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Category Archives: Beauty

An afternoon’s worth

26 Tuesday Sep 2017

Posted by Betty Zhang in Beauty, Petit Passages

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aesthetics, art, classic music, music, prose, writer, writing

light tumblr

Light is fading, and with it the sun’s warmth. The room—golden and glorious just then—seems bigger and impossibly empty without that radiant guest. Drenched of the life it bestowed upon them for that brief, sacred moment, what adorned the room now shrunk in size. They will swell again, in size and in beauty, Continue reading →

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Dancing in the woods: a visual essay on the soundscape of Chopin

16 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by Betty Zhang in Beauty

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art, chopin, cinema, feelings, imagination, mood, mood board, movie, music, nature, romanticism

atonement.gif Continue reading →

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Meatier than wursts: big long German words

19 Sunday Mar 2017

Posted by Betty Zhang in Beauty

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

book, education, english, german, high school, language, learning, literature, prose, sociology, university, words, writer, writing

liesel merminger.jpg

Linear, Germanic, and impressively gothic in appearance (it’s the ä, the scher and the unfamiliar arrangement of familiar alphabets), the italicised word at the bottom of the page enticed and incited in me what can only be described as a rush of desire accompanied by the urge to gratify it, like a neon sign that blinked Continue reading →

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Henry Winter

24 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by Betty Zhang in Beauty

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blogger, book, donna tartt, fiction, henry winter, instagram, internet, ivan kozak, literature, model, photographer, photography, the secret history, tumblr, video

ivan kozak male model hot.jpg

View this post on Instagram

@zxwo ❤️

A post shared by kat irlin (@kat_in_nyc) on Jan 16, 2017 at 6:27pm PST

Ladies and gentlemen of WordPress, readers, book lovers, fans of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History: I give you Henry Winter in the flesh.

No, his name is neither Henry nor Winter, and he is far from fictional. He is a model, real name Ivan Kozak (@zxwo), featured in @kat_in_nyc‘s mini music video from which it is unlikely I will ever recover. Continue reading →

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Excerpt from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

01 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by Betty Zhang in Beauty

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a portrait of the artist as a young man, book, books, james joyce, lit, literature, quote, writer, writing

james joyce.jpg

How beautiful and sad that was! How beautiful the words were when they said BURY ME IN THE OLD CHURCHYARD! A tremor passed over his body. How sad and how beautiful! He wanted to cry quietly but not for himself: for the words, so beautiful and sad, like music. The bell! The bell! Farewell! O Farewell!

Reader, whenever I post a quote, know that it is because I found the words profoundly beautiful; know that I was saddened to find that their sadness echoed my own; know, if you can, how words on a page move me so.

Passage, beautiful, inky temptress, I pressed my fingertips on your imprint hoping you’d seep inside and stay.

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The Last Shadow Puppets cover Leonard Cohen’s “Is This What You Wanted”

29 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by Betty Zhang in Beauty, Reviews

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alex turner, icon, leonard cohen, music, singer, the last shadow puppets, tlsp

the last shadow puppets.jpg

In the timely yet cruel way the world often works, it just so happened that three weeks before legendary singer-songwriter/poet Leonard Cohen’s passing UK indie duo The Last Shadow Puppets, comprised of longtime pals Alex Turner and Miles Kane, uploaded Turner’s cover of “Is This What You Wanted” onto their YouTube channel. I already penned a piece on Cohen’s death so do pardon my focus here on Turner, a legend in the making with and without Kane. Continue reading →

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Summertime Sadness

08 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by Betty Zhang in Beauty, Petit Passages

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lana del rey, literature, music, musician, poem, poet, poetry, summer, writer, writing

carmen-lana-del-rey-roses-vintage-Favim.com-1725863.gif

Listening to Lana Del Rey on summer nights: a wearable mood / like slipping on a cloak of indulgent sadness / a shift of persona, swift as Mystique / a sinking and falling into place, like being swallowed into the depths of a dark rose, petals spiralling into infinity / memories unfolding, genuine or embellished, shrinking and blooming like youth on rewind / FIN.

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In the mood for Ophelia

01 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by Betty Zhang in Beauty

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

aesthetics, art, Beauty, colors, hamlet, history, literature, love, mood, mood board, ophelia, poem, poetry, romanticism, shakespeare, tragedy

ophelia painting.jpg

Sir John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851-2, oil on canvas

A mood board inspired by Shakespeare’s tragic heroine Ophelia (Hamlet). Her madness-led demise by drowning was deemed one of the Bard’s most breathtaking death announcements and, with the aid of this ethereal depiction on canvas by Victorian painter Sir John Everett Millais, her death lives to this day, immortalised by Romantics then and now.

background-forest-free-landscape-Favim.com-2064025.jpg

ophelia tumblr.jpg

There is a willow grows aslant a brook,

That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;

There with fantastic garlands did she come

Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples

That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,

But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them:

There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds

Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;

When down her weedy trophies and herself

Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;

And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:

Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;

As one incapable of her own distress,

Or like a creature native and indued

Unto that element: but long it could not be

Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,

Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay

To muddy death.

tumblr flower girl.jpg

 

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Chopin & the little death

30 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by Betty Zhang in Beauty

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art, Beauty, chopin, film, literature, music, prose, writer, writing

Chopin.jpg

I find Chopin’s music incredibly soothing, gentle, and elegant. And in all that which is the aforementioned, there is Grace and Beauty. Grace and Beauty are capitalised here in allusion to the old poetic tradition, where vital intangible things like Death and Spirt are given the capital treatment.

And speaking of Death, I happen to live for la petit mort, Continue reading →

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Little Russian prince

13 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by Betty Zhang in Beauty

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baby, Beauty, children, family, life, love, mother, prose, writer, writing

thelittleprince

The most gorgeous little boy came into my workplace today. I was talking to his mother when a blur of blonde swished past her hips; my view was blocked at first by the high counter behind which I stood, but when I brought the catalogue of Christening cakes to her table later, I couldn’t help but take a good look at what I knew would be a child cherubic enough to send Raphael into a frenzy of Sistine proportions.

And he was: his perfectly round little head, platinum under the sun just then, was now strawberry blonde verging on faux ginger as he sat where the light did not reach. Add to that a chubby buttermilk face that was freckle-free and spotless, fresh and soft the way all baby skin are, and add also his impossibly light, fairy-like golden lashes and you almost have the whole picture. Almost; but oh his eyes! Continue reading →

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