Out in the cold...

There aren't that many things I can pride myself on being great at. I'm one of those people who're anywhere from average to very good on a lot of things. But one of the things I definitely have a talent for is starting out in one place on the Internet and ending up somewhere completely different.
So, when I was poking around the website of major, Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter and stumbled across an article about the construction of this season's ice hotel in Jukkasjärvi it was really unevitable that I'd end up reading more about it. Ever since I first heard about that hotel a few years ago I've always found it intriguing on many levels. So, there I was, looking at all the different designs of this season's ice hotel when one room in particular made me halt, re-read the name of the room, tilt my head slightly as I made sure I wasn't imagining it, and finally giggling as I realised what the two designers had done with the room dubbed "Getting Cold Feet".
Reading about the designers I immediately became curious of the "masked" one known as INSA. Because artists who hide their identities tend to be graffiti artists and that's one of those areas of art that absolutely fascinates me but I know very little about (there are plenty of those areas, by the way, far more than someone who's studied art history and contemporary art for as long as I have should be allowed). So, I started looking for information on this guy (unless it's a woman who's taken a lot of trouble to cleverly hide her gender, in which case I apologise and say that I'm impressed) and there doesn't seem to be a wikipedia-page about him, go figure. I did find some articles though, and through them a link to the "official" (I so hate that word sometimes, but I suppose it's needed to sort out these little pages we call web) site.
Now. Someone who just gave INSA's work a quick glance might say it's just the work of some semi-perv wanting to gawk over half-naked women, but that's not it (or maybe that's some of it, but that's none of our business, really, and it's not of importance), there's much more to it than that. The use of the high-heeled shoe (sometimes with an accompaning leg and arse), which is a common representative of fetishes, is quite thought-provoking. In itself it's just a shoe. Depending on your disposition and feelings towards footwear that can make you think about fashion, footwear you might crave but can't really afford, Carrie Bradshaw half-running down a New York street, pin-up models, pornography or maybe how your wife spends far too much on shopping. But there is something these things have in common - consumerism. If you'd seen a sensible shoe for walking you might just think of necessities, but the high-heeled shoe is not a necessity, is it? Nope, it represents both the aforementioned consumerism and something much more primal - desire. For women (yes, I'm generalising) it's the desire to have it. For men (still doing it) the desire have the woman wearing it.
I've spent hours reading and looking at things by or concerning INSA. But those little cog-thingies inside my brain have been spinning around, making all that machinery work at high-speed too. Because this did something that various things do to me every now and then; I started thinking about consumerism in modern society. It sounds really pretentious, I know, but things just set that stuff off in my head every now and then, but always from a slightly different angle. And this one was quite different and more intense (just goes to show what art and culture can do to me), because this time around I was forced to come back to myself, and scrutinising your own behaviour can be both fun and horrible, but it's always at least slightly frightening. While I occasionally will be watching something trashy on TV with my mum (like Dr. Phil or something) and we'll both exclaim how we don't understand those shopoholics who keep turning up with their "addiction" and how we could never do that. That's not necessarily true. While I get bored very quickly if I shop for clothes (and I even did during that lovely year I felt somewhat thin) if I had the money to spend on my fetish, I'd spend it. And you know what that means, right? Yup. Boxes upon boxes of mint condition original 70s vinyl.

My head was still racing with ideas about consumerism in media and mainstream culture (and subculture too!) and how this could easily turn into one of the two 10-week papers I have to write to ever get that stupid degree of mine when I accompanied my brother as he took the dog for a morning walk. Once outside, my mind started drifting back to the art aspects of INSA (possibly triggered by the dog doing his own street art by spraying the innocently white snow with an in-your-face kind of yellow) and then to the ice hotel (which is looking stunning this season, you must go to their website and check out the pictures of all the rooms). And as I walked there, being viciously stung by the tiny snow flakes which were whipped around in the wind, I started thinking about how much I'll miss this when I move to the UK. I'll complain about it like everyone else, but it's no secret that I love snow and winter. Hell, I was born during a blizzard and a temperature of -25 (rarely experienced this far south, even back then). And I don't even mind when it springs itself on us like this, killing all the flowers which had begun to stick their defiant heads out of the ground. In fact, I was quite enjoying the feeling of an early morning being filled with daylight and snow and birds singing (though, I swear they were louder than normal, as if shouting complaints about the damn weather to one another).
You can't really put a price on the art of snow and ice, can you? While I love leaving the first set of footprints on virgin snow, I know they'll have filled up or melted away a couple of hours later. Or been trampled beyond recognition by other feet whose intentions were much less poetic than my feet's were as I went for that 3 am walk with no other purpose. And while INSA can sell his own range of stilettos, inspired by the artwork he's made for years, for £200 a pair; come spring, his ice suite will return to Torne river and it won't turn up on a 22nd Century edition of the Antiques Roadshow.

The Weirdness of Dreams

Yes, this is it. The first non-dream-post. I should probably drink something festive to celebrate, but I can't be arsed to get up so the slight taste of garlic still residing in my mouth since lunch will have to do.

For those of you who didn't stop reading from being too grossed out just now, welcome! I've been meaning to get this done for ages, but it's never seemed the right time. But today, as I was reading a blog post on the blog of a delightful woman who on the web goes by the name of dyermaker I was reminded of a wonderful album I haven't listened to for a while, namely This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours by the Manic Street Preachers. Lately, I've mainly listened to Send Away the Tigers, but it was time to reacquaint myself with the older stuff too.
So, I found myself inspired by a delightful blog and a wonderful album and I decided to sit down and write a non-dream blog post.

Since I'm trying to ease you into it, this is really only an introduction, also touching on a subject you will be familiar with if you've read my earlier ramblings. Dreams.
After James had read my most recent nocturnal adventure (well, it was really morning when I had those dreams, but still) he posed an interesting question, namely that if he has as weird dreams as I do? Since he's one of many who can't recall their dreams very often it really it's not easy to tell what he dreams. This got me thinking... Do we all have as strange and odd dreams or is there something wrong with me? Wait, that doesn't put me in a very good light, does it? Am I... different? That's a better word.
The more I thought about it the more odd dream descriptions from various friends over the years I could remember. Clearly, there's Kit and her strange dreams. Beppo has mentioned a few as well, and then there are others - including James, who's mentioned one or two odd dreams he's had. Is it very common to have strange, crazy dreams where nothing seems to make much sense? Could it be that a lot of people for some reason think it's embarrassing to talk about and therefore never tell others about their REM-induced endeavours?
Every time I see one of those "dream charts" they always explain things like dreaming about a ladder... And while I can understand that not everyone dreams the way I do (comeplete with sound, smell, taste, sensations and different languages - all in full colour, of course) are there really people who just dream about a ladder? Do they just stand there looking at it? What kind of ladder is it? Doesn't it lead somewhere? Do they climb it? I've seen a few ladders in my dreams too. One was propped up against a house that was being painted white and purple by kids from the school I went to in that dream and somewhere around was a boy I then spent the most amazing day with, walking alongside a road, smelling flowers and went to all kinds of places with before he got in a fight with one of my brothers (I had two in this dream) and as a result died, since he'd had a heart problem no one had known about. Do you see what I'm getting at here?

So what causes dreams as elaborate and odd as mine? I know I get a lot of from real life because I can often relate things in my dreams to things going on in my life and even in dreams where I'm in "fake" places with "fake" people I can still see resemblances from places I know in life. But how come it all comes through so vividly? Is it because of my fondness for the evil rock music? Is it because my diet isn't healthy enough? Or because I watched Gremlins when I was five? That, by the way, was only one of many "scary films" I saw when I was a child but still the only one to give me nightmares (oh, poor Gizmo, those bad ones were throwing darts at him in my sleep too that night), and I've yet to turn into a psycho killer or anything so it couldn't have been too bad.

Any theories on this? I'm not sure I've really composed a proper problem here to hypothesise on, but if you've any thoughts feel free to share them.

As a side note I might add that I've never had a recurring dream that I'm aware of, and I think that's quite common. If I kept getting recurring ones this blog would really be lacking in content.
I wish you all cracked and entertaining dreams!