After too much time spent in fashion purgatory, a new body of work is rising!
I had to stop working in the spring of 2020, intentions were set, but quickly crushed, I don't really need to explain why—we were all living the same aberrant reality—suffice to say I was left with nothing to show for.
I take no issue with those who choose to ride the wave of capitalism despite the risks, but I know I'm far too sensitive to work under that kind of stress. instead I have been dwindling in denial that life goes on, nervous to even think about getting off the couch—I am bloody glad for stretchy active wear that allows me to accommodate my ever-expanding body, when every other piece of clothing in my wardrobe has failed to contain the volume of my feelings as of late. Weight gain seems to be my automatic coping mechanism.
But we are now in the dawn of a new renaissance, and after a year and a half of desolation, I've started afresh, re-fueling my desire to tell tales about the universe I've created for myself, and by the black hole at the centre of the galaxy, I have tales!, so fasten up, keep hands, legs, and tentacles inside, I'm about to take you for a ride.
In an unexpected case of Amarcord, prompted by the lethargy and stagnation of prolonged social isolation —and a friend sending me links to the wayback archive machine with scattered bits of my fragmented chronicle since my first appearance on the internet— I've gone back to a past life looking for inspiration, put on a helmet, padded my elbows and knees, gloved up and dove into my own memories, a nebulous dimension with tolerably distinct fragments, scattered about in that luminous glare that lingers after stars go out.
Visions swirled, flavours, scents, sounds, and emotions flurried as I floated adrift in a world of my own, and at the centre of this spiralling universe, me, blue haired and sparkly, with a naïveté and flirting curiosity for a world that seems new and bubbly, clutching at whatever is in front with desperate eagerness.
I immediately knew what to do. To lose myself in the echoes of my own nostalgia, let the stupor overcome me, and the flashbacks inform the resurgence of my work in the midst of this self imposed isolation, after all, I know my muse through and through.
(images captured via webcam on dailybooth.com, 2008, courtesy of the wayback machine archive)
This one is about a girl, who suffers from mainstream malaise, she can be seen as reckless, but her impulsiveness comes from a desire to expand her own sense of place. She rashly reaches out for something she knows is out there for her to discover, she just doesn't know where to look. Her zealousness is often mistaken for capriciousness.
She is from another time and another world, a bank of information exchanged through packets of data from server to server, memory assemblage in VR, she is a reflection of my own, catalogued in albums by year and file type, memoirs that exist only in other people's impressions.
My alter ego, my science fiction twin, my self destructive ways, my source of bliss, the best friend I've ever had. So I've decided to honour her with a memorial of sorts, a collection that depicts her essence and illustrates her chronicle.
Very truly yours, from past, present, and future,
Alyssa P.
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