I want to live in a place that provokes an automatic sigh of relief just by seeing it in the distance on the walk home after a long day. I want it to be full of colour and reminders of the other things I have or had in my life. I want to not care about anything matching or making sense. I want to burn 14 candles, eat fried chicken all day and know that it will be exactly as I left it when I wake up in the morning. I want to invite people into this visual, liveable slice of my universe. My home is a fingerprint of the life I lead--it pieces together the journey and the present. It represents the person that I am and is full of clues of the dreams buzzing in my head. 

To live alone is a strange thing to get used to. Maybe its a metaphor for everything that has happened in the past 21 years. Today, on the third anniversary of the worst day of my life--the day that my father took his own life I can't help but wonder if my desire to live alone comes from the comfort and security I've found in loneliness. Over the past two years I've learned that it's impossible to live without family in a foreign country without that loneliness. But what I've also learned that it's not the melancholic thing we make it out to be. Loneliness allows us to understand ourselves and be at peace with that. It is unrelated to sadness unless you choose to draw the line between the two. We are human beings and we need love and we need human contact but we also need to know that those are things that we have control over. This whole thing revolves around the equilibrium of the two components of what our lives really amount to in the simplest terms: a series of decisions and a series of events. Control is something we could all learn to accept, utilise and also let go of better. 

I don't live in a personal utopia. That personal utopia is impossible. What I do live in is a container of evidence of what that utopia would be. I have a colour coded book case with my vintage toy collection and trinkets from my travels mixed in with my miniature library. My window sills contain my best friends cacti, a metal plaque my dad made as a kid that says "DREAM WEAVER" and a little american flag. My wardrobe lives atop sheepskin rugs and consists half of my own things, half of things that belonged to friends who have come and gone and old things from the closets of my grandmother or my parents. There are no window treatements and few photo frames but rather a stack of hand-made photo albums chronicling my entire life. My kitchen is full of tools I only use one a year, but which mimick those that my mom keeps in hers and probably uses more often. For me, this is a dollhouse and I get to be the doll.

Nobody can live in a dollhouse forever. I long for Sundays in my mothers house with snow outside, thick socks on our feet, CBS Sunday Morning on the television, the smell of coffee and my mom and siblings who still and probably forever will never really sleep in late on weekends. I would give anything for one more weekend with my dad at our weekend home in the mountains, the fireplace on and dad in flannel pyjamas standing at the bottom up the stairs hollaring absurdities to wake us up for the famous Kean Weaver breakfast. I can't have any of those things. I will go back to America, I will buy an apartment in New York City, I will run away to my family when I want to and I will have a fresh start in the country where I belong but which haunts me every single day. I will be content and that will be home until the end of my life. 

What we need to do is be less afraid to allow ourselves to seek exactly what we want and be more accepting of the things we can't have. We need to allow ourselves the time to feel something. We need to fear not what will happen ten years from now and come to terms with the things that have happened in our past. All we really need to know how to do is wake up in the morning and face the day ahead with vigor and passion. 

This is too good to keep to myself. You need to know. LUSH makes lime-flavoured lip scrub where the exfoliator is--ready?--pop rocks!

If that's not an incentive to keep your lips soft, I don't know what is. 

Is it possible to be a master of all trades? The answer to that question is probably no. Am I the only one who is lying to myself when I choose to believe it's possible? Also, no. If this is the predicament that some of us are in, how do we cure ourselves? How do we save ourselves from disappointment and distress? How do we at least become at one with what we're doing?

We have to find the answer. We have to close our eyes, point and walk in that direction. We have to move forward. 

photo: Me doing what I do. 

Frieze Art Fair. I've written about it both of the other years I've gone...and now, the third time around, it's an entirely different experience. 

Spectacle is a word used too often to describe art. I have a love/hate relationship with the word. To Merrium Webster it means this:

a : something exhibited to view as unusual, notable, or entertaining; especially : an eye-catching or dramatic public display

 b : an object of curiosity or contempt <made a spectacle of herself>

But in art its connotations are vastly more complicated. This very art fair is a perfect example of a non-spectacle within a greater spectable. The work itself is nothing to gasp over--it's what's chosen as "sellable" in the current art market, the chosen ones from the contemporary art realm that have been deemed by whichever higher power as having the ability to float in the equilibrium of mass appeal and artistic merit. It's a poor representation of what exists within this little niche world, but the prime example of where it all ends: when a piece of work is actually sold and consumed. That triumph when the gallerist checks a piece off their roster and the artist breathes a sigh of relief. 

All of this is something the average student or young artists scoffs at, but it's actually the harsh reality of the universe we are commiting our lives to. Most of them refuse to pay the £20 admission price to witness that reality in person and move on with the nightmare lingering in the back of their minds. 

It's not all negative though. It's kind of an incredible thing. This past Wednesday I had the pleasure of attending the private view with an invited friend. Did I look at the art? Not really. What's more interesting is the people who are there to buy and the environment in which they do so. Never have I seen so many thousand dollar handbags going to work, nor have I seen so many bottles of Champagne being guzzled in such a serious setting. You could look at it in one of two ways: a celebration or a condemnation. Opportunities are given to the deserved, money is thrown at the damned and people like me are there to add to that impending checklist of future options and enjoy the ride for the time being. Most of all, what I've realized is that there are two types of artist: an artist, one who is happy just to be making and learning and paying the consequences of not selling out with the secret hope of being in those white and carpeted cubicles and circus clowns who make simply and purely to be in those exact same cubicles. It's a diffenence not dissimilar to that of a boutique hotel and the Four Seasons, or a produce stall and a supermarket. 

Maybe the joke's on us. That spectacle is really in the hands of the middleman--those people with glossy hair, dressed in black and behind the desk. 

Photo: A close-up of a David Altmejd piece at the Andrea Rosen (NYC) booth. 

Ryan Gander's Locked Room Scenario. It's exactly that--a scenario. But Ryan Gander isn't that new of an artist and the people behind the venture aren't amateurs or mysteries either. Artangel and the amazing James Lingwood have brought us Rachel Whitereed's House, Roger Hiorn's Seizure and now this. The thing these all have in common is that they were all widely talked about in the paper, in TimeOut or in the culture circuit. They theoretically weren't hidden at all, but when you experience them it only feels like you're the only one in the room and you've come across this thing as a gem in the average urban landscape. 

In this particular case, you will probably actually be the only one in the room. Ryan Gander has created a situation whose circumstances are difficult to fathom. The experience happens in stages, starting with a mandatory online booking, then a mysterious text message from an unknown number, then upon entrance in the east end warehouse space you first notice a bizarrely placed fold-up table and a normal looking man with a clipboard awaiting the restricted 8 visitors per booking session to stroll confusedly through the gate. Walking into the space is uncomfortable. Maybe not just uncomfortable but rather calmingly eerie. You know this is an art piece. You know the closed doors are probably meant to be opened. You know that whatever lies on the other side of those doors is as equally non-descript as the office-y environment. The atmosphere initially reminds me of walking down the corridor in my father's engineering office building at night, except then there were no disheveled postcards or strangely placed velvet ropes. Nor were there iPod listening, McDonalds eating teenagers blocking the entrance to the stairs. It's like playing Clue, except the version created for intelligentsia in the 21st century. 

In art it is a common, usually monotonous and stale endeavor to purposely make something seem unintentional--but this is a rare example that actually succeeds. Ryan Gander admits us into a space where every detail down to the things in the skip outside or the crumpled paper on the floor is intentional but so much so that the viewer is guaranteed to forget that what he or she is experiencing isn't real. Everything is accessible to the invader, that is, everything except the textbook definition of art--that stuff only exists in the locked room. 

What all of this makes me realize is that what makes contemporary art successful is its ability to make someone feel like they are intruding. We are indeed invaders of the think tank--the final product at the tip of the artists working fingers. The unknown makes us uneasy and the uneasy makes us curious. In actuality that's just it: the viewing of art is a process that takes a viewer through stages of intrusion, curiousity and at last, an open-ended conclusion. 

Photo: The work of one of Gander's fictional blue conceptualist artists, Rose Duvall

What does one do when all there is to do is lay in bed? Boredom isn't an option. Actually, boredom doesn't exist. If you don't believe me then maybe you need to read The Canal by Lee Rourke. In the meatime, I'll be reading the new issue of the Gentlewoman, purchased at the very lovely issue launch at Dover Street Market last weekend and Richard Prince Collected Writings, a new publication that is essentially 200 pages of what Richard Prince thinks, observes, writes and denotes. The perfect cure: allowing the thoughts of others have more effect than my own, just long enough to give me distance to clarify my own.  

We always think we're too busy until we're not. Then we're just confused.  

Photo: new additions to my colour coordinated bookcase. 

Today those skills were tested with nectarine and cherry dumplings with lycee infused elderflower sauce. Dumplings. I'm ashamed to say that I've never even eaten a dumpling nor have I ever made them. They're something that I had dismissed as "too normal" in the realm of international cuisine and have actively ignored for twenty years. We'd all like to think that our epicurean instincts lead us in the right direction but I was wrong. 

While googling things to make with lychees and cherries I came across this. Frozen cherries and tinned lychees? But I live in such a culturally rich neighbourhood and have access to the real thing! How dare they! I'm sure those dumplings are delicious but I surely could come up with something more interesting. Fresh cherries now being scarce outside of Tesco I omitted them as the main ingredient and replaced them with nectarines, which are really a replacement for now out of season peaches--purely because Jackie, that amazing Korean housemate of mine has been telling me that Korean princesses only ate peaches and lychees and drank milk. 

Rewind to about age 10 when I used to call my mom at work in the summers to ask permission to bake something. That something being nothing from the dozens of cookbooks we had, but from my imagination--things that were usually cakely, a vile brown colour and which the members of my family bravely pretended to like. Sorry guys, but I haven't learned from that. Most of the things I make even now are made up versions of things I think I remember. 

That said, the filling consists of skinned, diced nectarines cooked on the stove for about 10 minutes with about a half cup of the syrup strained from a tin of black cherries and a teaspoon of brandy. The sauce is just 1 part honey, 1 part caster sugar to 2 parts elderflower tea, a dash of cherry juice for colour with 8 peeled lychee stewing in it while it reduced.

30 minutes later, we have dumplings! 2 fell apart while boiling and a few stuck to eachother but it's okay, this kind of stuff is about learning from our mistakes? I suppose the moral of the story is that we have too many tastebuds to have the same 20 recipes on repeat in our kitchens. Go make something strange. Go! I on the other hand am going to gorge myself on dumplings and pretend that I am a Korean princess of yesteryear. 

How do you feel about fashion?

That's a question that probably instigates a cringe, a wrinkled eyebrow or a tilted head. Fashion. That thing that decides the degree of our sophistication, that tells us what we should weigh and how we should spend our money. It has more to do with us than just the clothes that we wear. Even if you just want to buy a white t-shirt, walking into any store will slap you in the face with trends. Though I consider my self to be a fairly well-dressed person there are still shops that I won't go into to avoid the uncomfortable disapproving gazes from the sales assistants. All anybody really wants to look like is just simply good. Have you ever known anybody who looks remarkable-just out of a page of W-good every single day? I haven't. I just want to look good. I want to look into my mirror in the morning after applying my lipstick, smile to myself and think that I am proud to show my Acne-Gap-Thrift store clad self to all those strangers out there. That is all we as consumers of fashion can really wish for. 

The thing about it is that we wear things that we feel like wearing. You feel like impressing your boss so you make the extra effort in the morning. You feel like getting a tinge of excitement from checking yourself out in a glass reflection while walking down the street so you wear that skirt that catches the wind and those heels that makes your legs look like pencils. When I wake up I feel like dressing up for myself because that seems to make everything else in my life more comfortable and strange as it may seem, easier. 

You don't have to care about this thing called fashion to have an opinion about the way you dress. With the world in the middle of its fashion weeks for the season I've realized the same thing that I realize every show season--fashion is as much about the fun of treating yourself like a doll in a plastic house as it is function. That's it. We're dolls and our clothes should hang like they're as important as out books organized on our shelves. Our shoes deserve to be orderly and paired up. Our accessories belong in our homes as works of art or safely stashed away in a nice box. We invest our time, money and personalities in buying and wearing these things, it only makes sense to think of them as you would have thought of your Barbie party dresses as a seven year-old. 

There is nothing like the moment the catwalk is empty and the crowd is clapping and you realize that these things aren't just clothes, they're actually trophies and everything makes sense because it has for decades, you've just forgotten what it's like to get mixed up and forget that you're not made of plastic, but rather flesh and bones. 

Photo: taken by me backstage at the very exciting Meadham Kirchhoff show at London Fashion Week today.

You know those times when everything feels entirely right and the person standing next to you may as well be your best friend? That is what I'm talking about. You can close your eyes and see black but that doesn't matter because all of your other inlets are so aware, so enveloped in the surroundings that everything sensory experience is intensified. The smell of stale beer and sweat for once smells welcoming, but the sound of the parade of instruments on stage is even better. Never has a duo of trumpets sounded so powerful. Nor has a ukelele paired with a strong, humming voice. What I'm talking about is the hero that is Zach Condon and his gang. In a matter of five-odd years he's become one of the most prolific artists of his age and genre--now even only as a mere 24 year old. What I admire most is his aggression and gushing passion on stage. He is an artist who is consumed by his work, in only the very best way--something any creative person hopes of experiencing through their work. I may not aspire to be a performer, but I want that overpowering possession of my practice.

About a month and a half ago I bought a ukelele. Last summer I bought a harmonica. Next summer I hope to buy a xylophone. That harmonica now sits in its case on my window sill. I realized shortly after attemping that learn it that I had no desire to play it. Sure, the mental image of sitting under a tree in the park on a sunny day whirling around on the harmonica is a romantic one but it's not right for me. Until now, that ukelele has stayed in its case. Another romantic idea left unrealized. Two days ago, I rode my bike to the local ukelele shop (yes, we have one) and bought a tuner. I am ready. I am ready to learn to play my very first instrument. I am ready to find solace and delight in simply being at peace with the movement of my fingers and the sound feeding into my ears. This is not to add a skill to my pending list--this is to feel something from what I make. 

photo: my pretty litte beginners Mahalo...longing for a Bushman Jenny.  

If you live in America you have definitely heard of the No Impact Man. If you live abroad, you've probably seen the dvd on a few shelves. If you've actually watched the documentary you'd have witnessned the trials and tribulations of living a life in a real city, in the real world making no environmental impact. That means: no toilet paper, only local foods, no packaging on anything, no electricity, no refridgerator, no motorized transportation, no paper...the list goes on and on. Having watched this for the first time, also considering myself a fairly eco-friendly person I can't help but have a looming checklist of criteria in the back of my head with every item I throw away, everything that I buy and every decision that I made. 

Sorry Al Gore, but we know the world isn't going to turn into a smoggy green house any time soon but certainly there are benefits to living like it's going to. 

So there it is: a personal mission to green up my life a little bit. Not just for the environment, but also for myself. What we must realize is that there are things that we can do that will still allow us a comfortable lifestyle...we don't need to read by candlelight and wear only organic cotton clothes to feel and see a differance. Maybe what all of this is about is the desire to seek a greater depth in daily life--to no longer care about recreational shopping, to no longer have to be frustrated with a bus that is struck in traffic at rush hour, to no longer worry about looking like the glutton of the street when the rubbish goes out on Monday night. Eliminating those things frees up oh so valuable time for better, more exciting, more beneficial things! Here are a few easy ways to do something:

1. Transportation: Ride a bike. Or walk. If not all the time, do it when you can. I grew up in a town where the "downtown" was a 15 minute walk from my house--yet for my entire life we have driven to get there. In retrospect, it makes no sense. Maybe we thought it'd take to long. Maybe we were just creatures of habit. Maybe we were just lazy. Now, living in a city where bikes are quicker than buses I own a beautiful little thing that was assembled locally and just to my likings...and now I don't have to pay extortionate public transport fees, no do I have to go to the gym every day. 

2. Household: This is a tough one. No one really wants to clean their house with home-made cleaners, nor do they want to give up their vaccum cleaner. However, there are four things that are easy: buy bagged refill soap for the dispensers in your bathrooms...I like the ones from Muji...they're stylish little rectangle bottles and the refills cost significantly less than the original product.

Also, recycle your printer ink cartridges! This is an important one...that stuff is just solid plastic and toxic ink residue...if you live in London, you can get postage paid envelopes at the Tate (yes, the art museum)...and even better, the museum earns from your well-informed decision. 

Your dentist probably tells you to buy a new toothbrush every 1-3 months. That's 12-3 toothbrushes a year--toothbrushes that go into a landfill...multiply that by the number of people in the world and the number is terrifying. Perserve is a better option. Their toothbrushes are made from recycled yogurt cups, and when you're finished with them you send them back and they hit the cycle again. Bam. Not in a landfill. You can even buy a subscription so they come right to your door. 

If you live in a place where this is possible, but things like laundry detergent from brands that offer refill services. ECOVER products can be purchased in a bottle and then brought back to Whole Foods or plenty of other stores to be refilled at a reduced price. 

3. Shopping: Two easy things you probably know you should do but probably don't do often enough, carry reuseable bags, yes, even when you're buying clothes, shoes, housewares and don't buy things in packaging. You can buy loose grains at most health food stores and produce at your local market..it will most likely be fresher, less expensive and more likely to be locally sources anyway!

Okay. That's my lecture for the day. Stop lying to yourself by thinking that it's okay for you to acquire a million plastic grocery bags because everybody else does. It's not. Come on, at least ask for paper bags and use them as wrapping paper. 

Photo: Courtesy of Yorkshire Sculpture Park...a place I visited recently that made me realize that a healthy, productive lifestyle can indeed be luxurious and stimulating. This one is Jaume Plensa. The grounds of this English countryside estate have 60+ sculptures scattered amongst the natural landscape. Where else could you see a Henry Moore in a pasture of grazing sheep? Or an Antony Caro along the side of a lake?