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Blood, Ink, and SoulBy Courtney Barron QuailBellMagazine.com I write because no one in my family does. I write because this is the only way to really know me. I write because the sky makes me feel small and sometimes its silence screams at me. I write because my heart might explode with love and gratitude. I write because I'm just a teensy bit lost. I write because I might be sick like so many before me. I write to explain what I will never ever understand. I write because my favorite sound is the stormy summer rain in Mississippi. I write because I have felt at home on foreign soil. I write because music makes me. I write because that one time changed my soul forever. I write because of Marilyn. I write because my body is a book and its words are my blood. I write to try to know and honor my ancestors. I write because I want to control the future but I know that makes me a fool. I write because I want to know what it really means to be beautiful. I write because I am every person and every person is me. I write to learn. I write because of the sad eyes and reaching hands of the world that I can't help. I write because I can't stand people sometimes. I write in gratitude for the lessons that made me bleed and become stronger. I write to remember the oceans current tugging me away from the beaches of my youth. I write because the world is on fire but no one seems to notice. I write because outside my window scares me. I write to make sense of it all. I write because of the sweet stillness of prayer. I write to find patience and peace within. I write because sometimes I think I'm the most selfish person I've ever met. I write to prove myself wrong. I write because loneliness can be very, very smothering. I write to find my elusive savior. I write because there is beauty even in the most ordinary of things. I write because somewhere within me is a young girl, a warrior, and an old woman that are all very good at hide and seek. I write because the walls really are talking and someone needs to write that stuff down. I write to find that little bit of light in a dark room. I write to remember to be humble. I write because people forget to stop and just be. I write because one time I got to watch the sun rise alone in Times Square and I think I felt God. I write because writing is actual freedom in every way. I write because sitting on the rivers edge and listening to the Earth whisper makes me feel that good kind of crazy. I write because everyone else is so important. I write because in that small apartment upstairs I found love and a new journey. I write to make sure I always remember the bad so I can appreciate the good. I write because of karma and her terrible sense of humor. I write because what I think about the world has to matter to someone somewhere. I write to honor the ever present glowing moon that will forever tug at my soul. I write because I've hurt someone but I don't regret it. I write to make sure I'm getting this thing called “life” while I'm living it. I write because I'm afraid to disappoint her. I write because I might just love you after all. I write because, absolutely without a doubt, I have to. I write because I don't know anything at all. Courtney Barron lives in Maine and is studying to become an AOD counselor. #Writing #Confession #Manifesto
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The Rehabilitated ReaderI used to say I hated reading to anyone who would listen. Since I’m a writer, they of course didn’t understand—as they had every right to. Reading is an integral part of becoming a great writer. To not read and be a writer is like saying, “I’m going to be a gymnast but never stretch” or “I’m going to be a neurosurgeon but never go to medical school.”
It’s not that I didn’t read. I read a LOT. As I was pursuing a career in the magazine industry, I eventually had subscriptions to over 20 magazines which I did, in fact, read each month and actually took notes on. I also read blogs, newspapers, articles—I read a lot. But books? Not really. And honestly, it’s not that I didn’t like reading or had trouble with it. I just had some crazy defining moments that kind of squashed that spirit in me. First, when I was in elementary school, a classmate who was peer editing my historical fiction piece that I wrote at age 11 turned me in to the teacher for plagiarism. We had just read the book Johnny Tremain (still one of my all time favorites), and this kid somehow thought I copied whole sections of the book when really, there was nothing at all copied. The story was very different. But this kid was CONVINCED. Fortunately, my teacher didn’t believe it. The short story later went on to win the Young Author Award landing me a spot at a super cool conference where I got to read my story out loud (which some parents seemed rather disturbed since I killed off my Main Character, but oh well), but after that, I tried to make it a point not to read outside of school too much because I didn’t want people claiming I copied anyone. I mean, how can you plagiarize if you don’t read, right? Then in high school, I was a part of the International Baccalaureate program, and on top of the ridiculous amounts of homework (so there wasn’t much free time to read, especially since I worked for the Florida Today semi-part time), there was one year where we literally had only one week to read each pretty thick/classic novels. That wouldn’t be so hard if I didn’t already have copious amounts of work to do, and no matter how hard I tried to get it done on time, come Friday afternoon, my teacher would reveal the ending just as I was about to read the last chapter. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Vintage "Jools" By Paisley Hibou QuailBellMagazine.com Kay Adams, owner of Anthill Antiques in Richmond, Virginia's Carytown shopping district, carries baubles with vintage and Old World flair. She also takes history seriously: For the past 17 years, Anthill has inhabited an historic building in an historic neighborhood and specializes in historic pieces and one of the kind couture that, let's face it, will probably one day make fashion history. The entrepreneur even makes her own jewelry and sells the collections at Anthill. I decided to pick her brain about the work that she does as a curator and creator of pretty, shiny things. Our quick Q&A over Facebook yielded this brief back and forth: Why did you start Anthill and how did you come up with the name? There was a genuine passion in my and my mother’s blood—if it’s there, and it’s real, you can’t escape the vintage bug—and it only gets more entrenched the older I get. Like little ants, we work hard at our vintage "jOoLed" hill, just like those tireless creatures that stay dedicated 24/7. How would you describe the shop in one word? OVERWHELMING-JoYFuLLY-jOoLiCIOUS! (Is that cheating?). We’ll just call that urban slang for VINTAGE JEWELRY NIRVANA! (Uh-oh—I must think in 3, not 1’s.) What's one of your favorite pieces you've recently sold? I made a necklace called Rhapsody in Rapture. It a had a crucifix with lightening striking it which was being held by two arch angels and a silver ascending bird flying away from it, among many other allegories. It’s moving to Texas. Just seeing how the lady responded to it made my happy. She saw the journey of it. What do you love about antique and estate jewelry? The quality, the history, the craftsmanship, the pride taken to create it, the innovation given the era, the nostalgia, the fact that someone else once cared for it, the fact that its legacy can continue. There isn’t anything about it I DON’T love. How do you choose pieces for the store? Gut. It’s always a gut reaction, and being open-minded enough to realize that people’s tastes and desires are all different and all over the board. I would never curate in a vacuum. A hand-painted celluloid bird pin could be as cherished to one person, as a fabergé egg to the next, and I completely respect that. What's your quick tip for telling if something's authentic or not? Look for signs of good craftsmanship. In vintage brooches, look for thickness of the cast pieces, uniqueness, and detail of the design, and often prong-set stones and/or riveted and multi-part construction. #Interview #Jewelry #Anthill #AnthillJewelry #AntiqueJewelry #Vintage
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"Why That Note?"By Matt Treacy QuailBellMagazine.com “Why that note?” This is a phrase I remember from a book I read many years ago. Scanning the shelves one afternoon, I came across a biography of the Irish rock band U2. In this book, I would learn about a man I’ve never met, a man who would become my guiding sound as an artist.
For many years now my artistic sense of self has been guided by the influence of the guitarist for U2, colloquially known by friends, fans and family as “Edge.” The Edge is my greatest art hero. This man taught me that there are no boundaries whatsoever between the musician and the writer, between songwriting and developing story. “Why that note?” These words have stuck with me ever since. “Why that note” is a question I ask myself every time I pick up an instrument or a pen. “Why that note” has shaped my craft from the moment I was able to fully understand what it implies. In 1969, Larry Mullen Jr. formed the band U2 with his schoolmates Adam Clayton, David Evans (The Edge) and Paul Hewson (Bono). The four friends were born and raised in the North side of Dublin, Ireland, a particularly industrial part of the country. This rundown setting would become the basis for their first three studio albums, while images of drug and alcohol abuse, political unrest, and social uprising have since been the subject of Bono’s lyric. But more than the words, it’s always been the electric raindrop sound of The Edge’s mesmerizing guitar style that keeps my attention. To my ear, it’s the sound of one man trying to speak for many, using the most common of instruments. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
An Eldritch Phantom By Jonathan Bellot QuailBellMagazine.com Why do you write, a voice asks one lonely lamplit evening, and I realize the answer to that question is as one-in-multiple as a cubist painting. I write to raise a sunken figurehead from the deep, where the shipwrecks dream in bubbles; I write to learn the language of lost galleons, to understand the blueblack sadness of girls made of wood. I write so as to hold a kerosene lamp in the hallways of myself, those vast hallways of gold-endragoned doors that lead to Dominica and Curacao and South America and Europe and Africa, a notebook of returns to native lands, and sometimes I write so a lamp is snuffed out. I write to firefly the night, and to night the fireflies. I write to release the figures in my heart’s dusty mirrors, the figures long-buried in the heart’s old red cenotaphs, the figures lost under the labyrinthine spiral staircases that lead to doors of what-ifs, the kimonoed girls and aviators in fluttering scarves, the ones with hair that is straight and hair that is a mad starburst of ringlets and hair that is blue and black, the figures that string together my tapestry. I write because I could not be I if I did not write, or perhaps I have become I since I wrote, and it is simply too late to turn back, but either way there is no turning back. I write to speak with Life and with blue-haired Lady Death. Because I am less memorious than Borges’ "Funes," and one cannot write if one remembers too perfectly well. I write to conjure back up the feeling I had of diving into the Caribbean Sea and coming suddenly across a sea turtle and, later, a stingray, each as large as I was, and still and staring. I write to slow the universe’s expansion, to tug back the screams of Munch and Lovecraft and Camus. I write because the island I live in is small, and I feel a sting each time the people who ask where I am from, then cut short their attention when they realize just how small it is, cut short their attention because the island is not on the radar of much-of-the-world, unless one sharpens the gaze. I write to re-contour known islands and, like the sailor in a tale by Saramago, to seek out Unknown Islands, unlisted on any maps. I write because Jean Rhys has been a beautiful and eldritch phantom for too long drifting down my halls, and some who remember the island we share will remember it only as a murky bit of sargassum leading to the shores of Jane Eyre. And I would write if she had never been a ghost, simply because I have never chosen to write, because I wrote long before I attached reasons to writing, when every back page in the exercise books of my youth was a story, a plan for a novel series. Scheherazade tells stories even when her life is not threatened by an insatiable king. I write, you see, because I could not be if I did not, or, closer to the truth, I would not want to be if I could not write, and perhaps that is enough of enough. Jonathan Bellot is a second-year PhD in Fiction at Florida State University, where he also completed his MFA in Fiction. He was born in Cincinnati to parents from the Commonwealth of Dominica, and he moved with his parents back to the island as a child. His work has appeared in Small Axe, Transnational Literature, Belletrist Coterie, and The New Humanism, among others, and he has done collaborative work for The Missouri Review's blog. In Dominica, he has served for the last few years on a committee for the island's Nature Island Literary Festival, which brings together writers connected to the Caribbean. #Literature #Writing #Process #TheArts #Creativity
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Zero's TaleWes Anderson is a director who loves to play with nostalgia and the retro in order to create memorable and great comedy films. Whether it's using elements of the French New Wave to tell a children's adventure tale (Moonrise Kingdom) or using the tropes of Jacques Cousteau to create one of Bill Murray's finest roles (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou), Anderson's film have a distinct style to them that makes them stand out compared to other comedies and dramas. Everything he creates looks like it's straight out of a childrens book (or, in one case, is an adaptation of a childrens book, with 2009's Fantastic Mr. Fox), and this can add to the nostalgia the viewer may have towards periods like the 1960s or 1970s.
Anderson's new film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, is probably his most nostalgia heavy film to date. The film opens in the present, with a young woman reading a book titled The Grand Budapest Hotel in front of the grave of Zubrowka's (the fictional eastern European nation the film is set in) finest author. The film cuts back to 1985 when the author (Tom Wilkinson) explains how he came to write the story. The film then flashes back to the 1960s when the young author (Jude Law) meets Zero Mustafa (F. Murray Abraham), the owner of the hotel. Zero tells the young writer the story of how he came to acquire the hotel, flashing back to 1932. It's here that the story mostly switches back and forth between Zero's story as a young lobby boy (played by Tony Revolori in his first major film role) working in the hotel under the tutelage of M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) and the dinner conversation the older Zero and the young writer have. Already, the viewer is thrust into a real nostalgia heavy tale. The viewer is given four removed narratives in order to tell the story, and this is a move that clearly affects the story. Every time the tale goes back, the story's events become a lot more susceptible to the nostalgia filter. What we are seeing on screen may not be the true story of what happened when Gustave was accused of murdering Madame D. (Tilda Swinton), but the story we are shown is presented as truthful by the person telling the tale. |
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