Whenever I feel homesick or isolated, I make tea and sit on my bed with magazines, and listen to The Smiths/Morrissey, because I know that their lyrics will strike a chord with me, and that I will instantly feel better because I can indulge in my strange sadness.

I think that their lyrics are so unique because they can sing about deep human emotion without being overly depressing or morbid. They are so British and nostalgic, and I think that it is worthwhile to be sad every once in a while so that you can sit and listen to their melancholy lyrics, and just enjoy being miserable!

So make some tea and get out your best reading material, and click here to listen to one of The Smiths classics : )

If I am day-dream believer who seeks comfort walking in the fields and catching butterflies, then my friend Giovanni is most at home at a bar attempting to solve his problems in the depths of a whiskey glass, seeking inspiration from the burning embers of his cigar, and writing poetry at 4am. 

Often our views my be the complete opposite of each other’s, but we both enjoy poetry and reading and writing; we both cling onto our beliefs that metaphors can exist in every day life. So have a look at his blog here, and see what you think.

I do not think

that we can ever look

objectively

at the past

like the historian thinks that he can.

For the defining characterisic of a moment in time

is the confusion

and uncertain complications

of the present.

People seem to view the idea of ‘art’ as something that these strange, mysterious people called artists create – as though they perform some sort of conjuring act; magicians with canvas and paint.

I was thinking about art and what it means – can anything truly be created? I remembered a quote I once read: ‘If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.’ 

In the same way that we ‘create’ an apple pie, all we are ever doing is mixing and manipulating a series of ingredients that we have selected. 

Therefore, art is surely just selection – the artist is someone who can look at the confused and messy world, and extract from it the purest of ideas: the tiniest points of interest that would otherwise go unknown.

And what’s more, the artist was able to recognize them as beautiful, when no-one else did.

Just like the Andy Warhol above; he has selected one second in time – a car crash – and conveyed through repetition and distortion, an interpretation of events. He has taken horror and chaos, and made it beautiful.

However, I think that most of all

from these pure ideas taken from a messy world, the artist forms an idea of truth.

And perhaps that truth is something that they created all alone.

I keep having an indistinguishable nostalgic longing for home. It arrives in different waves and in varying flavours, but today I want so much to be on holiday in Wales, with the rain pouring down outside as it always did, the smell of damp wetsuits encrusted in sand, and the hunger for fish and chips. I want to be on the beach as a child, running up and down those slippery, seaweed-clad rocks, fishing for crabs and prawns, feeling freezing cold and feeling free.

Young child,

I tell you with the certainty of my heart

That it is ok to be confused,

Ok to be lost in a maze of your thoughts

As long as your goal is, one day,

To find your way out.

Value these days of confused navigation,

Because they are golden;

Because true beauty can only be seen

Through the medium of mystery.

It is only when we find the answers

That things cease to be interesting anymore.

But if we never find the answers

We won’t know what we were searching for.

I am waiting for something,

I think,

to change.

For everything,

these days,

seems to stay the same.

Some find comfort in monotony,

but i,

find adrenaline

in the unknown.

Leave me in my prison of bound paper

Stained in factual lies

Because these are what keep me safe -

They protect me when reality questions

My well-researched truths.

Recently I have come to the realization as everyone eventually does, that the more we have hardly ever makes us more ‘happy’.

We can stuff ourselves with food, buy as many clothes as we want, do no work, do everything that brings us pleasure and nothing that brings us pain.

In theory, we would be full of happiness!

So many people talk of the day that they retire from work, so that they can just do the things that make them happy…

But in reality, how can this really make us happy? I find that whenever I go through a period of acting like this I eventually end up feeling depressed and discontent. Humans need to have some innate purpose in their life; and it is not eating chocolates in front of a TV set. Without fufilling the purpose that they have created for themselves, without going through pain to get there, without having the hope and belief that some day they will achieve it, how can they ever expect to be happy?

What even is this so called happiness anyway? I have come to realize that people talk about it as though it were objective, as though that they will wake up one day and will have reached happiness, they can tick it off a to-do list like any other goal.

But, as the old cliche phrase goes, money (or anything else material) does not bring happiness.

Of course we all know that!

…don’t we?

I think that, sometimes, we all need a reminder that happiness can only ever come from within. There is nothing that you need to wait for, no boundary whatsoever from achieving this state. You can simply decide to be happy.. now! So why delay it for one more second?

‘No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change.’

- Barbara de Angelis