the stain of love

 Vanessa Jackman

I have always loved the colour yellow - hair, clothes, sunny flowers - it's about brightness and brilliance and boldness and it puts a smile right on your face. It is also, and I do believe this, the colour of love. How else to describe that golden hue that the world takes on when you're truly, truly happy? Forget red, red is lust and all that physical stuff. Red is boring. It's yellow that represents how light it is, how honeyed you feel, how sun-drenched the world looks through saffron-tinted glasses. Thanks William Carlos Williams for putting it all into words, again.

X

ps. if you haven't already, check out Vanessa's incredible photos of my friend Talisa! They are my favourite photos she's ever taken and are just so beautiful. And there's a yellow Acne dress in there! See, there is method to my madness haha.

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only god, my dear

park and cube, jeanasohn

One of my favourite lines from a poem - ever - is a phrase from a little known Yeats number called "For Anne Gregory". There's nothing remarkable about it. Like all good poetry it's small but perfectly formed. I don't know much about its context, but I think I can assume that it was written for a young woman - Anne, perhaps? - and she has beautiful "honey-coloured rampants at her ears". The poem is basically an ode to her blonde locks. At the very end of the poem he says, "only God, my dear, could love you for yourself alone and not your yellow hair". How wonderful. I used to love that bit in A.S Byatt's novel Possession when we first meet Maud and learn that she keeps her beautiful golden hair wrapped up in the turban because her ex-lover used to say to her "who could love you for yourself alone and not your yellow hair?". I almost like it more as a question. Who could? I am constantly stunned by blonde hair and how truly lovely it is. The first boy I ever kissed had blonde-hair, it was too-long and it hung down, honey-coloured rampants at his ears, and when he would get out of the water or come up from the beach he would shake it loose in a way I have since heard described as the unconsciously virile way of teenage boys, which is kind of perfect, don't you think? There is something sun-drenched and youthful and full of life about yellow hair. I hate to reduce people to the sum of their parts, but a good head of yellow hair will always be the trump card for me.

X

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In Flight.

Flight is that wily temptress that we are allowed to experience, however viscerally, through some other means. But helicopters, planes, gliders and the like could never really replicate the powers of flight, how sensational it must be to soar, i mean really soar through the air with great wings. To see the world in a grain of sand. 

[daria werbowy: vogue paris via TFS, gemma ward: vogue paris via foto_decadent]

Who doesn't want to fly, even if for just a moment?

X

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To a child dancing in the wind

[this photo is so gorgeous, i had to use it. it is from flickr.]

Dance there upon the shore;

What need have you to care

For wind or water's roar?

And tumble out your hair

That the salt drops have wet;

Being young you have not known

The fool's triumph, nor yet

Love lost as soon as won,

Nor the best labourer dead

And all the sheaves to bind.

What need have you to dread

The monstrous crying of wind?

W.B Yeats, to a child dancing in the wind.

This poem is sad, rather like the 'crying of wind' itself. The speaker is lamenting his lost youth, his lost innocence, the fact that he can no longer dance on the beach in the carefree manner of children. The danger of life has entered his conscience, the water and wind pose no threat. I wonder if i am reaching the age where i can no longer dance in the wind? I should like to hope not, but then, perhaps...

X

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slipping through my fingers

[foto_decadent]

'the innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time'

w.b yeats

I remember when this editorial came out in australia and new zealand there was controversy with a capital C, censorship boards, parents, teachers, even teenagers complaining that the spread was indecent because it showed 15 year old Zippora Seven and 16 year old male model (can't remember his name) naked in a bath and insinuated alcohol and drug use. People were calling for Russh to be remanded, fined, sued, banned...

I thought it was a gorgeous shoot though, and it was supposed to be an homage of sorts of the kate moss/johnny depp era, a relationship that i loved and wish still continued (kate moss was in far better shape with johnny than she is today with pete/jamie). The shoot was so evocative of young love, the thrills and perils of being in love for the first time, and the invincibility that is so synonymous with being young. I don't know, i'm probably reading too much into it (as usual) but what i got from the shoot, and it's clear and unveiled relation to the johnny/kate relationship is how there really is no boundaries when young. destructive behaviour, animosity, passion, wasting time, not doing anything by half measures... i mean, that's youth. nothing is as bright and exhilarating but at the same time despairing and never-ending  as being young. At least, that's my opinion of it anyway. :P

And of course Yeats goes all poetical on us, but it's true isn't it? the innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time. Time robs us of our beauty and our innocence, among other things. With age comes new realisations, new understandings... nothing can ever be the same as it was before. You look at the world with different, tempered, eyes. After your first love, your first broken heart, your first disappointment, your first moment of pure ecstasy (and not the drug kind), you are changed irrevocably. The excitement and wonder that the world holds seems old hat, the despair and distress that it holds a daily reality. And as each day slips through your fingers it gets harder and harder to connect to the innocent, and it must be said, the beautiful, of yesterday.

And i think that's what the editorial, and yeats, is about. Time changes everything. For better or for worse. And nothing is ever the same again.

[zippora seven image; foto_decadent

johnny and kate image; flickr]

Thankyou once again for all your lovely and sweet comments.

X

for those looking for the whole editorial, it can be found here;

fashionising forums

the fashion spot here, and here

at tfs the whole ed is there, including the pics of the male model. at the fashionising forums the pics are just of zippora (although she is the majority of the ed). 

You have read this article editorial / yeats with the title yeats. You can bookmark this page URL http://startthefire-cafagesta.blogspot.com/2008/10/slipping-through-my-fingers.html. Thanks!

For Anne Gregory

'NEVER shall a young man,

Thrown into despair

By those great honey-coloured

Ramparts at your ear,

Love you for yourself alone

And not your yellow hair.'

'But I can get a hair-dye

And set such colour there,

Brown, or black, or carrot,

That young men in despair

May love me for myself alone

And not my yellow hair.'

'I heard an old religious man

But yesternight declare

That he had found a text to prove

That only God, my dear,

Could love you for yourself alone

And not your yellow hair.'

W.B Yeats, For Anne Gregory

[the fashion spot]

everytime i read this poem i think about the lovely ms. gemma ward, and whether anyone could love her for herself alone, and not her yellow hair? i mean, look at it!

You have read this article gemma ward / inspiration / poetry / yeats with the title yeats. You can bookmark this page URL http://startthefire-cafagesta.blogspot.com/2008/10/for-anne-gregory.html. Thanks!