Feeling festive

I'm feeling very festive as I sit surrounded by all the presents I bought despite being quite poor - some of my friends wonder why I went out and bought so many things for so many people but the truth is I really just love that feeling of finding the right gift for someone, and not worrying about the price. I like being alone, walking around shopping centres close to Christmas, stumbling further and further into a trance, trying to predict what my family and friends would love to unwrap. 

Here are some Christmas songs to get you in the mood. I have at least another hour of sitting up and walking out nervous energy as my body prepares to not stop for the next week or so - I probably won't get a chance to blog for at least another week, if not two, so check back then...I promise I'll come back though! 

Have a wonderful Christmas. Take some time to treasure your precious loved ones and eat lots of food and don't feel guilty about it. Thankyou for all your support this year, dear reader, you are in my heart always. Take care. 

xxxx

On this day

I love riding a bike for the first time in many years, and being a subdued part of a convoy of cycling hooligans, (showing off in the most endearing way), gliding down Brunswick Street at midnight with no hands. I love standing in a static conversation when all of a sudden, the lead singer of one of my favourite bands asks us for a cigarette. I love tearing down the highway with the windows down with my friend and bandmate by my side, singing along to our very own songs as they blast through my speakers. I love cooking gingerbread with my little cousins, sneaking dough into each other's mouths and giggling. 

I love everything, like I loved the stars on the day the world was supposed to end. I love them still - and wonder if we are as beautiful to them, as they are to me. 

This year I have learnt how fragile we are, how very breakable the human mind and body is. I felt everything, as always, every part of the spectrum - I felt it in my bones and in my blood. I learnt that hopelessness is everyone's enemy. But perhaps the most important thing I have learnt is to value that little pulse in not only your own chest, but in all your loved ones' as well. The little rhythm, the only thing keeping them breathing and living and loving in your arms.

Warrior

O h   m y   G o d d d d 

...it's one of those nights where I'm writing love letters and listening to sad songs by Ke$ha lying in bed at 9PM. On a Friday. And I have zero problems with it. 

Today in the studio the word 'sexy' was thrown about in reference to my voice in one of the tracks we were mixing. I've never thought of myself or my voice in that respect and to be honest it was pretty hilarious considering I knew, at the time, that this is exactly how my evening would turn out and that it's probably a -7256 on the sexy scale. Anyway whatever guys I'm going to bed. Here are my new favourite sad Ke$ha songs. 

PS OH WOW I completely forgot to tell you!!! Frida's song 'please don't leave me now' was played on Triple J Unearthed radio today! Can't believe it! So happy! Getting somewhere guys! Oh goodness

www.triplejunearthed.com.au/Frida

Four legs good, two legs bad

I am in the studio with Nebraskatak this week, recording our debut EP. Here are a couple of shots...

I am incredibly busy for the next few weeks, like I've been saying. There is recording, Christmas, then Boxing Day-Christmas, then straight to Falls, to Sydney, to home to consecutive gigs...but I will try to check in with you guys on a semi-regular basis at least! The band also got some WONDERFUL news this week which I will announce when everything is confirmed...I actually cried a little bit when this email came through, like real tears. Oh my. 

I walked into Lewis's house the last night to find him wearing a denim apron (yeah, denim), cooking a glorious dinner of from-scratch pizza and creme brulee, to mark our half a year of being giddily in love with each other. 

During the waiting around of recording I have been reading Animal Farm by George Orwell and really enjoying it...

Around all these lovely activities, I have been missing my Mum, calling her up in breaks at the studio just to say 'Watcha doing?' I have been making cookies for the masses, riling up Soda, laughing at my shuddering car, writing songs, getting goosebumps in my sleep, dreaming about rabbits and bookshops and crying happy tears. I have been craving meat, smelling Christmas, thinking about the future and videoing myself dancing to Taylor Swift, knowing that it'll be funny one day.

Hang on to the wallet

Here is a picture of me, very very tired but also very happy (The Brady Bunch is on in the background). Justin and I had a gig as our cover duo Alexander Supertramp last night and it was really fun because I got to stick things on my face and make a new crown (see above) and pretend I was Mick Jagger. Lewis and I had pasta at midnight and looked at camping supplies for the upcoming Falls Festival which is ACTUALLY going to be so fun and I am going and I hope you are all going too because of the fun. 

The other day I was in a terrible mood then I went to Savers, and the universe must have been trying to cheer me up, because I found this 35mm film SLR camera for $24.99 what a bargain!! It works and everything...then Lewis bought a huge stereo that was made in the sixties and I love having a car because we just put it in the back and drove it home and played with it and it's so great - you can sit up against it, and the sound comes out from all around you, it's very comforting. 

Smile!

No kidding

Here is a picture of me struggling with my tangled-up light-dress after my end of year recital...in much the same way, I am struggling to untangle many aspects of my existence  constantly. 

Tonight I drove to the top of a hill to look at the stars and be grateful for all the wonderful things that make up my tangled mess of a life. Little things, like getting Soda's ball out from under the couch for him, and kissing ice cream out of my man's moustache, and reading a digital ~VERY GOOD~ on the treadmill when I put it on the Fit Test mode thing. Monumental things, like creating work that I am proud to call mine, having a family that loves me and friends who love me and a man who loves me, and having all these people to receive the love I so badly want to give. 

I am mine

Over the past couple of days I momentarily lost the plot - I'm quite sure I've got it back now, and I lose it semi-regularly so no need to fret...it does suck though. I have this terrible sickly feeling that is so overwhelming during these times, and it tells me that I'll never be good enough at music to 'make it', and that I should be much more successful than I am right now at 19 years old (prime of my life!), and that every second spent NOT writing, practising, or running, and every second that IS spent eating, having fun or resting, is a complete and utter waste of time. 

I curled up into a sorry ball on the couch and watched the ARIA Awards on TV the other day and hated myself for being ~fat~ and ~sad~ and ~bad at music~ so I went and wrote a song about being none of those things any more. And I felt about 100000075% better afterwards. 

Funny that. 

++LISTEN++

++LISTEN++

++LISTEN++

Deja vu pour toi

I will be honest, I am feeling pretty uninspired at the moment. I feel as though I'm writing the same things over and over and soon you will become bored and stop reading. As a result I've been wracking my brain to think of something new and exciting to contribute but have been run off my feet with logistical things like rehearsal and work and impractical things like feeling sad for no reason in particular and peak hour traffic on Friday afternoons. So I apologise if anything I have written recently has sparked some deja vu pour toi, please be patient with me. 

Here are some things that you have not seen before, because they come from my diaries (oooo). 

'If I could speak to you today, I would thank you for all the songs I wrote for you. I would point out the sun and remind you how I traced across the rays with my fingers and dangled my heart between them, so you would take it and give me something to feel.

I would thank you for the disaster I was, because I crawled out.' 

'...the mongrel yawns, 

disappears at dawn. 

you sigh, relieved, the creature's gone. 

(he was never there, i could've sworn.)' 

I'll take care of you

I know I promised a post on Wednesday but you know what? I've been extremely busy leading a life filled with things that look like this:

The beach trip was beautiful in that hyperactive teenage way (which just so happens to be my favourite way of doing things). I drove ALL the way there and back with Lew the navigator, and did not crash, or get squished by the trucks along those stupid freeways where everyone seems to regard the speed limit as optional. We lived on cookies, peanut butter, beer and Weetbix with Rice Bubbles (the latter mainly just me) for three days and although I still fulfilled my self imposed running commitments, it felt nice to be surrounded by my friends who treat these things with a 'whatever'-ness that I could learn a great deal from. 

The nights were a glorious blur of endless music, smokey lungs, cheap wine and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. We ate spaghetti with spatulas just for the fun of it and danced and tired ourselves out early, falling into cozy sleep. 

Speaking of cozy sleep I collapsed right onto Lewis's bed as soon as we got home by late afternoon, exhausted from my hesitant driving and the late nights that my pensioner's mindset is just not accustomed to. He went out quietly to get salad-making things (bless him) and left me there in a little ball on the mattress. I'd forgotten just how wonderful it feels to be exhausted, and resting comfortably, in the most comfortable, warm, good-vibey place such as your loved one's bed...the afternoon sun just obliterated the room and the high ceiling and I could hear  little voices playing outside on the street and it was just blissful. 

Here are some musical vibes for the past week:

And a bonus musical vibe, promo for a gig that I am doing with Justin very soon...come and fun...

Thanks for putting up with the unhealthy post gap from this week - I'll try not to neglect blogging from now on! 

Listen here

xx

Infinite

I am sitting in my room, surrounded by the blissful cool change, next to the window thrown wide open and listening to some party my neighbours are throwing. The thing about my street is that because it's in a valley kinda thing, you can literally hear normal conversations that are being held like four doors up. So you can imagine the ruckus parties cause around these parts. 

I just finished reading 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower' which I started yesterday because it seems to be all the rage, and I've been looking for another 'Looking for Alaska' which made me feel everything. I just LOVE that book, like urgh, and I didn't love Perks as much. I feel like I didn't actively 'like' it, or maybe I did, I'm not sure, but I do know that I finished it overnight which means that it was interesting enough to keep me reading for straight hours. 

It was actually kind of nice. Because even though it was really angsty and everyone was so mad and everyone was caught between being an adult and being a kid and all up in unrealistic and illegal situations and abortions and suicide and LSD and suspicious dead relatives, they were all hopeful about something. About the future, or their families, or the friends - that everything and everyone would turn out OK, the end. And also the same things kept happening, like the same characters would go to the same places and do the same things, but it wasn't boring because there was always some emotional or cerebral or physical trauma happening and someone was always high or angry or both.

Midnight daydreams

Some vibes for you guys...

It was HOT yesterday, like 38 degrees kinda hot! I went to my friend's pool after band and it was bliss - how wonderful it is that we can just swim in our friends' pools in the middle of the day, and not have to worry about work, or school, or anything like that...divine. It's kind of like being retired, but 60 years early. 

For now, anyway. I have a very busy few weeks coming up which is pretty hilarious considering how money poor I am. In December Nebraskatak is recording our first EP (exciting!), Alexander Supertramp (my and my friend Justin's acoustic covers/background dinner music money making extravaganza) has a gig at Red Bennies on the 13th, AND I am writing and recording demos for Frida from now until March, when I will hopefully have enough material for an EP and for gigging. Not to mention that thing called Christmas, during which we will give and receive presents and be visited by my charming Aunty Em (more on her later, I think I've talked about her before actually), New Years (which I will be spending at Falls Festival) and an impromptu beach trip next Monday; all of these activities are slotted in neatly beside essentials such as eating, sleeping, teaching, exercising and watching The Bachelor with Lewis at 11.30am on Friday mornings. 

The fairest of them all

Last night a friend of mine mentioned this thought that she had had: that a good friend of hers was not actually a real person, that she was just this figment of her imagination, and everyone in her life was just humouring her whenever she talked about this friend, going along with the whole thing so the illusion is sustained. 

It's kind of frightening to think about things like that. Especially in situations where you're quite sure you don't deserve something or someone you have managed to snare. Is there really a living body next to me in my car, is there really a jeaned-leg beneath my hand, is there really a voice in the atmosphere and not only in my head?

Even when you're quite sure a person is real, even when you can feel them solidly beneath your hands and believe that they belong to the world and not just to your imagination, the frightening and sad fact remains that the only thing that's keeping them in the atmosphere is the quiet, pounding pulse of their human heart. Something so fragile and so temporary and so breakable, that is the only thing that keeps a person alive on the planet and not only in heads.

No future/no past

A particularly angelic photo that Lewis took the other day, when we were drinking in the gardens. 

A couple of nights ago at a house party, two girls that I am pretty much friendly acquaintances with came up to me and told me that they read this blog on a regular basis, and have it bookmarked on their computers. Whenever something like this happens I just feel so happy, and so fulfilled, and it means so much to me, that anyone would ever be interested in reading what I write. One of these girls said to me: 'I feel as if I know you!' and the truth is, she does. 

I write honestly here because I always think that no one except me reads what I publish. I think that silly delusion is a good thing, because it makes me completely comfortable with being totally honest with you, dear reader, as you deserve nothing less. Life is a shared experience, and we all go through things that someone else has been through before. If you find solace in my strangeness, insanity, nuances and love of love, then that's all I can ask for. 

In other news I've been thinking about dreams a lot lately. Lewis and I tell each other our dreams in that funny morning headspace, side by side in bed, and this morning I was recalling this dream where I had a little kitten under my care. It was adorable but I looked it up and apparently, to dream about kittens means your subconscious is nervous about a transition into independence. Who'dve thought it...

A year or so ago I wrote about the most frightening dream I've ever had. I still don't really know what it means, but here it is, if you care to interpret...

"So the world in my head ended last night. I watched as little specks of humanity crossed the darkened sky, throwing flaming balls of light and gas in an attempt to relight the sun, which had burnt out. I stood on the same hill that, in reality, my dog and I walked up yesterday in the moody but docile wintery weather. In typical disaster conditions people were standing with me, huddled in families, praying, screaming, shouting with false hope when the sun burnt bright for a second, then wailing as it faded into nothing as it became apparent that it really had died, and was not to be relit.

I knew that it was our fault that this had happened, that the sun had died and we were doomed. You know when you just KNOW things in dreams, and accept them - it was like that. I don't know how we did it, however I feel that it had something to do with something like climate change, definitely human-related.

Then I was driving with my parents in pitch black darkness, watching from the window of my car the same saga with the sun being relit, then burning out immediately, then being relit again. Knowing this was our last, final resort failing before my eyes."

Red

Seriously guys, Taylor Swift. She's so good. I just downloaded a whole bunch of new music yesterday and her new album Red was in there. I mean, there are some questionable moments but I just like her. I've written about this before but I like her more than ever, because that silly cursive writing has gone from her album covers, and been replaced by some cool block lettering, and her songs are about a gajillion times better: 

She sends a wholesome message. Listening to her on the train yesterday was really relaxing because I know how many teenage souls would be compiling playlists full of Red to reminisce their lovers, and that makes me happy, just for all the crazy love that young people share. I don't know quite how to describe why I like Taylor Swift so much, but I think it has something to do with my own appreciation of music that is relatable to a wide audience - I always try to make my songs accessible to people, full of things that happened to me that happened to everyone else too. I think Taylor Swift is a mastermind at this, if only for the young girls that make up the majority of her audience. 

'I forget about you long enough to forget why I needed to.'

Come on guys. That is a good lyric. 

So we beat on

Here are a couple of terrible quality videos from my recital - I will take some proper photos of the outfit I was talking about in the last post...if you can see, I'm wearing a dress with blue fairy lights all over it. It was pretty cool but possibly hazardous so I only wore it for one song. There was also a projector which was directed onto me so that the colours of the video were on me, if that makes sense. That's what the weird light is. Here is my program (sorry it's so hard to read, I kind of just wanted to show you the border because it is so pretty): 

I have finished a year of my degree at the Victorian College of the Arts. It feels weird, and like I'm not totally finished because I'm not staring into months of oblivion until March because I have so much to do music-wise before the year is over. 

I'm so happy. I really am. And it has taken me so long to be able to say that without some little niggle of doubt and some nerves sitting and waiting at the pit of my stomach. I love stronger and better than I ever have before because it's not the total insanity of my teenage heart getting ahead of my brain; I am making better music, I am a better friend and daughter, student and teacher, because I know more than I did. I did not enjoy every part of the learning process but I am so proud that I have made it this far, and can see just far enough into the future to be excited about it. 

This year has been exhausting. Sometimes it has been that awful kind of exhausting; where you're riding on a bus home at 3am with 50 other people, standing next to a pile of vomit while waves of anger and hopelessness wash over you in equal parts as the bus jerks you from side to side, into the body of someone you thought you knew. But it has also been that beautiful kind of exhausting, where you're lying in a paddock at 6.30am watching the sun rise with your closest friends, after watching it set the night before with the very same people. It's been emotionally exhausting, frightening phonecalls and late night television shows - but at the same time, being so in love with another person that your body and your brain are overwhelmed and exhausted, and the only thing you can do is just look at this person in astonishment at the incredible, impossible luck that has allowed your paths to meet, is one of the most wonderful and beautiful things in the world. 

I just finished reading The Great Gatsby today and absolutely adored every word. The last sentence is so divine, and so perfect, I want you to read it right now: 

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. 

I love stronger for what I have known in the past. The struggle continues for everyone but we beat on...we just don't have a choice. 

PS. THANKS FOR THE PICS EMILY XXX

Welcome back, space girl

Yesterday was a pretty funny day. After drinking hideously tepid wine from a plastic cup as the sun set over the Botanic Gardens, Lewis and I went home to his home-made 5.1 surround sound set up. I sat and mixed my work for the semester and he brought me tea and then we watched The Mighty Boosh and went to bed, relishing in the fact that yesterday it had been five whole months since that one quiet 3am that marked the beginning of a very lovely and very beautiful relationship. 

Here are some screenshots from my video for my recital tomorrow night. If I can be bothered I will attach the program too for you to have a look at. If you are thinking about coming to my recital by the way I made a Facebook event with all the details. I'll get someone to take some photos tomorrow night too, I have an outfit that I'm just DYING to show you guys...