Intimacy

I decide on who I want to be usually on a daily basis and today I am a composer. Here's a picture of me being a composer just thinking about like, ya know, composing and stuff. 

I worked for a BAJILLION hours today trying to write and for once I actually got somewhere. It's like 7.30PM now and I just feel really tired, and I wish I liked movies more so I could just watch one and not think about things for like two seconds. That would be so nice, instead of listening to this song and crying my eyes out for no actual legitimate reason. Well anyway the lyrics to this song are too gorgeous and too perfect to hide away so scroll down to the bottom of this post for a mind blow. 


Instead of being normal and watching movies and going outside I thought a little more about what I wrote about last night/early this morning - about being 'in love' with all these things. It's funny because the way I use the phrase 'in love' is steeped in both positive and really negative connotations. I think Nick Cave once said something like 'there's no such thing as a happy song', which I totally agree with. I always thought that the whole idea of 'love' is just a culmination of the strongest human emotions all rolled up into one, then directly fired at someone else. It's dangerous, it's a weapon, it's frightening because it's strong and ugly and complicated. I don't see love as this whole, pure thing - it's everything we are, when it's done right. 


So when I say I'm in love with loaded questions, for example, I adore them and I hate them. They make me so angry but without them, how would we live? Imagine if no one ever placed a hand on your knee, looked at you with a tilty-sympathy head and said 'so...how are you?' 


God, I don't know. Sometimes I think that that song is wrong, you know - 'what the world, needs now, is love, sweet love...'

'signs' --- bloc party

Two ravens in the old oak tree, one for you and one for me

Bluebells in the late December, I see signs now all the time

The last time we slept together, there was something that was not there

You never wanted to alarm me but I'm the one that's drowning now

I could sleep forever these days because in my dreams I see you again

But this time fleshed out fuller face in your confirmation dress

It was so like you to visit me to let me know you were ok

It was so like you visit me, always worrying about someone else

At your funeral I was so upset, so upset,

in your life you were larger than this

statuesque

I see signs now, all the time - that you're not dead, you're sleeping.

I believe in anything that brings you back home to me.

This is not for you

Why do I even call myself a teenager? I am just not one. I bleed concern and think in years instead of minutes. I drive home with my Dad at 11pm while drinks are still healthy and pouring and talk to him about my songs. I think tequila is vile and my head hurts but the vibes are still somewhere in the positive atmosphere, even if I am sitting here listening to Bon Iver on my bedroom floor in Palookaville just like I was a year ago. Well...except a year ago (exactly) I was in a sleeping bag with my feet in someone's face, curled up at 4am trying to order my mistakes from worst to last, while my ex boy continued to live like everyone else. I still have the same playlist called 'sad' on my iTunes and I'm not really sure why I keep it there. I'm not a drinker, not really anymore anyway, I can't swallow the sadness it can provoke! Living isn't something I do very well all of the time, but sometimes I do get it right. 


I've found that the best part of living is finding someone else or something else that feels the same way that you do. And today, my sister and I laughed about whatever at the same time, and everyone around us laughed too - amazed at the fact that we could sound so similar laughing, yet be so different in every other way. Tiny legend. 


I'm in love with romantics, with lingering hugs, with siren songs, with smoke and mirrors and making things happen. I'm in love with loaded questions and bruises and making music that moves. I'm in love with keeping it fresh and keeping it interesting and keeping safe and  staying home on Friday nights. 


Ultimately I think I'm tentatively living (but still - living in hope). 

Jesus gave me water

Well, I'm pleased to announce to you all that the cure for sadness does exist, as I discovered for myself knee-deep in funky soul tunes last night (with Saskwatch). There's something about that music that makes the spirits soar, something about sweating every molecule of my made-up face completely off clean in a tiny sauna of a bar, grooving the night away, 'how low can you go?'s in the middle of a broken glassy dancefloor where every single person in this insane establishment is crouched to the ground, getting ready to jump 'n' jive. Mmm hmm. 


The vibes today are soulful, spiritual and good. I'm going to live today pretending I'm in a Shangri-Las song. 

Fire and iron

To update you on the last post, I did end up losing all my work. But I decided to not care, which is OK, and ended up making something better than the other thing I lost anyway so high five, universe! 


The whole experience was pretty new to me, because minus the GREAT LAPTOP CRASH of '11 (during which I lost all of my illegally downloaded music ((karma???)) and non-Facebook photos), technology has been kind to me. Or perhaps I was just so frightened by my old teacher's story of losing his ENTIRE UNIVERSITY THESIS the night before it was due because his laptop crashed, that I've become like this document hoarder, with my external hard drive securely holding all my precious Taylor Swift albums. Um I mean Radiohead bootlegs. 


It's funny how something can mean so much to you, and then nothing, all within a relatively short amount of time. I didn't sleep the night before last at all, knowing that I would have to put in a few extra hours of work redoing something that I thought was perfect. But once it was completely gone, and I did have to start again, I just kind of did it without thinking and now it's done and I'm pretty happy and the thing I lost means nothing to me anymore. It's kind of similar to the way I feel about the way I look. Sometimes I desperately ask my mum or my friends 'oh my God do you think I've put on weight?? Tell me HONESTLY' and other times I will be running at the gym and feeling like I could lift a car over my head or something or I'll be drinking wine or eating birthday cake (often simultaneously) and look down at my body and feel perfectly comfortable and happy and strong. So it's kind of strange. 


But the nature of those feelings is cyclic so that's kind of different to the whole computer losing work thing - although, who knows, maybe I'll wake up tomorrow wishing I could get that work back...


Anyway it's absolutely POURING today so I think I will just wear my new jumper and listen to stormy music and try to do some work that is piling up slowly but surely. Uhhhh

Serenity NOW

So I'm writing this to fill in time while I wait for my computer to unfreeze and even though I just spent hours refining the final draft of this piece I'm working on I'm surprisingly Zen about this whole ordeal although now I think about it maybe this is just like in Seinfeld where Kramer says 'serenity now' to expel negativity but ends up just holding it in until he explodes or something anyway whatever  

'ode to protools'

please unfreeze.

i need

you to work,

you big jerk.

Lemme show you baby, I'm a talented boy

Last night me and my good friend rage had a nice catch up for their 25th year of existence special. I wasn't feeling so good, so instead of going out with friends and being social and normal I stayed in bed, curled up to my chin in doona and filling my body with tea. 


I had this weird anxiety attack around midnight which I ultimately place all blame for on John Farnham's video for 'Pressure Down'. My little body couldn't handle the overwhelmingly 80s creep show that this video presents. All those little John Farnhams (looking suspiciously like Simba with that magnificent mane) floating earnestly over a Scrabble board. Please view below (at your own risk). 

But the night definitely peaked with Prince's 'Gett Off' - in his own words, 'oh my Godddddd...!' What a diamond that man is. 

Anyway that was my Saturday night, in bed by 9pm with a fluttering heartbeat, no pants and a bootleg Kanye West tshirt and three cups of green tea. Hello boys!

Um yeah hey

Ok so I check the search terms that land people on my blog pretty regularly and today I checked it and instead of like eilish gilligan or eilish music blog or even like eilish brady bunch expert and singer songwriter today it was something like
one direction doing famous beatles walk background
zayn malik rare pictures
one direction wallpaper saying i love zayn
topless one direction wallpaper hot (?!!)


so OK like I don't know am I obligated to be a One Direction tribute blog now? Umm

Trains and boats and planes

Today I am the 'working girl', like my Nanna says, looking after my Mum's flower shop while she is away with my big sister on the other side of the country. I'm happy to do it because it is a beautiful place to be, and it is in my quiet little town so I can use all my Mum's downloads to catch up on all the music that everyone is listening to with minimal interruptions from, like, people. I just have to make sure Tyler, The Creator's 'Her' isn't too loud when our elderly customers come in for their pot of cyclamens. 


Last night I saw Burt Bacharach with his band and the Victorian Orchestra and it was so good. I went with my Dad which is always lovely and as our collective age was significantly lower than those around us we enjoyed surveying the vast sea of grey heads before us as they relived the music of their youth. So refreshing. And we at the Gilligan household love Burt; my Dad in particular. He may not know much about music but he knows what he likes and why. It's all very well and good to get 'expert' opinions on your work but when it comes to the crunch, a musically clueless but honest opinion can be more helpful. While sometimes it's harder to understand my Dad because of the whole communication gap 


("I like the bit where you go 'oooOOOmm...bada-da-da DA!'" 
"What, like the A minor 7 bit?"
"What?"
"...what?")


his opinion on my work is something that I couldn't be without (sometimes just because it can be pretty funny to try and maintain a conversation like the above). 


Ahhh customers! I don't know how to work the eftpos machine help HELP

Even though I'm a woman

I have reached that point in time where it's a quarter past tomorrow and I have to be up in outrageous hours to work at my mum's flower shop but I feel so highly strung I want to write and sing and drink coffee and throw things. I don't feel like writing in sequence or with any kind of point so I'll let you in on some things I have been thinking about lately. 


- Noise cancelling headphones are the best. I walk through the city listening to this song and pretending I'm in a romantic film. It's easy to do that when you spend hours mulling over feelings and times and when big heavy fake eyelashes cast shadows over everything you see and you're young and stupid and scared of taxes and changes and you walk like you have somewhere to be when really you're just walking for the sake of walking 'cause class isn't for another two hours. 


- Everything I do is somehow inherently flawed with self consciousness and self doubt which I always subconsciously hoped was endearing but I am suddenly realising that this breeds insecurity and audiences sense that and subconsciously resent it. 


- I have taken a higher degree of interest in One Direction's trip to Australia than most adults and I now know all the names of the One Direction people and my order of preference is as follows: Louis, Harry, Zayn, Liam, Niall. 


- I have come to the conclusion that the best opening to a song that has ever been written is the first five seconds of 'Kiss' by Prince. 


- I'm saving up for a RC-30 loop station. Judging by my current income and spendings per week, I will have enough money by two-thousand and not likely. 

Have you passed through this night?

When I walk my dog I take him here, to this place in my town that hasn't been built on by neighbouring housing estates because of the powerlines. The general aesthetic is awful but I like it because it's quiet and my dog likes to rub his face in the grass. You can see most of my town from here; the stupid little backward village that I love so much, that I'm always aiming to get back to, that I can never be too far away from.


I love my uni, and I love the city. I love the people in my class who learn these electric and sacred things with me and treat the process with the same reverence and sincerity, yet are still not too proud to breathe a snicker when our lecturer says 'sextuplet'. I like trains and I like things that consume my attention completely and I love the strange mania of ideas that comes in impossible waves.

But no matter how much I like the city and its plastic chairs in the back of pubs or the coffee that tastes like coffee or the tiny lawns of terrace houses or the constant comfort of traffic noise, I could never drag myself completely away from here, this semi-rural semi-wasteland. It's too much a part of me, too much decided who I am, for me to stay away forever. I grew up with horses and trees and grass and sticks and I miss the stars when I leave, because I've never seen stars so clearly anywhere else in my life. 

I won't be here forever, but I guess it's always just going to be a matter of time before I will want to come home, to the ugly powerlines, and rendered houses, and my little dog's muddy body and permanent doggy smile. 

Possibly maybe

Today is my last day of Easter holidays and I can't wait until the amount of caffeine I'm drinking directly relates to the amount of activities I'm doing once again. Right now I'm sitting at my piano trying to write but desperately needing to run up and down the stairs or something to run off finishing my third coffee for today. Why do I do it. I don't know. 


Anyway so this is my outfit today. As I was getting dressed this morning it suddenly occurred to me that I own perhaps one or two items of clothing from a retail store, bought 'unused' or whatever. I wear clothes from Savers or op shops but mostly I source my clothes from my sisters' magnificent wardrobes (sometimes by stealth but mostly above board). I didn't become really interested in clothes until about two years ago when I suddenly realised that dressing up is one of the greatest joys in this life, and by then my significantly more fashionable sisters had already collated quite a spectacle of a clothing collection. Easy street. 


I like wearing other people's clothes, or 'used' clothes from op shops. Not only is it cheaper and more environmentally conscious or whatever but it is electric too - experiences and memories are already connected to the fabrics and patterns and you are about to add your own, as soon as you walk out the front door. 


Other people's clothes smell like them too. Today I'm wearing my friend's Hard Rock Cafe tshirt and it smells like him. Weird but cool. I wear my mother's clothes too sometimes, especially from when she was younger, and they smell like the seventies. They smell like her favourite perfume that my Dad bought her twenty years ago and still buys her now. And I feel like the good vibes from those memories and those times seep into my system through the fabric and the smells and the feeling of the dress or shirt falls all over me and all around me like a shield. 


Always wear other people's clothes. It's like being hugged. 

Let me sing you to shipwreck

It's normal to almost always wish you were somewhere else, isn't it? Like right now I'm watching the live stream of Radiohead's set at Coachella and I wish I was there, with Thom Yorke and his Pyramid Song instead of sitting in my bedroom with a half eaten apple and the remains of my hair that I feverishly cut off a couple of days ago and am yet to actually clean out. Taking a break from working for a couple of hours. Working, writing. Not really 'work' in the true sense because I love it and I am so lucky to be like this. 


Writing songs is a very personal, very serious, usually very private thing that I spend a lot of my time doing. By keeping the manic ritual really private, I read almost straight from my diary and piece together some kind of musical scrapbook entry. I write so much, it's all sacred - even the terrible songs I have written (and I've written many, so many) are sacred and something to take pride in I guess just because I have produced something honest.  


Once I show another person something I have spent my hours pouring over, it's not mine anymore. I guess the reason I take this thing so seriously is because I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do with what I'm giving away. Once my own feelings and stories aren't mine anymore (the only things I have that make anyone any different from anyone else) and suddenly belong to the world (or just my mum and dad, or whoever I've sheepishly shown a new song to) I always feel as though I can't write anything that does justice to existence. Everything that I thought I saw with my 18 year old eyes is stupid and once I show someone what I have produced, I can see how oblivious I am to everything ever. And how often I fall back onto what I know, the same stories, the same feelings. 


I gasp for criticism but at the same time I dread it. I take it and almost always use it and find it to be amazingly helpful, but sometimes let myself fall into that melodramatic idea that I'm impossibly deluded, that everything I do is so much less that I think it is and everything I have ever written or will ever write isn't worth the time I spend on it. Which is when I start thinking 'Oh God I have no backup, I have nothing but this thing that I can't even do well anyway!' 


So I guess I almost always wish I was somewhere else or doing something else or being someone else, perhaps less so but even still in this situation at present, where I pretty much have everything I could have ever asked for, this time last year. I will keep showing people my songs because after all, I do think I have something to give, however small, or something to say, even if I don't really know how to say it yet. I think that maybe what I'm trying to provide for people is reassurance, that everything that you have ever felt ever has been felt a million times over and will continue to be felt a million years into the future. By using songwriting as a cathartic/scrapbooking exercise I help myself, and by writing about universal feelings and whatever I guess I especially hope to help someone else. 


By writing heaps about my 'practice' I suppose I'm trying to zone in on why I feel like this is what I want to do for the rest of forever. By justifying the work I do I give it context which in turn is conducive to productivity! Yeah!

Beware of young girls

I gave myself a fringe today as you can see. What you probably can't see from the above photos is that I'm pretty happy about it. 

I was inspired by this video (below. thinking about going blonde. time's they are a'changin) and by my hair style from last year when I accidentally used blunt scissors to cut my fringe and made myself look about six years old.

Gotta be you(ooooooooooo)

Now I like One Direction for the same reasons I watch Rugrats on Youtube and read The Saddle Club in my spare time. There is something so wholesome about the entire business of the band that makes me feel so warm I could melt all over my computer keyboard. 

Well actually. Like most things, I like the idea of One Direction more than I like the actual band themselves. I don't know their songs. I don't know their names. I kind of know what they look like (or know enough about what my little sister likes in boys to assume) and I know they're in Australia right now because the excitement of the preteen female populous in my area has reached remarkable heights. I don't speak to many young girls but I do catch trains a lot and they are on them. Trust me. 

One Direction fans are around, like Justin Beiber fans and Twilight fans, and we all know it. I love that. I love the manic obsessive teenage fandom, to the point where it's almost frightening. I love seeing young girls in white tshirts covered in black sharpie love hearts and '1D' scrawled anywhere it will fit. I love listening to them shush each other, huddled around someone's iPod listening to some acoustic remix of a song. I like remembering how I felt about The Beatles and drawing weird comparisons, 40-odd years too late. 

I feel like being 'wholesome' is supremely underrated. For all the time I've spent trying to be cool, and being frustrated by the fact that I will just NEVER be cool, I've slowly come to realise that 'wholesomeness' is not such a bad thing. I feel like if you take all the nice happy things about being alive (not including the nice happy things that sometimes happen when we drink or smoke or swear or throw things), put them in both of your hands and then give yourself a high five, you get someone like Taylor Swift or a whole bunch of people like One Direction or even a whole MOVIE (High School Musical 1+2+3) and everything is swell in this weird world where hair is always perfect and being 'sad' is something to just sing about. 

It's all just make believe I guess. I love that!

Maybe you were the ocean

I think a bit about religion or religious experiences but I've never properly had one in a church or a temple or anything like that. I think the closest thing to a religious experience for me would be standing in my room in the middle of the day crying really feeling like I'm living to some piece of music or maybe driving around roundabouts singing at the top of my lungs with my friends in the dark not knowing whether to close my eyes and breathe in night or keep them open and fall in love with every star in my town's sky. I know I'll look back on now and remember it like I remember when I was 15, and every cigarette I can't roll properly and every song I've dumped before I let anyone else listen and every grown up thing I've learnt and done this year will be hazy, and I'll remember everything glowing and shot in soft focus. Like 'now' is perfect in the future and because I'm some kind of optimist the 'future' is perfect now or something. Maybe. 


Anyway I guess I am thankful for the people and the times and the art and the supermarket catalogues that haven't let me fall back into that strange nostalgia vortex or completely away altogether because I wouldn't want to miss the nighttime drives or the mega chills of today because then what would I remember when I'm old? You can't really remember remembering. 

No ceiling

A lot of people say to me 'You sound like my mother,' and I haven't quite decided whether this is good or not yet. Either way I think it has something to do with the way I like to touch people on the forearm when I'm worried about them or the disdain I have for Coco Pops or the way I throw cups of tea at guests in my house while shrieking phrases like 'when I was your age' and 'you're not leaving this house dressed like that.' I'm not sure. 


Anyway last night a friend of mine was added to the long list of people who have said that to me at least once, as we lay as slouched as possible totally engrossed in the film 'Into The Wild'. For someone who acts mostly like a mum I have amazingly annoying childlike tendencies when it comes to watching films, simply because I just don't watch films. Like at all. I get up and walk around, go to sleep towards the end, make loud and hilarious observations throughout, you get it. And the worst part is I'm always amazed by a good film, not only because it's, like, pictures that MOVE and make NOISE and EVERYTHING but because film is actually an incredibly powerful artform and it's really lazy and bad and terribly remiss of me to be so behind in film-watching! It's kind of hilarious because I'm always like 'oh my God! This amazing thing called FILM is happening and I MUST BLOG about this RIGHT NOW the world must KNOW!' when in reality I am decades behind the rest of society. I am so ashamed and I always vow to watch ALL the movies I've missed but as you can imagine, for someone who could probably count all the movies they've seen on their hands, I get overwhelmed and frightened and just end up watching The Brady Bunch again. Oh God. 


Well yeah so 'Into The Wild' was a film that really caught my attention for a few reasons, primarily because my friend had recommended it so highly that he came over to my house so that he could supervise me watching it (knowing that I'd never ever think to actually put it on of my own accord). There's something so wonderful about things like that, when someone recommends something to you especially because they think you'll like it. But that's another story for another time! This movie was really something, and it made me think about living and 'things' and 'the wild' and about how it really is true that happiness is only real when shared. It was a frightening story in a lot of ways and of course the fact that it was based on truth is also terrible and scary and everything but I enjoyed it, not in a happy way I guess, but in some other learning-curve way which is just as good. 

Struggle street

Too much chocolate cake not enough cardio I'm wearing tops from Cotton On and my mum's makeup the sun shines through my bedroom window and it always wakes me up too early so at 7AM I'm already wondering how many times I can refresh Facebook and still see the same things happening still watch the same people continue their lives the same way wondering why we bother with most things we do like why do we make our beds because unmade beds are still good for keeping things in like bodies and diaries and sometimes that chocolate cake that I still can't stop eating.

When I saw someone that looked just like you

Well obviously I've been listening to this over and over and over since Jimmy Little died this week. Sometimes I wonder why I do that but then I remember I just spent the last few hours eating dumplings and drinking bargain-basement wine singing happy birthday for no one and that one day I'll be back in bed needing someone to bring themselves home to me and right now I'd rather live, and THEN when I get home romantically drape myself around my room and turn this up really loud

Don't let it bring you down

On nice days in the city, before class, I like to try and find somewhere to sit in the middle of everything so I can absorb as much of everyone else's routines as I can. Today I sat right in the middle of the city, watching everyone do everything all at once. A little girl came and sat next to me and normally I don't like kids much but today, my heart just melted (mainly because she had these little plastic sandals on that I wanted so badly). I find that little kids, mainly girls, like me quite a bit despite my old lady stiffness towards them; there's something in the way that I dress, I think, all colours and patterns and stuffed animals and shiny things, that they like. I didn't say anything to her, just smiled lamely and tried to inch myself politely away from her grubby fingers moving greedily towards the birds in my hair. Even so, this little blonde creature just made me happy for a moment and it made me wonder if I would actually like to have kids one day...or if I just like the idea of them, taking them to shopping centres during the day eating cookies with Smarties in them and having a Labrador and a house in the suburbs where they learn to ride their bikes on the street?


Another thing I like to do on nice days in the city is walk by my favourite theatre. It's beautiful and grand and old and I have very fond memories of standing inside and outside, being inspired and getting that fluttery heart from the idea of actually performing there myself one day. It's another one of those comforting things I like to do because it's just SO old and SO big that it seems like it'll never go away and the possibility of me playing there won't ever really leave either. It sounds ridiculous and romantic but I am very much both of those things. 


And it makes me wonder if I will ever have to choose between having a family and having a career in this business. The nature of that is complex and worrisome so I'm not going to wonder for much longer...instead I'll write or play or sing because that won't ever leave, and I won't ever wish it would - or wish I could love it more than I do (impossible). 

You were a house on fire

'S'all happening!'


I sit in booths at sushi restaurants trying to explain why I like saying that. Holding my head in the crook of my elbow, swinging from side to side I just keep saying it and I don't really know why. Got something to do with everything, it means good things and bad things, it's a comfort and it's frightening. I say it a lot and it was one of those things like you don't realise you're doing until someone tells you. 


Right now I have a cement mixer ankle and I'm hobbling around eating dinner at 5pm in big long dresses and I truly encompass and embrace the life of the pensioner. Sometimes I feel like I wouldn't mind being old, like actually old, living with things like 'midday' as an actual concept of time not filled and soft fine face hair and walking and calling my old lady friends 'the girls' or something. There's a real definite sense of rut-routine in that life that I like very much and that is probably pretty concerning but I'm not too worried. I have energy to spend at 1am writing music and the manic to be restless about not being able to run so I'm not so old just yet. I'm kicking on for a few more years while 's'all happening' because I don't particularly want to miss any of it, even if I'm not really sure what it is or if I'll like it.