Janis Joplin: my absolute hero

Today I was going to write about something else, but on the train ride home my iPod shuffled onto 'Cry Baby' by Janis Joplin and all this nostalgia hit me all over my body with more force than the force it took me to 'break' (self diagnosis how ya doin') my toe on the coffee table last night.

This is a post honouring everything to do with Janis Joplin, who, as those who have known me from the year 2007 onwards, has been a hah-UGE part of my teenage years, from when I first started listening to her when I was like 14. I was clinically obsessed; you know One Direction fans? I sympathise with them. Really, I do. I once wrote a creative piece, in my FREE time, about meeting her at Woodstock and immediately becoming best friends. I drew pictures of her and put them up on my wall. I re-designed her biography book cover for an English assignment. I think I wrote a song about her.

Specifically I remember staying up really late one night, lying on my bedroom floor listening to I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! (best album title award #1 always), when Maybe came on. It was like someone had reached into my chest and pulled out my heart; I remember realising that my tentative hormonal crushes were comparitively laughable, when put up next to the hurt and soul and humanity in every note Janis Joplin ever sung. I fell madly in love with her, harder than any crush I'd ever experienced before, every little part of her and her voice was something I wanted to know about because it seemed as though she knew everything about everything ever!

Listening through my (impressive) collection of Janis this afternoon all these feelings came rushing back - certainly tamer than they once were (don't expect any Janis Joplin-themed fanfictions any time soon) but still wildly, um, appreciative? Admiring? I don't know. She still makes me feel all the feelings. And it's funny, how I can appreciate the technicalities of the music so much more now that I know about things that I've been doing at uni. And what's even funnier, and weirder, is how I can only now see how she's filtered, ever so slightly, into my own performances...

Gee I hope you have a spare hour or two to get your head around these diamonds. One listen will not suffice.

“I’m a victim of my own insides. There was a time when I wanted to know everything. I read a lot. I guess you’d say I was pretty intellectual. It’s odd, I can’t remember when it changed. It used to make me very unhappy, all that feeling. I just didn’t know what to do with it. But now I’ve learned how to make feeling work for me. I’m full of emotion and I want a release, and if you’re on stage and if it’s really working and you’ve got the audience with you, it’s a oneness you feel. I’m into me, plus they’re into me, and everything comes together..."

"...you’re full of it. I don’t know, I just want to feel as much as I can, it’s what ‘soul’ is all about.”

You know your youth

Above is a picture of me and my little cousins, singing 'You Are My Sunshine' together. Their little bodies are just humming with endless amounts of energy that I could feel, with them sitting right up close to me, on my lap, at my shoulder, at my back. They have that wonderful little-kid thing where when their attention to something is complete and whole, it certainly won't last very long but while it does, it is the most undiluted, pure thing in the world. Curiosity, is such a beautiful thing! 


As my hands moved knowingly around the notes their little noses nearly touched my fingers, as if the secret of making a piano make music would be revealed if only they could look closer. Eyes wide with wonderful questions as I pointed to the music, telling them about the language of notes. I watched quietly from the other room as one of them explored the piano like I used to do at her age; slowly walking up and down the notes, laying my whole arm across and just playing for the sake of sound, not even in that show-off little kid way...I can't wait to show them the most beautiful sounds ever created; Chopin, Debussy, and later, when they need to be taught about feelings, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young...! (I see these music education sessions flawlessly soft-focus in my head, with their little stockinged legs swinging off the side of the piano stool, bookending me in while I play Moonlight Sonata.) 


I could just cry! I started teaching piano and voice lessons this year and it has certainly melted my poor ancient heart in ways I did not expect. Do you realise how malleable little brains are? I didn't. They learn so fast, they really are just little sponges! 

In other news, we finished a new song today with the band, here is a lyrical preview. Can't wait to share it with you at our single launch on the 18th of August (sneaky plug sorry please carry on). 

light lines like veins, like a crown around your face. (light lines like veins.) 

i place my fingers in the spaces between your ribs. they fan out as you breathe in. 

(oh) darling you're just a pile of bones

(oh) but i still love you so. 


i'm lying on your bed, on cotton sheets, in roses red. (blood rushing to my head).


i'm not frightened this time, as both your hands just swallow mine. (i'm not frightened this time.)

Oh wait one more plug um my velvety man and some lovely cats from uni play in this cool band and man they're really cooking with gas. They're launching their album on Saturday and you should get down for mad dancing funk funs. 

Sweet like cinnamon

i think i'll miss you forever

like the stars miss the sun in the morning skies

later's better than never

even if you're gone i'm gonna drive

your hands swallow mine, you listen, my head

hums about you, heavy in your arms. 

Pourquoi?

This week during a songwriting session with the band I made a huge fuss about including one single (F minor) chord in one of our new songs. I came up with this rushed list of technical reasons why it should be there and vehemently pleaded its case as if it'd done something wrong by existing. We built it up and down in different ways with different notes   and instruments and strumming and every time we would tilt our heads to the side as if the thought of the whole thing was too heavy in our brains to keep them upright. 


Tonight I went to a gig of some uni friends of mine, and their music kind of layered itself all on top of me like a blanket and made me realise that, lame as it is, I just really, really, really love sounds, bad, good, moderate...All the technical scales and modes and chordal structure and functional harmony certainly have its place, and I'm glad to be learning it, but when you get down to it...I do what I do and because I don't think anything else makes me more content; I don't know anything else, really. 


And sometimes (usually around when you start thinking about how good sounds are), the stars just align and the universe remembers you, you tiny little speck of insignificance, and minuscule nuggets of perfection sprinkle around you like glitter; walking in twos in the middle of a busy road in the pouring rain on a Friday night, my friend standing at the pie section of 7/11 looking about as absurdly out of place as I would if I was to ever set foot in Wah Wah, giggling uncontrollably about nothing in particular and drinking sneaky beer in a weird, weird bookshop-turned-performance art/music space...

 And this afternoon I also realised that 'You Are My Sunshine' is one of the most beautiful songs ever written, ever. The words are beyond perfect - so simple, so sweet! And the way the melody slips into minor without you realising, or something, is so subtle, and so sad. 

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are grey. You'll never know dear, how much I love you. Please don't take my sunshine away.

Sine-a-long

I am happily sitting on trains again back and forthing to uni, I just didn't realise how much I've missed that wonderful electric place. Today at uni we were playing with sine waves, and weird, completely computerised, self-made sounds (with this program, if you're interested), which was fun. I do get a little concerned when my teacher rails off numbers and methods and my classmates take it all in with a single nod (for the record I do NOT know how to computer, OR how to maths) but when it came to the crunch my computer made a mostly awful sound, which was echoed in a mighty chorus of rookie sine wave noise ("eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"), piercing our eardrums most satisfactorily.

Getting on board a different train of thought, I've been working on some music the last couple of nights that has kept me quite occupied. It started out being a song with a piano accompaniment and now it's more of a piano piece with little bits of voice here and there. Speaking of, here are some examples of why pianos are better than most things in the world.

I know Let It Be is an obvious one but I was reminded of it yesterday when I found a cool copy of the sheet music at Savers (terrible picture but you get it). I also got a couple of Signet Shakespeares, which is so exciting because they look so pretty. My man of brown velvet also got two volumes of a book called 'How To Succeed in a Man's World', the purchase of which I perhaps thoughtlessly encouraged...it holds such gems as 'Odd as it may appear, try to think of every woman as fragile, helpless, or old.' I am indignant on behalf of my gender, but sadly I have always viewed myself, sighing dramatically, as each of these things!
               

Cigarettes and chocolate milk

I like Rufus Wainwright, I think? 


I know I like Poses, mostly everything on that album but particularly of course the title song. 

I don't know. He's kinda sad, in every way; the way he threads his melodies, resolute and resigned, and his words, so tragic! The last line of Poses: '...no kidding.' Oh man oh man. 

I do worry about lots of things but a constant one that's way up there always bubbling away is being 'outta the game'. I have earnestly chosen to be a musician and to write music and be artistic and try to be successful doing so, and while it would be silly to attempt this without wholeheartedly believing that I could actually do it (which I do), I do give way to certain ideas that fester in the back of my (everyone's!) brain sometimes, that tell me just how deluded I am, how stupid, how self-indulgent - and weirdly, how I've probably already missed my chance, that most people have many more things going for them at 19 years old than I do. 


The brain is a wonderful thing, but it is equally as cruel y'know! God, who was it...it could've been Hemingway, I think, who said something like 'a smart person who is happy is the rarest thing in the world.' I don't quite agree, (and I probably misquoted that anyway) but there is something to it. I think that the smarter you are, the better your brain is at telling you how terrible you are, in weirdly creative ways. In saying that though, it should work both ways - IF you're really, truly smart, you're totally capable of out-smarting your brain when it tries to smart-arse its way through your self-esteem, if you get what I mean. 


See what listening to Rufus Wainwright does to you? I had a good day today, now I'm talking about outsmarting bullying brains. 

The quiet world

The band has changed names, a silly idea to leave it til just before we release our new single but nonetheless! We aren't Volumetric anymore, come and say hi to us at Nebraskatak! Speaking of singles, we have one, called 'In A Cage', and will be launching it on the 18th of August at the John Curtin Bandroom on Smith Street in Melbourne. This is seriously hot off the press - we are waiting for the track to be mastered as I type, and it was recorded on Friday last week in a marathon session in the studio. Lotsa fun! 


So that's some cool band stuff that's been going on. Unfortunately I don't think we have any photos from the Woodstock gig the other night, which is a shame because everyone and everything looked fantastically both woody and stocky...

That's all pretty unemotional (still exciting) information and not even in the form of a bad poem, what's come over me today? Here are some songs that will make up for the upbeat-edness of this post...

disintegration

(you were angels so)

my psychiatrist scheduled weeks between sessions so 

i learned my lessons from joni mitchell's 'blue'

(hold for the last time then)

my fingers fold like petals, i sing like metal on metal. 

pretty eyelashes catching diamonds, crying tears over nothing. 

(open my eyes)

(but i never see)

(anything)

By the time we got to Woodstock

Goodness me!


I was going to tell you all about yesterday, yesterday, but I got home at like 1am and decided to sleep for a few hours before rising with the sun (impossible NOT to do in a bedroom with see-through curtains). So the below post is my latest verbal monstrosity called Amy Whining.

I went for a walk today with Lana Del Rey, trying to both clear things out of my head, and fill up time before an impromptu gig this evening. She is just wonderful, and I know a lotta people disagree. That's OK, I'm picking up what you're puttin' down, gurl!

Everyone's always like 'Oh yeah, I can see why you'd like her.' Which is interesting, because I can't really decide exactly WHY I like her myself. I do think she is probably one of the most beautiful women I have ever laid my eyes upon, and I'd like to say that I think that's beside the point (it's not, I love beautiful things - 'a thing of beauty is a joy forever')...I do love how DRAMATIC she is. I think that's got a lot to do with it. There's a moment in the Born To Die video where she's sitting on her throne with her crown of flowers and she just has the dirtiest, most spoilt-rich-girl expression on her face and to see such a perfectly proportioned, credit to evolution, piece of artwork of a human face, scrunched in such an ugly, pouty way...in the words of Holden Caulfield, that KILLS me. I'm not kidding. 


Beautiful things that are ugly. I love that. Last night I was talking with my friend outside a pub, when everyone else was inside laughing and drinking and playing ping pong. We fed off each others' exhaustion and beer-moodiness and rolled cigarettes next to towering security guards, giggling hopelessly about the saddest things in the world. I'm very tired, of breathing in and out so fast, and it's so nice to feel the brick walls of our favourite beer garden on my stocking-ed skin, and two hands sweetly swallowing one of mine, and my best friend slowing breathing tumbles of smoke and clouds half-covering stars kind of like me when I get nervous; see-through and minuscule and flaky and forever away.

(The gig tonight is Woodstock-themed. Peace!)

Amy whining

quietly slipping between shop aisles breathing 

in and out, too too much. i have a whole lotta stuff to keep 

to myself. (and do i know it well.)

well you don't know anyway no i wouldn't say

what kept me silent seeing being coy and charming

in that little high school sweetie kinda way. 

i can be whatever you want me to be uh huh but just so 

i know give me a minute to beat this in the bathroom baby

breathing slowly waiting for the waves to swallow me i swallow back 

the nerves, when they reform and attack. 

i fight a good fight. darling i do so fight back. 

but i get go got back to black like amy 

whining on the internet and letting dizzy cast spells on my poor tortured head. 

(little whispers, ceiling fans,

i sleep in coffins just in case, mum and dad

sitting wringing in and out their hands.)

hovering, hovering, at the head of my bed -

'she's not the same,' they said, they said. 

Whenever I'm alone with you

Today I did something really stupid and ran for like eight kilometres without stopping. This isn't one of those things where I'm like 'URGH guys I can't BELIEVE I just did that man oh man I'm just sooo tired but sooo fit hey wow I can run soooo far and fast and watch me go with my skinny little body hellooooo boys!' 


Really, really not. 


I am stupidly exhausted and light-headed and I have no one to blame but myself. I don't even have a skinny little body because, like I exclaimed in desperate despair to my friend today, I just really like to eat. And at weird times, too; one of my greatest fantasies is to make someone think Robert Smith wrote the lines '...spinning round and round, always take a big bite, it's such a gorgeous sight - to see you eat in the middle of the night!' about me eating Weeties with milk at 3AM after getting home from a night out. (Which, trust me, is so much more romantic sounding when you write it down...)

So now I'm sitting here eating comfort cheesecake (exhibit A) and patting my dog on the head as he dozes on the heating duct, quietly getting zen for the next few days of band excitements...


I'll probably blog about it all too, just FYI. But right now I'm going to make an indentation in the couch and look up pictures of Robert Smith, just 'cause. He is dearly aesthetically pleasing wouldn't you say?


(ALSO THANKYOU SO MUCH TO THE ANONYMOUS COMMENTER WHO DARKENED MY BACKGROUND FOR ME. YOU ARE SO SWEET. THANKYOU. COME OVER TO MY HOUSE BEFORE I EAT ALL THE CHEESECAKE AND I WILL GIVE YOU SOME.)

You are my sunshine

I have this compartment in the relationship-y bit of my brain, made up of a special category of people called 'the sunshine people'. It's easy to spot a sunshine person but hard to describe why; because it's not that they're always happy, or smiling (sometimes sun goes behind the clouds y'know) but there is something inherently organic, sweet, nurturing, and kind about them. They're the kind of people who make hand gestures like Penny Lane in Almost Famous, spreading their fingers out like flowers, or smile at nothing in particular. They listen to pop music and Nick Cave too and dance all arms and legs everywhere, unselfconscious and sweaty and sometimes you blink and it looks like they're flying or something. You know what, they are the most content beings on this earth. 


One of the saddest things in life, I've found, is when one of the sunshine people are not actually from the sunshine land. Or they once were, and now, for whatever reason, aren't. The mother of someone close to me was attacked last year, and I won't ever forget the way, when he first told me, he furrowed his brow a little, and smiled one of those awfully sad smiles and said 'She's not the same.' 


And even just the other night, I met someone who I could have sworn was made of sunshine and the song 'I Wanna Be Your Lover' by Prince, but later found out from those who knew her well that she was not, that her life was hard and complex, and so much worry had been spent on her - and it made me so sad! To watch her bounce away like a child and to realise that mostly, no one is ever as bright with the lights turned on. 


I've never been one of the sunshine people (too nervous for that). So I do wonder what it must be like over in sunshine land...


I do believe, also, with the pretty hope of someone who has not lived long enough to know otherwise, that it would be possible to return to sunshine land, should something happen that is awful enough to take you away from there. 


Similarly I guess I believe in the immigration of the not-so-sunshine-y people to the sunshine land. I don't know why I think that it's such a simple and straightforward place to return to and to come home to, but I figure that it kind of has to be. I don't know. 

“I had no reason to be over optimistic,
But somehow when you smiled
I could brave bad weather”

Crying while eating

I hope you enjoyed yesterday's vibes posts; lately it's much easier to let you know how I'm travelling through visual/aural media, because every time I try to write something down I get distracted by pretty colours or nice sounding noises...

Just because I'm pretty happy at the moment it doesn't mean I still don't dig a bit of Hamlet, y'know! 


I did one of my most favourite every day things to do today and caught the train around end-of-school time. Like most things I absolutely adore the idea of school, and choose to ignore the actual reality of how much I disliked some of the confines of my own conservative experience of particularly Year 12...I do have, very much, a soft spot for the whole institution though I gotta say, and watching year nines riding their bikes to the train station, throwing their helmets at each other and yelling ('he's totally changed since he found out all the girls think he's hot') makes me very content for reasons I probably will explore while sitting on a psychiatrist's couch. 


I like a lot of every day things; instant coffee, supermarkets, trains, red lipstick, Facebook, The Beatles, junk mail, Woman's Day magazine, stickers of cats...usually things that are bright and obnoxious and ugly, I like very much. It seems like those are the things that are loud enough to mute ringing ears or bad news or crying before you go to bed. I don't understand how/why comfort can be found in the ugliest of things when it can also be found in the loveliest of things but hey, I didn't make the rules...