Something or Other
i started making this zine in april of this year - it honestly just began as a place where i could dump the stranger parts of my brain on without thinking of the repercussions or whether or not people would enjoy it. i wanted to have a space built only for myself and experiment with graphic design (even if it is at its most basic level) and really let my brain loose. i think that since starting uni i’ve felt creatively stinted because so much of my brainpower has been zoned in one single place/subject and so i’ve barely had time to actually indulge in anything that i properly enjoy. my wonderful friend dizzy has their own zine and it reminded me of the zines i used to make in 2020... so here we are. so when i started this in april i wanted to just get it done in a few days bc i wasn’t expecting much from it (i just wanted to make something for myself). turns out it’s taken me a lot longer because i started exam season and also got into a relationship that was incredibly short lived and also quite jarring so i had to take a step back and re-evaluate what the fuck i was doing just generally... still don’t think i have an answer but i can just keep looking for it until my dying days. that’s kinda grim. it was really odd and lowkey kind of funny because i put up with a lot of shit that looking back was actually insane and that i should not have considered as normal but i was truly blinded by something. many such cases. as such the end of this relationship (which again lasted for two weeks) put me in another creative stint because it left me frazzled and quite unsure about my place in the world not in an emo way just in a way where i was like
wtf am i doing should i convert to heterosexuality? answer is no btw being a lesbian rocks. oh happy pride. so yeah this zine has been something i’ve been waiting to tackle again until i was perhaps not mentally stable but somewhat creatively coherent because i in fact do want to share this with the world cause i think it’s pretty neat. it’s hot they brat party girl sertraline tan line edamame rooster summer and this zine is going to start it off with a blast absolutely no one is ready for. i have a lot to say and a lot that has been on my mind since april. to be honest a lot of this is very boring to anyone that isn’t me which is totally fair. i don’t think anyone is reading this so if you are that’s actually crazy wow thanks appreciate u of course. i want to do a fitzier page so that may be something you can look forward to. oh also just to bring it back to my breakup it’s just quite funny that i got broken up with on a friday whilst ‘friday i’m in love’ was playing. i’m not being sarcastic like that is objectively just really funny and makes for a really good anecdote so i’m glad that happened. i turned nineteen like last week and i still can’t believe it because i feel like i’ve been wanting to be this age for sooo long bc of lorde... lots of big things waiting for me this year lots of perfect places (what the fuck are perfect places anyways etc. etc. ad nauseum) and such. so now that i actually i am nineteen i feel like i owe it to past me to be somewhat interesting or to do something memorable with my new age. maybe i should dye my hair blue though i fear that it’d wash out weird. but maybe it could look cool. actually maybe i should leave my hair alone because i think if i dye it one more time it might actually all fall off and i would not suit a buzz cut at all. anyway the zine starts now, u can clearly see what i made after april. xo dan
TATELATESWIT
i love speaking about literature with sophie because i really do think we have the same level of worrying intensity when it comes to how much we adore art in all its forms. we were both saying stuff that would have sounded ridiculously pretentious were we telling anyone else, which is why it’s so wonderful that neither of us judged the other for a single moment. one of the books she recommended me sounds so up my alley that it made want to cry with the knowledge that there is an infinite amount of literature in the world that i will never read. but also, that’s kind of a nice thought or it’s both nice and daunting at the same time both can coexist etc
there was also a wish tree in front of the yoko ono exhibition (which i still have not been to - although i want to very badly) where we could write down a wish and tie it to a branch it was adorable to see all the wishes children had written. for example, a boy called joshua wrote that he wished he had a forklift. good for him. sophie and i looked at all the wishes in different languages and wondered what they said one in spanish hoped their grandma lola would get better soon another one was from a man from barcelona called xus!
book recommendations heritage - vita sackville-west agua viva - clarice lispector dictee - theresa hak kyung cha reading lolita in tehran - azar nafisi if on a winter’s night a traveller - italo calvino the diving bell and the butterfly - jean-dominique bauby the price of salt - patricia highsmith
not pictured: crêpes & chocolate ice cream, a very long conversa when we walked into the ice cream store, they we jumped out of my skin when i realised. i don’t rea y y j g nebraska in a context outside of my headphones - it’s probably something to do with the honesty of that album. but i’ve always loved how that song starts. i’d been wanting to see sophie for ages because for some reason, despite us both living in the same city and studying in the same campus, i hadn’t seen her in what seemed like years. i’m kicking the dan of the past for not seeing sophie enough (in a healthy, non-hateful, medicated way, don’t worry). and so, we went to the tate modern! i must have been to the tate modern a total of five times, but every time i go i still manage to find something new that i have never seen or even thought about before sophie and i watched a short film about a woman whose husband shoots her in the wrist. it then cuts to a psychedelic animation superimposed over a cover of peggy lee’s ‘is that all there is’, which contains some of my favourite lyrics of all time. sophie told me that once she’d spent half an hour just watching this projection. i almost wanted to do the same. a man next to us snickered at the animation, i’m pretty sure, but i was too focused on the lyrics. as i stood there shivering in my pyjamas...
TATE BRITAIN WITH MARCIE
fun fact this is actually just a painting of me and marcie in another universe
going to the john singer sargent exhibition was a genuinely spontaneous decision that i made the night before, when
saw someone on twitter posting about it the insane thing about living in london is that there are so many cultural and art-oriented events that it’s easy to lose track and miss something like this. his painting lady agnew of lochnaw (directly above, of the woman staring directly at you) is one of my favourites of all time i think it’s something about the delicate pattern of the chair and her sheer-folded sleeves directly clashing with that look in her eyes and her crossed legs! i am genuinely obsessed with how sargent translates the movement of fabric into his art (mostly all of his paintings, but i think it especially shines through in lady agnew it would be simple enough to focus on that alone, but her face is so interesting that i think i could look at it for hours). i just love his art.
i’m pretty sure you’ll know this because it’s a ridiculously fun story, but marcie and i met in 2017 through a long-winded dan and phil related anecdote that resulted in her blocking me because she thought i was too nice to be real (also, because our birthdays were one day apart) to be fair, the way i spoke in 2017 was giving off quite heavy stranger danger signals so i can’t blame her i’m just surprised she didn’t sue me when i messaged her on a separate account and sent that fateful ‘why did u block me lols????’ message marcie was one of the first people to see every side of me and still love me genuinely - i know she’ll hate me for saying it, but i also know a secret part of her enjoys this sappy stuff, so i don’t mind that much i think i could spend the rest of my life at the tate britain with her, speaking about the stupidest things in the world, and still die happy we’re very very similar but also intensely different in a way i don’t think i will ever understand. but that’s the fun part! love u marz
this dress was the one sargent depicted in his painting ‘ellen terry as lady macbeth’. the sequined green dots on the fabric aren’t actually sequins - they’re beetle wings something really cool about this exhibition was the fact that you could appreciate singer’s dedication to maintaining the elaborate folds and texture of the fabric in his paintings sometimes i think in another life i would have been a fashion designer but i’d prob run out of ideas fairly fast
this spread is dedicated to fitzier, whose love exists so freely and boldly in my head that i could/will dedicate an entire zine solely to them. james fitzjames and francis crozier i love you
beidak-art
BECAUSE IF I DON’T PUT THIS SOMEWHERE NOW, I NEVERWILL,ANDIWANTTO SOMEDAY RELEASE A SECONDISSUEANYWAY
i have many ideas for this zine but i’ll wait until i’m back in london because i want to do full spreads about my friends and interview them properly and find out more about them and also their favourite pulp song. if you want to be featured then i will definitely ask you anyway, so don’t worry about it. i don’t know if anyone’s reading this, but if you are,
ok bye xox
