it's all wrong
it's alright
it's all wrong
you are all i need
you are all i need
you are all i need
you are all i need
Thursday, 27 February 2014
All I need
it's all wrong
it's alright
it's all wrong
you are all i need
you are all i need
you are all i need
you are all i need
Monday, 24 February 2014
Bumpy night
I watched this film tonight :: All About Eve :: and it was super cool. As you probably know I'm not one for sitting and watching a movie and as soon as I saw that this one goes for TWO HOURS + EIGHTEEN MINUTES I just went 'buuuh' but I *had* to watch it because my little sister is studying it for year 12 and I am helping her with English so you know. So I bit the bullet and pressed play and you know I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it like I enjoyed Valley of the Dolls which is also an amazing film, 10/10 would recommend.
I guess it's kind of late by my funny standards again - I keep staying up later than I intend, and later, and then later...I think I'm becoming the night owl I always wanted to be when I was little. The downside of that is that I simply cannot drag myself to a 6am gym session, which I used to so idealistically do some mornings. I guess I like the night time because there is no distraction of the day which forces me to do and achieve and be, you know. I can just sit and watch a movie because it's night and everyone's asleep and things can wait at least until the morning.
A lot of people don't like the night. I think I don't like the day; my greatest achievements happen in the dark. Ideas, words, art, not to mention my job - singing, playing - I write songs about the dark, about walking down the street at 3am or lying on the beach at dusk drinking goon out of a plastic cup - day is too blunt, too obvious. Night is mysterious but content. I think if I were a colour I'd be navy - not quite black, the sky at night.
Thursday, 20 February 2014
~*~
To Dave,
About a year ago, you uploaded some photos onto Facebook of the night in Melbourne where everyone stays out and up until 7am. I hadn't seen you since the last day of uni and I was pretty drunk then anyways so it was nice to see your pensive face, blurry, little smile, neat hair. In the days after you died I used to flick through them, because seeing you sitting on a train in the dark and out of focus helped me imagine you in a kind of spiritual 'limbo' - because people can't just ride trains and drink water and eat and sleep and poop and then just stop...can they? Well I mean I know they can and I know that's how it works but it was easier to believe you had not immediately become just a 'body', a pile of suspicious flesh that was then all burned up in a furnace - but you, what was you, still existed somehow. Doesn't make sense, I wish it did.
Anyways White Night has come around again and I'll be on the train too you know, staying up all night within an idea that sounds romantic but really is just a whole lot of drunk Australians wandering around the CBD, too many people and too few attractions. The funny thing is you probably hated it last year for those reasons, you probably went home early which is why I didn't bump into you. I wish I had, you know, but of course only in hinesight - at the time I was much too distracted by stories my friends told of the lights on acid, and my little hyper heart which beat out of my chest at the sight of my love lying by the river, unknowingly reflecting the same lights from his eyes. You were not a blip on my radar, and I guess that's how it goes, when a person knows a person only from the outside. Since you died I've been trying hard to get inside everyone and it's not easy. I hope someone got inside you - I think some did.
On the day of your funeral I didn't wear flowers, because they were for your casket and not to be perched on my head. Instead I piled my hair high as it could go, because one time Amy Winehouse said 'the more insecure I feel, the higher my hair has to be' and I've been living my life with that motto ever since she died. I wish it wasn't the truth, but it is - in death, we affect others in a way which no living person can replicate. The chances of me writing to you if you were sitting next to me again in class are little to none, but because it's been almost a year since your body was your home and not a pile of ashes I feel like I should. You have affected me so.
I love being young. I love the freedom which it entails and I love the idea of my whole life, stretched out in front of me, all terrifying and wonderful. But when we are young, we learn that life is not how we would like it to be. Actually life is pretty fucking shit really and you know on the worst days I wonder what it would be like to have no body, to have no fire, breath, heart or bones - when I was even younger I didn't think I would be thinking these thoughts now but I do, and you did too, obviously, not that I knew it when you were alive. Youth is beautiful but it is disgusting. I have learnt more about the world and about myself in the last years of teenage-hood and the first year of my twenties than I ever thought I could even contain in my head, and the majority of it all has been horrifying.
You know, you taught me a lot. You were a little older than me and definitely wiser. In life, you practiced such humility, quiet determination, and intelligence. I admired that in you, knowing that my hyperactive brain and moods could never be disciplined the way you disciplined yours.
But by taking yourself out of this world and out of mine, I learnt that there is no 'limbo' - you are alive, and then you are dead. There is no in-between, no comfort, no resolution, because dead is dead and that's all. Maybe one day I will find comfort in that thought, but I think I feel too much; all the years you could've had, all the time that was yours, and you threw it away. And not only was it a waste for yourself, but for all those who knew and loved you better than I did. Your partner, your family and friends, your death is the death of bits of them too, you know. You killed something in them when you killed you. It makes me angry to think of it, but to be angry about it is a total waste of energy, and I like you too much to be angry anyways.
Wishing is a waste of energy too, but I can't help but wish you well. I don't know what you are anymore, because the only thing that I can actually believe is that you are a memory. I don't believe in God or Heaven or anything like that which is funny because I thought I would be the type to revert to such spirituality as soon as I am forced to cope with grief. But here I am, in the full knowledge that what was you is now buried in the ground in that strange pompous way, and I know that you did exist once in the world, but now you don't. And the only place that you really 'exist', is in the pile of flesh inside our skulls as memories. Seems quite humble really, probably what you would've liked. I wish you well in living in people's brains.
I do worry that I am going to forget. I guess I will, eventually, but I hope that the important bits remain. The other day I asked Lewis to give me his Grolsch bottle when he was done, and when I looked at the funny old thing as I refilled it with water I couldn't help but smile, remembering the way you would always bring absurd vessels to uni to carry your water (two litre bottles of milk, olive oil bottles, wine bottles...). It always used to make me laugh; the first time you brought in a wine bottle I was quite alarmed at your apparent dramatic alcoholism...!
Someone deleted your Facebook a month or so after you died, and I'm glad they did. I can't see those photos anymore which is OK. And I'll go to White Night this year and maybe I won't even think of you. That's OK too, because if I spent every waking moment searching for people drinking water out of wine bottles I'm sure to go insane, you know?
One day I will be older than you, maybe even wiser than you were. I have the indulgence of growing old to look forward to, to observe the wrinkles in my face develop - a map of experience - maybe to have babies, to travel the world, to love and live. You will always be what you were. That's sad, but most things in life are sad somehow anyways. You gotta take the good with the bad I guess. Like, knowing you is good, but knowing you has also been bad. I can't decide which outweighs which.
Doesn't matter. I am glad to know you - to have known you - to have caught you in time to know you a little before you left. It's a shame, but most things are.
Eilish
About a year ago, you uploaded some photos onto Facebook of the night in Melbourne where everyone stays out and up until 7am. I hadn't seen you since the last day of uni and I was pretty drunk then anyways so it was nice to see your pensive face, blurry, little smile, neat hair. In the days after you died I used to flick through them, because seeing you sitting on a train in the dark and out of focus helped me imagine you in a kind of spiritual 'limbo' - because people can't just ride trains and drink water and eat and sleep and poop and then just stop...can they? Well I mean I know they can and I know that's how it works but it was easier to believe you had not immediately become just a 'body', a pile of suspicious flesh that was then all burned up in a furnace - but you, what was you, still existed somehow. Doesn't make sense, I wish it did.
Anyways White Night has come around again and I'll be on the train too you know, staying up all night within an idea that sounds romantic but really is just a whole lot of drunk Australians wandering around the CBD, too many people and too few attractions. The funny thing is you probably hated it last year for those reasons, you probably went home early which is why I didn't bump into you. I wish I had, you know, but of course only in hinesight - at the time I was much too distracted by stories my friends told of the lights on acid, and my little hyper heart which beat out of my chest at the sight of my love lying by the river, unknowingly reflecting the same lights from his eyes. You were not a blip on my radar, and I guess that's how it goes, when a person knows a person only from the outside. Since you died I've been trying hard to get inside everyone and it's not easy. I hope someone got inside you - I think some did.
On the day of your funeral I didn't wear flowers, because they were for your casket and not to be perched on my head. Instead I piled my hair high as it could go, because one time Amy Winehouse said 'the more insecure I feel, the higher my hair has to be' and I've been living my life with that motto ever since she died. I wish it wasn't the truth, but it is - in death, we affect others in a way which no living person can replicate. The chances of me writing to you if you were sitting next to me again in class are little to none, but because it's been almost a year since your body was your home and not a pile of ashes I feel like I should. You have affected me so.
I love being young. I love the freedom which it entails and I love the idea of my whole life, stretched out in front of me, all terrifying and wonderful. But when we are young, we learn that life is not how we would like it to be. Actually life is pretty fucking shit really and you know on the worst days I wonder what it would be like to have no body, to have no fire, breath, heart or bones - when I was even younger I didn't think I would be thinking these thoughts now but I do, and you did too, obviously, not that I knew it when you were alive. Youth is beautiful but it is disgusting. I have learnt more about the world and about myself in the last years of teenage-hood and the first year of my twenties than I ever thought I could even contain in my head, and the majority of it all has been horrifying.
You know, you taught me a lot. You were a little older than me and definitely wiser. In life, you practiced such humility, quiet determination, and intelligence. I admired that in you, knowing that my hyperactive brain and moods could never be disciplined the way you disciplined yours.
But by taking yourself out of this world and out of mine, I learnt that there is no 'limbo' - you are alive, and then you are dead. There is no in-between, no comfort, no resolution, because dead is dead and that's all. Maybe one day I will find comfort in that thought, but I think I feel too much; all the years you could've had, all the time that was yours, and you threw it away. And not only was it a waste for yourself, but for all those who knew and loved you better than I did. Your partner, your family and friends, your death is the death of bits of them too, you know. You killed something in them when you killed you. It makes me angry to think of it, but to be angry about it is a total waste of energy, and I like you too much to be angry anyways.
Wishing is a waste of energy too, but I can't help but wish you well. I don't know what you are anymore, because the only thing that I can actually believe is that you are a memory. I don't believe in God or Heaven or anything like that which is funny because I thought I would be the type to revert to such spirituality as soon as I am forced to cope with grief. But here I am, in the full knowledge that what was you is now buried in the ground in that strange pompous way, and I know that you did exist once in the world, but now you don't. And the only place that you really 'exist', is in the pile of flesh inside our skulls as memories. Seems quite humble really, probably what you would've liked. I wish you well in living in people's brains.
I do worry that I am going to forget. I guess I will, eventually, but I hope that the important bits remain. The other day I asked Lewis to give me his Grolsch bottle when he was done, and when I looked at the funny old thing as I refilled it with water I couldn't help but smile, remembering the way you would always bring absurd vessels to uni to carry your water (two litre bottles of milk, olive oil bottles, wine bottles...). It always used to make me laugh; the first time you brought in a wine bottle I was quite alarmed at your apparent dramatic alcoholism...!
Someone deleted your Facebook a month or so after you died, and I'm glad they did. I can't see those photos anymore which is OK. And I'll go to White Night this year and maybe I won't even think of you. That's OK too, because if I spent every waking moment searching for people drinking water out of wine bottles I'm sure to go insane, you know?
One day I will be older than you, maybe even wiser than you were. I have the indulgence of growing old to look forward to, to observe the wrinkles in my face develop - a map of experience - maybe to have babies, to travel the world, to love and live. You will always be what you were. That's sad, but most things in life are sad somehow anyways. You gotta take the good with the bad I guess. Like, knowing you is good, but knowing you has also been bad. I can't decide which outweighs which.
Doesn't matter. I am glad to know you - to have known you - to have caught you in time to know you a little before you left. It's a shame, but most things are.
Eilish
Saturday, 15 February 2014
Je t'aime
I had a really nice week at the beach - it's funny how I always see holidays as this big THING like a TASK to be COMPLETED which is so bizarre seeing as going away is supposed to be this time where you dun have to do anything but whatever. When I got there and once I had spent a couple of hours ~prepping to relax I fell into the swing of things quicker than normal which I guess if proof that I really needed a ~~getaway~~.
We camped at this caravan park that was like LITERALLY on the beach and it was very beautiful although I guess the scenery was divine, but I think the true beauty lay in the way we sat around our tents eating Nutella wraps and listening to Ween's 12 Golden Country Greats, laughing our heads off while the ants had a feast on our drips. There's a lot to be said in being displaced and settled in a little canvas shelter for a few nights - it clears the mind of all those stupid niggly things that eat away at you all the time when you're at home. I've been reading Anna Karenina and got a fair chunk in because I just thought 'well I guess I'll just read now' and didn't have to stop for any particular reason unless it was to put on more sunscreen or join in playing cards or somethin'. Every kilometre we got closer to home driving back I felt a little thought push it's way back into my head and press down on my shoulders a little and I sighed and yawned knowing how it's just gotta be.
Monday, 10 February 2014
Glowing
.JPG)
I haven't done a ~proper~ post in a very long time it feels like - I much prefer to live in my italicised world sometimes - but I have been doing good. Actually I've been writing a fair bit you know, when your brain gets fogged up with music and notes and muddy mixes sometimes writing feels like getting back to basics. I also took the plunge and dyed my hair blue, and my little fish Taku who is the same colour seems to approve.
I went to Laneway Festival last week and had a good time - I was saying to Lewis on the day how amazed I am by how I cope with festivals. I should love them because I am a musical person but I get very stressed and anxious and intense, not just because of the HUGE crowds but mainly because I'm terrified I'll miss something really really cool on another stage like a kilometres' walk away! Plus a kiddie cup of cider was $8 which is criminal and some lady decided to get on a dude's shoulders like RIGHT in front of me when Haim started playing The Wire. But other than that it was really cool and I got to see some very cool bands, Haim being one, and Unknown Mortal Orchestra, and Lorde (!!! omg I love her) to name a few...a definite highlight of the day, however, was when one lady tapped me on the shoulder and said 'Excuse me, but what is the name of your band? I saw you play at the Brunswick Hotel the other week. I want to tell my friends about you, I loved it.' I just couldn't believe it - not only had someone recognised us out of a million other people, but someone had actually been at that hilarious gig, when our set began at midnight, and enjoyed so much that they wanted to come up to me, a total stranger, and be so nice!!! I was glowing (not just from sunburn!) !!!
Thursday, 6 February 2014
Stay awake cont.
but don't take it from me. i'm flakey and i can have a perfectly good conversation voice not wavering when i'm crying and collapsing from the inside out. i wish i had gypsy blood but my blood is manic and i need tablets to calm it but they don't work all the time you know and i wish i wish i could be like the people i see on the late night trains going into the city with high heels and everything and you know they have 9-5 jobs in the week and tonight's the night you know like maybe they're with the girls or it's someone's birthday or whatever but oh man i have work all next week all my days are full kind of thing that would suck but it would be great. i want to know what is a feeling and where do we feel it and i want to know why i care so much about things that don't matter like why did that person just walk outside while i was singing i must truly be unbearable you know. i want to be sick but i don't i want to scream and i wish i could but i swallow my tongue down into my throat and gag on it but you know at the same time i wish i could eat cereal for every meal so.
i dyed my hair the same colour blue as the little fish that swims in his tank in my room. people raise their eyebrows at me like i'm crazy when i tell them i am actually crazy and no one believes that sometimes i have to pull over in my car to take a few deep breaths and i believe in 2 things 1. that you have to work hard to be happy and 2. not every second of youth is made of nostalgia and i should know that one because i have squeezed every night spent drinking and dancing and i have scraped every last second of magic from india and from my bedroom and it's there and it's hard work but i guess it's kind of noble. or maybe it's pathetic or self indulgent or sad.
i dyed my hair the same colour blue as the little fish that swims in his tank in my room. people raise their eyebrows at me like i'm crazy when i tell them i am actually crazy and no one believes that sometimes i have to pull over in my car to take a few deep breaths and i believe in 2 things 1. that you have to work hard to be happy and 2. not every second of youth is made of nostalgia and i should know that one because i have squeezed every night spent drinking and dancing and i have scraped every last second of magic from india and from my bedroom and it's there and it's hard work but i guess it's kind of noble. or maybe it's pathetic or self indulgent or sad.
Wednesday, 5 February 2014
Stay awake
our visit was short, and i couldn't help but feel as though we were knocking on peoples' doors then running away before they could catch us - playing with fire, skipping from city to city and miraculously escaping unscathed. i think the closest we came to true and genuine danger was in agra, home of the taj mahal and not much else. we did the tourist thing; spent a while at the taj in the heat and the humidity and wore those freaky shoe covers that you have to wear on the marble so you don't wreck it. my memory of how the taj mahal actually looks against the sky and the landscape gets all mixed up with the postcards and photos that i've seen in books - funnily enough the thing that i can remember most clearly is the people along the laneway back to our hotel, who were all trying desperately to sell us slightly different forms of the same souvenir crap. sad tired eyes.
we went out to dinner at one of the million restaurants claiming to have a view of the taj from their rooftop (this one didn't) and, exhausted, dragged ourselves back to the hotel. i remember lying in bed next to lewis, staring blankly at the ceiling fan which didn't work, with my head spinning and my limbs sinking. slow motion. i remember turning my head to lewis taking ten minutes and his little heart seemed to pound so hard i could feel it and i said i was scared and i ran next door to get the other boys and made them lie in bed next to each other and they were laughing and i didn't know what to do. everything was wrong and i didn't sleep even though i was so tired. how do you sleep when your blood gets lazy, when it skips your fingers and your feet?
the next day we rubbed our eyes and ate toasted sandwiches (standard) and caught the sleeper train to varanasi. i remember reading shantaram with babies crying and the light switching on and off and looking up to see my lewis watching from his top bunk, and my blood momentarily forgot its job again.
and after the usual battle with rickshaw drivers who would be happy to take us anywhere except where we had planned to go, we arrived in varanasi. it's supposed to be a very spiritual place, and i say 'supposed to' because it's hard to be spiritual when a dead dog is lying grotesquely at your feet next to holographic pictures of ganesh (300 rupees each madam a bargain). we paid a little extra for the luxury of air conditioning in our room, and often i would open the door to a spread-eagled body on our double bed, drying sweat with a hindi game show playing on the small television set. i would sit on the balcony and smoke a clove cigarette (175 rupees a packet) and think about going for a walk, which i could almost do on my own now (almost - still a nervous nancy), or think about the little kids on the train ride to this place who had charcoal around their eyes and crawled under our legs begging for coins, or think about the lifeless body on the bed just inside and the friends that were also with me and how living on top of each other has not made us crazy but only closer, think about music and performing and know that there is really not a single doubt in my mind that that is the plan for the next part of my life. butt it out. breathe in the clove taste and lick it off my lips, shut shantaram and turn off the television.
"i don't have a soul like you/the only one i have/is the one i stole from you"
we went out to dinner at one of the million restaurants claiming to have a view of the taj from their rooftop (this one didn't) and, exhausted, dragged ourselves back to the hotel. i remember lying in bed next to lewis, staring blankly at the ceiling fan which didn't work, with my head spinning and my limbs sinking. slow motion. i remember turning my head to lewis taking ten minutes and his little heart seemed to pound so hard i could feel it and i said i was scared and i ran next door to get the other boys and made them lie in bed next to each other and they were laughing and i didn't know what to do. everything was wrong and i didn't sleep even though i was so tired. how do you sleep when your blood gets lazy, when it skips your fingers and your feet?
the next day we rubbed our eyes and ate toasted sandwiches (standard) and caught the sleeper train to varanasi. i remember reading shantaram with babies crying and the light switching on and off and looking up to see my lewis watching from his top bunk, and my blood momentarily forgot its job again.
and after the usual battle with rickshaw drivers who would be happy to take us anywhere except where we had planned to go, we arrived in varanasi. it's supposed to be a very spiritual place, and i say 'supposed to' because it's hard to be spiritual when a dead dog is lying grotesquely at your feet next to holographic pictures of ganesh (300 rupees each madam a bargain). we paid a little extra for the luxury of air conditioning in our room, and often i would open the door to a spread-eagled body on our double bed, drying sweat with a hindi game show playing on the small television set. i would sit on the balcony and smoke a clove cigarette (175 rupees a packet) and think about going for a walk, which i could almost do on my own now (almost - still a nervous nancy), or think about the little kids on the train ride to this place who had charcoal around their eyes and crawled under our legs begging for coins, or think about the lifeless body on the bed just inside and the friends that were also with me and how living on top of each other has not made us crazy but only closer, think about music and performing and know that there is really not a single doubt in my mind that that is the plan for the next part of my life. butt it out. breathe in the clove taste and lick it off my lips, shut shantaram and turn off the television.
"i don't have a soul like you/the only one i have/is the one i stole from you"
Sunday, 2 February 2014
So good at being in trouble
i literally have no interest in being a spectator. i am going to be on the stage and not in front of it, reining myself in from panic attack sandwiched between some girl's butt and the pulsing whitehead on the back in front of me. i am not interested in watching but in doing; not in standing but in running and if i have to sit in waiting rooms waiting to get my head straight prepared for the jump then so be it because i refuse to fall down again or at least i promise i'll get back up if i do. focus, focus. start early at the cafe and work honest and hard because one day you'll miss the steam straight outta the dishwasher and daydreaming about dry ice and electric pianos while you scrape breakfast into the bin giggling with your workmate who's looking forward to turning 18. tell her she doesn't know what she's in for but man alive she's gonna love it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)