ah i love that song too! nope, that's the first time i've ever heard it, so thank you for that. morrissey may be the only person whose music i love right away. for everyone else it takes me a long while to warm up to them.
your uniform sounds like my current uniform! i am a fan of the black shirt and jeans, either blue jeans or black jeans. but it's not a uniform im committed to. i feel like even though i like t-shirts and jeans just fine, a well-thought out uniform should require more commitment, should be a bit less common. ultimately jeans dont really convey that much (and while for some reason it seems perfectly acceptable to me to wear the same skirt and t-shirt every day, to wear the same jeans and t-shirt just seems too far-fetched, too bordering on the habits of depressed people, because surely one can at least change their shirt? but then of course, if they did, it would ruin the whole concept of it being a uniform). the skirt in the first picture is simple, but it conveys what is important to me: which is simplicity, yes, and also a carefree insouciance, a girlishness without femininity. when i first saw the skirt, and which is what made me buy it, it reminded me of a skirt a modern-day cinderella might wear when going about her household chores. but to me it also has the look, as most rhie clothing does in my opinion, of something an eccentric young heiress would wear on her country estate on days when she is left to devise her own amusements.
it is a bit interesting to me too, now that you mention it, that i find my ultimate self would be a skirt wearing one, because i rarely ever do wear skirts. and yet, when i was little thats all i would wear. i had a skirt that my parents would call my "hippie skirt" (because it was loose flowing with a floral pattern), and i insisted on wearing it everyday; even on those days when i had to wear pants for whatever reason i would pull the skirt on over top, because i was never fully dressed without that skirt. so it's interesting to note that as a child i favoured the idea of uniform and felt that one skirt would suffice for all days and all occasions, so maybe this idea of finding my ultimate self is to be founding in going back to my roots as a child.
i would also like to emphasize how important to the concept of uniform a great coat is (margot tennenbaum had her fur coat, though i would never wear real fur). a great coat is essential regardless of what one is wearing under it. and i could even see committing to a t-shirt and jeans uniform so long as i had a great coat. coats are very important to me in general, not just for a uniform, because they represent a certain constancy. the reason why this is important to me is i think because i have trouble formulating in my head a concept of my physical space when im not looking in a mirror. like when i take an eye off myself anything might happen: i might spill out all over the place, shape shift, turn into a cyclops, who knows. coats-- more solid, more constant, more real than i am--seem like a way to keep my perimeters in check, to reinforce the boundaries of my person, keeping me in and the rest of the world out. they are like a life raft keeping me afloat in the physical world, keeping the grey swirling mass of unreality that is me from drowning in the grey swirling mass of unreality that is the universe. (by now, you're probably under the impression that i can take anything that is meant to be fun and turn it into a horrifying extension of my own neurosis
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your thoughts on angles and shapes are so interesting! i think i get it. on a similar, i think, note, im really interested in concepts of space as a way of wordlessly impressing the intellect onto the pictorial world. for example i really like certain pieces of modern art that have do with space-- large incomprehensible squares of metal painted red or whatever--of which no meaning can be found in the thing itself, but, rather, meaning is to be found in the space around it, the way the object influences that space.
living life as art... well i think you can do that either passively or actively. passively by becoming more perceptive or more aware. something as simple as changing your perspective, seeing in a new way--like what you are talking about-- can imbue life with a sense of it being art. i feel like watching movies help me to see life as art. sometimes it happens that after watching a movie i feel like i have that cameras frame in my head, like im viewing things from above, like i have become the character in that frame. or sometimes i feel infused by the mood of the movie. it lends me a certain sense of objective awareness as well, like i become more aware of my own mannerisms, my own facial expressions, the sound of my footfalls on streets, the buzz of streetlamps, things like that, and all of these things takes on a new significance (regardless of what uninteresting thing i may be doing). it is often little things which to me makes life artistic, but we have to be aware of them. which is why i love a writer like milan kundera, who wrote about 'the meaningful moment', and who would place great emphasis on a mannerism or facial expression of one of his characters, devoting paragraphs to the description of it and the effect it has on someone else--how, for example, a man seeing his lover blink ruined her for him, made him stop loving her--while at the same time making only a brief offhand mention of what the character does for a living or the fact that the couple in question is to later die in a car accident, these things being seemingly less important than the blinking of a persons eye. so as a passive observer you can view life as art (and of course it helps if you see yourself as a character in it and dress for the part). unless you're an artist or a person who has a lot of torrid love affairs or can afford to live very grandly, eschewing all the pederstrian things of life, it's a bit harder to actively live life as art. but for me i think it has to do with the experience of emotions. i feel this rather faustian desire to feel all emotions, even the most abject ones, often thinking that i would like to be a vagabond because this would be a sure way to experience new emotions (as well as new spaces; as well as be able to play around with identities; as well as having more chance of finding meaningful moments). a while ago i locked myself out of my house, and it was the one time the hungarians werent at home, and having a rather delicate equanimity, i got extremely annoyed and frustrated because i had things to do and had to be at work soon, and didnt have access to a phone and could do nothing but wait for the hungarians to come home. at first i tried to macgyver my way in using bits of metal that i found in the garage (muttering swears to myself as i went back and forth), but found that alas, i am not macgyver, and there was nothing to be done. so i sat on the stairs and waited, and wrote a letter to a friend on a piece of paper that i had found in my pocket, as you do when you have locked yourself out and it's raining and the stupid hungarians are out gallivanting around, buying sausage and paprika or whatever they do. and during that time i was overcome by a sense of peace, and realized that i had enjoyed that little burst of emotion, however maddening it had seemed, and i was grateful that i had locked my keys out. it was such a simple everyday occurence, nothing to write home about, but i felt like life had been framed in that moment, that i was viewing myself as if from above, a character in a movie. on a much grander scale, one of my favourite examples of living life as art is the marchesa luisa casati, have you heard of her? in fact her motto was "i want to be a living work of art", and in that she succeeded. she was said to have walked her cheetahs along the canals of venice clad in nothing but a fur coat. at a dinner party she once wore live snakes around her neck. she also used to put the poisonous bella donna in her eyes to make them bigger. near the end of her life, old and penniless, she was often seen rummaging through garbage bins looking for feathers to put in her hair. i think this last tragic note makes her life that much more artistic; for someone wanting to be a living work of art, it really could not have been otherwise.
well that was long and boring. sorry about that. i promise it could not be helped!
