Issue Eight Cove r A r t by C l a r a Joyc e
Self
Mu s i c, A r t, P h o to g r a p hy, Wr i t i n g
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S T Y LO I S A N O N L I N E M A G A Z I N E B A S E D I N P E RT H, AUSTRALIA. All issues are contributor-based which loosely revolve around different themes. Contributions in any shape or form are always welcome. For more information, email stylocontributions@gmail.com, or visit: stylomagazine.tumblr.com instagram.com/stylomagazine facebook.com/stylozine EDITED & COMPILED BY ANDIE PHILLIPS
No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission.
Andie Phillips, Self #1, 2016
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Foreword
The concept of self encompasses the core of our being and all of our thoughts, emotions and perceptions. It's difficult to define because it represents something different for each individual. The essence of your “self� is completely internal and separate from others. This is often intoxicating to think about, when you consider how the way you see yourself is completely different to the way others might perceive you. This isn't a negative thing, as people often admire certain aspects about yourself that you might overlook. Our society distorts this esteem by manipulating our deepest insecurities, to an extent where self-confidence is sometimes labelled as vanity, and it's more of a norm to complain about your flaws rather than embrace them. For this issue, I explored this idea through my own series of self-portraits, scattered at different points throughout the zine to resemble stages of your life where you might have highs and lows, but eventually reach a point where you have to learn acceptance and selflove. Other contributors have chosen to explore doubt, awareness and reflexivity, but of course, considering the theme, expect a few inevitable selfies in there too. A huge thank you to everyone for their raw and exposed contributions. - A.P
Clinton Space Funk - MOUNT LIBERATION UNLIMITED Video Days - YOUNG MARCO Movin’ Out - PROJECT PABLO Rare Happiness - HUNEE
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Journey to the Sun - D.K. I’m With You But I’m Lonely - GOLD PANDA Tsunami - BENOIT WIDEMANN Sun Room - WILSON TANNER Vertical - MOUNT KIMBIE Argente - FLOATING POINTS
The playlist for this issue is completely instrumental. Moody and stirring with a slow progression into ambience, these tracks were handpicked for self-reflection or as a pensive study soundtrack. Listen while you read at stylomagazine.tumblr.com/playlist. art by Ella Bunker compiled by Andie Phillips soundcloud.com/andiephil
Playlist
Ella Bunker, 2016
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Contributors
ELLA BUNKER studies Fine Arts, loves taking pictures and is fascinated by female portraits and nudes. AMY COOKE has recently taken work off to spend time in New Zealand, where she makes art and gets her daily dose of nature. RUBY HAMILTON splits her time between Fremantle, Balingup and Byron Bay but can usually be found watching Broad City or reading Zadie Smith books. AMY JOYCE is a woman trying to cut the crap and navigate toward authenticity. CLARA JOYCE is a triple threat: she’s a painter, photographer and dancefloor queen. 7
CALLUM MARCH likes taking selfies in different glasses and archiving them for later. ANDIE PHILLIPS is about to go on a long holiday and hopes that when she comes back she’ll finally be able to make a passable Aperol Spritz. MATT SIDDALL spends his days writing, drawing, making coffee and laughing at memes. DECLAN WATKINS-SAXON is slowly branching out from his punting ways by pursuing a budding CDJ career. HANNAH WILLIS studies Behaviour Science, Social Justice and Politics and likes writing for fun.
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Butterfly a series by Amy Cooke
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All of my collages are created by hand using scissors, a scalpel, glue and then scanned into the computer. I get my images mostly from old magazines and books that I find around my house or in op-shops and I have just begun to use home made pressed flowers in some of my works.
words and art by Amy Cooke instagram.com/amycooked
Passing of Time a series by Amy Cooke
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Views
a review by Ruby Hamilton
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If you've been in my car/next to me at the library/at any event I'm at in the last month, you'd be aware of the latest Drake album. Views (released April 29) is lavish self-involvement in the best possible way. Views is deep postmodern millennial. It opens with the melodramatic Keep the Family Close, and indulges over 20 tracks (pls don't skip the outros or Summers Over Interlude). The opening track is a glorious bitch-out (‘All of my “let's just be friends” are/Friends I don't have any more’), which continues on 9. U With Me? and Feel No Ways build to Hype, then Weston Road Flows and Redemption are smooth, sensual and somehow make ‘This year for Christmas I just want apologies’ seem like a cool thing to say. Still Here is the hype up for the next six tracks: dancehall in Controlla and One Dance, rowdy on Grammys, Child's Play and Pop Style, and the necessary sexual tension with Rihanna on Too Good. Summer's Over Interlude bridges the energy change to Fire & Desire (v important for Brandy sample alone). The album really ends on Views, the title track, where Drake gets the last word (‘If I was you/I wouldn't like me either’). Then Hotline Bling, as a bonus track, is tacked onto the end as an afterthought, having agreed as a society to forget any version of that song that isn't the Erykah Badu cover. People have criticised it for being too long, too dispirited, too self-centred; basically missing the entire point. Its aesthetic is pure Drake, egomaniac to emotional. It's intimate and claustrophobic in just the right unsettling way, being pulled into Views’ ruminating inner life. Drake is basically the Kevin Parker of hip-hop. 40 describes the album as ‘a lot of introspection, very vivid’. Even the ambient transitions between tracks (from 9 to U With Me? makes me feel some type of way) are charismatic.
“How could anyone be annoyed about this step in Drake's steady rise towards looking like a successful Persian realtor?”
Drake releases mixtapes and leaks tracks so often, but Views is a good two years in the making. After dropping singles for months, some obviously transplanted that onto the album, expecting an hour of Hotline Bling and Summer Sixteen. These are people who think Drake “runs” rap and uses the 100 emoji sincerely. I guess they thought Drake was being serious before? If you think this album is, I'm worried for you (case in point: ‘Got so many chains/They call me Chaining Tatum’). Drake is the ultimate example of not taking yourself too seriously. To promote Views Drake meme'd himself, on U With Me? he talks about groupDM'ing his exes, and his dancing is the subject of too many jokes for me to venture one.
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[There] are people who think Drake “runs� rap and uses the 100 emoji sincerely. If you think this album is, I’m worried for you.
I listened to the album in probably the ideal context: on repeat, locked in a uni library, armour against a Constitutional Law assignment. Not just as escapist self-gratification (I really did feel like turning my birthday into a lifestyle at various points of that paper) but because it's able to articulate that restrained restlessness and unplaced frustration. Views takes our shitty millennial day-to-day and crystallises it into something neat and aware. And anyway, how could anyone be annoyed about this step in Drake's steady rise towards looking like a successful Persian realtor? If you don't like the album, at least recognise Drake's unimpeachable contribution to memes. - R.H
Andie Phillips, Self #2, 2016
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Self-Doubt words by Amy Joyce
Everyone lives with self-doubt about their ability to function and control their life. When you're standing in the kitchen on a Netflix break scraping the bottom of the ice-cream tub, you think: lord, what is wrong with me? Why do I keep spending my time doing things that are not good for my mental, physical, spiritual and emotional health? If I knew that decision made me less happy overall… then why did I do it? … and continue to do it.
Don’t try to control your decisions with your mind. You will never win.
When you know this deep down, it becomes possible to take a step back and see the situation from a greater perspective. When you stop buying into the need to construct an identity you can make decisions with the goodness of your heart. Your sense of separateness dissolves, you feel connected and the impulse to control falls away. Because there is no “you” and there is no “your life”. You are a temporary expression of the infinite consciousness. So stop worrying about future and past bad decisions. Trust the basic goodness that flows within you. Because you are a beautiful expression of Mother Nature, all you have to do is experience this truth in your heart. So next time you want to eat that whole tub of ice cream, take that pill or stay up all night watching TV, don't try to control your decision with your mind. You will never win. Instead feel your body, get in touch with how your heart is feeling at that moment, let go of “me vs the outside world” and feel the connection to everything and everyone. - A.J
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When you do something that sabotages your happiness it is because you are acting from a sense of separate self. You are believing that you have a separate identity. You have an over eating problem, you can't control how much you drink, you waste your life watching TV. When you are in this mind frame you act out of shame and fear that deep down you are out of control and will never be able to stop self-sabotaging your happiness. Every time you make a bad decision your mind says, “Yep, no matter what you do you will always be like this, you can't change, this is who you are.” THIS IS NOT TRUE! It may be a real thought, but it is not the truth. Real, but NOT true.
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Stillness in Space a series by Clara Joyce
We find reflections of ourselves everywhere we turn Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, Snapchat - a carnival hall of mirrors that we can't seem to tear ourselves away from.
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As fucked up as it is, it is fascinating to revel in all the different variations on the singular ‘I’. But the fact is that this constant meditation on self is at the expense of our true identities. It may be worth turning out rather than in - picking our eyes up from the small reflections in our palms - to find that the ‘self’ might also be found in all the space not taken up by us.
words by Faith Ng photos by Clara Joyce instagram.com/claraljoyce
Clara Joyce, Yallingup, July 2015
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Clara Joyce, Yallingup, July 2015
Clara Joyce, Yallingup, July 2015
24 Clara Joyce, Yallingup, July 2015
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Clara Joyce, Yallingup, July 2015
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Man in Glasses
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a series by Callum March
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illustration by Matt Siddall instagram.com/sddl
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Clusterfuck
Wagon
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words by Declan Watkins-Saxon
On tough days i'd take my lunch to the library. I still remember the first time clearly: a thousand sets of eyes followed me across the room, defensive and snarling, encircling. The look said you don't belong here. I understood it; I was a cog in the machine that had swept them aside, toward the fringes of the playground, and then, slowly, up and into the library. How many times had I used that look, for protection and combat, upon the demarcations of popularity- in the gym, in French class, in the canteen? I scampered to a couch in the farthest corner.
After a while the library days became more frequent and a routine of sorts developed. I didn't just go on the tough days now, or, maybe, the tough days were more frequent. The library became my metaphorical tuck-in: gentle, safe and snug. However, I was cautious and paranoid - keen to avoid detection from friends, I'd never take the books home from the library, and I spaced out the days in which I'd lunch at the library. Luckily, I had reached the age where lunchtime activities had become less concrete: king of the pack, soccer and ‘Barcode’ had given way to loose discussion, holding court on all matters of ‘shit talk’ - sex, girls, booze, exams. This often occurred off campus I'd all but given up on reading by this point, too, with hordes of students sneaking off to instead, choosing to live off a heady mix Things can be shit, Claremont for lunch at the Kebab, Hungry Jacks of self-indulgence and Death Cab for Cutie. but they aren’t and Subway. A dedicated group of friends still However, the library was both an obvious played basketball at lunchtime. I led a double always shit. and desperate choice - where else and life: the discussion groups thought I was playing what better way to escape your own life than by slipping basketball and vice versa. In hindsight, I don't think anyinto someone else's. I'd read a Nick Hornby omnibus: one really noticed, I don't think anyone really cared. it contained Fever Pitch, High Fidelity and About a Boy. Hornby's novels were like nothing I'd ever read before. I remember the day they found me. There were three They were urban. They were simple. They were real. The of them, all drunken tourists: boisterous and obtuse. characters didn't fight with swords or go on top-secret They were pissing themselves by the time they got to my missions for MI5. They were aimless and obsessed; they couch. “Mate, what the fuck you doing here?” they said, in were middle class; they were average; they were anunison. I didn't know what to say, or how to explain anyguished, confused, frustrated, sick, greedy, distracted, thing, so I meekly shot back, “reading”. After that, they'd dumb and bored. In short, a little fucked up - just like follow me from class to the library. Sometimes they'd try me, just like us all, I guess. to drag me out of my chair as I read, sometimes they'd
The library visits crescendoed towards summer break - by that stage I'd read A Long Way Down and Slam too. Slam held a great message within, but I couldn't see it at the time: things can be shit, but things aren't always shit.
When school recommenced, I didn't take lunch to the library any more. The mind is an endless map littered and lined with attractions, resisting chronology and organization, with no beginning or end. I am now twenty three but I am always sixteen - hunched over in a library, infatuated with Hornby - aimless and obsessed; middle class, average, anguished, confused, frustrated, sick, greedy, distracted, dumb and bored. In short, a little fucked up - just like us all, I guess. - D.W.S
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Andie Phillips, Self #3, 2016
talk loudly to annoy me, and, sometimes they'd just sit quietly. I felt the eyes on me again. I was lower than the drunken tourist - I was the tour guide, the enabler. I never gave them the satisfaction of my annoyance or anger, and, they grew bored soon enough.
34 Ella Bunker, 2016
Me, Myself & I - De La Soul words by Hannah Willis
come to understand that I cannot identify my own beliefs and values, my essential being, or access any form of introspection without being reflexive. The foundational and theoretical justifications for this stems from psychosocial literature and research. Overall it is maintained that in order to successfully and sustainably assist underprivileged groups in society over a prolonged period of time, individuals must be able to articulate their own epistemological foundations. This involves deconstructing the self and explaining why and how we hold certain beliefs and Surely attributes are values, whilst examining the elements of an indication of my context and power interplaying through“self”, more so than out all of this.
There is obviously much more emphasis on these categories mentioned, rather than what the title of my Reflexivity is the process that has led defining ourselves job is or where I live. me to deconstruct the categorisations of with qualities to form our identities. the self and others. I suppose this can be Morning person, independent, conscientious, sensitive at acknowledged as consistently building on knowledge times, and organised. Surely these attributes are an indito emphasise the desire to always, always, always be cation of my ‘self’, more so than what the title of my job is indulging in the process of learning and unlearning, or where I live? We are taught to channel the former, the which has consequently led to an increased appreciexternal constructions, and in my experience the relevance ation of fluidity of the self in terms of social construcof categorising myself seem to be evolving with age. tions. The process of critical reflexivity has fortunately contributed to acquiring credit points throughout the latter end of one of my undergraduate degrees. Through this, I have
Of course, the cultivation of all of this reflexivity has embraced Sigur Ros, Sufjan Stevens and inconsistent listening of Eckhart Tolle's audiobooks. - H.W
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Rather than state I am a certain age, studying a double degree, living in a certain area, or working in disability support services, I find a sense of enthralment to introduce and describe myself, and others by our qualities rather than the categorical boxes we so often put ourselves into.
36 Andie Phillips, Self #4, 2016
- Stephen Fry
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“You are who you are when nobody’s watching.”
Contributions now open
Issue Nine The Alive Issue
The theme for the next issue is ‘alive’. Contributors are encouraged to interpret the theme in whichever way they like. If you want to get involved, please visit: stylomagazine.com/contribute or email stylocontributions@gmail.com
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