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Frank Ocean - The Blonde Who Inspired Blonde Lyrics

Preview of the feature article & exclusive interview published by blonded.blog on August 20, 2024; to read the full article, click here.
[Intro]

“Blonde”—a pale yellow or golden-brown color; a shade of hair that carries many connotations beyond its fair appearance.Since the ancient age of the Greek poet Homer, many bards have serenaded their tales of love, glory, and tragedy through characters of blondе description, using their hair as a symbol of youth, beauty, vitality, and morе. In this tradition, Frank Ocean entitled his much-lauded 2016 studio album Blonde—a project emanating from his experiences in adolescence & early adulthood and one that continues to resonate with the youth of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Accompanying his album came an epic in its own right, a 370-page magazine titled Boys Don’t Cry, featuring an eclectic curation of stories, poems, interviews, editorials, and photography by Frank Ocean & many others.Within its first few pages, the notoriously enigmatic artist offered a glimpse behind the curtain with a prologue reflecting on his experiences producing Boys Don’t Cry & Blonde.

In the opening lines of his magazine missive, Frank Ocean describes the photograph that inspired his album:

Two years ago,I found an image of a kid with her hands covering her face. A seatbelt reached across her torso, riding up her neck, and a mop of blonde hair stayed swept, for the moment, behind her ears. Her eyes seemed clear and calm but not blank; the road behind her seemed the same. I put myself in her seat; then I played it all out in my head: the claustrophobia hits as the seatbelt tightens, preventing me from even leaning forward in my seat. The pressing on internal organs. I lean back and forward to release it. Then backwards and forward again. There it is—I got free…

Just as a song may sway the heart, the power of a photograph cannot be underestimated. Frank Ocean selected Eyes by The Collaborationist (photographers Jessica Haye & Clark Hsiao) as his inspiration for Blonde—his muse & the subject of the photograph: a twelve-year-old Angel, with locks of eponymic potential. However, on that late-summer day in 2010, Angel carried a greater burden than the delicate strands of hair that swept across their shoulders. Behind their clear & calm eyes, Los Angeles faded into the distance as they journeyed down a desert highway to memorialize a late loved one, en route to spread their mother’s ashes into the whirling sands of Death Valley, California.

The Collaborationist’s image itself has a certain energy that was strong enough to convey something without Frank Ocean knowing its backstory, which I think is very magical… —Angel, infra Q&A, 2024.

14 years have passed since The Collaborationist looked down the lens of their camera and captured that fleeting moment.Angel, a resident of the “City of Angels” at the time, has since taken flight from California and returned to their country of birth—Germany.Today, they speak to us from the “Grey City” of Berlin to give color to an image that has peered into the lives of many worldwide through the physical albums and magazines perched upon their shelves and the posters bonded to their walls. This is the story of the blonde kid who gave name to one of the greatest albums of all time.
Read more… [Q&A with Angel; intro, Q&A with The Collaborationist]
[Outro]

The power of a photograph cannot be underestimated: a picture can defy time by reproducing an aperture’s worth of light for an indefinite duration, defy distance by providing instantaneous access to one location from another, defy diction by crossing over languages, and defy description by encapsulating a variety of emotions—some explicable, and others, ineffable. However, one thing that can be said is that The Collaborationist’s Eyes continues to inspire inquiry years after its initial dissemination, generating articles well beyond “a thousand words.”

For eight years, I’ve carried this photograph from home to home. Angel’s eyes have followed me from a poster mounted, dismounted, and remounted on many walls—a static character in a montage of scenes from my life. I was eager to animate them, to hear them speak and know their story—and what a beautiful and poignant tale it is. A photographer beset by the loss of a friend, transporting their bereaved child in a procession to celebrate their mother’s life in the valley of death.

This is The Blonde Who Inspired Blonde, a piece dedicated to Natascha—the mother of an Angel and the friend of an artist—may she rest in peace.https://blonded.blog/365/posts/the-blonde-who-inspired-blonde