Jennifer Funnell

Dear blog, dear friends and family, i have turned 20!

This is quite a milestone, the doubled double digits. 

I have felt very existential, mostly in February when the idea of having ‘my last month as a teenager’ dawned upon my super comfortable and settled brain. But now I know everything will be okay and the fun doesn’t stop when you leave those golden teenage years. 

I’m going to quote a best friend of mine in her letter to me for you:

‘This may feel like a loss, the loss of your teenage years, but its just opening the portal to the rest of your life’.

This is a wonderful thing to think about, I shouldn’t worry about the time passing as whilst it did pass and I filled it with fun, beautiful, emotional and joyous moments with the gifts that are the people that have appeared in my life.

Reading the 20 letters from 20 people who love me, a gift my best friends compiled, gave me a MEGA grounding. I’ve really had the most intense gratefulness ever like I could convert into a sort of friendship appreciating cult and I’d fit in perfectly. 

Stornoway has a beautiful song called ‘long distance lullaby’, it’s about romantic love but when I listen to it I think about all of my loved ones. Some are hours and hours away, like my best friends in Scotland or my sister in amsterdam. I have friends I’ll only see once a year, like my friend in Canada (we journal together) or the friends that were so defining of my teen years but now we live in different cities. This song really brings up their names in my head, and I wish them a little ‘I hope you’re having a good day’ when I hear it. 

This song is one of my 20 letters of love I can send back to you. 

I hope that everyone who reads this has had a lovely week so far. Though it’s tuesday today, and everyone knows the week starts getting good on wednesday!!! 

New little fact from random research this week is some tea about a music genre called HAPPY HARDCORE. My new obsession – though it’s a little jarring.

it’s a genre that emerged both from the UK breakbeat hardcore rave scene, and Belgian, German and Dutch hardcore techno scenes in the early 1990s.

An example of a happy hardcore song i love is ‘have you ever been mellow’ by party animals. Maybe have a go and see how much of the song u can listen to before getting UTTERLY overwhelmed. Its deffo a track for sure. 

ART HISTORY SECTION: ARTWORK OF THE WEEK

(new thing – as i am a creative after all)

FRIDA KAHLO, ‘Diego and I’, 1949

In honour of the cafe my friends and i go to in mornington crescent after a night out, also in honour of the project i did with an art school friend that i NEED to see again soon.

‘Diego and i’ is a piece about heartbreak, and it’s one of my favourite self portraits!

Though my love life has been looking up lately (no jinxing or cursing it please), I think this piece is also still very super cool and hits hard as a super ‘romanticise your life’, emotional and frantic 20 year old girl.

Read a little about it here if you wish!!!: https://www.fridakahlo.org/diego-and-i.jsp

Thank you for reading my blog, i’m off to bed so i can wake up for a 9am breakfast with my honorary gramps.

As always, with love

Jenny

Ps. text your friends and family that you love them, maybe even give them a ring!