The state of the world: our love of 'stuff' and the isolation that comes with it.

I've been thinking about stuff recently....I'm not referring to deeply personal life reflections(they aren't for public viewing). I literally mean stuff; materialistic things. The things that make us feel comfortable but aren't life's essentials.  

One of the main reasons I've toned down the amount of blogging I do is because I feel like a complete hypocrite writing posts about fashion trends when I'm really questioning the importance of the whole industry. Fashion and retail provides a source of income for so many people, myself included, and in no way am I advocating that it is wrong but surely the climate it breeds of impulse purchases and excessive spending can't be right!? 

We spend an extortionate amount on things we are subliminally told will improve our quality of life. Large companies(Apple for example) create a problem, provide the solution and encourage us to buy the product- the product which conveniently breaks/stops being produced after a set amount of time meaning we have to replace aforementioned item. As the consumer, we are being sucked into a cycle of spending which, despite keeping the economy going, causes us to feel a toxic combination of chronic dissatisfaction and an insatiable desire to continue spending.

Taken from: http://superkevbo.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/sign-171.jpg

Spending creates a quick fix for happiness. I am not denying the fact that every time I buy a new item of clothing/jewellery/whatever else I might think I need, I do feel a familiar fuzziness and a false certainty that this thing will solve all my problems. Alas it is short lived. All of my happiest memories, however, involve no money- they revolve around people not items as I'm sure is the case with most people. So why do we spend so much!Why do we put so much value on things and stuff?

 I look around at the state of the world and I just can't understand how there is so little alignment with what different people value as important. In years gone by people used to associate poverty with '3rd world' countries and abundance with the '1st world'. Now that we have finally realized there is just one world it is a lot harder to have a separatist attitude. Poverty is no longer confined to charity adverts of malnourished African children, poverty is now on the doorstep of every country and yet we still choose to ignore it and carry on spending.
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It's almost as though we use materialistic things as a form of escapism- this is hardly a ground breaking thought. We buy things that don't matter; we discuss things that are insignificant; we focus on things that have no depth and cause no negative emotions. ISIL(ISIS) are decapitating children in Iraq....but lets focus on the serious things of the last year- 'is this dress blue and black or white and gold'!I am aware that this may sound insensitive but I'm just drawing comparisons because we appear to all be completely desensitized to any issues that actually have significance. When did the human race lose it's morality and it's ability to have empathy?

I actually saw a news article fairly recently about the migration issues some Greek islands are experiencing.Some of the holiday makers reactions were astonishing(in the most negative way you can imagine) they claimed that the migrants were making their holidays 'awkward' .....apologies for the inconvenience holiday makers just fleeing for our lives here.  

Photo taken from 'The Independant' article below.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/british-tourists-complain-impoverished-boat-migrants-are-making-holidays-awkward-in-kos-10281398.html 

People are fleeing from war torn countries unable to bring any of their belongings and we're complaining that they're making us feel 'awkward' whilst posting videos about our holiday wardrobe and outfit choices! I find it hard to write about fashion trends when I'm aware of these other issues. 

The below video was first released in 2012 by Waterforlife charity to raise awareness about the importance of clean water in countries like India and Haiti. It perfectly portrays how disjointed the things we value really are by playing on the comparisons created with the trending #FirstWorldProblems complaints hashtag on social media. Although filmed several years ago it is so SO relevant in demonstrating how the things we view as problems and value enough to talk about on social media are so trivial that we shouldn't let them affect our happiness.

Notice how most of the 'complaints' relate to technology!We're spending money on iphones, ipads, ipods(Apple isn't entirely to blame of course) wide screen hi-res televisions and cars to name a few. Consumers are constantly encouraged to spend more and upgrade their products so they don't miss out on trends. Most of these technological devices encourage isolation and break down social interaction. We're all guilty of it! We have 'family' nights which revolve around a television screen, the family aspect is that we are all bonding by watching the same thing in silence- ironic silent bonding; we watch TV programs about people living life instead of living it ourselves; we even watch TV programs about people watching TV programs( this is a bad example as I absolutely love Gogglebox);we create group whatsapp messages instead of all meeting up and spending time together; we sit in our bedrooms on facebook(guilty of that one right now) stalking each other for life updates instead of going for a coffee and a catch up. What is going on!!!!

Real interaction seems to have been replaced with feeble attempts at online communication. I'm definitely guilty of this and have never really thought about it in depth before. Moving to a different country has been amazing but also really isolating. It got me thinking about loneliness and how technology plays such a big part in that!

Einstein would definitely be shaking his head at the current state of the world. We are the idiot generation. The generation that doesn't realize that the solution to a lot of emotional problems revolving around loneliness lies in tangible social communication not instagram posts and status updates.

On a different note, but still related to technology, this week I went back to Dusseldorf for a C&A trend presentation.  In which they featured the below spoken word film based on a poem by Gary Turk which perfectly describes the problems today's society has in relation to technology and its link to loneliness. The feeling of being in a room full of people but still feeling alone is maximized as we now have access to a world full of people and loneliness is heightened.

I loved this video so much and it was struck a chord with how I've been feeling since moving to Brussels. Since moving here I've been feeling pretty lonely, not sad depressive wallowing in self pity lonely...happy lonely if that's at all possible. I'm content with my life here; I love my new flat, I love my job, I get along with the people I work with and I finally earn enough money to not have to panic every time I try to pay on card. It's a new kind of loneliness that comes from not being near your friends and family. I'm still a Brussels newbie so I've yet to create a group of friends here and until I do I feel quite displaced. The UK isn't my home any more, neither is Germany, but I haven't quite made a home here yet either...I'm effectively emotionally homeless....moving countries once and creating a family of friends is tough...but moving again in the space of 3 months is even tougher and I'm only just realizing that!Although social media is a blessing, enabling me to talk to my friends back in the UK and Germany, people's attachments to their phones while walking down the street means it's borderline impossible to catch anyone's eye or start a conversation. People are so busy speaking to their online friends that they don't care about interacting with people in their direct vicinity. Problematic when you're a newbie in need of friends. 

I don't want this to seem like just an anger fuelled rant. I just wanted to get these thoughts out there. People don't like talking about heavier issues like this, they're viewed as taboo topics- you definitely wouldn't bring them up at a dinner party. We choose to ignore them to avoid feelings of guilt and powerlessness, but these things need to be acknowledged. If we don't acknowledge and start talking about issues such as loneliness; abandoned morals; refugees and discordant values how can we ever hope to make any positive changes.

Just a few thoughts on a Friday night....

THE GRAND OPENING

Yesterday we celebrated the opening of our studio Studio Shangri-La, whih we have been working on during the whole summer, and for such a long time before that on a mental level. I was, as you may undertand, rather busy but did force myself to manage and snap a few pictures during the evening.

Ruska / Tinker, who is my performer and business partner.

 

My will be working at the desk greeting you when you arrive!

We have Saana Koskinen's Showgirls Series exhibited on our walls.

And here she is herself. Saana is also a fabulous singer, as some of you may know.

Our student troupe The Shangri-La Showgirls after their pastel-kinky-pinup-cherry-blossoms-performance.

And we had the bestest Knucklebone Oscar playing. 

Oh, and as you can see we have a stage in our studio as well (that we have built ourselves!).

The artistry of pastries. Violet-blackberry-white chocolate petit choux for the guests. Seriously, I don't get how people come up with these things but I am happy they do!

Also vegan rum-rose petal pastries and raw raspberry-coconut pastries. Our friend Julia made these. She truly is a cake wizard. There were a couple of boxes of  raw swees left over so I have had them for breakfast and lunch today not to waist them. Not complaining.

Espresso martinis. I could totally have these for brekfast as well but I am perhaps not quite at that point in my life -yet. But I'm telling you, espresso martinis is the thing.
(But as we also are a well being studio and not just a sinful redcurteined martini filled burelsque place we did serve aloe vera juice as well. But that makes less of a picture ;)

And here we are, still for a brief second.

Season passes, cards and single classes are for sale at the studio as well as in our web store at Holvi!
Alla måste köpa. On Saturday we have demo classes from 11am onwards to a reduced price, do drop in! Schedule and more info can be found on Facebook.

CLOUDS, TIME, LIFE AND ALL THAT

I'm going to start this one a bit tacky here now, because I thought of this back when I was fifteen (when, you know, you easily tend to be rather dramatic and corny about things). So here we go: life is  like the clouds. Constantly moving, changing shape, without really noticing when or how it happens. You look up at a cloud, it has a certian shape and you follow it with your eyes. It is changing form in front of you but you can't see that. It is not until you look away for a while and then back that you may notice the cloud has taken on a totally different shape than before. It is like a whole different cloud. (It was a rather long time ago that I was fifteen though. Phew.)

Well, yes, in any case. Everything indeed changes and evolves (that is perhaps what time is all about, changes in- and layers on eternity) and sometimes things go so fast you that years just pass by and if you get a second to think about it, it will very likely become a 'whoah, how did we get here'-moment. And then it's WOOOM on again to the next one.

Changes are what life is made of. Something is always changing even when you think it's not, time goes on, trees grow bigger and people grow old. No matter how well thought out or planned something may be you never know how it will turn out as anything can come up along the way. Or it may go just like planned, but the outcome may still be something different than you though.  And so on, yada yada. I don't really believe in finding reasons why random things happen or in meant to be's, it's just something we have come up with to make the chaos that forms everything more understandable, and bearable. Stuff just happen. Some by itself and some you make happen.

I've been making some things happening lately. I quit the harbour late this spring. Which wasn't a big thing per se, as I had not been working there for three years, but I had remained employed there anyway. Now my time for parental time-off was up -in short, you getup to 9months off paid, and can then get an unpaid leave until the child turns three, when you are to return (unless you get another child before the 3 years date when it all starts over again. I always knew I wouldn't go back, but sometimes some parts of me miss that. By now I have forgotten how it felt to be out there no matter what weather (or time of the day. And year).

(Here's me in the harbour a long time ago, a shot from that German tv show with fine shots of the Baltic Sea that airs every now and then and always brings me lots of strange Facebook messages from strangers in various European languages. "hello, I saw you on tv. Bye")

Dag did indeed turn three this summer which is both totally strange and totally natural at the same time. (We're on a feelings-level here, as I do know that turning three when you have lived three years is what most would describe as "natural"). He just started attending play school (or play club, whatever you may call it, a few times a week) and he's talking and making jokes and all and soon he'll be going to school and wanting to use the car and then moving out. The way it goes.

See, here he's already flippin' me the bird:

(To his defence -or mine, it's my kid after all- he is actually showing us thumbs up from a very unfortunate angle.)

It feels very odd to think I at this point of the year could have had a baby of a few months already. As it didn't turn out that way, I fast forwarded some other plans instead. Now the baby-thought feels very distant, and, I'm perhaps a little relieved (that's the brain working I guess, creating reason and meant-to-be's again). You do get kind of comfortable with time, and it's like I've almost forgotten the baby time with Dag, how it felt and how 24/7 it was. Not that I remember it being that rough then, comfort wise, but thinking of it now feels like it would be an awful lot of work to go trough again. I mean I have a child that can go to the toilet by himself already. So easy nowadays! I of course know that if or when such a time will come again the brain will settle into that mode and it will be fine and great all over (and tiring and messy too of course).

You may have noticed I have been rather busy the last year and my blogging has been less frequent.
As I just said I'd quit my old job and that my son is starting to mind his own business a lot you may wonder what the hell I actually have been doing away from the internet.

A whole lot. One of my fasts forwards was starting to study to become a pilates instructor (classical, mat. Apparatus are not very common over here. Yet.). It's something I had thought of for many years, to perhaps do at some point, and then decided to really go for in 2016. But it then came to happen this year already. I started in January and hold one certificate now, but will still be continuing to study for a long time. More on that later.

But what I also have been working on is a thing I had dreamt of for years, but never really felt was realistic. (And soon we will see it if is or not, dum-de-dum) : My colleague and performance partner Ruska and I are opening up our own studio, the very first one dedicated to burlesque in Finland!

There has been classes here and there for years already, and we have thought many of those and kept a small studio ourselves for quite some time already, but now we are opening up and actual burlesque school, a studio that has burlesque as it's main thing and that is the first one over here. We will combine that with other classes under the same roof; yoga and pilates (Ruska is a yoga teacher) and stretching as well as other dance exercise. The name Studio Shangri-La comes from our duo performane The Ravishing Shangri-La Rubies and we have coached our own performing student troupes for two years under the name The Shangri-La School of Showgirls. (I linked our Facebook pages there. Do go and like them. All in Finnish, but don't let that stop you.)

I really had intended to blog about the process of fixing up our new space. "I will have so much to post about". And alas - I would have had, and did. But what I did not have was the actual time to do so. (Well you have seen some on instagram along the way, for those of you who hang around there.) In between waiting for contrucion guys who never came (and then came late and charged too much and so on) and painting and ordering things (and spending up a lot of hard earned cash) and planning and plotting summer just went by and here we are at the opening already. On Wednesday!
Eli sinne kaikki, dit allihopa eller hur!

Apart from that we are working on the Pin-Up competition and putting together a custom performance for the book launch of Sofi Oksanens new book. And then I'd really like to fix up some rooms in the farmhouse plus grow back all the kale that the lambs ate.

Well, this started with clouds and ended up in Shangri-La in something of a mish mash of a post.
So for now: studio studio studio. And buy classes!

Oh and also bangs or no bangs?
Oh the choices in life.

BROWN BUTTERFLIES

Summer was saved and we finally got our warm days. Still, in the early mornings and at night you can already feel the end of summer in the form of a chilly breeze or sad sound among the trees. But daytime I am enjoying the sun and enjoying the fact that I get to wear some of my summer dresses. Here posing in one of my almost forgotten Trashy Diva dresses! Toodeli-doo.

I actually would have a lot of other things to blog about than dresses, a lot, but I have no time for that at the moment. Give me 12 more hours to the day please! Make it last June again (with sunshine this time) for a little while! Uaaaa!

FAUX

I have a big vase in the farmhouse living room that I got once with the idea to put "something huge" into, but that then I have then noticed has been rather hard to fill.  I've kept blossoming branches or the occasional huge flower in it, but in some cases I am very much for consistency - like here, I want it to have something more permanent to go along with. (Partly because, emptying/filling and washing a huge vase is kind of tricky. Tricky as in annoying.)

I wanted some flowers that would clearly not be or look real, but not in a almost-but-not-quite-polyester kind of way, rather something more stylized. At some point somewhere I saw really nice and simple but still well detailed flowers made of wood, which I have later tried to find but without any luck. Or then I just really pictured them in my head until I thought I had actually seen them somewhere (that can happen you know), as not even the internet seems to provide..

A few days ago when on a totally different errand I spotted these huge flowers and they got to move into the big green vase for now.

I think they're fun.
The flowers are from Kodin1.

VINTAGE AND REPRO PATTERNS

 One of us is wearing vintage and one of us is wearing repro;

Dag in my dad's old t-shirt and me in Vivien of Holloway.

FANTASIA PICNIC / SITTING FOR A PAINTING

A couple of days ago Dag and I went for a late afternoon park picnic. It also served as a set up for a future painting. It will part of a series of paintings of performers. But more on that once the series is finished and the artist has gotten to present her work by herself first.

First of all I just have to say that  IT IS FINALLY WARM.

Tinker's rainbow hair.

Fiona, the milliner.

Sandy.

Pepper and her hairpiece.



Mimi and her girls.

And me and my little boy.

Who found a new friend.

Picnic patterns.

The artist memorizing.

Petra's paintings are always full of colours and patterns and it will be interesting to see how this eventually turns out!

AHOY SAILORS & SAILORETTES! PIN-UP FINLAND 2015

This year Tinker Bell and I hosting, coaching and co-producing the annual Pin-Up Finland competition! It's the biggest and oldest pin-up competition in the country - this will be the 5th edition. The finals are held on October 3rd in Lahti at the X-treme Car show. The contestants are featured both in printed- and on social media. We are going with a fun sailor-theme for this year's competition.

Now, I have actually never been a person for competitions myself, and I also think that some things are not measurable, but Pin-Up Finland is a very positive competition with a friendly, community-building atmosphere. It aims to give all the aspiring pin-ups a chance to get their modelling dream up and going.

There will be a vintage hairdo workshop held in and by retro hair parlour Pinkki Paplari on August 23rd followed by our posing class. Both workshops are open not only to the finalists but also for all future contestants as well as anyone else with a love of and interest in all tings pin up. More info of the worskhops here, in Finnish: Pin-Up Finlandin superpäivä.

There are a lot of fabulous and enthusiastic women participating this year and I am looking very much forward to meeting all of them!

And, ahoy! Do you have a product that you would like to see featured on the pin-up contestants in the finale show or in any of the photoshoots? Your line of clothing or acessories? Something sailor themed? We will be working with both Finnish and international brands and small companies - we are open for all sorts of collaboration! Do get in touch with us to rubiesproductions (at) gmail.com!

Burlesque Sailorettes-photo by me.

BYE BYE GARDEN

This summer I haven't really had any vacation. It's been a lot about work (which I will get into here soon), but most of the time that I've had off I have spent watering plants and taking care of the garden. And anyone who has been stopping by here this summer or follows me at instagram know that  I have actually managed to grow things this year.
I had a really nice garden.
Had.


Until the lambs decided their, I don't know, three square kilometres or so of grass was not enough to roam but decided to start hanging out in our garden instead. And as they tend to do, they ate EVERYTHING. Even my palm tree from inside that I had outdoors for some sun-therapy.  And most flowers and all the berries bushes and my god damn growing boxes of kale and salad and peas and aaargh.

But I think there was a Chinese proverb saying that nothing in life is more important than to attend to your garden. And even that is not so important.

ISLAND GARDEN PARTY

Last weekend we went out to the summer house in the archipelago. I don't make it out there that often anymore, just a few days per summer, but it is still the ultimate summer place for the, as it is there that we spent the whole season when we were children.

 This time we were here to celebrate my nephews first birthday.

  Garden party.

I made a vegan chocolate cake with banana and cocoabutter (and a lot more). Will get back to that one later!

 This is my dad's old stroller from the mid 1950's.

And here's the birthday boy riding it.

It's funny; I somehow remember Dag being so much "older" when he turned one but I guess that is a parent-thing. Or forgetting-the-baby-phase-thing. Or, things-go-so-fast-thing. Something it anyways is.

 My other nephew just turned eight months.

 Opening presents.

And of course, the older kids are very eager to help with that one...

Fast forward to ending the day with a archipelago sunset.

The sun suddenly sets so much earlier. August, snap, the evenings are dark!