To: <olly.rees@gmail.com>I work for this charity at my university that sold roses as a fundraising event. The roses had to be delivered early the morning of valentine’s day. So at 9:30AM, extremely hungover and tired (I had a nightmare about a girl with track marks and i kept saying ‘please stop it’ – so scary – another story entirely) I went to get my roses and got dispatched to deliver them in a part of campus I had never been to. The campus was completely deserted and I thought to myself that I wouldn’t be surprised if I was still dreaming.

Anyway as I got closer to the part of campus I was going to I saw SUCH a stunning girl who I guess saw me riding with the roses and assumed I was someone’s awesome boyfriend. She was jogging along and just started beaming – but she kept trying to hide her smile. It was so sweet how much it pleased her to see (what she perceived as) a loving boyf. Also upon delivering the roses each had a little note attached that had address and I couldn’t help but read peoples messages. Some of them were so great. There were so many great/sad moments:

1) I gave a girl her rose and she just kinda sheepishly smiled and went inside and then as I was walking away I heard her and her roommate screaming with happiness shouting ‘its from him!’

2) A girl opened the door and I guess she just assumed it wasn’t for her so she said ‘oh xxx isn’t in right now’. I said ‘oh no this ones for xxx’ and she was  touched and then just took it and said ‘thank you’ and walked back in

3) There was a girl doing her laundry who I could see through one of the windows and she was stunning (don’t know if i was blinded by the romantic atmosphere) but if I had any roses of my own they would be hers

send your valentines stories to olly@edan-dolly.co.uk

Tiananmen Square as a landmark symbolises the ideology behind communism, with grandiose buildings serving as state headquarters and vast spaces in which the individual man appears meagre and insignificant, and it was here that protests for freedom, largely formed of students the night before this photo was taken, were brutally quenched. Martial law was declared and peaceful people, mostly students and parents of students, who refused to get off the streets, were shot by fellow compatriots. The official figure for those killed in these protests was never released but it is estimated to be in the low thousands. Even after the morale-crushing events of the preceding day, this man stood up for what he believed was for the best of his country and future generations, not giving into the fear of death (people were publically executed for far less than humiliating the army like this). He had no idea he was being filmed but his actions reached the masses and no doubt gave impetus to bringing about real changes to the China of today. The fate of this man is unknown and in the moving footage of the whole sequence of events, he is seen being dragged off by plain clothed people who are speculated to be fellow citizens worried for his safety.

Today the world population was estimated by the United States Census Bureau to be approximately 6,802,400,000, with each one of this 6.8 billion leading individual lives, waking up, facing their own variable levels of struggle and living it out until the day is done. When considering yourself as a fraction of this number, the idea of making a difference to global history seems like an unachievable fantastical ideal. Of course, we all do have a lasting impact on history, on the people we love and the people who love us, it’s just that most of us fail to reach a level sufficiently high enough to positively benefit the masses.

The 21st century is rife with challenges for humanity to overcome, and radical changes for the better won’t come about without elicitation, so in response to the problems we as human beings face, we as individuals mustn’t give up in fear and doubt that we can make a difference, but see the opportunity to inspire and act for the good of humanity and leave our lasting mark.

We were originally driving aimlessly. It was just me and Charles but we picked up Ben on the way. There were a lot of intersection junctions on the highway we were driving down; six lanes, some weeds on the road. We were driving down the motorway at full acceleration with music that made me feel great blaring out of the speakers. I was drawing a lot, and watching the scenery of America pass me by. Suddenly the journey becomes less aimless, even though I don’t know why, from an aimless existence I suddenly have a purpose. Urban, concrete, I have a birds eye view of the car, it was one of the topless ones, like a Cadillac. We stopped on the motorway and played the music louder and we all got more and more drunk. Ben was driving but kept drinking and then we realised that he couldn’t drive anymore. We stopped on the motorway but I said that we shouldn’t be stopping on the motorway and had no-one seen those adverts where they tell you that you shouldn’t be stopping on the motorway. Marc Coen- Walking in Memphis was playing. Ben said he was going to ring his dad to drive us the rest of the way but there was too much happiness going on for anyone to really care. It wasn’t about where we were going, it was about where we were in that moment. Written at 6.07am after suddenly waking up.
“It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end.”

Ursula K. LeGuin

Weird track, and strangely moving – I can’t stop listening to it. I recommend you listen through to the end although it is a lengthy track. When my friend put this on and said how epic he thought it was, I remained skeptical but as the song progressed I was able to see where he was coming from. I saw a video of scenes from 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick set to this track and felt completely entranced for the whole nine minutes.

Fuck buttons.

To: <olly.rees@gmail.com>

Maybe that’s it: maybe, whether you like to admit it or not, you just plain miss London. You miss the overlong tube journeys, the rainsoaked and uneven pavements, the sound of a black cab buzzing past you… Come to think about it, I miss London, well, the London in my head, anyway.

I do miss London actually. My favourite places? In the order that I think of them?

1. ICA

2. Westminster Bridge at night

3. Osterley Park

4. Manchester Square/streets behind Selfridges in the Summer preferably.

5. Towpath along the river between Kew/Richmond. esp when it’s grey.

6. Richmond Park around the bit where you can see St. Pauls. In the Summer.

7. Between Embankment and the Tate.

8. Kitchen and Pantry cafe in Chiswick.

9. Prince Charles Cinema.

10. Kew Gardens.

Summers Day in Richmond Park

Snowy day in the Kitchen & Pantry

Grey Day between Embankment and the Tate

Revising in the ICA

Cycling along the towpath between Kew/Richmond

Only the first six and a half minutes of this video is the song ‘The First Days of Spring.’

The days get longer and the breeze teases as it brushes past your face, reminding you that Summer is soon to come – walking around today, I sense that the first days of spring are about to grace us with their presence. The second album by Noah and the Whale is about the broad spectrum of emotions felt following a breakup. This song compares the first days of spring with the first days after you truly get over a relationship and I personally think this analogy (and the song itself) captures the emotions of such a scenario to perfection. After the bulk of the song which has slightly depressing lyrics such as ‘For I’m still here hoping that one day you may come back,’ when the climactic violin part proceeds you can’t help but forget the painful emotions and gain a sense of hope that everything is going to be alright in the end. When I first heard the second album near the time it came out, I quickly noticed the stylistic change from the nostalgic, upbeat, yet subtly lyrically dark first album, and I was profoundly able to relate to the lead singer as he bares all the inner workings of his mind during his painful break up with Laura Marling. Listening to the album was cathartic for me personally during my own experience of break ups and it really helped keep a clear mind through that whole cloudy period. So for break ups past, and for break ups yet to come, I recommend this as part of the remedy for that inevitable depressing recovery.
In the end everything is going to be ok. If it’s not ok, it’s not the end.

The naughty noughties have expired, leaving the media nothing to do but reminisce on the decade that was.

Or wasn’t. The general consensus seems to be that the greatest advances made in the arts over the last ten years have been technological. In music, television and cinema, the industry has been falling over itself to cater for the interests of lonely, headphones-wearing teenagers plonked in front of oft numerous monitors. In music, this has led to a dilution of quality, a dearth of new music, and the now-terminal decline of the music album. Television and cinema, on the other hand, have proved more adaptable, with the explosion of reality television causing an about-turn in our expectations. Contemporary audiences now want to see, besides the customary blockbusters, something they can believe in. ‘Gritty realism’, to coin a phrase, is the name of the day (or decade, rather), and is what has led to the success of series like The Wire as well as films like Fahrenheit 9/11.

In the case of the aforementioned, the ‘grittiness’ stems from minimal camera work combined with a no-star cast. The latter is particularly important: actors act, the rest of us don’t. We can only be ourselves. Fish Tank (2009), with the only recognisable face being that of Michael Fassbender, demonstrates perfectly the benefits of this absence of artifice. Its protagonist, Mia Williams, is played by Katie Jarvis, a teenager plucked from council estate-obscurity to play what turns out to be a starring role. Fame has not changed her, however, as even when Fish Tank was awarded the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Jarvis declined to attend in favour of staying at home – the same estate as before – to take care of her newborn baby.

Fish Tank itself shows a similar refusal to bow to convention. Its story follows fifteen-year-old Mia, who has just been expelled from school and is left to fill her time wandering aimlessly around her council estate. Her friends have turned against her, while her family, consisting of a prepubescent sister and an alcoholic mother, live forever in denial of one another’s existence. What quality time they have is spent in front of the television and all of them, the youngest included, drink to oblivion. Yet there is hope in the form of Mia’s talent for street dancing, as well as the arrival of a new man in her mother’s life. Connor (Fassbender) brings the family together, insisting from the start on including the children in everything the couple do. He emboldens Mia, showing her the attention she craves deep down and encouraging her to take her dancing to a professional level. The question, of course, is whether their newfound domestic bliss can last.

For all its realism, Fish Tank is rife with symbolism and ambiguities. It is shot beautifully, with endless richly-coloured landscapes alongside intimate close-ups of characters, and speaks more through the power of its visuals than through its (mostly minimal) dialogue. Recurring images of animals in chains, such as the white horse that Mia twice tries to set free, show clearly the dangers of living in a confined environment, namely, that a person loses all perspective and with it any real sense of who they are. Thus, at the film’s heart, lies a simple identity crisis. It is not so much a case of Mia having to escape the estate; rather, she must learn to appreciate her human potential and how to apply it in any setting.

Perhaps the worst aspect of growing up is that we expect steadily less from others. Yet, when this happens, and whether we notice it or not, we come to expect more from ourselves. Fish Tank shows that human beings are not to be holed up and ‘taught’ independence (by, for example, a social worker like Mia’s) but must learn it for themselves.

Words – Charlie Chichester

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To: <olly.rees@gmail.com>Are all of you so nostalgic about the past (I have just been looking at Edan Dolly)? It seems so bizarre when you are 18/19 to be looking back so much and it makes the photos on your website essential viewing! Live for the moment might be your next one……seriously, the relentless march of time, the removal of the death which will then destroy our (questionable?) drive for life? It’s a hard, hard world being a privileged, middle-class, highly educated student…………..