What I never did is done

Oh goodness me, to be young!

Last night Nebraskatak played at Red Bennies, straight after the burlesque/cabaret act Holy Ship! After being mistaken for one of the burlesque performers I was empowered and the gig was cooking. I just know that times like these will be those things that I will look back on when I'm old. Sitting upstairs in KFC eating noodles and doing my dear friend's makeup, giggling and checking reflections in the window. Sitting on a sofa bed, pulling off my fake eyelashes and crawling under covers into arms.

It's late. I was going to finish this with a speel on the Beach Boys, whom chance brought tickies for free for me and my friends, but 3am bedtimes are catching up and I'm young but I'm quite exhausted. Sweet dreams.

In your light

I am happy, because today, when I was feeling quite absurdly nervous for no legitimate reason, I had the good sense to listen to this song, breathe in, and then breathe out again, suddenly knowing that everything is really just OK.

I spend a lot of my time being absurdly nervous for no reason, and trust me, THAT is the epitome of monumentally wasted time. 

I had a dream the other night, where I saw a plane fall right out of the sky and crash into the land. It wasn't as frightening as that dream I had once, that I think I told you about -  where the sun had burnt out and we the humans were trying to relight it before we all died - but it was upsetting. Apparently, to dream of a plane crashing means you have set yourself unachievable goals, or you don't believe in your ability to achieve the goals you have set for yourself. I'm not quite sure which one is worse.

Goodness me, this is too heavy! Here are some good things:

...and for good measure, some lyrics from Nebraskatak's latest song 'Underground'. 

you sit heaving on the edge of your bed
soaking the sheets with salt and sweat.

i rub your back with nothing to say, 
feeling like i'm lying in my grave. 

i stroke your hair but you flinch away. 

we're going underground. we're going down, down, down. 

I went crazy when I was with you

When I was fourteen I fell in love with whales. I still think they're beautiful creatures and retain a silly amount of knowledge of the different types and their migration patterns and things like that. Similarly, but ultimately more intensely, I went through the obligatory horse-crazy phase from the ages of about 9 to 16, complete with my very own ponies and pony club membership and The Saddle Club taped from the ABC on VHS. Some of my fondest memories are of me and my sisters traipsing around the paddock in jodhpurs, building jumps out of old trees, and riding bareback into the dam in the middle of summer, and galloping so fast through the cleared bush that everything except my pony's bobbing head became a complete blur.   

One day, when I'm old, I'm going to move back home to the country. Except maybe closer to the ocean. I'm going to get some land, some horses, maybe some chickens and an old dog,  grow vegetables, and flowers. I'll grow my hair long even though it'll be grey and I'll wear my flower crowns and my birds every day like I do now. I don't know how the years are going to turn out between now and then, but it is nice to have that end of my life quite certainly decided on. 

A drop in the ocean

'I AIN'T LIVING IN THE DARK NO MORE IT'S NOT A PROMISE I'M JUST GONNA CALL IT'

Ah, the comfort albums: Bon Iver and For Emma, Forever Ago by Bon Iver, oh they know me so well! Y'know in between the song Kiss by Prince and getting into the VCA, seeing Bon Iver live was really one of the greatest things that's ever happened to me. Sitting with my chin on my knees on a filthy picnic rug, with an eerie full moon hanging over our shoulders and a heavy heart and head from feeling too much for how old I am, with my friends close, in a heady daze of dope smoke and early evening fog, that music was just it, everything, everything to me. 

I know so exactly what song comes next, so dear and so close they are to me, that they aren't really separate entities anymore. They're an experience, a memory that I can access whenever I want, and go back to the end of summer early this year, and who I was then, and I realise that the only constant is the music. I have changed, but not much, I'm still so desperately careful...but y'know, I'm better with, well, so much more well-versed in feelings now that I feel as though I get more from music now than I ever have before.

And there are melodies that still kick me where it hurts, no matter how many times I hear them. No matter where, or when; they are scattered throughout my music collection like scars, or maybe stars, depending on how you choose to take it. 

My favourite Bon Iver lyric, of them all, is as follows below, and it will follow me like a shadow in my head forever and ever because it is just everything. 

'your love will be safe with me.'

Too long, too strong

I've been staring at a blank 'new post' page for like half an hour over here. Nothing much has changed since we last touched base; I've rediscovered my dangerous penchant for peanut butter on anything, Soda got a haircut and I remain forever disgruntled by the ridiculous weather in this city.

I've been wondering how much of a good thing a person can have before they realise they have it. I've been writing and playing and singing and running and making flower crowns like I need them to survive. I've been wondering where I'm going to find six female voices to sing my songs and how on earth am I going to figure out how to mix my work for 5.1 surround sound and when am I going to write a pop song for large forces in between band practice, uni, gigs, study, running, food and sleep. I've been re-reading A Series of Unfortunate Events and wondering why I'm doing such a thing, drinking coffee then regretting it, eating Nutella on cruskits and regretting that too. I've been looking at pictures of summer roadtrips in America and looking out basement windows into the cold and rain and raising my eyebrows like Juno. Now I've really been missing the sun and the sea.

I am running up that hill, yes I am, but I can almost see the other side! And the other side is sunshine, and music, and glorious melodies and hand holding in the ocean and flowers (real and fake) and stage lights and train rides and nothing scary and no plateaus.

I am quite tired of being tired, and getting caught in storms and  and this winter has been too cold and too long. I don't mind sitting it out by the fire, but goodness, I can't wait to lie in the sun again!

Mama, you been on my mind

Things actually continue to happen and the world continues to rotate after BIG GIGS (this ever fails to catch me by surprise); in fact we've been booked in to play next week with Superjuice at Red Bennies which will be good times and good funs. Sifting through the aftermath last night with the band over coffee and chamomile tea we were talking about things like managers and royalties and festivals and all those dreamy foreign things that have now become serious things that we have to consider and be wary of instead of just dream about them at the house parties we used to play at, trying to disentangle our leads from party-popper remnants and shooing drunken teenagers away from my fragile keyboard.

Everyone who's followed my blog for even just a little while would know that music and art  is quite everything I am, the two go hand in hand in my head, and it's nice to have a destination that you have so completely decided on it feels as though someone else has decided for you. In all other aspects of my existence I cannot manage decision making, I suck at it, and regret either choice and feel guilty and backtrack over things and worry about most things - and unfortunately a lot of people are like this don't ya know...But in a sense I'm incredibly lucky; having such adamant faith in any type of decision is so, so rare for me, I'm just very lucky that I am so sure about something as important as the FUTURE.  Or whatever. 

I find that music is not something I second-guess. Things sound good because they just do; I know there's technical reasons that theory teachers have concocted and while I understand (mostly kinda yeah) and appreciate the information and stuff, you know, there are just certain things that cannot be explained. The way the chords C, E7 and Am sound when played in progression make me feel so good I could just melt and that's it. It just feels good, and right, and there's no two ways about it. I like it, and I just do, for not really any reason other than it sounds great. That makes me feel so much better than anything ever has,  except for my family and friends who, by the way, understand the frightening, awesome power of that too. 

I'm a better person because of what I do, and I do what I do because I'm the kind of person who needs this to survive, really. I like it very, very much! 

I'm writing a vocal piece at the moment which I thought needed terribly romantic lyrics, even poetry, to put into a harmonic melody...after realising that this actually wasn't really the case I was left with a pile of cliched but lovely poetry that I adore just because I do. 

'Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.'

*

'They might ignore me immediately
in my moon suit and funeral veil.
I am no source of honey
so why should they turn on me?


Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.

The box is only temporary.'



*


“Nothing compares to your hands, nothing like the green-gold of your eyes. My body is filled with you for days and days. You are the mirror of the night. the violet flash of lightening. The dampness of the earth. The hollow of your armpits is my shelter. My fingertips touch your blood. All my joy is to feel life spring from your flower-fountain that mine keeps to fill all the 

paths of my nerves which are yours."

We don't eat until your father's at the table

Whenever I get off stage after a gig, I go into a strange, unreal kind of state of mind where decision making is just completely impossible, and as such, I can't decide whether I want to throw up, curl up and go to sleep, or cry forever, or giggle, or run, or play a whole other set. I don't know if I want to be alone, or with people, not sure if I'm feeling tired enough to go home or buzzed enough to stay out. Mum says it's adrenaline taking some time to dissipate, and I think so too. But in a more romantic way (which is generally the way I favour) I think it's the aftermath of being so erratically, uncontrollably honest for 45 minutes. I'm OK with people knowing the most secret of secrets as long as I get to choose how I tell them, and I tell them, and it's OK because lots of people have secrets like mine anyway. But telling them makes me shake, and sweat, and cry a little bit, and smile too, and stamp my feet and flail my hands around in front of me weirdly, shooing invisible heartache away. 

Last night was great. I knew it was going quite well when I took a sip of water and could barely hold the glass with my trembling hands. I have a couple of unedited photos that I don't think anyone will mind me using: 

I might tell you more as I remember but right now, I need to sleep off some serious waking hours of the past two days; the first, spent dancing joyously with four year olds, anxiously watching stars glitter in front of my eyes doing the 'you're low in iron' polka, and singing songs to beautiful people who actually listen, and the second - a dreamy hand holding daze of karate dance moves, ice cream for an overcast lunch and fairy-lit stages with cross legged audiences and kisses that taste like Difflam. 

You forgot to answer

So it's been a while between good proper blog posts, and now that my internet has been restored to its lightening-fast former glory, and today has been declared a PUBLIC HOLIDAY by the office of me, I can provide with that hyper-coronary goodness that you must so desperately crave. 

Tomorrow is THE night, Nebraskatak's debut single launch at the John Curtin band room. As is the usual with anything in my life that is prefaced by a capital THE, my brain has gone into fast-forward, and my body is struggling along behind. I've been getting 1am-worthy tired at midday this week, and craving big, cheesy, fatty hamburgers (which usually means I'm low in something or nervous about everything). So today I walked into Coles and armed myself with orange juice, blueberries and the latest Cosmopolitan magazine in the hopes of remedying the tiredies with a hefty dosage of vitamin C and mindless but colourful junk. I've been alive long enough in this particular mind and body to know that I cope with nerves by getting amazingly tired; my body's weird way of saying 'we are doing NOTHING TODAY, stay at home where's it's safe and warm.' And I guess sometimes you actually have to listen. So right now I'm sitting on the couch thinking about watching Summer Heights High and maybe letting my dog inside for some company. 

Over 99 billion sold??? MMMMmmmmmm

Anyway, while this week HAS been a bit of a dizzy daze of band practice, tests, lectures on ancient Indian rhythmic techniques and airplane hijacking documentaries, I have retained some good things about the week - and in accordance to my new vow to be thankful for the things I have and am, I'll list some for you now...

I'm thankful for the things I get to listen to at uni and the things I have learnt even in this semester so far. It's hard, and I have to work hard to get it, but I will get it and even as my rhythm teacher looks me in the eye and says 'You have to WANT it!' I feel as though I can look him right back and say 'Well, I do!' Here are some things we've been listening to this week. 

And a couple of great artists we've been learning about this week...I've found myself getting a little skeptical of my lecturer for the class we looked at these in, but I suppose I'm always humbled every time he shows us something pretty cool (which is often)!

Martin Arnold, this is creepy but beautiful and kind of funny...and my God, Judy Garland, just oh!

Christian Marclay, cool guy, not much else to say...

Also I was talking to my friend about this short documentary that Gotye did, I seriously recommend watching it because he is so darling and so intelligent and well-spoken and cool and talented and it's just good.

I guess I'm just happy all this exists and that I can listen to it whenever I please. 

Velvet Lew, some uni cats and I are seeing a documentary tonight on Charles Bradley (Soul of America, alright!) and judging from the promo it will be all things classy class:

If you haven't heard him yet you better listen up and fly right:

Speaking of Lewis he's going on tour soon with the Cactus Cuties, so if by any chance you are reading this from outside the hippest confines of cotton-stockinged Melbz, perhaps Canbangers or Brisvegas, hit 'em up.+

That's about enough outta me. I'll catch you on the flip, maybe in a nervous compulsive post tomorrow, maybe not, until then, keep on keepin' on loose units. 

+Don't actually! Apparently Tupac had a way different meaning to Hit 'Em Up than I do! Or did! Wow OK! Don't hit 'em up!

Everything's blue

My singing teacher said something funny the other day - she had been showing Nebraskatak's single to a few people during the week between lessons, and raising her carefully-painted on eyebrows at me, she said the resounding opinion was that 'the girl who's singing, she's singing about such a sad thing!' 

I am certainly what you would call highly strung. I think I write and sing joyously and manically about sad things because I don't know how else to cope with being hyper-senstive to everything. I like being this way, because there's nothing quite like crying over a series of notes, only because they are just the right amount of tragic and beautiful, or being brought to your knees in the midnight-dark, in a small room lit by a computer screen where Joni Mitchell is playing and, for once, finally, her voice isn't just weaving into my body on its own. 

I do like being this way, and I think a lot of people are like this too. I just like to feel things!  And I think that if things go wrong, if you can write a song about it, then you should. I'm in love with the idea of tragedy that's danceable, or complete devastation at 120BPM, joyous heartbreak...! I think it has something to do with my being so happy to fall into situations that are emotionally risky, always with that security belt of knowing that if things go badly, I can write about it and feel better and try to make other people feel better too. 

My week with slow internet has been cool and fun

I'm thankful for the strings section at the end of Hyperballad by Bjork, for the red bead necklace that used to be my best friends' (but who gave them to me because I love them so much), for The Brady Bunch and The Mighty Boosh and 91.5 Smooth FM, for my man and his shadow walking up my front steps in the cold and the dark, for the tiny minor third that Ben Howard 'woah's in his song Everything, for Colin Hay and his song There's Water Over You and for my friend who showed it to me. I'm thankful for peanut butter (especially on toast), for Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov and The Arrival of the Bee Box by Sylvia Plath, for Joni Mitchell and Bon Iver and The Beatles, for the smell of hairspray, for the gym I go to and the treadmill in my house and the footpath next to the road that I run along, for the housing estate that I like to take my dog on a walk through around 5PM when you can smell Coles chicken schnitzel from the street, and for my family who just love me despite everything. I'm thankful for band, gigs and practice and writing music, giggling in the back seat all squashed into one car, leaning and elbowing each other around corners and toasting ourselves with slices of peanut buttered-bread in lieu of our single's online release, for the fact that they know all the intricate details of my emotional state at any one time and let me write lyrics about it, and at the same time, let me probe their brains for feelings that I can write about as well. I'm thankful for the sun that wakes me up every morning really early because I have see-through curtains, for full moon that shines through my window and keeps me awake for the same reason, for my uni and all the wonderful sacred things I get to do and learn about there, for the talented beautiful people I get to study with, for Photo Booth on Mac and Sibelius 6 and Spotify and even Facebook, for Frida Kahlo and Lady Gaga and fake flowers and Christian the lion and killer whales, for little kids who learn and absorb like sponges and sing and dance and do cartwheels, for plaits, for bobby pins, for high heels and velvet and Aesop shampoo and conditioner, for horseriding boots and Debussy's Clair de Lune and grand pianos with candlestick holders, for customised coffee mugs and sofa beds and crying and laughing and that wonderful knowing of the fact that we are all made of the same material as stars, and every atom of me is every atom of everyone and everything I love, and we are all connected. 

We tried

I take pictures of myself at places I wish I was, in states I wish I could be in, floating weirdly chopped into pieces in front of beautiful things. Even though I'm all broken up, it doesn't mean it's not still a nice picture. 

"i shut my eyes and all the world drops dead

i lift my lids and all is born again. 

(i think i made you up inside my head)."

Aloha

Clearly my internet has been down for the last couple of days, goodness me, I hope you're not having emotional withdrawals from my lack of melodramatic insight! I'm back online but still laboriously and painfully slow at loading so don't be expecting any cool GIFs or 20 minute YouTubes today! 

I keep thinking of things that I want to tell you about but always forget them when I sit down at the computer to write, and always end up just talking about the things that are resting on the very top of the pile of things sitting on the desk of STUFF in my head. 

So sitting on the very top of the pile today is Punch Drunk Love, a movie with Adam Sandler being serious (something that I've always thought he could do quite well, funny people are usually introspective, sensitive, shy and emotionally intelligent) and some quite beautiful music by Jon Brion (same guy who wrote the music for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - in the words of my film scoring lecturer, he's a 'shit hot composer'). It was a beautiful film with camerawork that I a) actually noticed, and b) thought was just so gorgeous, in a scary fragile way, just like the character of Barry. The score needless to say was really great too and reminded me of some of the stuff we do at uni sometimes...There was a really beautiful series of scenes in Hawaii, which of course reminded me of the time the Bradys went for Mike's work...

(I made another new flower crown. I've decided to make a range of crowns for everyday use - I have so many HUGE ones that just become obstructive when I'm at uni and at band and  being generally active.) 

Of course ALL the cool profound things I was going to write about have escaped me, as usual; I think I might have accidentally given myself a cold just by talking about that time I listened to Insomnia by Washington... and all this terrible wind and rain, bed looks so appealing! 

Dreamy...

Anyway to conclude this going-nowhere post, my beautiful sunshine friend Elle Graham is playing a gig at the Toff in Town on the 19th of August, which is the day after our single launch. You should come because Elle is lovely and makes the most gorgeously delicate and pretty songs ever. OK!

Thanks for today

There is something very sweetly therapeutic about hot glue-gunning fake flowers onto a little plastic headband. I have no idea what it is, but my goodness, I am as addicted to making and wearing flower crowns as I was to The Saddle Club in 2002 (concerning levels). Here is a picture of me wearing my latest one with the recurring enigma of this blog, the velvety man himself, Lewis...

...who doesn't EVEN laugh at me when I wear flower crowns that are double the natural circumference of my entire head. 


This post is victim to my internet's downloads being totally used up for this month. You have no idea how long it took to post this. Unfortunately the insight within, versus time it took to publish this post do not even out. All I have to offer you today is hidden within a big pile of cheap fake flowers and not-made-for-adult-sized-headbands. Do with them what you will (but I recommend making crowns. And lots of them). 

There was a lot to get used to

Sometime mid-last year I got that bed-ridden sorta sickness that happens a lot in year 12; a heady mixture of germs, hormones, anxiety and just plain tiredies! Lying in a pit of sorry-for-myself surrounded by bits of essays and old Panadol packets, I put on this CD...

...Insomnia by Megan Washington - heady, melancholy, truly bitter and sweet, it floated and threaded itself in and out of my consciousness as I lay there dazed, watching the stars of my low-iron body glitter in time. It was a strange concoction of experience, somehow completely outer-body, but also so not - I was so in tune with how full my head was of both sick-gunk and the lyrics to Sentimental Education, so aware of how hard it was to breathe through phlegmy lungs and a concrete-blocked nose. 


I'm having trouble describing what it was about those first few listens to that collection of songs that was so amazing to me - there is something so appealing about the crossing over of the senses, I think, that most artists try to capture at least once. I mean how many times have you heard about the synaesthetic folk? I guess for me it just makes sense, to try and engage more than one of the senses at any given time. Listening to that tragic music in a self-indulgent state of flu enriched the whole experience, by turning it into an experience in itself. 

Last night I got off a footy fan-packed train, dressed like a woodland nymph and shaking a little in the cold and in the highly strung way my brain works when sandwiched between sports fans on packed carriages. Sipping chamomile tea and waiting for my man like a Jane Austen novel, city people with places to be and cigarettes to smoke wove in and out and all around as I sat outside Starbucks burning my tongue. 


And standing on the roof of the bar clinging to the fences way above everything ever I wondered about how hard it is to join up physical things with sound and art, like so many people have tried to do, like I've tried to do before, like it's been done to me with Insomnia and sickness, and concerts and heavy bass and startling horns that bring the people to their knees...how do you get your man's closed-mouth smile in a melody? How do you make other people understand how beautiful it is to watch when a loved one sits in front of the sun on the train, and the light stems out from behind them like some kind of crown, framing their perfect face? How do you sing that?


I'm really asking!!

I paint flowers so they will not die

I've been vibing for an outfit for the single launch. I have to start now, a few weeks away from the actual event, because it takes ages to sift through all the colour and pattern that I love so much, and to consider the logistics of the evening (how many stairs will I be dragging my keyboard up), should it be short, long, glittery (looks good in lights) bright and poppy, or demure and earthy, birds, cats, stockings, eyelashes, glitter, lipstick, facepaint...it's all too much fun! 


In an attempt to start at the very beginning ('a very good place to start!') I trawled the internet for pictures of a dear old friend of mine, Frida Kahlo, who was so beautiful, always. 

Hmm. Lots to think about. 


Tonight is The Cactus Channel's album launch which is exciting! They are some of the warmest sunshine people I've ever met and the album is car-chase funkalicious. I'll be there tonight in some form of dancing regalia ready to cut the rug. Class!

For that, I am very grateful

A friend of mine from uni composed this piece a while ago, and I love it, and it's so beautiful, and I'm so proud to be going to a uni where this kind of work is happening just all the time! We had another fun day yesterday performing the piece below too, in our silly way, giggling over catching eyes and sharing squares of Crunchie chocolate between us, sliding the block back and forth across the room (a sweet little gesture of our teacher's, an effort to endear us to 10am starts...)

The barista at our uni cafe knows my name and proceeds to make my coffee without having to ask how I take it anymore, and yesterday I only just realised how lovely that is, to be a 'regular' (or perhaps not so great considering how much money I spend on coffee every week!) 


I mean you guys know how it is; we usually feel lots of things at once, cycling feelings in and out like the kind of meditative breathing I've been told to do...but it really is  wonderful to be 'breathing in' contentedness, and 'breathing out' negativity, y'know all those zen things that I believe in, even just for a little time. To actually reach the point where I can go through my entire day feeling that way (cool calm in-control), seems not entirely impossible, like it did once. 


I've been learning to distance myself from the things that cause me to scrunch my face up, which includes everything from eating Burger Rings, to reading One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, to scoring on Sibelius 7, to listening to songs that I used to listen to when I was dancing on the graves of dead relationships. I prefer to laugh about the poor patch I am never-endingly in (often accompanied by my artist family), and run for stupid amounts of kilometres and eat my little sister's brownies, and buy presents for my Mum for her birthday and teach little kids about music, wearing my flower crowns and my colours and my little birds.


I suppose to summarise this whole thing - I've been trying to live as though it's the middle of summer in the middle of winter, and, importantly, writing music furiously, trying to silly things, like capture what stars sound like. I'm in over my head as always but right now it feels, well, it feels OK.


Anyway that was a tangent and a half. Here's another one: remember those amazing home movies from Disneyland that I posted I think last time? Well for some reason in my head I put these two together, probably the whole theme park thing...I've been looking at all these pictures of Shamu, that killer whale in captivity, and some others that I don't know the names of. It's pretty awful, but the pictures, creepy screenshots from the Shamucam, are weirdly beautiful. Don't get me wrong, I support the whole Free Willy thing, that's for sure - let them go! But in the meantime, look how freakily beautiful these are...

I also recorded this work in progress today. If I had listened to Steve Reich's Piano Phase for two weeks non-stop and gone a bit weird, this piece would be the result. 


http://soundcloud.com/eilishgilligan/hello-demo

You. Got. My. Heart, iiiinna cay-ge

Tonight I'm feeling SO happy sad excited scared anxious a little annoyed kinda hungry. I have this really good blog post cycling around my brain tracks but I can't get it out properly, so I decided to take a picture of myself somewhere outside Disneyland circa 1955. 

HOME VIDEOS FROM DISNEYLAND CIRCA 1970/1969. SERIOUSLY. GUYS. 

Well anyway, back to 2012, Melbourne, Australia, and Nebraskatak have released our single IN A CAGE which you can listen to/download for FREES (that's ZERO of your precious moneys) in the links sprinkled through the last sentence. Oh, and don't forget about our single launch! So many funs to come...s. 


I promise I'll write about something cool and mysterious again sometime soon rather than these lame self-promo posts. I have a few teenage-y nights ahead so I'll be sure to keep you in the loop as always. For now please be satisfied with my favourite cliched corny line from some new writing I've been doing. 


you treat me gently, like a small card
board box with 'fragile' stamped across.


Also I saw this cool little quote floating around on the internet too...pretty much sums up every song I've ever written. 

'I am, I am, I am.'