She is fast, thorough, and sharp as a tack

The band are playing at the Corner Hotel on Wednesday night which is a BIG DEAL for us! Come!

In other news the vibes are good still. Here's a taster:

breathing heavily, quietly you say

absolutely nothing. 

i hear you all the same. 

That means a lot

My little four year olds are coming soon for their singing lesson, so somehow I'm going to paint a tenacious smile on and visit little kid world for half an hour. I am still really very quite tired, hazy, having trouble stringing words together into normal sentences, watching sunlight through thick curtains, eating breakfast in the afternoon...


Last night was mad funs. I had to give a speech at uni to tell prospective students how awesome the course is, which was whatever, but I couldn't help feeling a little overwhelmed and unreal, remembering so clearly how it felt to be sandwiched between my parents, pointing out my course in the booklet and trying to stop myself from getting too attached to the dreamy idea of actually getting in! And here I am now, halfway through first year, so dreamily happy to be at the VCA and telling everyone else how good it is to be here too. Sometimes the universe really does help us out. 


I didn't much fancy the idea of standing in a sweaty bar on my own waiting for my friends to arrive at a gig we were going to, so I filled in an hour or so drinking coffee and reading 'The  Catcher in the Rye,' which kind of took me away and made me late. In another dreamy way. The waiter saw me reading on my own and put a little candle on my table next to my book. Such sweet and lovely things that happen! 


And of course the gig was great. Saskwatch at the Cherry Bar - get down in the next few weeks, they are huge and mad and electric. Cherry was as packed as I've seen any room ever. I swear to God there was about ten different people touching me at once and we were all swimming in an ocean of communal soulful sweat, stomping side to side on the thick sticky floor. 


We are young! Bless!

Tipping point

I think I'm at a point where I could either sleep for days, or never sleep again. This is what happens when I'm exhausted from being too content with the life and the vibes. Too much feeling, too many golden showers of soft focus train rides and silly giggling and putting things inside grand pianos to see what kind of noise it will make. 


I've been writing a lot. I like the look of a carefully assembled pile of words equally as much as I like the sounds and the feeling of them inside your mouth when spoken aloud. I like to use brackets because I don't think tangents should ever be dismissed. I don't like to use capital letters because of Cummings (I've told you this before I think) and because I like that without them everything is just that little more deadpan...even sorta superficially detached but still, like, inherently desperate? I don't know. 


Desperate is a good word to describe my writing I think. I write bad poetry but as you well know I do quite like bad things. I'm currently getting a collection together to release in  zine-form. I'll let you know when they will be available/when I learn how to fold a zine properly!

On any given Tuesday

My family will be gaining two new members in the next few weeks, after the 'longest pregnancy ever', as my uncle said the other night. Eleven years is, indeed, a long time to wait for a family to close in on itself in content completion but finally, finally, we are set to welcome two new little lives into our arms. I will be a cousin, head honcho of the Gilligan family chorale at Christmas concert time and a babysitter and most of all a friend. 

I feel as though we were all born for some purpose; I'm quite sure that my purpose has something to do with the way sound bleeds into colour bleeds into feelings and everything else like that. But there are people I know whose purposes are quite different yet just as strong, as tenacious, and as inherently known to them as I feel about what I love the most. 

My aunty, mother-to-be, was born into this role. The golden glow surrounding her as she clasped champagne and frantically lamented the fact that cottontail undies are no longer produced was absolutely and positively there and all of us could see it and feel it. She had all the sweet softness of an expectant mother, as it should be, because everything is now as it should be. I didn't realise so much until just two days ago when I walked into the room in their house which has been quietly awaiting little bodies for years. At this point I didn't know about our new arrivals so I saw the delicate wall painting of a little girl in a paddock, and the calico dolls my little sister had made sitting drooping on the beds, and the quilts my Nanna had made with Peter Rabbit appliqued on to the soft fabric and I left, unhappy, uncomfortable and upset, feeling the incompleteness of purpose and the linger of so much love with no where to go. 


But that is not the case anymore. All the love we have to give now has somewhere to go and I feel as though it will increase exponentially when we meet our new little additions. That's all I will say here and now because I could get caught up in the point of living and I don't really feel like going there today. 


Just know that things are happening and things are changing and for once I'm not completely stunned and frightened by this. 

Take these broken wings and learn to fly

Today I took some little little girls for a singing lesson and I think my cheeks burst from smiling so much but still, it was fun. I've definitely said this before on here somewhere but little kids, for reasons unknown for certain but still certainly amazing to me, tend to like me very much. I've always thought it's something to do with how ridiculously I clothe myself; walking along the fashion crime line in a sea of colour and pattern and fake animals. They stare unashamedly and giggle and think I'm a fairy and say so. It's divine. 


I very much like the idea of introducing music to little kids early on, especially good music full of imagery and excitement. Today we sang Octopus's Garden, with me and my orange ukulele and some very intricate choreography (I'd like to be *points to self* under the sea *makes wave with arm* in an octopus's garden *shakes arms around* in the shade *puts hands over head* etc etc), and I saw their little eyes light up in that golden second where kids are actually engaging with an activity with their rainbow imaginations and putting them to use...

I wish my head was still little like that, just four years old and still growing and still so preoccupied with how beautiful and wonderful the world is to realise how awful it is too. I still eat peanut butter out of the jar with my fingers and use facepaint but I know too much (not that much but still TOO much) to settle down.

Don't you think everything is just unadulterated happiness when filtered through a little colourful felt Muppet body? I haven't told you yet how much of a world hero Jim Henson is. One day. 

Only something in me understands

I feel like I have lots to say but I'm just not sure how to say it. I've been housesitting since Sunday, living a strange alternate life much closer to the city with a little dog for company. Somehow I don't feel like myself but then again, I feel much more content than I have for a while. I've even been walking around with no red lipstick on; I really don't know what that means, but my cracked lips have been thanking me. 


The main idea for this week was to write some new music, but I've found the days slipping in and out and away from me very quickly, what with walking dogs and rehearsals with unimates and bandmates and friends coming and going and me (Nonna Gilligan) cooking up several vats of pasta for the incoming and outgoing. But I figure it's all relative; my friends are in and out, and I'm supposed to piece together new work from whatever fun and niceties they leave with me. The Beatles, Woody Allen, Leggo's pasta sauce, Cleo magazine, polaroids. There's songs in there somewhere. 


I'm really happy, actually. It's been ages since I've been forgetful and silly but I have been, for the past couple of days. I locked myself out of the house twice, and climbing the back fence for the second time in my huge Mexicano skirt, I wondered why it is that I'm suddenly not concerned by scrambling over fences twice my height in the pouring rain, with elderly neighbours sighing from their warm insides. 


My hyper little heart pounds faster these days but the difference is that now, I don't think it's always frightened.  

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

You really gotta hold on me

I could listen to The Beatles forever.

I've realised that I am a silly partner when it comes to music-listening. Everything is just too good to be true and I get overwhelmed and it's an embarrassing little spectacle of sighing and head-holding. 


Last night I watched two movies (!!): The Blues Brothers and Woody Allen's Manhattan. Both amazingly top notch. 

Same deal with movies. Sometimes things are just too beautiful, too perfect, too sad - like when Tracy says I can't believe you met somebody that you like better than me and just cries right there in the milkshake bar - it's too much, too much to take!

More than less than

I'm a sucker for things that come last; last lines, last words, last scenes. I will watch the last episode of a series that I've never seen before and I will read the last stanza of a poem before the first. Last things are fascinating things because they live and curdle inside of you. I think the vibes of my own terrible poems are just last lines; I want all lines to have all the gut-churning sickness of a devastatingly beautiful last line. 


I have very romantic ideas all the time and real life always gets in the way. I want to live in a candy and pink lemonade kind of world where I can have platinum blonde hair and flawless red lipstick and the strength of heart and mind to know what to say and when to say it. I feel as though I have no interest in being real, but at the same time, I miss routine when I skip it. 

a minute bends, the second ends. 
there's no way to mend this 
(if it breaks - ) 
we can't be friends. 


**


you are made of sea salt and black ink - 
impossible to save (impossible to sink) 

Magic melodies

GUYS. Yesterday Savers was amazing. Look at these cool things. LOOK.

This skirt is from Mexico. Really. And totally handmade and patchwork and heavy and full and SO GOOD. This picture is me standing outside Mexico or something wearing it.

This dress is mustard which I'm really into at the moment. Mustard with dark lipstick and collarbones. It has one of those awesome cuts that go in at the waist and then are pleated in the skirt, if you know what I mean? (Yeah fashion!) Also take note of the pockets - pockets on dresses/skirts are super-REMELY underrated. If I ever make or design a dress pockets will be a must. Us girls need somewhere handy to keep our red lipstick, am I right?

On my trip to the shopping centre/Savers I got some photos developed which is always good fun. 

Til the morning comes

I admire flippancy in many forms, because everything I do is planned to the greatest extent possible. But you know, I'm sitting here with my new turntable, watching and listening to my Mum's records from the seventies, and thinking that if I was flippant about more things - would I notice just how much the old crackling sounds like vinyl breathing? Little things. 


Speaking about vinyl. I suppose I'm going back to my little kid roots a little, listening to Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, America, Carly Simon, you know. It's funny, how far from that small girl I am now, what the songs mean now, and what I remember they were. Like this:

When I was little I absolutely lapped up this song, and I think it had something to do with the imagery in the lyrics...


'You walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht
Your hat strategically dipped below one eye
Your scarf it was apricot
You had one eye on the mirror as you watched yourself gavotte
And all the girls dreamed that they'd be your partner
They'd be your partner, and...'

Same with these...

These songs, plus a select few more, are very deeply engrained into my system, even though Mum would sometimes skip Woodstock because it was the slowest song on the mixtape in our old Volvo. 


I was talking to someone at some point in my life and Joni Mitchell came up, and I said something like 'she taught me how to feel.' Which, to a degree, I think is very true, even though my companion scoffed and said 'You're fifteen, you don't know how to feel yet,' (also a valid observation but nonetheless). I know I learnt more from listening to Joni Mitchell's 'Ladies of the Canyon' as a child, than I did in the entirety of my ninth year of existing.  

She is so busy being free

Here are some vibes for this time; 

Because

Uni is over for the semester. I came home at a loss, after cycling myself into a frenzy, wondering how to fill my time...so naturally I went underwater. I'm catching a train out in ten minutes. See you ashore. 

They will never take our blonde hair and our red lipstick

These past few days I've been flitting around from last-minute plan to last-minute plan, trying to make the most of being close enough to my gurl to be able to flick the hair out of her eyes with my fingers, while manically preparing for final uni DEADLINES (11.33am this morning - welcome to art school), while welcoming back my own very jetlagged family from God Bless America, while defeating nerves and sickness and drinking too much wine for a school night and seeing a few too many clocks tick over to tomorrow before going to sleep. It's quite safe to say I'm burnt out, but happily satisfied to be lying in this particular  pile of ashes.


My little heart has been relatively whole for a grand total of two days, as almost every loved one has been close to me once again - until this evening, when my friend takes another piece of me with her on her adventures. More than happy to give it up, knowing she's left more than a little bit of herself in me somewhere. 


So while my little darling is flying away tonight, my family flew home just yesterday, all bloodshot eyes and exhausted grins and gasping frightfully at the cold. My home is proper again; Dad snoring from beneath my bedroom, my big sister's light through my window, my little sister talking loudly to a suitor and me, not feeling inadequate anymore for not being able to consume the amount of food my Mum had been making for just two (enough for five, clearly a ratio set in concrete. Impossible habits). 


I'm sitting here in my room, consumed by the remnants of late and trying to summon the energy to clear the last hurdle of a presentation I have to do tomorrow morning. Rather than over-prepare and work myself up into a frenzy like I would normally do, I'm going to sit for while longer and trust my inherent ability to spend lots of time talking about art and music and how everything is just great and just yeah! Sound! I'm nervous but I just think that the thing inside of me that compelled me to make these 'compositional decisions' has its own little voice and will speak for me tomorrow, while the rest of me tries to keep up with the help of the fury of a thousand skinny lattes. 


So that's me, really, at the moment; a mess of caffeine and PVA glue and the queue at Officeworks. A cacophony of horrendous computer skills and hilariously clashing top-and-skirt combos and infallible, desperately determined red lipstick.

As if I didn't already have enough proof that my family really do know me from the inside out, here is the pile of souvenirs that was incredibly generously unloaded before me when we got home from the airport. Take particular note of the book of Frida Kahlo's personal photos (I'll scan some pages at some point, too beautiful to be described), coffee mugs from the Guggenheim, a Frank Lloyd Wright photo frame, Daisy by Marc Jacobs (from the real live duty free shop!) and, in a true demonstration of sisterly sweetness, my sister bought me Bon Iver's 'For Emma, Forever Ago...' on vinyl because she knows how closely it is wrapped around my heart. 


Here are the songs that have been friends to me lately, each with their own little stories to tell:

(Yeah really, Africa - shame, I have none.)

There ain't no way we can be friends

I paint myself because I am so often alone, and because I am the person I know best. 

- Frida Kahlo

Suddenly I am intrigued by close up pictures of blood, because blood seems to be a bit of a vibes theme this week. Last night I went to a crazy gig by, and with, my crazy friends and it got crazy but in a nice safe way. I like being entranced by visuals with music as well don't you know, and that was what last night was all about. Then I dragged my sister's dress through muddy sidewalks walking in that strange tipsy way, as though you have so many important places to be when really the most important place you're headed is towards more alcohol. Well that, and music, and a dance floor so unprepared for our ecstatic movement that it cleanly broke. 


Standing outside the party with my phone pressed to my ear, The Jackson 5's ABC muffled but definite and tiny drops of rain getting caught on my eyelashes like crystals. Sinking against bricks, opposite and sick. Putting nostalgia in a cage. 

In other news I'm a mess of emotions more so than usual, as one of my best friends in the whole WORLD makes her final preparations for her overseas adventure, leaving this little town for much grander things for four months or so. I know nobody who deserves this more than she does; she has spent the last seven months or so working, and working, and saving, and pouring drinks for buck's nights and cleaning up vomit in bathrooms and doing 17 hour days to save up for this trip, and now something that seemed so unreal is finally here and it's hitting us hard! She is so excited, and I am so excited for her, but saying goodbye will be hard!


Tonight was like a 'farewell' barbecue for her and her travelling partner, and as I watched them stand together, quietly going over logistics, ticking things off on their fingers as they spoke, my heart flew out of me and towards them in some weird empathetic fit. I love them both very much and I know they will have an absolutely amazing time and while the mother and best friend in me frets, I'm reassured by their dedication to this whole crazy thing, proven again and again as they each worked hard for the money, day in day out. 


I said to Mum just before 'We should've caught up more! We should've seen each other more!' and she kind of smiled and said 'that's what happens - real life gets in the way' and she's right of course, like Mums usually are, and God last year I was so ready to be out in the real world but now the real world is all around me and everywhere and everything and it's scary! And crazy! But in a good way!

Build a rocket boys!

Be still my heart! I remembered this song this morning at the train station, where my dorky foggy breath was getting confused with the cool smoke coming from the lungs of the girl next to me. My eyes were all welled up as Guy Garvey hit that second build a rocket boys! and I know it had nothing to do with the icy wind blowing on my face. Sigh. Today bits of blue sky wove between clouds like watercolours and it made me realise that even though the sky is so grey it's worth going outside because of the holes of blue. 


If my belief is correct, and Apple is taking over not only the world but our minds as well, my iPod was certainly intertwined with my own nostalgic habits this morning on the train. First Lippy Kids, then this:

Oh Joni you just know everything.


and then this: 

I was considering this song today and I honestly would list it as one of my favourite songs ever. It is just the best. I don't know why. Perhaps it's because of the state I was in when I first found it; comically serious, huddled in a corner on a bus from paradise to palookaville and surrounded by same-aged hungover hooligans, vomiting in plastic bags in front of and behind me. It paints weird lines in crimson and grey all over me and all around me until I can't even smell vomit anymore. I had to have a blood test yesterday so perhaps I'm feeling particularly fond of it right now because of the doctor's needle that was inside of me and the time spent with the dizzy head of a non-meat eating nineteen year old female...but I think there is still certainly that something there that is so appealing. One day I want to listen to it and lie on the edge of the pier from the paradise the bus took me away from, backwards with my head over the side so that the sky and the ocean are vice versa and I don't know which way is up anymore. 

Well, I met you at the blood bankWe were looking at the bagsWondering if any of the colorsMatched any of the names we knew on the tagsYou said, see look that's yoursStacked on top with your brother'sSee how the resemble one anotherEven in their plastic little coversAnd I said I know it wellThat secret that you knew but don't know how to tellIt fucks with your honor and it teases your headBut you know that it's good girl'Cause its running you with redThen the snow started fallingWe were stuck out in your carYou were rubbing both of my handsChewing on a candy barYou said, ain't this just like the presentTo be showing up like this?As a moon waned to crescentWe started to kissAnd I said I know it wellThat secret that we know that we don't know how to tellI'm in love with your honor, I'm in love with your cheeksWhat's that noise up the stairs, babe?Is that Christmas morning creaks?And I know it well, I know it wellAnd I know it well, I know itAnd I know it, I know itAnd I know it, I know it

And last but not least, I sat with EE Cummings on the way home, who I love very much, and who I read with wide young eyes, amazed not only by how words can be so goshdarn beautiful-sounding but beautiful-looking too. I only just remembered this as I read through some of his work today, but a while ago I decided to do away with capitalisation ALL TOGETHER purely because of Cummings. While this was an ill-fated tribute in many aspects (my high school teachers were quite annoyed), I still write my letters to loved ones, my diary entries and my songs with no capitals - and of all the things I write, those are the things that matter the most, don't you think?