Welcome to Carousel Thirteen!
As I’ve finished my second-to-last semester of undergrad, I’ve suddenly (finally) made the realization that I really like to write. I don’t know why it’s taken me this long to realize, as I definitely tried writing a few books as a child, just for fun, and I can go on rants and rambles of word-vomit for hours on end. Sophie and I have wanted to make something like this for at least the past couple of years, but we didn’t really know exactly what we wanted a collaborative creative thing to look like. She is an excellent writer, and an avid reader, so I think we always had an idea of a written component. I’m so happy we decided on making our own website, a blog-type thing.
We decided to call it “Carousel Thirteen” because of the visual beauty of a carousel, as well as the overall nostalgia of something that held so much excitement to come across at a mall or zoo as a child. Carousels have become a pretty regular motif in my artwork for this reason, and I also feel like they’re representative of the passing of time, as something that can only move forward in one direction that you eventually become too old or uninterested to ride. As for thirteen, it’s our family’s lucky number.
One of my regrets in life is that I was never a true “Tumblr girl”. As I am the oldest daughter, I rarely consider breaking any type of rule, and 13-year-old me would certainly not be caught breaking the 17+ minimum age requirement that was listed on the App Store at the time (after a quick Google search I can now see that the minimum age was only 13 - I am now annoyed by this). While I wasn’t a Tumblr user, I understood it from afar, and utilized “tumblr” as a keyword in Pinterest searches. Now, I do have a Tumblr, but I’m afraid I may be too far past the point of it infiltrating into my growing teenage mind for it to feel natural to use. However, I really desire the sense of community, and overall coolness that exudes from the platform. It was a place for people to curate a visual aesthetic of things they liked, become fangirls of bands, or to discuss niche topics.
In my free time, I do a lot of deep-diving on music. There are a handful of early-2000s indie and alternative rock bands that I’ve researched, where some of the only information about them can be found in their fans’ old blog posts or Flickr pages. Looking through these fills me with some sort of excitement that I hope to capture on this website; I think it’s fueled by a sense of community and an overall infatuation with a band or niche interest. It all appears so charming now (hopefully this won’t make any millennials roll their eyes at me as a 2003 baby), as photo taking was mostly done on digital cameras, and blog posts were written casually for friends. We have the blessing and curse of smartphones now, giving us the ability to take a photo at any moment. But, this sorta takes away the novelty of photo taking as it has become so accessible. Similar to film photos, digital camera photos were taken with a bit more intention and purpose than it feels like now with smartphone photos. At a time where social media was only just beginning, there was less documentation of any event, and digital cameras created proof of the fun times with friends, or quiet times alone.
With all of this said, I’m hoping to create this “feeling” that early social media and digital cameras and MP3 players and flip phones and CD players had, since I’m jealous of all the teenagers that got to experience indie sleaze in its prime, while I was unfortunately busy being an elementary-schooler. I didn’t want this blog thing to be overly associated with any existing platform, or to rely on it too heavily, so that’s why we made our own site. But, you can follow us on Instagram to be notified of new posts and updates about our site. We hope to make something exciting that feels familiar.
Love, Maddie
