PASSION
Adele Exarchopolous in Blue is the Warmest Colour (2013)
Abbie Cornish and Heath Ledger in Candy (2006)
issue five
FOREWORD //
PASSION
Stills from Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960)
There are some people who believe they are passionate by nature, and others that remain indifferent. Passion is a bright, intense flame that can burn out just as quickly as it flares up, or it can even consume you completely whole. True passion is a rarity and unleashes its fierce power at times when it is both unexpected and most needed. Take the protest movement of the 1960s - it is difficult to say whether we will see social upheaval such as that ever again; but at that exact point in time, the violent eruption of passion that was ignited in young people was and still is compelling. Passion can exist in any shape or form, its intensity often overlapping between rage, love, admiration, desire, enthusiasm, and infatuation. -ANDIE PHILLIPS
CONTRIBUTORS
Holly Bodeker-Smith, Jessica Cockerill, Sean Dillon, Ruby Hamilton, Taylor James, Brea McConnal, Madison Pawle, and Ben Riethmuller.
FOR MORE INFORMATION AND UPDATES VISIT stylomagazine.tumlbr.com
ISSUE 5 PLAYLIST need you tonight - inxs don’t let me down - solange i’m in it - kanye west hiiijack - sza rocket - beyonce
doo wop - lauryn hill bonita applebum - a tribe called quest lover’s cave - is tropical add it up - violent femmes Kate Moss and Pete Doherty by Venetia Scott for Dazed and Confused (2007)
NOW PLAYING AT 8tracks.com/stylomagazine
PHOTOGRAPHY //
IT ALL STARTED WITH POE.
IT ALL STARTED WITH POE. It was my third grade year at a strictly catholic school, and every recess, without fail, one of three or four girls (whomever was better at reading) would regale us with stories of ravens and black dogs and death. I remember being taken taken away by each story, and at each bedtime being afraid to turn out the lights. It was this forbidden rush, these words we weren’t allowed to read that taught me more than any lesson in school ever had. I fell hopelessly in love with words from then on. How an arrangement of letters could spell out exactly what your heart was thinking, it fascinated me, and I always had a notebook and a pen in my hand. In the sixth grade I was writing about love and betrayal that I had never even experienced yet, but I did anyway - and if one thing was sure, it was that I wouldn’t ever let anybody tell me what I could and couldn’t write.
PHOTOGRAPHY AND WORDS BY BREA McCONNAL | OHIO
I have always been a strange girl. In that, I mean that I’ve always been marching to the beat of my own drum ever since I can remember. It was always hard for me to fit the mold of my peers, but the day that I found the marriage between words and music was the day that my weaknesses became my greatest strength. I was always singing, even before I could talk, but it wasn’t until I found the likes of Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan that I learned music was far from just a melody. My fate was sealed.
I tell everybody that I have the Gemini disease, meaning that there are seventeen people inside of me at once, and seventeen ideas floating around to go with them. Writing was the only thing that silenced them. In the eighth grade I was sure I wanted to be Carole King. Freshman year it was Kate Bush. I was constantly mixing and creating and reading and learning. Music was a solace, a safe place, my best friend and my teacher. I wrote my first song at fifteen, and have never stopped since then.
SAUNTER
PHOTOGRAPHY BY BEN RIETHMULLER | PERTH
WRITING //
A BRIEF ENCOUNTER WORDS BY HOLLY BODEKER-SMITH | MELBOURNE
Marlon Brando in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1972)
I AM WAITING FOR A FRIEND ON
Swanston street when you eye fuck me under the last minute of the sunset. I am not unfamiliar with this game; I’ve done it on the street, on the tram, in lectures (forgive me). But this, this is different. This is obvious. Your face locks itself into my gaze and for a moment, it is as though you and I are the only two people on the busiest street in the city. You walk with a reserved purpose, your arms lazily flail about beside you, but you are sure of the way your body moves and so am I. Somehow our bodies coordinate and we slide past one another, eyes pulsating away within their sockets, jumping out at one another. I keep walking for a few meters before I get the urge to look back. And there you are, looking back at me and laughing quietly to yourself with your hands in your pockets. You twist your head up, as though to ask yourself what your next move will be. I smile and wait for you to walk away, turn around again and continue dawdling up the street. When I look back, you are gliding towards me with an eased confidence. “What are you doin’?” a British accent spills from the smirk that curls up the right side of your face. “I’m just waiting for my friend Leo,” I pause, “what are you doing?” “I’m just goin’ back to my hostel,” you look up to Flinders street and back at me, still smirking, chewing your gum. “Ah,” I laugh, “I’m not coming with you, you know.” “Oh yeah. What are you doin’ later then?” “I’m going to see a show and I s’pose I’ll go back to a friend’s after that, yourself?” “I was just gonna go back and drink at the hostel, you know, same thing as everyone else.” You are wearing a burgundy velvet blazer that exposes your pale bare chest, just above the top button are a few tufts of brown hair. I imagine you standing in the mirror at home, staring infinitely at yourself, spoofing them up, mincing them with hair gel. You have completed the outfit with silver velvet pants. I ridicule your taste but you don’t seem to mind. We banter for a few minutes, what between moments of silence as we examine one another; mouths half open, slightly curved. You were born in London but you’ve lived in Bristol for most of your life. I grew up in Perth; “most isolated city in the world”, we chime. You just moved from there, lived around Mt Lawley, but you’ll be in Melbourne for “the next half year or so.” Every so often you raise your eyebrows as I speak and trail your gaze down. I balance myself on the concrete height that lines a small garden bed. I walk to one end, tip my toe and the edge and twist myself around to walk back to you. I feel your gaze follow me. When I return to face you, you bend your leg up next to me, rest your arm onto it and close me in. “What’s your name, anyway?” “Tom,” you extend your hand out to me. “Holly,” my hand meets yours and you hold it there, pulling at me slightly with your shake. For a moment we both fall silent, our extensions dance amid the chaos of hundreds of anonymous people walking past. I think about
your hands. “And are you holding onto anyone, Holly? Well, I mean, you’re holding onto me right now but—” “No, I’m not.” I laugh, pull my hand away from yours, slightly sweatier than it was before. “But I’m not doing that whole dating thing at the moment.” “Well you’re a bit presumptuous aren’t you!” “I guess so,” I walk back to the end of the ledge. “And why is that?” “Why am I presumptuous?” I look at you. “Why aren’t you dating?” “We don’t need to get into that. I don’t have to justify myself to you, anyway.” “Well you might want to be careful because I just might kiss you,” you say this with sincere conviction. In one swift movement you extend your arm out towards me, leverage your hand into the small of my back and pull me into you. I instinctively shriek and pull myself away. “Who kisses a stranger in the street?” “It’s a beautiful night,” you gesture your hand out at the passersby, “why not?” “Yeah ok, and how often do you go up to random girls on the street and start talking to them?” “Just once, once in my life.” I am laughing now, perhaps at the transparency of your lie, perhaps at my own embarrassment for believing it. “Sure, sure.” “Seriously, once in my life.” It may have been the dawning spring air that laced the evening, or just the way you looked at me with that half smile; but when you went to embrace me again I didn’t resist you. For a few moments we were just two strangers entwined, mouths open against one another. Your hand resting on my neck and my leg swung between your stance, pressing against you. We pull out out of our embrace and I twist my arms back out behind me. “You better get on now, I wouldn’t want my friend to walk out and catch me kissing a stranger,” “Well, I wouldn’t want to interrupt you,” you tip your head slightly, still smiling and lodge your hand into your pocket. I twist my body back towards the shop I am supposed to be waiting outside of. When I return to you, you are already walking down to Flinders street. “Bye Tom!” I call out. You turn your head, smile and wave back at me. I sit down on the concrete, dangle my hands over my knees and stare blankly at the legs of anonymous people walking past. Some dawdle, others move with a steadfast velocity. Perhaps one of them had walked past and scoffed at our affection, it is of equal possibility that they would have admired it, envied it even. Maybe no one saw it at all, or maybe someone watched the entire thing unfold from across the street. These are things I do not know. However, I do know there is a great possibility that you could have walked past me and not said a word. I know that the next day I would have mentioned in passing to my best friend the ridiculous eye sex that I had with an “absolute nine”. And I know I will probably never encounter such a spontaneous moment of passion again.
FEMALE FORM WORDS BY TAYLOR JAMES | PERTH
I WAS DROPPING MY 12-YEAR-OLD sister off at dancing last week and asked her to read the time on my phone as I was driving. She opened up my phone to complete disgust as she shrieked “Taylor, why is there a drawing of a naked girl as your background?” I was confused for a moment and glanced at my phone to see what she was talking about. My background was a drawing by Egon Schiele, a protégée of Gustav Klimt, and just like 99.8% of artists in the world, he drew great inspiration from the female form. I just laughed it off to my sister and tried to explain to her how beautiful his work his. My efforts of reassuring her were diligently cut off with an adolescent eye roll as she clicked on the radio to a song singing about how “my anaconda doesn’t want none unless you got big buns hun”, and many other tasteful metaphors. So there my sister was, joyfully singing along to tacky lyrics of a song completely degrading women as sexual objects purely for the pleasure of men, yet she was blinded to interpret Schiele’s drawing as something beautiful. I completely understand that she’s only 12 years old, but that particular mentality seems to be increasingly prominent in modern Australia today. This nation’s media advertising campaigns are largely based on sexual undertones and provocative connotations, yet we ban foreign films on our cinema screens for being ‘too sexually suggesting’. Many foreign films use sex and nudity beautifully and artistically, often capturing an act so natural it usually reinforces the existence of powerful human instinct. These films are deemed too offensive
for our screens, yet the degrading exploitation of women prominent in our media is never given a second look. Spending some time in France after growing up in sunny conservative Australia, I was completely taken aback by the sheer amount of nudity and open sexuality that I was surrounded by everyday. The daily newspapers, the six-pm news, the extremely sensuous public displays of affection, topless women at the beaches, I didn’t know where to look - and I didn’t understand how everyone was getting away with it. I had a realision of how my idea of the female form was completely poisoned by the over-sexualisation of women in media in Australia, and how backwards my ideas were. If you remember the Cornetto ad a couple years ago, why is it that a bikini is acceptably worn on the beach, but after only mere meters away from the beach it is deemed public indecency? “If you can’t see the water, you’re in underpants,” goes the ad. We like to believe we live in ‘free’ society in Australia, yet we are all products of contradictory conventions created before our eyes. Cuba, being a communist country, has no influence of media advertising and in turn has minimal issue with body image upon young women. Females of all ages in Cuba are told to embrace their body in every shape and form, and are taught that beauty comes with confidence. When they dance salsa a woman’s sexiness is expressed by her rhythm and persuasion, not by her physique. There are no big billboards down the street telling them
Egon Schiele, Two Women Embracing (1911)
what is ultimately ‘beautiful’ and ‘desirable’. G-strings are worn daily on Cuban beaches and no one looks down upon it because their bodies are not over-sexualized and nudity is not such a forbidden taboo.
eat well. We’ll drink good wine. We’ll make love,” and when one of the girls asks, “Who exactly is going to make love?” He responds very nonchalantly with, “hopefully, the three of us”. In February, Swiss performance artist Milo Moire walked around Basel completely nude as part The conservative mentality of our political leadof her performance for “The Script System”, with written ers since the inception of Australia is a direct reflection labels on her body replacing clothes. If someone walked on what makes us such a prude nation; it’s simply emaround a CBD in Australia entirely nude, they would either bedded into our constitutional roots. get locked up for public indecency Just like other developed western or admitted to a mental institution. “OUR SOCIETY HAS BECOME nations, our society has become so SO UNJUSTIFIABLY OFFENDED unjustifiably offended by nudity BY NUDITY THAT WE ARE MADE Sexuality and nudity as taboos that we are made to feel ashamed in Australia are clear demonstraTO FEEL ASHAMED OF IT” of it. I’m not saying that we should tions upon the power of social conall walk around nude or with flowers covering our geniditioning. Our teachers, authoritive figures, and society tals, but we need to stop being so contradictory. My sisat large has taught us what is right, and what is wrong, ter should not be offended by seeing the female body because that’s what their parents and society taught as a work of art, yet accept Nikki Minaj in all her softthem. None of us are ever free from social conditioning, porn-twerking-glory singing about how she will have and this is why it’s so important to step back and critsex with men as long as they buy her expensive gifts. ically examine what the human-constructed world has laid out before us. Nudity only offends a majority of If you talk about sex in Australia you are very people in Australia because that’s what they have been likely to be deemed sordid, shallow or repulsive. But in cultivated to be offended by. In order to not be a world say, Europe, sex is discussed very openly and is talked of followers and sheep, opinions and viewpoints should about just like wine or cheese - it’s simply seen as anothbe built independently of social conventions and politer one of life’s fine pleasures. In Woody Allen’s movie ical ideologies. So next time you’re at the beach don’t Vicky Christina Barcelona, Juan Antonio, a handsome prudishly shun at the woman who’s not wearing her Spaniard, asks two American girls if they would come to bikini top, because it’s not her nudity that is the probOviedo with him, where he exclaims: “We’ll spend the lem; it’s your corrupted-over-sexualised-robotic-byprodweekend. I mean, I’ll show you around the city, and we’ll uct-of-social-conditioning mind that is the problem.
P AS S ION: A LOVE LETT E R
WORDS BY MADISON PAWLE | MELBOURNE
Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe
A BURDENSOME CALLING WORDS BY SEAN DILLON | PERTH
Ernest Hemingway by Robert Capa (1937)
“DO YOU THINK YOU HAVE
an issue with alcohol abuse?” I looked out the window and watched as people idly strolled past. They were normal people, on their lunch breaks, running errands, just normal people living out their daily lives. I wasn’t sure if I still fitted that definition, and I tried to remember when that had happened. “Have you heard about Nigella Lawson’s latest hiccup?” I eventually replied. “No, I have not,” “Well as it turns out, she has an insatiable appetite for cocaine. And when she was asked about it, when she was asked if she had an issue with drugs, she answered ‘I don’t have drug issues, I have life issues’. Those are my thoughts exactly. I don’t have a problem with grog, nor does it have one with me,” I’ve forgotten the man’s name. Truthfully, I don’t remember much from those days besides the significant turmoils that protrude like street signs on an abandoned highway. He worked for a small, government subsidised drug and alcohol counselling clinic in Fremantle. I imagine him having just graduated university with a rich desire to change the world
one junkie at a time. He was good - brilliant, I would even go as far to say. It takes a lot for someone to back me into a corner, to get me into a place of admission, but unsurprisingly he couldn’t quite finish the task. Our hour together was a mental chess match. Each time he trapped my king, a cunningly placed pawn or knight would rebuke his offensive. Had I seen him a couple of months later I’m sure he would have been able to coerce more from me, he would have been able to actually help me, but I was too frightened to face myself. When I exited my session and walked past the shaking addicts in the lobby, I had a reignited conviction. I mentally calculated my funds, made a list of potential companions and checked the time. Although it was only 1 o’clock in the afternoon, it was 5 o’clock somewhere else in the world. I desperately needed a drink. I had fallen in love. Vodka’s warm embrace kept me up all night, chatting away to anyone that would listen. Bourbon’s firm grip goaded me into a pensive, reflective state. Sparkling made me giddy and the life of the party. But my soul mate, my one true lover, was an enticing blend of Golden Oak cask wine and as much Diet Coke as my shoe-string budget would allow. Don’t
knock it till you’ve tried it. A proportional mix (50/50 for beginners) is immensely satisfying. The dullness of “DC” (Diet Coke for all you non-basics) doesn’t add any more sweetness to the already treacly smack from Goon, which makes it a perfect combination for the poverty stricken who are longing to get loaded. My lover brought out the best and the worst in me. She established still existing alter egos, destroyed friendships, created panic and fulfilled me like no other could. She was a lover taken as a reaction to my circumstances, a femme fatale that had sniffed out decay and wrangled her way into my heart. I attended alcohol-specific therapy under the recommendation of social workers at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. This advice was given to my mother the night I was detained there for 14 hours.
Our destination was only a short drive away after our pitstop. They handed me over to the capable care of the nurses who settled me into my bed in the emergency department. I could only be released when my blood-alcohol level dropped to .05, and I’m still disgusted that it took me 14 hours to get there. I mean, that’s some Amy Winehouse shit right there. My poor, poor, fucking liver. The whole ordeal was humiliating and situations such as this were occurring most weekends. Some obviously weren’t as eventful, and others were even more so. Drinking had become the only thing I was good at. Drinking had become my passion.
Excuse the tired cliché, but passion is a double-edged sword. Passion has the power to sculpt the world and to push it in a better direction. It is what That evening, I had gone to Subiaco for somegets us out of bed in the morning, what carves out the thing big. Maybe it was a new event I “just had to be path we walk in life. But passion is also the greatest seen at”, maybe it was someone’s birthday, the trivial ally of destruction. It can consume you whole and take facts are nonessential. However, I can recall tipping a you to places you’d never think you’d go. It will break bartender a measly $10 for the two Cosmopolitans he you into a thousand pieces and attempt to do the same had made me (*cough*, wanker to those around you. Passion can, and alert) before launching into one of will, ruin you to a point of no return. “PASSION CAN CONSUME my world [renowned] “episodes”. I YOU WHOLE AND TAKE YOU In those now-cringeworthy days, I spat directly on the face of one of identified by my passion. I proudly TO PLACES YOU NEVER my best friends, pushed another declared “I’M AN ALCOHOLIC” to THINK YOU’D GO.” into oncoming traffic then ditched anyone that would hear it. However, my phone across the length of Hay Street before getit was passion that caused me to put down the drink ting in a cab to visit ol’ Papa Bear. Snap forward 30 and pick up a pen. minutes and I was beating him senseless with a fence topper, the only weapon I could find in my inebriated Although I only have myself to blame, my habcondition. To add even more salt to the open wound, I its hadn’t helped my academic pursuits. My lethargic planted my foot through his large living room window hangovers meant that assignments were always left to for dramatic effect. That would have been a real cherry the last minute and were a rushed job. I was too busy chucked on that turd-flavoured ice cream sundae. Betrying to figure out where my next intake of cash would cause the phrase “I’m going to kill myself” was thrown come from to buy piss, than to physically attend classaround quite liberally on my behalf, not to mention the es. Consequently, I was terminated from my course. thoughtless destruction I was dishing out, the fuzz were So I did what anyone would do when their pension called. They gave me two options: either they arrested payments and mental stability hinged on their studies, me and took me to Sir Charles Gairdner for observaand wrote a letter of appeal. Writing the letter placed tion, or I could come willingly. Thankfully I opted for me in a position where I had to incrementally address, the latter. and come to terms with, all the crap that had been happening in my life. It was a horrible process, like scrub In retrospect, they handled me perfectly. The febing yourself clean with an iron-haired brush, but then male officer was stern and had little time for my antics. I was free. “Cut the bullshit Sean, you’ve already put your family through enough tonight.” The other, a handsome, Do I have a problem with alcohol abuse? No young, South African import was far more gentle. doubt about it. Do I have it under control? For the The Yin and Yang of their good-cop bad-cop routine time being, sure. But it would only take someone dyknocked some much needed sensibility into my coming, or for me to cock up beyond all repair, for everyposure, like a good clip around the ears. They let me thing to unravel. At the heart of the sentiment of what purchase a packet of cigarettes on the way. In that mowe consider passion to be, we acknowledge that it is ment, I fully intended on being one of those loopers an integral part of our composition. It is what makes who crouches outside the hospital, gown flailing in the us who we are. So I offer caution to those who believe wind, exposing my bare and hairy ass cheeks to whichthey have found their calling, whether you believe it is ever poor soul walked past. I lit a smoke and sat on the innocent or not. Gear yourself up for a lifelong combonnet of the police car with the male and played the mitment, and a burdensome one at that, because you unacknowledged game of 20 questions one does when never know where your passion will take you and what trying to get to know a new acquaintance. demons you are stirring up on the other side.
BIG IDEAS
WORDS BY RUBY HAMILTON | PERTH
Gough Whitlam outside of Parliament House, Canberra (1975)
ON
21ST
OCTOBER
2014,
Gough Whitlam passed away. For a day, he was eulogised enthusiastically by a Parliament that is unrecognisable to that of Whitlam, Menzies and the other revered figures of Australian politics. But the energy with which he was remembered stands in stark contrast to usual proceedings.
ble that of Whitlam’s time. Now, big ideas on either side are too risky. They could upset the delicate allegiance of the fickle swinging voter, or (worse) the campaign donor. The major parties seem to exist only in spite of each other. What once were ideological rivals now compete in semantics for a seat on the fence. The ambivalence towards politics and politicians felt by most Australians is evidence of this shift. It was impossible to be ambivalent to Whitlam and his profound reforms.
Whitlam had gravitas and real, passionately held beliefs. He was probably the exact opposite of labelling a civil war as “baddies versus baddies”, and arguing over As politicians circle-jerk over his grandeur, most the Latin root of “economic girly-man” for a week (both actual things that have actually happened this year in ac- of the budget measures legislation lies waiting in the bowels of Parliament. In a state of deadtual Australian politics). “WHITLAM BROUGHT AUSTRALIA lock, the opposition maintains that Many people remembered INTO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, they are there to oppose. Not only is this counter-productive and obstiWhitlam as a “giant of Australian polBUT WE ARE YET TO HAVE A itics”. It is definitely true that current LEADER WITH SIMILAR PASSION nate, it is virtually pointless as there politicians are dwarfed not just in terms THAT CAN BRING US INTO THE are barely any real ideas to oppose. It is very hard to imagine Abbott of his stature and importance, but also TWENTY-FIRST” marching into a double dissolution his big ideas. Whitlam destroyed the last elements of the White Australia policy, withdrew Aus- out of conviction for his policies. Whitlam did. tralian troops from Vietnam, ended conscription, raised In 1975, Whitlam was dismissed in explosive fashthe status of women, removed university fees, established a universal healthcare system and acknowledged Aborigi- ion, because he refused to let this passion be derailed or diluted. Bob Hawke once actually suggested to Whitlam nal land rights. that he hire an economics teacher. He refused, allowing Whitlam brought Australia into the twentieth his passion and imagination to guide him through some century, but we are yet to have a leader with similar pas- of the most radical social reforms in Australian history. sion that can bring us into the twenty-first. Somehow, we It was probably unwise, and definitely unrealistic, but at might even be regressing – the knight and dame titles that least it was something. At least there were ideas at the Whitlam abolished are back, we have followed the US into centre of it. another war, and Team Australia rhetoric is the modern Now, passion is too dangerous. It cannot be wawhite Australia policy. The best product of Australian pol- tered down into a three-word slogan, massaged into a itics at the moment is the comedy material. marginal electorate, or sold to a mining magnate. John Howard observes that there are many more Whitlam died on 21st October 2014, but real paspeople in the centre of Australian politics, probably dou- sion in Australian politics was already long gone.
ART //
TOXIC NOON ARTWORK BY JESSICA COCKERILL | PERTH
Two bored lovers in an arid paradise are fused on a hot sunny day: not only to each other, but into the desert itself. For further misadventures, stay tuned for Jess’s future project, “Solar Waste”, coming soon.
THE NEXT ISSUE OF
STYLO IS COMING SOON.
Eva Green and Michael Pitt in Bertolucci’s The Dreamers (2003)
THE THEME FOR ISSUE SIX IS
DREAM. CONTRIBUTIONS ARE ALWAYS WELCOME. IF YOU WANT TO GET INVOLVED, PLEASE CONTACT VIA:
stylomagazine.tumblr.com