Everything's gonna be alright, just calm down

Welcome to a different layout - I kind of got sick of the visually arresting nature of the old one (ie. it was so obnoxiously ugly) so I'm going for a layout that's a little easier on the eye. 


So I don't really have any special insights or interesting things to tell you about today (not that anything I ever have to say is especially insightful or interesting). I have been wondering whether or not I'm crazy again, after I recorded some conversations with my friends last night without them knowing and then putting the recordings to music as soon as I got home. I like going to the VCA though because things that seem like crazy things to do in normal life are normal life here. 


I've been recording my friends and family without them knowing and turning the recordings into songs (I do tell them afterwards) for a little over a year now, and it's a very spiritual thing for me to do. I like to take snippets of everyday conversation from these years, when I'm supposed to be the most exciting, beautiful, young thing I will ever be, and turn it into a kind of visual scrapbook - a moment in time caught somewhere between the visual and atmospheric. Of course I keep my photos, diaries, sketchbooks - this is just another version of that and while it's probably the most time consuming I would say it's also the most satisfying. Each individual piece has a specific meaning that I always want to share with others because they are so dear to me. They are a shrine to the ordinary. I am obsessed with normality and the beauty in routine is often overlooked and I've recently realised that by recording these almost mundane situations I am trying to hold onto something that makes me feel safe - and safety is something we forget that we are constantly working towards. Isn't feeling safe one of the best feelings in the world? It's like a comfort foundation for everything else - you can be happy, sad, angry, whatever, but if you feel safe underneath all these other feelings it's as though this huge box is ticked...or something?


I've hurt my ankle and I haven't been able to run for a couple of days and it's driving me a bit insane and I think that might be why I've been thinking about all of this stuff in such a huge way, while I've been trying to work really hard and not waste my time watching Seinfeld. 


If you're interested in what I've been calling sound art you can listen to one of my pieces from last year here. 

Your skin looked blue in the television light

(i want to inhale the stars

and choke on the dust of all

the lives they held)

Way down unwell

It's nice to be reminded that I still know all the words to My Immortal by Evanescense from those funny safe days from a few years ago now. I've already told you what I miss and why and now it seems like I can't really say any more about it. And it's way past my bedtime again and I'm wide awake, not sure if it's got something to do with the coffee I'm drinking or the company I'm keeping or the music I'm making. 


Feeling things, feeling things! Why! If I wrote a song for every time I felt something huge I would have a back catalogue to rival that of Rick Astley (who was surprisingly prolific, mind you). But there's only so many times you can sing the same lines before it they get old or stale or something, even if the feeling never goes away. This business of feeling things, I don't know. It's too much. 


My Dad rubbed my neck today and told me how performing will make me exhausted emotionally and physically and I kind of got it. And a lot of people have told me that I've 'got it' but I don't even know what 'it' is, not even close, and I just sit in my room reading my old diaries trying to scrape together words for something that's a mess, unfinished, and kind of lame and people are saying that I've 'got it'? I know I've got a few things, like craziness, and melodrama, and dorkiness, but which one is 'it'? 

What is this I can't even

Yesterday we did free improv in class, which meant that, after playing a collective Bb, we would improvise a piece of music in duos, trios, or all of us all together on traditional, strange and interchangeable instruments. Our improvised pieces went for as long as the players - us - saw fit. We were as polite as we felt like being and as obnoxious as we let ourselves become. It was wild and hilarious and so much fun. 


I was fascinated by my classmates and the way we each have a language through the music we play. I might be working on my own particular 'sound' but even as a work in progress I realised that I can still speak in my own little way, when I stop using words. The most gorgeous thing about the whole free improv thing is listening - listening to someone else's language and then decided how to communicate using your own language. It's interesting to be allowed that insight into a person and an honour to be in a class with people so in tune (haw haw) with their instrument. I liked watching others do this exercise; the little nods, half-smiles, retaliations - the understandings! 


Muuuuuuusic! It's so good! And I am so tired! Even though today I had a coffee as big as a baby's head! Yeah! 


OK OK. Here is my band and I at a recent gig playing the musix. Sik. 


Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz 

How're you travelling?

I read a book when I was little and in the book the girl character had a guinea pig and it died and I can't remember the details because they were absurd (I think she put it in a freezer then had to thaw out the body? I don't...I mean, like yeah) but one thing did stick with me. Towards the end she built a small raft out of paddle pop sticks or something and sent the guinea pig's (thawed) body out onto a lake, then shot a flaming bow onto it so that it burnt and sunk into the water. I don't know, I always just liked that. 


I come from a family with two sisters and we are something to look at, at least in country towns - my big sister who is beautiful like Lolita and my little sister who is glamourous like Vogue magazine and me with scabby legs and feathers for eyelashes. I like churches and I like country towns because they are both predictable. Usually aesthetically questionable.  Always corny. Usually old school. Always friendly. You get it. 


I had to go to a funeral today and saying that I hate funerals is pretty much like saying I hate racism or throwing up or this. It's a given. 


Although thinking about it makes me feel as though it's not funerals that I hate, but probably just the fact that there's not really any such thing as a happy funeral or whatever. There's just so many washed-out faces, grimaces, awkward hugs that go for too long with people you hardly even know - and we can never really seem to say how we feel, condolences-wise. What can you say to a person who has just lost their parent? Especially if it was unexpected?


One thing that makes me uncomfortable is funeral companies. I hear them advertised on the oldies radio station Magic 1278 which my sister got me onto (for programs such as 'Elvis and Friends' and 'The Sinatra Lounge') and on morning television sometimes while I'm doing sit-ups like a new mother. I don't like them. I have been to only a few funerals in my life and mostly they were organised by funeral companies and that's fine, because being organised is impossible in grief. But - massive generalisation alert - they tend to not allow for the individual. Same songs. Same readings. Eulogies are of course different and unique and they are always a highlight of a service but God. I don't know. 


Just build me a raft of paddle pop sticks and burn me on a lake when I die, will you?

Oh, nostalgia!

I'm having a weird identity crisis, which isn't a bad thing, even if it is a bit disorientating. Last night I spent hours pouring over diaries from when I was 15-16, playing songs I hadn't played for years and remembering all those strange intricacies of the heart at that age. 

I'm obsessed with nostalgia! I love reliving those heady days when Dad would give me $20 to go to the shopping centre and I was at school in years that weren't double digits and I would write letters to musicians I adored and write songs about love even though I didn't know anything about it yet (because that's what you write songs about right?) and I remember how the older kids were so cool and together...and I read through my diaries last night like novels, watching myself fall insanely in love, lose my head, learn that rules are made so that we can break them and learn, the hard way, that there won't always be a parent to give you $20, just like loving stupidly is stupid, a little predictability never hurt anyone and there's definite safety in routine. Going to a gig was a BIG DEAL and I would plan it for weeks and have like the BEST NIGHT ever, without fail. Wearing makeup was a BIG DEAL and I would dedicate blocks of time to learning how to glue on fake eyelashes and how to put glitter on my eyes not IN my eyes. Everything was such a BIG DEAL when I was that age and it's not that I'm complaining or anything because it seriously SUCKED being underage (I guess I'm not so far overage yet that I've forgotten how it feels). But I love BIG DEALS about things that are now quite routine: gigs, parties, drinking...LOVE is still a big deal but I think I'll always be like that. Sigh!

I feel like I'm wading through the GREAT PERHAPS at the moment which is thrilling and exciting but a part of me (the part that reads supermarket junk mail because the bright colours and familiar brands are supremely comforting) wouldn't really mind so much to be transported back to being 15. 15, where 18 was, like, SO OLD and if you were 18 you were together, and cool, and exciting and smart and beautiful. 

So in like three years when I'm craving my current 18 year old life, these are some photos that I will look at fondly, patting my 27 cats in a synthetic nightie. Pondering my romantic failures. Eating Weeties out of the box. Weeping. (Nostalgically of course.)

Coming down

tru luv

I had a love affair with a sheet of fabric once. It was the visual component to my year 12 artwork and by God it was everything to me. I couldn't stop thinking about this thing that I had made, wanting to be near it at all times, desperate to touch it, fix it - sounds crazy yeah whatever. It was a safe kinda love 'cause fabric is fabric and when I was tired I could use it as a blanket and go to sleep wrapped up in the names of my family that I had stitched into it. 

I guess the point is I want to be consumed all the time by feeling something. Sitting idle is no good, even train rides are too long without missing something. I can't really understand the point in half-arsery. If you're going to commit to something, like hoping to be able to live off creativity or whatever, then you really have to commit to it. Like the way I see it it just has to be everything you are, weaving in and out of you like blood or air. 

I met you at the blood bank

Yesterday one really good thing happened that stuck with me not because it was the best thing to happen in my whole life - it wasn't even the best thing to happen in the DAY - but just for some reason I felt that shift like when tectonic plates move or like when you're playing Tetris and the little squares fall into place to make a line you know? Anyway it's not even exciting just I said something in one of my classes and the girl directly in front of my seat turned right around in hers just to smile at me and I'd only ever said like two words to her in my whole life and it was just so nice I wanted to cry. It's a weird time for people around me changing minds everywhere and I feel these vibrations of things falling into place for everyone around me as well but sometimes like they get mixed up with the shifts of things falling apart and it's hard to know whether someone's got the pieces all worked out or if they're working their way out of something bad. I guess this is why it's nice to think that it's all connected because when things break it's because they're meant to or something and from nothing comes something. But who am I to say I only know what I am and even then I'm not so sure so I prefer to pretend that someone else does know for sure because then at least someone does. Know who they are I mean. Because if there's anything I do know it's that I like to know things especially in advance and I don't like surprises and I don't like chances and I don't like eating things like those muesli bars with chocolate chips on them for reasons that I know make no sense. Making no sense. 


xoxo angsty_gal11

Emotional champ

I was sinkin' beerz with friends last night and it's always weird when people say they read my blog because I feel like I just write and write on this thing and it just disappears into the internet vortex...but anyway, my friend said that she liked the way I keep talking about emotions and thinking and stuff lately and it made me laugh out loud because I am a monumental dork. But seriously, feelings do matter!


I guess I have been thinking about ART a lot in relation to everything and the way that we filter the world through our experiences and in turn what we create is an extension of who we are, in some kind of tangible format. My bandmate patted me on the shoulder at the Bon Iver gig the other night, completely out of the blue, while listening to this song and said something along the lines of 'Eilish, I'm glad you write songs about who you are and what your life is. People can relate to them. You'll be up there soon enough.' ('Up there' being a reference to the stage, not 'up there' as in heaven as in dead. I hope.) That was exactly what I needed to hear just right then and my heart just swelled to about a million times their normal sizes like the Grinch or something. 


I like to think that everything we create reflects everything we have been and done. How could it not? Which, I guess, supports this idea that all creative endeavours are sourced from the same basic emotions because we are all the same - pretty much. I mean we all love, we all lose, we all live and we're all stupid, and I don't really see any reason why the same conclusions that can be drawn from a Radiohead song can't be drawn from Sylvia Plath's Ariel. I think there's something so exquisitely beautiful about that because it is inherently comforting and soothing to believe that everyone has felt just as badly, if not worse, than you feel or have felt, and everyone is capable of happiness because we've been happy and sad since the dawn of time and there's just so much evidence of that. 


From the amount of 'I mean's and 'I guess's in the last paragraph you can tell I'm not entirely sure how to articulate how I feel but I want you to know that it's a good feeling, to believe that everything is connected. I think that believing that you're never really completely alone is probably one of the most comforting things anyone could ever feel. 


I'm afraid we're all afraid. I miss people missing from me people missing me too. I'm an emotional champ but so are we. 

Stacks

Just more validation that creativity is the heart of everything - sitting hunched over myself surrounded by like mindedness and shutting my eyes to feel the pulse of the ground as it's shaken by us and feeling the moon and the stars align as a little man tells us that our love will be safe with him. So happy and so sad. So my hair falls over my eyes and I'm not wearing any shoes and the smell of weed is giving me a headache but I just see the moon and the stars and my friends surrounding me and everything is aligned for just one second and I curl up happy and sad. Happy and sad. 


Association is a funny thing. How an experience can change your attitude towards anything regardless of what that thing was to you in the first place. I was sad when I found Bon Iver, and I'm still sad - but I've found a common ground with people who know the songs I know just as well as me and we harmonise together. Suddenly sadness, the same sadness that bred these songs, brings us together and creates something like happiness. Happy and sad. 


The worst in us breeds the best. We find hope in the saddest of places.


And everything, everything dies, from the flowers my mother sells with her heart and her soul, to the sounds that we make that make us cry, to the second on the day my own heart gives up. I guess thinking about that makes me happy and sad. 


Because tonight, in fairy-ring moonlight, I just saw so clearly the only reason I am here.


('axiom.')  

Slow show

So as I sit here once again typing something that I hope will lead somewhere I can't grasp anything solid. I'm kind of mad for no special reason, just mainly at this whole Kony thing that has popped up on facebook, which I hate myself for. Actually I'll tell you why it makes me mad. I am so cynical sometimes and yeah it's unhealthy but I just can't help but be disgusted by the KIND of attention the issue is getting - the shock and disgust generated by the truly horrific nature of these crimes creates a sensation that kids my age and younger just latch on to because it scares them and in turn excites them, not because there is any sense of connection or empathy. It's easy to reblog something or share something and think that you're helping, like that's your little contribution to the terrors on this earth but the reality is, awareness is important, yes. But awareness is nothing, nothing, without action. What NEEDS to occur IS action, something that our government in particular seems incapable of, something that people are afraid of because it IS frightening but necessary nonetheless for change. Hopefully all this hype surrounding Kony will actually eventuate into something positive and tenacious instead of just inspiring some terrible horror movies or comments such as this which are genuine comments from some facebook friends of mine:

'All this shit about 'Kony' is as annoying as Cunts that clog your news feed with Photo sharing!'

'Kony is a dog.'

'who is this Kony bloke'

and so on and so forth.

I hate to get all 'kids these days' on you but I feel like, while the ideals of my generation are incredibly admirable most of the time, well-positioned hearts aren't enough to change the world. You have to create change yourself, by actually moving, by taking steps or even just a step, towards something better. And sure, you're probably reading this and trying to figure out just how I got up on a horse so high so I'll say this - I don't know anything about anything at all, I really don't. All I know is that I got more satisfaction both viscerally and physically from partaking in organised events for charity, be it service projects or raising money by gift wrapping or coin collecting or whatever, than I ever have in the past by reblogging or sharing on facebook or linking to a YouTube video. The fact that I, and my friends, have actually organised and completed these charity events ourselves speaks volumes for our generation I think. Which brings me to the next thing...

Today in class we discussed our brains, specifically, the way our brains are wired with neurons and whatnot so that when we are touched, we feel it, and the same neurons that tell us we are being touched are activated when we watch someone else get touched. The only reason we don't feel it is because our skin receptors aren't telling us that it is us who is being touched. Kind of confusing, I know. But the bottom line is, the only thing that's separating us is a layer of skin. We all feel the same. We are all capable of empathy and we are all afraid of being alone and everything that has ever been felt by anyone, physically or emotionally, will be felt a million zillion trillion billion times over by generations to come. We are all just stardust according to big wig scientists, and let's just put aside the absolute gorgeousness that is that image for a second and think about that - we are all just matter, that has been, for some reason, allowed to think, and allowed to evolve in this specific way. I think it's important to remember how we began, and to consider how we are likely to end as a race - and the changes we must make to ensure life is as good for one person as it is for the next. God knows we've really made a mess of things so far, but despite my dirty cynicism I want to believe that there's some kind of a hope for us to change for the better. But I guess I just don't know, just like the rest of the world. We don't really know anything at all. 

You dream well

It's funny how some days you can hear people from other rooms and just immediately in your head you think 'that person is crying' and when you go and see them they're not crying but laughing and you remember that crying and laughing sounds so similar but why shouldn't you just assume that they're laughing? Not everyone is sad all the time. My sister is having her 16th birthday party as I type and I feel really old and not like the cool older sister who drives her little sister to school and has a job and a pretty lover and perfect eyebrows and pokey collarbones, no, just kind of old as in herbal tea and going to bed at 9.30pm and wishing those kids would turn that damn racket down. I don't understand screaming. Why do girls scream at parties? In my head the sound of someone screaming means I should panic and I should get help I just don't understand. Am I crazy? Or just really old. Like whenever someone says they feel sick I just assume that they are and feel like I have to do something to fix them and in equal parts I have to stay safe myself because I'm afraid of everything. I'm afraid of everything even sitting on trains with no way out afraid of everything. And like it's not even rational I know that I know that people have real problems and I know my body is healthy and my life is everything I want it to be and trains aren't even bad unless you're sitting next to someone smelly. So what if I want more pokey bones so what if I wish I could write bravely like Bukowski so what if I can't sing like I want to? 


I have everything I could ever want or need and I guess I dream well too. People see these things in me that I don't see in myself and I wish I could because even the bad things if I knew them I could fix them. And if I knew the good things too maybe I could 


such a big pile of vomit to write and to read. If you can pluck anything from it to apply to yourself I would be monumentally pleased. I just think that I can't be the only person to ever have felt like a big pile of bones just rattling away with that strange feeling of needing to be SOMEwhere but with NOwhere to go.

just me and mah gurl hanging out with the simpsons

Sing it back

Our fantastically black lecturer stands considering us, with his head cocked to one side. It's the early evening of a long day and his energy levels are alarming yet disarming. 


'Alright you guys,' he says. 'I know if I were you, I'd hate to be sitting in this room listening to the intricacies of the marketplace of the pop industry. Are you with me?'


Gigglemurmurshrug. 


He sighs. 'Well. I believe it's time for your RHYTHM class. Everybody, get up!'


He prances over to the iPod dock and turns the volume knob; the machine produces the funkiest funk that ever did funk and he orders us to 'step and clap'. 


'Step and clap! Step! Clap! Someone's not getting funky up the back, yeah I see you! STEP! CLAP!'


There is something about my new school that makes my heart burst with pride whenever I walk by it. It's not just any school, because it's somehow alive; I guess it has something to do with the electric creativity that drives the place and gives it meaning and direction. I like to watch everyone there with my wide first-year eyes. The dancers, draped subconsciously and inconceivably gracefully over the couches in the cafe, when everyone else sinks lamely between the cushions they perch like swallows. The drama kids, dressed in black not for trendiness as I always thought before I came here but to help them with their craft, to help them adopt someone else's life. 


I've always loved school and never been bullied, or really unhappy with any teachers or without friends or anything. Even so, though, I've always been kind of strange - standing out like a sore thumb sometimes. I didn't mind it. But here, though, I just fit. And this school that seemed so frightening is helping me grow and shaping me in such wonderful ways already. I'm so small, SO small, in comparison to everything and everyone else here but somehow, I feel like the pieces of me fit in here nicely - like my big sister does, and like she always said that I would. 

It may be the fuzziness of nostalgia that's making me feel this way, but I think I might have just come home. 

(Radiohead are coming yeah! Here is a picture of Thom Yorke holding a cigarette to celebrate.)