SERPENTSKIRT issue 01
Feburary 2016
£2.80
Cusp of Something
EDITORS LETTER Edited by Hope Morrison Contributed to by Annabel Wright Carlotta Chiochinni This month’s theme is what I like to think of as a literary pickaxe into the psyche of the Growing Girl. A phenomenon since it was invented, the ‘teenage girl’ is at the centre of the pit and the rest of the world is the audience, occassionally hurling commands of contradiction at them. It’s hard not to feel like you’d rather surrender your arms for a pair of puppet strings when you truly are expected to be a moving paradox. A paradox that’s pretty without trying nor realising it, seductive but not incriminatingly so, intelligent but my god keep your mouth shut, engorged in as much media as possible without soaking up the messages and becoming a stereotype. Through this series of paradoxes we fumble to embody, we become parodied versions of ourselves. Steroid injected and bold but caged and muted. It’s a kind of female limbo to constantly battle the standards you’re confined to whilst battling to uphold them simulataneously. It’s being frightened the guy across the street is going to yell obsceneties at you but being secretly weirdly crushed when he ignores you.
It’s this limbo that I wanted to encapsulate, through the stories of friends at different ages to stories of my own. As far as I’m concerned this process never truly ends, maybe it eases or maybe you learn to control it, but it hits peak in teenagehood. We all deserve a fucking badge of honour for surviving it.
CONTENTS
13
Girlhood Girlpool @ Scala
Reviewing their Ldn gig 15
Teenhood
Moving on out
A hopefully-helpful-manual for leaving home 17
Womanhood
GIRL HOOD When I was 13 I began feeling like I didn’t belong anywhere and started looking for things I could identify with. I got into punk and when my best friend who was also 13, started selling weed, I tried it for the first time. After that moment things started to get pretty bad - and I say this from my 19 year old point of view - though I was loving it at the time. We used to hang around all day, smoking, drinking, shoplifting, tagging and going to parties that were organised by communist groups where everyone was much older. I used to write poetry and smoke cigarettes all night, hating my family for “not knowing what it’s like”. I’d write stuff that made my life sound like Christiane F’s. One day we got caught with our bags full of stuff we had stolen, my mother had to pick us up and pay for everything we had taken. I remember feeling so humiliated at the time. They took away my phone and I couldn’t go out for two weeks, which however only added to the view I had of them and myself: the wanted to cut my wings and sweep everything under the carpet, I was rioting against their bourgeois reality. Looking back now I recognise my anger was just part of being a teenager and I was influenced by the people and things around me. I’m glad I went through that phase though, it taught me many things people my age are only learning now, and my grades at the time where the best I’ve ever gotten. I used to devour books on the daily, I felt like my intellect was my only weapon.
GIRLPOO GIR
AT SC
review by Hope Morrison Scala / 15th September 2015 Girlpool simultaneously embody both the shrill and the serene. It’s difficult to imagine them performing in any other setting than they intimate one they did for their London show, since they’re a fairly unembellished act. They are on stage in order to compell and comfort the audience with their diary-like lyrical style and vocals fluctuating between heavenly and piercing, reflecting the inner psyche of a teenage girl in both lyrical content and performance style. The set up of the stage consisted only of an amp and some fairly uncomplicated coloured lighting - any more would have overwhelmed the set. The introduction to their set was apparopriately introductory to their latest album, ‘Before the World Was Big’ opening with the song ‘Ideal World’. The set, both effortless and disjointed, embeds the audience with a sense that lies at the root of the album itself - it’s nice to be a kid, it’s tough not being one anymore.
OL RLPOOL
CALA
The tempo of their latest album is set at a far lower pace than the last, making the performance of each track on it intimate and haunting. ‘Chinatown’ proved to be an off-key success with the crowd, along with ‘Crowded Stranger’ in it’s balancing act of distorted guitar playing and harmonic vocals. It was tough to say good-bye as they departed the stage as they create an appetite that seems impossible to satisfy without excessive encores. Needless to say, the performance was a success and only reaffirmed the crowd’s love for Cleo and Harmony and their lovechild that is Girlpool.
TEEN HOOD Trying to remember being 15 is like trying to remember how I learnt to do my shoe laces. I know I did it, I know it happened at some point otherwise I’d be rendered immobile and yet it’s just an embedded part of me - muscle memory. Through the blur of the last 3 years of newly formed memories I can pick out some things. It was bang in the middle of a very strange few years of internet fame and definitely the year I felt most comofrtable with it. I owned my identity online and people were responding. I was turning into a true feminist tyrant and excercising my newly found opinions at any moment I could. I felt like I could do no wrong, except failing 3/6ths of my GCSES. It was a strange and turbulent time, with my Dad having a stroke and really not having an awful amount of support to guide me through, yet still it was a rare point in my life in that it was one of the only few I genuinely felt attractive to others. I felt likable and I utilised that - I tread carelessly and broke hearts and made friends. There are some parts of me then I wish I could transfer to my current self but I know that 15 year old me still lurks in here somewhere. It’s easy to cling to this rose-tinted idea of the past and I’ve found myself doing it often but I’m happy to be growing and evolving. What’s important is to feel grounded and secure.
MOVING O Whether it’s for uni or for good, moving out is tough business and no one really tells you practical ways to stay alive during the time you’re away from your ‘rents. So, in order to keep you both safe, sane and healthy I’ve decided to compile a helpful little handbook for you to refer to in times of need.
KEEPIN’ IT CLEAN 1. SURFACE WIPES. I cannot emphasise this enough. Poundland sells packs for
(surprise surprise) a pound and believe me they’ll make you feel like you can trust the air you breathe without it transferring a lump of dust into your lungs and help you feel under control when you spill stuff on your bedside table.
2. Handheld hoovers! They can be pretty expensive but when living somewhere other
than home you’ll come to know that there isn’t an airing cupboard to keep a 4ft hoover in in every hallway, especially in university accomadation. Some even clean up fluids so it’s a win/win.
3. Make your bed. This doesn’t need to be every morning but jeez louise will you feel
better when you open your door to see it waiting for you. The rest of the room can be a total warzone if your bed is a place of refuge.
4.
Invest in some travel wash. It’s basically available at all pharamacies and saves you from having to wear the same pair of underwear 4 days in a row until you feel more capable of doing the big wash, or manage to snag yourself some alone time with the washing machine in the first place.
ORGANISATION 1.
It can be hard to come to terms with the lack of storage in most properties and streamlining your wardrobe and essentially your life is really hard and a bit sad, but is essential and at the end of the process kind of cathartic. Buy those attachable canvas shelves if you end up with a rack or hanging wardrobe and if you have the space a small unit of shelves - depending on how many clothes you own. If you end up with drawers it’s worth thinking about getting a small rack given that there’s space for it.
ON OUT
2. Ryman’s is a godsend when it comes to attempting to organise your school stuff. Those cardboard magazine files are so easily decorated and dirt cheap. Buy or make some pencil cup holders and get some drawer organisers too. Muji is the better place to go for paper organisation and the minimalism of their products is the academic organisation equivalent to a xanax.
EATIN’ CLEAN Alright, this is something I still find myself struggling to achieve. I don’t know if it’s a penchant for fried foods or just a general lack of vegetable preparation motivation but either way I’ve seen it be done so I KNOW healthy eating whilst living alone isn’t an urban legend.
1. Shop around. This is crucially important. Just because your nearest supermarket
happens to be a Waitrose doesn’t mean there isn’t a fresh produce market somewhere within your vicinity. FIND IT. Do your research - it’ll pay off both for your health and your wallet.
2. We’re all aware of the ‘student eating instant noodles for 3 meals a day’ stereotype and it’s pretty easy to end up living up to it. There are ways to actually make that handy pack of fried matter into a balanced meal believe it or not but it does require some more prep. Spring onions and an egg are pretty much all it takes to keep your ma from sticking her nose up at your cupboards every visit.
3. If vegetables aren’t your thang, substitue with fruit. This, at times, has been the only
thing to keep me stable. Bannanas are great because, look at them! That perfect crescent shape is made exactly for the rushed grab of running for the bus.
And that’s it. Bonne chance, I hope we all make it.
'WOMAN'HOOD Being only a year ago I do not have much hindsight on my seventeenth year. For me it was a year for letting go of teenage angst, maturing and getting excited about my future. I had had a more difficult year when I was sixteen so by contrast I look back at being seventeen with fondness. I had gained independence from my parents and from that felt in control of many aspects of my life for the first time ever. Firstly, seventeen was the year that I felt fully accepted by a group of friends that I love and that accepted me unconditionally. In the past my friendships had been volatile and temporary but I feel that the mental and emotional stability I had newly acquired permitted me to form some stronger and more permanent relationships. Seventeen will always stand out to me as the year I fell in love for the first time. A tumultuous time for any young person but I look back on the rollercoaster of emotions fondly as it was an experience I will never forget. My seventeenth year was a time for dreaming and looking ahead. I had started to plan out my future and get excited about it. In contrast to being eighteen where these plans become more permanent, seventeen for me was all about dreaming and imagining a future for myself before I had to make steps to move towards realising these ideas and I had to be much more realistic with my thinking.