about womanly things, which was really great because I’ve been lacking a role model for a long time and I am so glad now that I’ve found one in my singing teacher because she is just the most inspiring, down-to-earth and simultaneously other-worldy person that I could ever dream of knowing. It makes me really glad to be around her.

Now I’m here at home, surrounded by lovely music and things and my cat and a wonderful feeling of radiance.

Here’s a special playlist for days like today where it’s raining outside but sunny in your heart.

Rain

1. First Love - Kirk Franklin
2. Bronte - Gotye
3. Move - S.Carey
4. Small Hands - Keaton Henson
5. First - Lucy Rose
6. Sweet Potato - Sia
7. I’ll Forget You - Lior
8. Flowers Bloom - High Highs
9. I’m Getting Ready - Michael Kiwanuka
10. The Apeal - Kirk Franklin

Today feels like the start of a warm, fuzzy period in my life. I feel like this is how being alive is meant to feel. I feel full and bright.

Lots of love, world.

x Bea

An Introduction

Hi there world!

My name's Beatrice W, and I'm a 17 year old teenage mess from the wide open plains of Australia. While I've never been too fab at introductions, and I don't want to bore any reader straight off the bat, right now I feel like I need to get myself out on the table about who I think I might be today:

• My name is Beatrice, which means something about beauty I think. I was also born on a Monday, which is meant to mean I'm beautiful too, but I think either something went really really wrong or I was truly hideous in the womb and only appear somewhat less so thanks to the circumstances of my birth.
• I have green eyes, and brown hair, and a coffee-stain birth mark that looks like a skinny Africa on my left leg.
• Some of my favourite TV shows are Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Friends, and anything with David Attenborough or Brian Cox. I also love Catalyst and I'm not 200% sure why.
• When people ask me what I want to do when I finish school, I tell them I plan on going to Art school but in all honesty I'm not sure if it's for me.
• I don't write things very often, and I am a very odd mix of extrovert and introvert.

I'm very new at this thing. And by this thing, I don't really just mean blogging. I mean sharing. The more I live my life lately, the more I come to notice just how much I tend to avoid sharing. I'm not sure quite what it is, or who I must have frustrated as a pre-formed human blob up in God's kitchen, but I've just never found myself committing to any kind of sharing platform in any way that results in any significant connection. But alas! There are no complaints from me tonight. I've identified a challenge in my life, and as I see it, I am blessed to be able to try and overcome it. :)

However, tonight I was feeling a bit glum. I was suddenly overcome, as I watched the news and read online about incredible motivated people and their achievements, by an utter poo of a feeling. I felt in that moment completely destined to be plain, bored, and dissatisfied for the rest of my life. 'I will be very surprised if I ever amount to anything' I told myself. In fact in the spirit of every clichéd teenager in the history of human endeavour I was even driven by my own shame to draw about it.

Yet I found something special later that night. I had resorted to mindlessly trolling the internet in an attempt to distract me from the mindlessness of my life when I came across one particular TED talk that really resonated with me.

This TED talk is by Brené Brown, who not only sounds like a v v clever human being, but one who really has done a lot of living in her own skin. Give it a watch, it's 20 minutes long (which may seem like a long while but really it's only about as long as it takes to bake a batch of cookies, or sit through like 2 ad breaks in prime time TV, or paint your nails if you're like me and shit it up every time)

So, internet, welcome to us being friends. Here I am, sharing and being vulnerable, but here I am too feeling proud and alive. I hope I can come across some lovely people here and I hope perhaps the things I talk about, share, and imagine here can touch the life of any other person out there in the big wide world who'd like to connect to.
Be gentle with me!

xx Bea