thick skinned chameleon

i'm exhausted. i'm finally graduating after months of stress. i'm a little worried about not showing enough emotion with my friends who are leaving either because i'm too detached or because i never really gave myself the chance to develop connections with them; i don't want to just float from person to person, i want to have roots. but to be honest, i really don't know what i feel. i regret the most not being kinder to more people, but i guess it's a little late. right now i'm mostly thinking about where i want to go and what i want to do and how much of life is just waiting.

1. 17 . youth lagoon

2. lay me down . sam smith

3. salad days . mac demarco

4. fourfiveseconds

5. the last time i saw richard . joni mitchell

6. laura . bat for lashes

7. be my baby . ariana grande

8. big girls cry . sia

9. acrobat . angel olsen

10. long-legged guitar pickin' man . johnny & june cash

11. eddie my love . teen queens

12. crying . d.d. dumbo

13. jailhouse rock . elvis presley

14.  milk . sea oleena

15. gooey . glass animals

this has basically nothing to do with anything, but i've been really in love with the aesthetic quality of produce lately. fresh fruits n vegetables are so great, i kno this isn't a #health(goth)blog but if are lucky enough to have access to this stuff, the adults in your life aren't lying when they tell you that it makes you feel genuinely better. 

 

i really like the layering: the black t-shirt dress is DIY, the floral dress and the birkenstocks are thrift.

 

ok that's all.

-=-

kani

can't you see we're only dancing

hello! i would like to do an outfit post (practically) every day in may regardless of how much i planned/like my outfit, and this is the first: 

i've had my shirt since childhood, the jeans are forever 21, and the shoes in this beautiful shade of blue that's slowly emerging as my favorite color partly because in the first few scenes of mamma mia! (which i only recently saw despite the fact that it's literally an ABBA musical?) everything in the hotel is this beautiful, rich shade of blue: 

via

sorry if that run-on sentence was hard to follow but the shoes were thrifted lol. also on that shade of blue: i was stressing about having a dress for graduation (!!!) and my friend found this for me:

l if you're reading this i love you because this is basically the perfect dress. it's sold out for my size atm but who knows, it's at least nice to finally have an image of what i want in a dress.

and a playlist:

1. all we are / utmost good [super cool 70s-ish pop]

2. got it / marian hill [a fun swinging sound with an amazing oboe solo]
3. this is not about us / kindness
4. fiya / tUnE yArDs [she sings "what if my own skin makes my skin crawl? what if my own flesh is suburban sprawl? what happens between us makes sense if i'm nothing and you're all, if i'm nothing at all" and it's all so honest]
5. fourth of july / sufjan stevens [i was so excited to finally listen to sufjan's newest album: carrie and lowell-- he's one of my favorite folk singers and his dreamy, moving songs never stop amazing me. this is one of the more story-telling based songs about being with his mother on her deathbed and i definitely recommend it]
6. i like to be alone / rachel trachtenbug [this is such a dreamy song and the video is like a picnic at hanging rock meets x-files]
7. inky sea / laura groves
8. soundtrack to mamma mia! [amazing overall but especially gimme gimme gimme, voulez vous, and mamma mia]
9. dream (original mix)/ autograf [i guess if i went to raves i would want them to play this song haha because it's electronic and it has this strange literally bubbling feeling]

ok i think that's all! i hope you all have a bright and beautiful may <3

-=-

kani

march playlist + outfit!

when i realized i was behind on this playlist thing, i was too lazy to find all the songs on spotify or whatever, so i just put the youtube version:

1. 1998 /  chet faker

2. barasu-ayo / ibeyi

3. pickles from the jar / courtney barnett

4. return to / #1 dads [i already mentioned them here, but this song is so soothing!]

5. tropical oceans / d.d dumbo [this song! ahh! if you only listen to one, listen to this-- it's so catchy and so swingy and he has such a distinct dreamy beach pop sound]

6. unrequited love / lykke li [i lied; listen to this song too]

7. left alone / fiona apple

8. every single night / fiona apple [she's been my favorite singer for a while now, and i was really into her voice and her songwriting this month; she's so talented]

9. fernando / abba [this song makes me a lil nostalgic and sad for some reason, but maybe it's just abba]

10. pedestrian at best / (more) courtney barnett [her songs are so off-kilter, and fun and weird]

11. pulsing / tomas barford [incredible music]

12. killing me softly / lauryn hill [i got into lauryn hill because of my dad, also i love this song]

13. the witch / big fish the musical [musicals! are! so! much! fun! ! also! theater! is! such a great experience! everyone on the face of the earth deserves to do some form of theater at least once inth eir lives; i'm so grateful to have been able to do big fish the musical at my school: the cast and crew was all so talented, and it was such a positive experience and i'm definitely a better person for it. and this is the catchiest song on the soundtrack ]

14. fade into you / sam palladio and clare bowen [long story short, watching nashville is making me really into country songs that are about love and anger and emotion etc-- even though aside from a pre-existing fondness for dolly parton, i used to think that every country song was about trucks or something (trucks are great though!)]

--
here's an outfit from the moment of my initial excitement about how close spring is:

the windbreaker is from my childhood, back when i hated windbreakers (and turtlenecks! and pop music! and burt's bees! all for some strange arbitrary reason, ahh childhood...). anyway, i love them now, partly because loud, obnoxious clothing makes my heart swell; and in addition to this color, it makes this ridiculous swishy sound when you move in it. this thrifted turtleneck is now one of my favorite articles of clothing. polka-dot dress was a gift and holographic slippers are thrifted. 
  

not photographed bc i am a noob was this elastic-y wristband from an old whistle that i wore as a choker:

also, sorry for the semi-overuse of '!'-- spring break is just making me feel reallyy good. and i hope yours are going as well. let me know what you think of the outfit or the songs, and thank you for reading!

-=-

kanyinsola 

january/february playlist

• video girl // fka twigs
• lovers in the parking lot // solange
• mama says // ibeyi
• talk is cheap // chet faker
• need ur luv // charli xcx
• go your own way // fleetwood mac
• budapest // george ezra
• retrograde // james blake
• riptide // vance joy
• drop the game // flume, chet faker
• alors on danse // stromae, kanye west
• hot knife // fiona apple
• my club // the asteroids galaxy tour
• yellow flicker beat // lorde
• stolen dance // milky chance
• marathon // tennis

the beginning of this year has been whirlwind and strange and i love it. i'm getting a lot of perspective on things that seemed unimportant before, and i'm trying to be better instead of just thinking about being better.

also videos that were really aesthetically pleasing to watch: 

i love love love ibeyi, and it makes me so happy to listen to their beautiful voices, and even happier as a nigerian girl/woman

and a song that wasn't on spotify: 

tell me if you've got any recommendations for march! thank you, 

-=-

kanyinsola

i got to fold because these hands are just too shaky to hold

winter always makes me crave warmth, like i'm not sure why; it definitely has something to do with wanting something that's really far away in the physical sense, but also in the sense of
1. safety
2. closeness

i tend to form really strong emotional attachments to people and things during the winter-time and then i start to fixate on having those things around me for a sort of stability. having a set routine. when things happen according to plan- i feel warm as in cozy and balanced.

the past few weeks have been v mixed for me: what happened in Ferguson and what's happening everywhere makes me sick and i think about it every day and it is terrifying and overwhelming. but at the same time- warm is the only way to describe the feeling i get from thinking about the people standing up for freedom, and the fact that people are finally paying attention to them.

links to petitions, donation master-posts, and information on ferguson

sweater / thrifted

skirt / marshall's 

tights / walgreens 
shoes / childhood

i wore this outfit a few weeks ago when it was a little warmer outside, and I wish it was nice outside again so I could wear it all the time because it's really simple and comfortable- and nowadays i just wake up and have no idea what to wear and feel completely uninspired and end up wearing something bLeRgH to match the weather ha.

this winter, i'm really yearning for a beautiful, warm coat: something in pastel or neutral with cool color-blocking/paneling and a loose silhouette. i feel like if you have a beautiful coat on- it adds a type of subtlety to your entire self.

 

honestly, owning one of these Hermes coats is *the* goal when I get older and want to become a werqing gurl because it vaguely reminds me of a 90s power-suit, but also seems to be elegant and huge and flowing enough to shield me from "adult responsibilities" or whatever that means.

recently i've also been feeling that winter is a really good time for crying: not always out of sadness, but sometimes just for emotional release. so i made this playlist called :cry: (the text form of the crying emoji)

1: autre ne veut is literally crying as he sings one of the verses 2: about the importance and comfort of crying 3: being dissatisfied w life atm  4: kind of a lost love story 5: wanting to curl up inside of yourself 6: forgetting 7: wanting/needing/craving something out of your reach 8: sometimes people need other people 9: a-loneliness 10: advice for sad times 11: it's fiona apple 

if you're looking for something cool to get me to tide me over the long days i'm gonna spend indoors this winter: gone home the video game came out last august and i'm still freaking out. gone home is a first person narrative set in 1994, with the player as Kaitlin Greenbrier- who comes home after a year abroad to discover her family home deserted, and has to solve the mystery of what happened. last year i was obsessed because i was so into the riot grrrl aspects of this game. and even though i no longer feel a lot of allegiance to 90s feminism, i still appreciate that's it's a game with a plot that's so spooky and sensitive, and incredible attention to detail in the graphics.

x

x

x

and while we're on the subject, what do you guys want/need for survival during the winter?

-=-

kanyinsola 

[ calvin klein aw 14 // jil sander aw 07 // calvin klein aw 07 // dkny aw 14 // creatures of comfort aw 14 // 3.1 phillip lim aw 14 // hermes aw 14 ]

[He] 2s2 2p6 (tacky + smush)

one of my favorite seniors left school yesterday and i found myself unexpectedly grieving for both the time we spent together and the time we didn't (i know that sounds way dramatic but I am allowed to have drama thoughts because I AM A TEENAGER HEYYO**).

despite being sad, i was also incredibly happy for them because graduating is such a great thing (mostly because high school sux haha).

and then i also got this really weird feeling when i realized that there's 7 billion people and  I am one of them and they are one of them and there's a big chance that I'll see thousands more people in my life but never see them again. even though this kind of thinking usually leaves me pretty existentialist and sad, i am actually feeling super excited to be alive because:

wow there are so many people on this planet and we all have supercomputers in our bodies and we can feel emotions and see colors and there are billions of ways to be alive wow. 

anyway, i decided to make a playlist of songs that kind of capture all of those loud beautiful emotions.

(if anyone wants to teach me how to embed 8tracks playlists, that would be cool- but for now i think you have to click through for the link)

--

the visual representation of all this is probably best described as neon because

1. neon glaring at you in the middle of the night in the city when everyone's supposed to be asleep
2. very tacky, very beautiful neon lights at those old arcades

--

1// Washington DC 2013 by Mollie Dauphin

2// Luke, Brighton 2014 by Rosie Florence

 

3// Faye Dung in Chungking Express (1994) x Pas De La Huerta in Enter the Void (2009) (via tumblr)

4// unknown by Ian Teh (via tumblr)

5// Long Exposure, Three Traffic Lights in the Fog by Luke Zimmerman



6// I am here but nothing, 2000 by Yayoi Kusama

And of course, the undeniable James Turrell, who I'm isanely in love with because of how simple everything is, but unusually magical.

Twilight Epiphany, 2012

Plain Dress, 2005

Bridget's Bardo, 2009

Akhob, 2013

What do you think of neon, and what are your favorite photos?

--

kanyinsola

--

*title is the electron configuration of neon
** yes i am now a teen, but more on that in a later post.