Chelsea Swan

I was re watching some of Sofia Coppola’s films and I really miss that feeling of lazy happiness that I had a young girl, maybe up until my mid 20s. Nothing hurt, dramas were just superficial and a way to feel something, time was endless, money did not matter, there was always fun to be had, people to meet, interesting things to find, traumas are just these silly things that had happened but didn’t affect me. I loved getting myself into intense states of depression, joy, danger. Don’t get me wrong it was massively unhealthy for the most part but I am glad I had that. And sometimes I still find small pockets of it, realisations of freedom and the knowledge that I could burn it all to the ground and start again, I am sure that feeling will go eventually too. How lovely that I once got to lay in bed, warm sheets, stretching my legs out, no plans, daydreaming, watching the light shine off things and make shapes on the wall and ceiling. Again, I do warn that I was massively depressed and running away and starving myself, but it sure was fun. When you don’t eat you enter a sort of euphoric state where everything is unreal and unable to touch you. You also get drunk really quick.

Coppola gets this and she also adds in all the others things I like, subtleties, girlhood, feminine objects.

I wonder if I will get any more pockets of that feeling or if it has passed now. They don’t warn you that the reason everyone misses youth so much is because of the intensity of emotion that diminishes as you get older and even big things can feel empty and numb around the edges. I do a lot of pretending to feel the correct emotion.

Relating back to my practice I think I want to do more to explore this girlhood feeling and aesthetic in my work as a lot of what I do relates to my history and being trapped as an eternal teenager in the deadzone of my memory that has blocked almost everything pre 16 out, and intensified the 16 to 20 year old me in my memory as someone who just got unleashed onto the world at that age. I am trying to get back and make peace with whatever happened to young me and put together the puzzle but I think it is fully locked away now. Maybe I am re-making myself pre 16 though this narrative I create through my work.

I think you are also aware of desire and the male gaze in her films and the dangers of girlhood and the dangers of feeling and wanting too much, and the sadness of being a young girl and feeling all the eyes on you and all the expectations.