There's a Storm A'coming..... You'd Better Run...

Well, I know dear Reader (s) that it's been a good few months. What can I say? I've become the queen of self destructive procrastination and possibly self destruction itself. Maybe I've been busy who knows.. anyway I'm back and I've decided I need some kind of structure to write something useful as I'm still in the same nonsensical customer driven job that nobody really cares a bit about (mostly me) and I feel the need to reach into some kind of atmosphere of creativity, however futile it might be (lack of readers and possible self reflective narcissism haha) 

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

a celebration of the harvest and impending death of the crops the reap to sow. This and Byron's We Shall go No More A'Roving are filling my mind at the moment. I just hope to one day be able to write my own thoughts in some vague way as exquisitely beautifully. there are no words for how much I want to share my own work on here but I think I'm still a bit scared.

So.. I won't dwell on the last few months or should I? I'm not sure.. What have I done with myself.....? The mighty British Autumn has flown in and turned to Winter (albeit with many an afternoon spent reading Keats to myself and dwelling on the weather and it's, eek Alevel, pathetic fallacy) I don't want to start this off in a miserable light but I must admit there are certain things lacking.. certain people missing and certain things seemingly unattainable. An interesting job providing me with some kind of useful life experience (not one where one is consistently screamed at for something you have no control over... ) 

There have been several gigs.. mostly of friends of mine though most notably Of Montreal and their excellence and bizarreness.. We trekked (ok from Liverpool to Manchester it's not that far but you try waiting for the last train when it takes you to somewhere randomly in the suburbs of Liverpool and you have to wait for a myriad of taxis named after Greek letters to come and pick you up in the cold with your post gig sweat on.. not so pretty) to Manchester and squeezed into the smaller bit of the Academy student uniony place to be confronted with a giant Koy carp with AK47s attached to his arms, skeletons in trainset footie pjs.. men in zipped up onesies. and Kevin Barnes in all his bouncy glory wearing the most gorgeous appliqued jacket, turqoise cowboy boots with um tights and a pinny. That's all. sigh. What a treat. 

With incredible live tunes Suffer For Fashion and the ecstatic Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse bouncing off the walls. Ironically the subject matter, no matter how depressing never fails to cheer you up, never fails to unite you with the two rather young indie pseudo emo boys behind you who seem to know every word to every song and the annoying girl in front of you who keeps elbowing the camera.. no matter.. everybody's been depressed and living vicariously through Barnes' self analogy of the pill popping approach to cheering up... C'mon Chemicals indeed. 

On this Remembrance Sunday, unfortunately being a bit ill I wasn't awake at 11 to be silent but I was Silently asleep, I always feel rather melancholic. As much as I'd describe myself in a pacifist light and am rather against war as a method for retrieval of any kind of semblance of humanity I always think of those without a choice, the two World Wars of those celebrated poets and those totally anonymously strewn somewhere in a foreign field.  The futility of those deaths due to negligence makes no sense to me, the deaths themselves were for us I understand that but were so many necessary when better judgement for those at the top could have saved the human lives that they probably saw as necessary fodder. I don't know I can't help it. I can't stop myself buying poppies I can't stop myself thinking of those that died and those that survived. For years after my family and I travelled to Arnhem in Holland from our suburban home in Naarden to take my Grandfather back to the site of his paratrooping, the site where he saved and helped so many and each year there were fewer men and women smiling proudly and staunchly in the Dutch fields.  Being taken over as a country itself the Dutch lacked no humility in parading these heroes that helped rescue them from Nazi regime and it always filled me with an immense sense of pride that they still cared. 

But this is also a day of Burmese freedom with such grace.. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/14/aung-san-suu-kyi-burma-democracy

Anyway, I know I"m rambling about a bit but frankly I don't care, I'm rather enjoying have some kind of small vent to discuss with myself things in my own head haha and listen to 6music on a coldy and chilly Sunday afternoon. 

I have friends who believe this should be some kind of confessional, a sexcapade of sorts... a sort of Belle Du  Jour.. but 1 that would require a formal sense of prostituting myself which I'm not quite prepared to do.. yet. and 2. might require a lot more sex than there is though I must say the recent weeks have foretold some interesting shenanigans. If only I were to put them aside as one offs and decree that each and every man or woman I meet is a potential. Potential what I hear you cry? I'm not sure.  A potential lover, a potential lifesaver, a potential poet or perhaps just lacking in potential. I know I must come across as a massively um.. technical term for this might be Fucked Up Bitch.  After giving yourself away I found myself the other day deliberating why I felt so selfish of late, I always seem to want to do things for others and yet recently self preservation has kicked in two years too late.. haha. I don't like it. I liked not being a fucked up weirdo but selflessly giving away bits of self to make others feel better. I hope I still do sometimes I'm too honest I suppose. and self obsessed but who else have I got to be obsessed with at this point? My lovely flat is lovely yes but not  person, the men I pine for (the one who I sometimes catch myself staring at and then start an argument with instead of making any sense with, the one I flirt mercilessly with, the one well I can't think of anymore really...) well saying that I can think of one I wanted to see again.. 

The scene, so I don't forget in my latter years of dotage, a rather lacklustre Halloween party where everyone seems to be obsessed with their own medical semblance instead of enjoying themselves. giving into their own labels and not dressed up. We'd given up our own labels for the night, Zombie Sherlock Holmes and Wonder Woman respectively. So we sneak away, stopped briefly by cracked up looters and make it into town with little to no money and sneak into our favourite boat shaped club in the centre of Liverpool.  This is where we gatecrashed a stag weekend. What had been about 17 lads from Manchester had deteriorated into a motley group of about 5... and one had the beard of a devil and hair of an Angel.. blonde and blue eyed with a handwash only jumper that was about to get (fake) bloody.. And this is the reason I now own a moping version of eek Mumford and Son's Little Lion Man. We kissed briefly to this nonsense, very suitable as frankly he was like a little baby lion. Well to cut a long and self absorbed story short we ended up in the most depressing of venues, a strip club full to the brim of half naked girls selling their wares shaking their money makers and confusing my loins... should I find women like this attractive even when they break the fourth wall and bellow for some bog roll in the toilet... and whatnot but not getting very far as I had no money, didn't even pay to get in frankly... There was possible outing of colleagues and a frogmarched lion man kicked out.. So we retired to their rented flat (bear in mind there were a remaining 12 men somewhere stashed in there) and continued our night of serious drinking into the small hours discussing Joy Division and each other.. Getting to the point of talking and staring that you know things might happen the fluttering of blonde eyelashes and the meeting of moistened lips and gorgeous soft furry cheeks.. mostly when you sneak off to the toilet and get a slight little knock on the door and open it to find a wide eyed bearded man gorgeously kissing you.. and then running away in a pair of blood streamed brogues into a lift. Now to be graphic or not who knows. Mirrored walls make for interesting viewing when you're trying to stop concierge from getting into the lift with appendages throbbing in your mouth. Were their cameras god I hope so.. Having this bearded Joy Division worshipping fiend at my disposal in stopped lift was something beyond. and watching myself give him long and slow orgasms was heartstopping and moist making beyond belief.. yes beards are sexy and I'm deep in the depths of a Pogonophilia (look it up) frenzy but the nipple ring and tight pert everything was too much for me and we got a good look at the mirrored walls as we stopped only when the door opened to a ghost in the hallway, the only ghost at the party where those taken were taking others in deep and hallowed flicks of a tongue. 

but this was the moment of more than just passion when someone warms you up, sits on your feet curls up next to you and holds you sleeping in front of his friends (despite apparently having someone) then you want to hold onto them forever and not let go. keep their taste in your mouth as they sing 90s dance tunes to you in the haze of the midmorning Sunday morning cooling on the breeze as I stare out at the hazy Liverpool city centre and then back to the floppy haired creature curled up under Holme's cape warm and calming. 

and that is my obsession down in writing so as to stop it going around in my head. constantly. Like so many other things that I've tried to forget.. Sat inside on this cold and what looks like now rainy Sunday listening to old Blues songs and staring at the clouds, if you remember I do love clouds, they always look beautiful and are the one thing I cannot capture no matter how well I want to, I miss people and not just the general population but specifics. friends lost. and honesty. and fairness. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b84zfPEe_g the Guitar is perfect.. I look for you in every passing car... the most heart ravaging loss in Win Butler's eyes.

Labels though are those things applied to them, they can't be objective. always subjective and the lost love are things that are always subjective. I think I've been watching too many films (I've gone on a bit of a French binge and bought Jules Et Jim, Les Enfants du Paradis, amongst others despite having no money) but for the first time yesterday, I watched, the Breakfast Club.  Not only does Simple Minds make me want to wail and dance simultaneously but Judd Nelson and their given honesty makes me cry inside. and out. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAdaQhitdKg the first few beats of this song and the wail cannot be beaten.. I have been singing it all day and I don't want to diminish it by saying it's the best song to sing in the shower ever but it is. Retribution and loss 80s bratpack synth stylee.. What could honestly be better? Nothing. that is the Answer nothing! It makes me want to punch the air.. oh wait Is that the point?

Jarvis Cocker .. we are having a party myself and I.. I don't know what I'm listening to but it's incredible I might have to leave this poetic justice and find out.. I'm looking for it and I can't find it online damn you and your incredibly beautiful music. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1bB7aIrWhs I'm totally and utterly in love and my heart has stopped momentarily listening to this.

Sorry slight 6music interval there. I do tend to write in stream of consciousness and I'm confusing myself listening to Jarvis Cocker and his exquisitely deep tones. 

for example now There's A Storm A'coming by Richard Hawley has filled my small living room and I'm dozying around in the dark glutting my sorrow on the old men's blues. 

I can't help it, I seem to enjoy being melancholic, all I suppose I need is my Gin instead of my bottle of Night Nurse, a ripped blue velvet gown and a fag. and to be leaning and screaming out of my small balcony window. but instead I'm going to go and paint. You see I have this plan to get out of the banking gig and become an artist of great unappeal. See what becomes of me when I get to do something I actually enjoy. God forbid haha. 

Things I have been avoiding: Gym (though I have been) the emotional roulette that is my Ipod (listening to some songs on Arcade Fire's the Suburbs bring back forgotten and missed well things, and Suburban War and Ready to Start are achingly amazing..) bills.. though thankfully the last bit of post I got was the ticket I ordered for an Interpol gig and not my council tax overdue evilness.. 

painting.. I'm finding myself more and more annoyed by my own painting and I want to radically change it. hmm.. and writing this. but now I've started I'm so excited and much happier than I could possibly fathom. applying for my postgrad course (though since the protests I"m rather looking forward to being a student again)

and I'm going to ignore the remnants of la Fete Du Fromage a Friend and I had for well I'd say Dinner, but it was all through the day... Breakfast Club and cheese, Julie and Julia and cheese, Blue velvet and cheese (and slight freaking out. though I watched Mulholland Drive on my own.. melty man how you haunt my dreams and nightmares... so in comparison Blue Velvet was surprisingly normal.. Though Dennis Hopper you erstwhile genius you had the Suave fucker down.. only in dreams...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UWo8LJnqLc the hooker on top of the car is a vision of uncoordination.
Also if you happen to be in the Liverpool area and haven't done so yet go to the Biennial it's only on for another week or so and the entirety of the old Rapid building on Renshaw street is full of incredible items. The Rooms are thematically adjusted to be so creatively inspiring. There's a room of flags, every item has a flag painted on it or originally bought with a different flag on it and a mini UN children's set of chairs and tables painted with the flags.. a Marxist lounge full of books amidst the red walls and black sleek sofas, the heaven and hell of the mirrored ceiling (unlike previous ones I've mentioned) with people everywhere. a Hipster video.. that has to be seen to be construed They want everyone to be beautiful.. just stick with the madness it's worth it for their conceptual itemisations.
But my favourite room is one with thread attached to the walls where you bring in something to be fixed. but it creates its own pattern around the wall as the items are labelled and left on the desk still attached to the thread. The thread creating a creative web of illusion. I'll put a map in but go to the Bluecoat too (the ribbon room.. I don't want to give it away but if you are a ribbonophile like I am this room is swimming with heavenly goodness)

and just to point out that Jarvis has just put on quite possibly the sexiest song ever.... Down in Mexico... I have goose pimples and for a myriad of reasons linked to this song. and Dear readers, I'm running down to Mexico.. apparently there's a cat named Jose Cuervo who will make you forget all... I"m going back to the 50s.. See you down the diner. xx

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/
and if you tune in now he's playing the soundtrack of Clockwork Orange.. oh be still my synth sodden heart. xx

Are You Trying to Seduce me Mr Gainsbourg?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRkovnss7sg  this is the truth, universally acknowledged. 


Bon soir mes petites...

I am fully aware that this has become a rather sporadic event, my blogging.. alas tis that I'm surely becoming an incomprehensible nonsense filled goon. Proof of this 1. I'm sure I'm losing my grammatical skills and conversational ones as well at that.. 2. I'm consistently worrying about either the boredom I have inflicted on my life or the boredom that has become my life. 3. I wish I was roaming Paris in big sunglasses sweeping through the streets to Shakespeare and co eating crepes. 4. I'm obviously becoming more logical as I've written things in list form. 5. I've been watching too many vampire related things both Buffy and Eclipse (yes I know I'm thoroughly ashamed of myself and the entire establishment that they represent) see http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/12/charlie-booker-twilights-unscary-monsters for a rather entertaining Brooker downsizing of something I'm ashamed to almost like... (Desperate Romantics aside.. why must you belittle my guilty pleasures so Brooker.. why??!!?)

So in order to make this up to myself I"m going to go off on a rather exciting rant about the most amazing new album I've listened to this month or for that matter in the last few weeks, Time has no calling in this matter... anyway yes Highlight by the wonderfully maudlin National is my new favourite album.. I must admit this is largely due to a certain 6music dj playing it at around the same time each morning as the mournful moans seep into my brain gearing me to face yet another day of the ratrace and remembering how utterly emotionless some elements of life are (work) and how lovingly amazing it is to actually feel something (be it bitter despair or happy light). So the incessantly played song was indeed the lovely Anyone's Ghost that I must admit did hit home slightly... it would for anybody who possesses even the tiniest bit of Romantic (and romantic) bitterness in their bones.. Go out at night with your headphones on... that lost hazy feeling of sitting out in the dusky summer night listening to anything that makes your heart scream and soar at the same time. The clouds always look better when one's listening to lustful mourning.. the pining heart can somewhat hide behind them....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XnRl-m5QPI
Getting lost in your own thoughts but so lost in love and loss that you become a ghost of yourself... pretentious maybe.. beautiful and haunting..definitely..
However, twas not all gloom and doom with their album as I mistakenly read Lemonworld as Lemur world.. that would be more entertaining.. England is beautiful.. and Afraid of Everyone is a mist of youthful fear and that inexplicable worriesome thought you have that nobody quite understands...
further musings on this may or not be advisable when one is searching for a home (seriously, Oscar the Grouch is becoming my new role model) and when I'm a tad confused about life but I did drunkenly rediscover Neil Young's beautiful Heart of Gold from the exquisite Harvest album.. If you've ever taken advantage of the cheap gin and fumes in the Pilgrim (Liverpool) and then found lots of change in your wallet from constantly spending notes instead of the money you've already broken then attacked the juke box with vigour.. Me and Jukeboxes... the love that dare not speak it's name.. nah lies.. it is the most open and fulfilling relationship a young girl can know.. on another note I adore the High Violet album cover tis tres pretty...


On a more bolshy womanly note I've also taken to listening to Janis Joplin in the shower. If you've never sung Piece of my Heart into a bottle of Minty shower gel and irritating the entire alleyway below you have never lived.
Also you never saw my exquisite performance that happened on the eve of my birthday..
And so I'm 23 now.. when I wrote my last blog I was awaiting the actual hour of my demise cough sorry growing up and becoming a real adult.. Now I've been 23 for well over a month but I thought I'd share the fabulousness of my birthday night..
A small sparkly room full of the most shiny superstars on the planet<>.. Ah the memories. what a memory I must say it was an incredible night and thanks to everyone who was there and sang their little hearts out..
imagine if you will a Francophile Bowie atop a sofa doffing her reddened quiff and swigging from a bottle of Sav blanc whilst swaying and singing, out of time may I add, a duet of Sarsdedts Where do You Go to My Lovely.. a personal tribute to an unmentioned time and I must say I grinned all night.. and danced. and got rather warm in my jumpsuit.. but twas a night of excellence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8XQZYIiNgo
Anyway I've neglected my knitting somewhat recently however, I'm coming up with ideas for my petit nephew's recent birthday.. he is a year older and I have celebrated a year of being a Graduate..

Yes this it the time I evolve, or devolve some might say, into my Dustin Hoffman phase (I have recently downloaded a lot of Simon and Garfunkel.. coincidence? I think not.. actually probably is)... that ennui he goes through, the sheer boredom and fear is always there.. who knows what to do when the world's at your feet and you've got so many places to turn that they eventually meld into one big nothingness.. they are all so possible that they become impossible and scary.. we are deep sea diving in a small pool, alone...

On at potentially more joyous note the World Cup is bloody over.. Yes I have actually enjoyed watching football for once.. England out.. but the team I wanted to win got to the final... Hup Holland indeed.. I have 1. got a massive crush on Sneijder 2 love me a bit of bright Orange and 3. feel the roots of my youth spent in the 'Dam coming out shouting "Ja hallo" at those silly Spaniards. (though When Cassillas cried it was very sweet) needless to say I used up my testosterone quota for a while (I must say a lot of shouty men in one room is quite a sexy experience...

as is Salma Hayek in From Dusk Til Dawn.. Sorry I watched it recently watched it and had a craving for Latina foot soaked whiskey of a vampire's tootsies.
mmmm..

Working my artistic skills in the office (and mostly out of it) I have downloaded Don McLean's Vincent (Starry Starry Night) a song that makes me want to lie in a field and watch it swirl.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwE3VdZ_AHQ I'm working on painting the silliness in my head.. and on that note I shall put up a few videos and think of something more interesting to say next time...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zAP2dUpAcA
download- National (and sneakily try and find some Arcade Fire Suburbs tracks cos I'm fucking gagging to hear it properly but I want to listen to the album the entire way through at least for the first time... awful habit I know but I'm hideously excited)
thinking about- the tattoo I want... it's French
as is the Movie I Most want to see-Gainsbourg.. yes. oh god yes, moi non plus... oui maintenant viens.... I am honestly in complete lust with Eric Elmosnino.. Je T'aime...Once I've seen it my entire next post will be about it... Attend.
Goodnight Kiddies


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYxxgvA8rlM

Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes.....

So hello again.. This is becoming a once a month tradition really. Whoever may read it I salute you. 

I've decided to write this on the eve of my 23rd birthday. Yes tomorrow I shall be 23 whole years old. A scary, scary thought for me... which shouldn't be that scary really as it's not old yet. But still It makes one sit back and think about the last year and what a load of crazy changes and rather mundane changes there have been. Just today I've chopped off a lot of my hair.. well a nicely priced Primarni clad lady did for a bit of a price.. but you get my drift. 

I've opened my first birthday present though.. and I must say I'm already quite impressed. a lovely polaroid camera and a rather huge book of pics from the Sartorialist.. that is indeed what has inspired me to write something more. 

I sit and watch about small Bolivian children being forced to work in mines I hardly feel like I have any grounds to complain about anything.  So I think I will try to make this as positive as I can.. 

I shall perhaps ponder on the exciting evening I had this time last week... it has been over 3 years since I've desperately wanted to see the rather lovely 50s movie star esque Dan Sartain. Wearing a Letterman jacket and a pair of turned up jeans his slicked back hair and his brown little brogues toe tapped their way into my heart once again. I admit I did drag some people to this little gig in the Static Gallery in Liverpool. Twas rather excellent. Not only was there a celebrity siting or million (um Slash from Guns N Roses, or the Welsh version at least who hangs around bus stops and on Duke Street) and Dan Sartain himself sat in the audience, in the dark, wearing sunglasses. With a calm and quiet Buddy Holly approach he sauntered on stage and caressed the mic, practically fellating its ridged curves. I may have been one of a handful who'd listened to his albums prior to the show.. but it was lovely to look around and see the occasional face singing along.videos and pics to come shortly.... 

Apologies for the rather distant and rambleless blog as I'm yet to think of anything overly exciting today. The highlight of my week has been the various new songs I've discovered and bands I've been playing to death. 

Such as the delightfully hazy Strange Boys with their excellent song "Be Brave" a song that has rather become an anthem in my own little head world. It's true.. I'm 23. Need a new job and house in the next two months and am at rather a huge crossroads of what the fuck I'm doing.. and feel somewhat scared and alone (and obviously far too emotionally honest to keep this to myself.. hopefully I'll read this back in a few months and be amused at the silly nonsense spouting from fingertips) Having been somewhat disappointed by various situations of late, mostly ones that have been due to the lack of courage or manners in others (and sometimes myself). So I'm stuck between a rock and a ridiculous place but maybe I shouldn't discuss that on a public forum with myself and myself and ooh myself. I must just say I've got a bit of a massive mind fuck on. This must be what it's like to be alone.... or so the song goes.. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hEQd-1XdIs

Apparently they utterly resent being called something that would be on a Nuggets album but frankly they would fit rather snuggly between some Electric Prunes and Love somewhere in a hip record case. 

I'm also stuck in the hard place between corporate whoreness and nastiness.. and the possibility of going to art school, creating my own clothes and owning my own hip boutique down town and playing loud music into the streets of Liverpool. I can't honestly wait to have some business skills to warrant my own shop.. If some people I've met can do why the hell can't I?

and this shall be booming from the windows... The Almighty Defenders- Bow down and die! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-gQV6mou2g

This shouty piece of delightpie is THE best singing/shouting in the shower song EVER!Enjoy!

so onto my more Feminist roots I have discovered not only one but two excellently twee girly tweepop bands.. The Dum Dum Girls with Throw Aggi.  A song for anybody who knows who they should be with and they don't seem to realise it. Throw her in a ditch! indeed!

and secondly Peggy Sue.. all I've found as well as the single on Hype Machine is a silly little recording on youtube of them playing this heartache song Once We Were Strangers for those relationships that may not work but can't not work, in a little park. I can't help but see the symmetry and the poetry in this.. How everything seems so significant.. how we just keep trying our luck and fighting and fucking. Just listen and think about it haha.. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZvLnYz-4g0

and my number one song of the week... so far... Paul Simon's Boy in the Bubble (or if I can push that to two number one songs Crazy Love as well) I swear everytime I hear this album I feel like a 7yr old driving around with my family. I always professed to hate "Graceland" I'm not sure why, it seems rather a pathetic piece of childhood rebellion but perhaps it just goes to show how ur taste evolves.. and how utterly mindblowing this is sat on the bus in the sun singing to yourself.. and being a little crazy... 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4kY4Y9gjqw Live in Zimbabwe the year I was born...

So this is going to be short as I'm going to go and watch a movie.. I have just noticed that Dick Van Dyke never seems to age and laughs the same as he used to in Mary Poppins.. I see Night at the Museum or Diagnosis Murder and think why did they hire a chimney sweep to solve crimes/be a weird museum guard/have white hair?

I'm hoping to have a lovely birthday 1. as many people I love will be around. 2. I'll be dressed in a custom made (by me though) David Bowie costume for my karaoke party in the sun (and to make myself feel less old this is the same theme I had for my 12th birthday party!) and 3. I will be amazingly excited despite my usual bittersweet feelings towards being another year older and situations where one feels pressure to be happy. I will have fun with my famous friends, Gaga, Mj, Madonna, George some Swedish popstars and a lot of vocal chord strain!! 

until then a bientot ma petites x

paul simon

work

I Often Dream of Trains or Zen and the Art of Banking....

Why hello Chums.

Yes, chums... I like the word I'm bringing it back.  I have just come back from seeing Shutter Island and require some kind of need to prove that I'm not completely insane to myself so I'm writing  a bit on my long suffering blog that has been somewhat neglected of late. 

So yes... I'm rejecting any kind of idea that I'm insane and living in a world of my own devising, well yes I have devised some parts of my world, most likely the part of it when I work as a top philosophical correspondent genius poet etc. but at least I"m not consistently going to a creepy, dark, Hitchcocky, Nazi, lobotomising island. I hope. 

Recently I have been rather busy doing things that may not appear to be a huge amount of excitement but it is quite busy doing nothing. I feel that I ought to spend some time out of work constantly doing anything but work. If that makes little or no sense than fine, be like that, but one day perhaps you shall sit in a cold, (yet strangely stifling) boxy room full of munchkins and evil managers singing adverts (Go Compare sung at full volume in a broad accent of some description and followed by a raucous bulldog laugh is not something I would recommend as exciting listening material-if anybody ever changed their ringtone anymore then that would be on par with those comedic ones that still futilely linger upon our screens that nobody pays attention to. I mean how, without radium or radiographic or something glowy, is one able to x-ray your own hand with a phone? One day there'll be no queue's for NHS resources to get x-rays when all we have to do is head to Carphone Warehouse and it'll all be ace)

I've been given more work, true, I do often complain about having little to do, but being given more work that is somewhat pointless, makes it even more pointless in some roundabout way.  So, like I said, I've been busy doing everything else; trips to Londres, trips to Margate and it's finest seashores (and gorgeously tweed clad waitered fish restaurants... with some Prosecco and some chavvy boys... and the best company of lovely people)..um yes it was also Easter, the day our lord, or somebody's lord, as Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine according to Patti Smith (or Them.. can't remember which) yes sidetracked, the day he died and rose or some such story. As you can tell my secular upbringing has not been massively infiltrated by Christianity yet somehow I still feel guilt hehe.. not really Catholic Guilt though. I don't know what God exists but it's not bloody their one is it? 

I have spent a rather luxurious weekend at home, I did indeed have a long time when I wasn't at home for the last few weekends. but a nice barbeque, Moroccan dinners and a bit of a pizzapalooza I've had a lovely week... too much mojito, too much Pimms, and a nice burger.. But I've felt somewhat abandoned I must say, mostly as seeing family and then not seeing them makes me feel somewhat lost. I read an Ask Mariella about a girl who was 22 and lost in the world. yes, she did have a traumatic accident and a family who were odd but you know I kinda feel empathy. I say kinda... I have yet to redeem myself from the crazy feeling that I'm not heading anywhere and that if I followed my feet on the desperate wish I have to just piss off somewhere else nobody would notice (possibly not true... the list pile would build up at work... and I do, despite other elements of silliness have lots of lovely friends) but I feel the need to make some kind of grand gesture of excitement in my life.. run away to Paris and live in a flat of the Champs Elysees and learn to smoke without coughing, drink whiskey and read my copy of Fear of Flying (that I've nicked off a friend) on the Rive Gauche..

it upsets me greatly that the likes of Cheryl Cole are held in highest regard when all she does is faff about making ironic "no comments" comments to Heat magazine or even worse making actual comments about life and what we should do with ourselves. Why do they have any greater knowledge of life than "normal" people? 

hmm this is rather a mish mash isn't it? and perhaps negating the original intent to prove I still had some semblance of sanity in my silly little brain.. it's just a bit sad not having one person in the world who can't live without me. but this is neither the time nor the place to expel all kinds of cathartic messages about life and love.  I am channelling my love into other things, into being patient and kind and not being a massive judgemental twat but I think I'm failing in that. Instead I'm being critical and off the cuff (?). and artistically temperamental. I've been painting, again mostly nudes, and writing some ranty poetry. Reading Fear of Flying is strangely cathartic as well to be honest. I feel that it's somewhat cliched to say that I totally or at least think I do, understand it. and feel it and worry about it. I stare at men on the bus and think about them naked, searching for a zipless fuck but wanting to be loved. I fall in love with men in books ( ironically I'm a little in love with both Bennett and Adrian already-Adrian less so as he sounds rather egocentric) but I'm maybe contemplating even more the idea that men are scared of stronger women? This can't be true? if so I'm taking any bisexual tendencies I have, which admittedly is some, I'm leaning that way baby... 

I will write more on this theory at some point as right now I feel I'm writing about it for the sake of writing when really I want to get onto the gig I went to last night. 

Robyn Hitchcock, former lead singer of the rather excellent Soft Boys, played a lovely solo gig at the academy in town.  Admittedly it was quiet and a quite subdued affair, with muso geeks (mostly 35yr old men and their girlfriends) nodding and whooping.  He flipped his hair, he talked nonsense about Ants (how we envy the ants.. how we think about the ants.. reminding me of some kind of incident that happened in a friend's childhood... ) about Antwoman... (who was strangely stripy- I've never seen a stripy lady-ant).. he came on stage to join in on some humming with Mark Heron, formerly of the Incredible String Band, and his family band... wearing a very American Apparel-ish Purple muted leopard print shirt and a cup of tea.. I can't for the life of me remember everything he uttered but it was the most divine nonsense and I thoroughly enjoyed it.. I was perched on the edge of a ledge, on my own and not caring about that as most people seemed to be and I'm comfortable in my existence to spend time alone..) and stared at the rather lovely looking young man across from me leaning on a pillar as if it was propping up what little self assurance he had left and gradually getting straighter and straighter throughout the performance...he sang seashanties and stories and delightfully matched his guitar to his shirt (purposefully one would have to assume but either way it was bloody ace) I can't decide if I'm glad he didn't play some of my favourite songs or not as it might have meant I'd become the way I do when something lovely happens and I worry I'll forget about it or stop feeling about it.. but he did play Soft Boys bizarre rambling Insanely Jealous.. one of my favourite songs about copulation and green eyed madness... I am insanely jealous of the spiders in your bath.. and frankly the lyrics of all his songs make me so ridiculously happy that I can barely explain it. 

I'll write more about it when I am able to put the pictures up so instead here's one video for you.. 

as you can tell I've mostly been Knitting: a scarf I started as a present for last Christmas for a young man who deserves plenty of scarves from me as I've attempted theft of his many a time.

eaten: food that has made my kitchen heat alarm go off at all hours and Moroccan lamb with balsamic braised shallots and mushrooms with dried fruit (bung it all together with some olives  and sesame seeds yum) and the lamb was covered in turmeric, paprika, honey, olive oil and sesame seeds.. and plenty of pepper. Homemade houmous and a lot of banofee pie (which I wasn't overly impressed with but pie, toffee sauce and cream and banana.. how can u got totally wrong?) 

Reading: Fear of Flying and attempting to read upcoming election manifestoes... hmmmm... this is another topic I'll hit on but believe me as a work colleague joked about running for MP I wept for the future.. I'm in a tad sticky situation.. two I definitely can't vote for but then feeling of a wasted vote.. never.. and the brochure for the Hay festival.. woo hoo! If any literary heroes/heroines are met believe me there will be some namedropping, possibly fake credentials and a job as Marr's righthandwoman.. ooh yes!

anyway.. listening to: attempting to download things by people playing at Sound city in the next few weeks (and looking into Indietracks line up hurrah), Robyn Hitchcock's album "I often Dream of Trains" which I was bitterly disappointed he didn't play (that was one of the ones I'd like to have heard) 

and Prince's "Little Red Corvette"- On repeat.Fucking. Incredible. Song!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5mgRFSCDO8 (there was copyright on the video on youtube I'm afraid.. but find it.. listen to the horsey song.. BABY HAVE YOU GOT ENOUGH GAS?)

So a video or two for you and then bed.. ok that's a lie I'm going to go and watch Heston Blumenthal's fairytale feast in bed...xxxxx

(oh and this is the guitar/shirt combo I was talking about.. it's true though. I do often dream of trains... and think about them.. I sit upon them and dream.. and remember.. of Basingstoke or Reading.. out in the corridor.... the sun sets at 4 o clock..exactly what I'm dreading...

I have no other words to describe how amazingly odd and silly this song makes me feel and I suppose I shouldn't try....

but it's somewhat scary inside. x

I would Shed My Skin for you.........

So here begins a gin induced rant/rave/what you will..

I have spent a long week pondering not only my own existence but that of the others in this world and the very fabric of being and so forth I am still bamboozled.

So I work in a ridiculous place. A place of silliness and but where silliness is somewhat forbidden or at least frowned upon as is individuality or even the thought of it crossing one's mind. A scary place where the likes of mundane things like Strictly Come Fuck Me Up The Arse Live On TV And Let People Vote For the Best Cum Shot are um well not the topic of choice but strictly come something or other are. Anyway, So my bemoaning of the day would be the exquisite amount of chaos mundane activities can have on the singular and small minded.

I shall tell you a story perchance, one of nonsense and lack of imagination. Your brave heroine waits, forlorn upon a desk of solitude and despair. I sit, and stare uponst the screen of information of fat of the land, the ones who've got rich of being rich and fictitious, They have achieved things unbeknownst to others. So, here or there I sat, upon the fate of my own conclusions, a temporary fate but a current one at that, To forget about the perils one has faced during the day boarded up in a cell of my own devising I ventured to the outside world, a world of light and magpies that sit upon the train tracks and flit about at their own accord, somewhat aptly considering they sit outside banks waiting for shiny things to appear but I've always given them more credit than that, they're not waiting they're just mocking. Your humble heroine stretches her limbs, reclines upon a soft factory themed chair of discontent and swivels towards the light anxious to break free of the invisible constraints holding her to a computer. So she sits and stares at the paper, at the sky at the silly thoughts of pretension and loneliness and thoughts of a silly and nostalgic nature. Sprawled some might say, upon a bench in the sun and air. This dear Reader is what caused such havoc. Everybody had some kind of opinion on the notion of a 22year old sat upon a bench in her lunch hour, giving herself a splinter in her thigh found at later notice, and thinking about lost things and madness and listening to Beach House. Could there be anything perhaps more renegade? How utterly rebellious. Sitting. outside!

So if you ring up a bank and ponder the notion of their own existence and why they feel the need to incessantly cause havoc amidst your finances, which incidentally people of Britain you need to take SOME responsibility for and use common sense, just be thankful they don't go into every intricate detail of your life and just ask you silly questions on the phone. I get the same joke everytime, "So sir or madam or generic tosser is there anything else I can do for you in this time of recessional need and necessity for happiness inducing impulse purchases of yachts?" "oh haha, yes, if you wouldn't mind transferring some more money into my account.. what what".
no
it's not funny anymore seriously. I have done what one could say a sufficiently passable actors career for about 7 months now.
Without the promise of Newcomer oscar nominations and Golden Globes.

I have been in the process of writing a thesis on the banal. A banalis if you will. Commenting on the people I have met and the silliness encountered.

But tonight as I sit in my house, singing along to some Nancy Sinatra eminating from the Tarantino film upon the telly drinking a small gin Mojito, a new invention of my own devising with a little Cuban help, I ponder not only things that I have lost and might find confusing, things I long to write about but can't quite bring myself to. I would rather think about the exciting new array of music I've been listening to all week.
mostly, Beach House's new album Teen Dream.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90ipyWYO3LM

A rather exquisitely beautiful ponderage upon the nature of the teenage and human condition. It makes my heart all fluttering to listen to something quite so pretty and think about things gone by and things to come. I feel contented for once, and somehow I'm too scared to jinx that with words of wisdom and depth.
So back to the music. I have listened non stop to Zebra, and cannot imagine a more amazing song about a stripy horse. It just makes me tear up for some reason Don't I know you better than the rest.... and makes me pine for the plains of the savannah where they may roam for all I know.
I"m yet to listen to an amazing looking cd of B-Horror movie soundtracks but if it's anything along the lines of Tarantinotasticness then I am all ears. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOofloefrEw




or the film for that matter. I've started searching for more music that sounds like it could be from a Western, excellently exemplified by Kill Bill.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZoQ_E8GHsk I've listened to much Dan Sartain, though I'm stil caught up on finding something more original and exiting souding. but then again maybe it's not meant to sound original.. just like a lot of fucked mariachi men on a bender with some knives, a Hatori Hanzo sword and snazzy yellow catsuit.

I do believe I may be losing my train of thought but I'd also like to ponder upon the excellence that is Jesus and Mary Chain. Everytime it has rained recently, Happy when it rains comes on my ipod, the ipod that normally likes to emotionally torture me with meaningful songs that I read into far too much.
But the shoegaze happiness is somewhat infectious..and I'm aware that sounds like a massive oxymoron but I find it quite happy in a bitter way. They've loved and lost and now don't give a shit about them. It's somewhat cathartic walking towards work listening to them loudly. I've made a habit of putting on an angry or loud song to walk the pathway up to work to. I have said before I often put journeys to music and perhaps feel like I live in some kind of music video, listening to Human League in the toilet and Wolf Like Me strutting towards the front entrance in front of everyone and I suppose I should just reiterate that I am so fucking glad I'm considered an oddity.

So I've mostly been making tshirts for people's birthday presents and planning a painting of some variety though I also bought two incredible paintings of lovers and the wedded couple at a flea market on Lark Lane.
a mess.
birthday cards at the expense of the work stationary cupboard.
my fringe

I am planning on how to become more like a Tarantino heroine without having to kill people. I already have the right lipstick and fringe.. I just need more witty catchphrases.
Watching Kill Bill, Skins finale (tragically having to admit my crushes on all the boys and naomi and Emily. sigh.. being a teenager in Bristol was not that exciting unless I have forgotten it all due to massive amounts of it.)

listening to .... Beach House-Zebra!!!! (and watching the sky whilst listening to it at the same time seeing the clouds form a zebra across the sky.. was beautiful) The Understudies Chip Pan Glam, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el7FU8boKWk this is actually from Indietracks Where I was I'm not sure If I got round to seeing them but I was sat at one point in that small chapel of love..
Ray Rumours and the No-Eye Deers Puddles and Rain Which is an incredible song.. I shall try and put it on the blog if I can figure it out..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-msNd8wg-j4 again this is not the same song but I kept finding videos for actual islands..
and One Happy Island's Texas Toast a loving tribute to drunken eating and plastic jewellery purchases (the texas version of drunk shopping in the 24hr Asda down the road)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CBJj2yhFyo this is not the same song just the only one I could find by him (who I also swore was a woman but is so gorgeous and frail sounding)

smelling the springy yummy air of frivolity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5x1F9ohRa4


I promise the next post will be somewhat more cohesive. Sorry.
xxxxxx

Two legs bad. No legs and Sticky Out Eyes Better...

Just before I start, or as I start rather, I warn you this may well be introspective drivel yet I have just walked home in the sleet, some called it snow some call it rain... why it's not called swain or snain or raiow heaven knows... and I walked home from the bus stop contemplating, thinking and generally many other thesaurus raped synonyms for looked a bit dozy and inward facing. I listened to Gimme Shelter. I howled at the sleet. well Mick did. I did. inwardly. Thinking why? Indeed.. tis a question with many answers. but tis also a question with many questions. None of which I care to think about on this night..

I have many fears... I have been told I take too many photographs. This is a reaction to the fear of forgetting everything. I have many weird dreams of which I am both frightened and compelled by usually concerning something or someone missing in a shopping centre and or conversations I am not allowed to have in real life. These both baffle and amuse and set me up for a day of computer staring madness. I apologise again if this is also rather short. I have been driven to actual eye problems.. yes I no longer wear my Buddy Holly glasses just to look cool.. they're real, albeit quite weak, lenses deep in the sockets of mine eyes peeking out from the mascara laden hordes of nonsense. This may also be disjointed but I fear that I am disjointed today. I ponder that I cannot think anymore, I worry that I cannot think enough or too much or feel too little or too much. My head is in a constant loop of madness and nonsense and yet I make some small sense in pretending to be quite contented leading to the conclusion that at points I actually am. This manner of introspection has yet again come upon me in a time of great influence of not gin, no nor vodka neither... but a "Thought provoking' film.. God I fucking hate films that "make you think". it doesn't make you think, you were thinking, well most of you were, before you went to it and we project our own futile lives onto a bigger screen for all to see. We share our own innate and stagnant worries so that they may become festering blooms of public displays. I am always one for oversharing. But strangely when others overshare I feel the urge to outdo them. God knows why I've not got that much to share. but maybe I do. I get confused rather by the nature of the human condition and if that's not a pretentious and stagnant brain bloom god knows what is... Perhaps I've been blocked. Perhaps I've been stoppered by some inane idea that sharing is good all the time. I like introspection but I like sharing it with few or many depending on who is about. I often find it makes some others uncomfortable. I may be too emotional some may find that endearing others not. I don't know what to say about that though. I have changed the way I have shared that recently. I have splattered along this rollicking thing of life bashing into people, mostly as I have no sense of balance, and crashing into various hedges simply to bump back along. I thought those crashes were important, significant idealistically challenging. Perhaps. but I would never in a million years stop wanting to feel anything. I have once asked not to. and I have regretted it every day as even though it hasn't come true yet I am always scared that one day I will get some kind of karmic shove up the backside and I'll be a reticent hole in the ground for others to get swallowed up in. I am aware I will possibly read back this post tomorrow thinking hmmm what a load of random crap but I felt this weird urge to write something beautiful. it hasn't happened yet but I feel if I keep typing I will eventually stumble onto the beauty without trying. do we need to try with that? Is it necessary to comment on how utterly amazing the city looked tonight? How much like crying I felt when four ruggedly handsome policemen stormed a Bargain Booze searching for a lonely drunk who may or may not have caused some kind of ruckus but was now sound asleep at the bus stop? Did they honestly think it was necessary to save two girls from this lonely old man with a beard? They asked if he'd bothered us. we said no. They hassled him anyway. Maybe I'm too cynical thinking they've taken him away for punishment when really it was cold and he was asleep at a bus stop but the rescue fantasy has become somewhat of an archaic throw up that reached into my gullet and tugged on my gag reflex one too many times. I am subject to it. God yes I am I suppose. I can barely rescue myself but I do try. and I do succeed more often than not. but it's the times when others might rescue you without you even asking and I find that few people can do that. I have met only 1 or 2 who I've not asked to help me but have selflessly done so. I have felt helpless and been helped but helped myself. I can't decide if that's egotistical, self reflecting or just plain narcissism wrapped up in nicer terms but sneezing on my own in my cold cold room thinking about something that could've made staring at the drunken man in the back of the car cut out against the bombed out church does not always help. I have been told on more than one occasion that I am a smelly person haha yes yes I am a stinky person. No that's not what I meant. Apparently I live life in a big olfactory factory. I smell something and I remember. I smell shampoo left behind and I think back to a day ending with a nice warm shower and a rain storm elsewhere. I smell a pillow and remember sleep and screaming and silliness and I smell a leaf and think of well I don't know. I smell the parting of my fingers after I've been out in the rain and it smells like honey. I think that might be why I feel so utterly wretched today. I have the beginnings of a cold and I am worried for myself over such a silly thing as thinking too much when really I long to be able to think more. I cannot smell much today and it is stunting my stupid silliness that I am usually overbrimming with. I'm sick of being forced into a role of happiness that I don't always feel. I'm not saying I"m not a happy person as I am I am joyously happy but when I feel most happy I want to cry.. with happiness. and I don't get it. I'm not supposed to obviously. but surely everybody at some point feels like that and I hate that. I am unique yet so is everybody. I am scared of the mundane I fear one day becoming it. I fear I may already have done but then I know in my heart of hearts that unless I am forcing myself into something else I'm pretty fucking cool haha..

I am after all trapped in a state of crapness at work. I am starting to get into a routine that I don't think everybody escapes and everybody keeps telling me I will but I'm petrified that I don't know what I want to do and will be stuck there forever, the more people offer other suggestions the more defensive I become and the more I just want to run away and be a hermit in a little cottage possibly in France and feed horses apples and go skinny dipping in my own eel free lake that is always lukewarm and refreshing and eat my own grown oranges.
I'm not sure why I'm writing any of this but whenever it rains I always think of 7 snails. I used to live in a house where I was on my own, well supposedly, for a lot of the summer, and one day I sat in the monsoon like rain storm that can only happen at the dead of night in the middle of summer where it's just become too heavy and hot to not rain. I stared at the moon in the way my Romantic side does, wishing I could somehow capture some kind of semblance of that utterly benevolent and beautiful moment and I noticed that in the rainy reservoirs gathering at my feet there were seven snails rushing towards my doorstep. They were going so fast, or the night was going so slowly they seemed supersonic, and all from different directions. It was like they'd arranged that on a darkened night they'd get together at my doorstep to prove humanity wrong that they were quite fast actually and that they were going to plot to take over the world. So I sat and watched them. Carefully trying to pretend that I wasn't eavesdropping on their plans for world domination. Till this day I'm still awaiting a benevolent race of divine snails to sweep down from the rainclouds and prove humanity wrong. That they also feel, that they also cry from their strange stalky eyes. I can't stand standing on snails, it feels somewhat revolutionary or mutinous to crush their small little homes and destroy something so squidgy and sweet looking. So utterly futile and pretty and silly.This isn't how I imagined writing about the snails for the first time. I was going to write a beautiful epic poem saving all my ideas for some long and undiluted ode to the silence they created around me but fuck it.
I'm going to write it in work tomorrow instead of saving the world of banking I'm going to help the snails in their plight to take over the world.
night xx

Back to the New School.....

So Tis a New Year... new years resolutions abound.. but that's not what I'm going to be writing about .... as I sit with a cold, pancakes, icely bound in my home, off work due to distinct lack of ability to taste/smell/see clearly I thought I'd abate boredom with a little post after a long absence and lack of actual readers.. but that's not going to stop me.. !!!

I am sat watching the Gilmore Girls..
in the exciting manner that I have missed since starting work.. what more can one want in a stupid comedy drama nonsense? Lou Reed, Sonic Youth, Grizzly Bear and various indie greats namedropped and soundtracked off the cuff... so well at least that's my basis for watching it.. I like quick talking nonsense. and ignoring the vapid nature of celebrity big eugheugheugh.... why? and Cheryl Cole... yes rather pretty and with utterly bouncy hair but she scares me.. she is just far too convenient.... hmmm... anyway I spent my first day .. nay the first few (coherent) hours of the new year watching Muppet Treasure Island and trying to figure out who the young Jim was... Kevin Bishop odd....


So what has happened since my last post? Life has swum past.... I have bought and lost two more fish... I named them after their favourite record, or the record I played them which made them swim fastest.. I tested a Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra best off from the lovely Oxfam collection of crap down the road... to which they looked somewhat happy but they didn't quite get what Lee was on about.. I think they were confused by Some Velvet Morning and even more annoyed they had not boots nor feet that were made for walking... so I put on Velvet Underground and Nico... and they swam and found some furs (well weeds) to wrap themselves in and um.. cavort with each other to .seems even fish like to have sex to the Velvet Underground ... who doesn't eh?


so they were called Lou and Nico....


So I enter a new year with my 10grand job (which let's hope fingers crossed I'm not still doing for the rest of the year to get 10 grand) and a new start is awaiting.. somewhere.. Planning an exciting breakthrough into something else exciting.. I think I've missed out on my hat making course.. so millinery is not going to be imminent but I'm starting to practice.. I have developed an idea for a fashion show based on the English Civil War, and I need to copyright that now cos it took me a good two hours to think of all the hats.. well I must have something to do at work mustn't I?
I am deliberating a lifestyle change to move the other side of the world. not quite sure where yet but who knows. It might be somewhere fun.. I'm sick of being shouted at 24/7 and it's only a matter of time before I start writing my memoirs of a banking Customer Service Adviser. It would involve such excellent stories of crazy cat ladies threatening to stab invisible men on the phone.. think I'm jesting? just you wait for when I publish banking Babylon (haha no really not the title)
I'm waiting for the time I can tell the person on the phone, in my ever stable and polite manner that the reason someone working on the telephone is not stupid as I have a degree and I understand what I'm saying.. just cos they don't does not make it nonsense and soon enough I'm going to point out, politely of course, that it's most likely the older generation of nonsense makers faults' that I'm stuck in a dead end job working for pittance and being treated like a doormat.. yes my boss big boss knows my name but no that does not make her less of an Evil Ice Queen... and yes that is a title so it does deserve capitals.. I do believe it is her new title... moving onto the vindictive nature of those "In Charge"... what exactly are they in charge of cos if i was more of a cliche than I am.. which I strive not to be (probably a cliche in it's own right anyway..hmm) I would play jargon bingo.. well bingo with their big old balls.. This a women driven world apparently but that does not stop my co worker being called Mr.. and me being treated like a nonsensical little girl, got called a "good girl" yesterday, because I'm of the fairer sex...

I've managed to figure out how to a. draw at my desk without being caught, b. knitting *under the desk but still .. I Looked like I was masturbating but that way nobody else came and spoke to me...hehe they were too uncomfortable * c. reading my book under the desk (at the moment Alain de Boton's "Essays in Love", before the excellent "Her Fearful Symmetry" which if you have not read go and do so now. I'm kicking myself for not having been to Highgate Cemery before now.. d. texting.. not too hard e. being paranoid that I'd miss working at all ... tragic non? and e. Giggling...

a lot.


So back onto why they're all vindictive and waiting for you to mess up.. I'm not going to be messed with on this kind of nonsensical shit.. not allowed to leave early due to the ice and snow... we walked for 2hrs in the day on sheets of ice and on the way home in the dark... fun times.. or not.. even worse when apparently you get in trouble for making a comment and being in a bad mood. when I Know for a fact that the bosses do FUCK ALL most of the time. I've outrightly asked my boss a question and she didn't know what I was talking about. I was confirming something, to do with banking may I add it wasn't quantum Physics... which frankly I hold my hands up to not understanding.. and she said hmm I don't know. and Two of us made the mistake of going to the Christmas dinner.. to put into perspective how heinous it was only 14 people out of about 300 went.. and we had to go and get pissed beforehand... it was all about drunkenly dancing amongst your "peers" and pretending to be down with the kids.. one person was lovely the rest looked like evil walking Boots adverts.. here come the evil bloodsucking ice queens, not quite as catchy a title for the song but you get my feeling yes??

Tis not the fun world for a temp... apparently even opening the window has its hazards... I opened a window in a bout of cold related fever and I would openly fine to shut the window if asked.. however, one delightful co-worker who can't look me in the eye and has a habit of badmouthing temporary staff or blaming the entire downfall of the bank not on its consistent workers oh NOOOO they know exactly what they're doing but on the temp staff.. so he couldn't even look me in the eye when I told him out impolite it was not to ask and coughed ... he muttered something about air con.. I'm just generally annoyed at the rudeness of people.. What is the necessity of rudeness? Wit, Sarcasm, even down and outright anger rage burning instead..

but stupid rude bastard

fume fume fume..
I've stopped listening to my ipod in the toilet in my lunch break now though and have actually made friends to watch telly with and fall asleep on the sofa with which is nice... just some dickheads are being dickheads.. how eloquent I have become in the face of adversity.. I dunno.. how utterly ridiculous am I? I sit at a desk all day alternating between telling people it's not my fault and transferring them to the ISA team, giggling or reading up on romantically inclined syllogisms.. tis but the life of the lowly graduate. Now if only I could find a graduate training scheme for I dunno.. political satire writing combine with millinery and photography and philosophical pundit for the Guardian and I'd be sorted!!!

I'm preparing for some Feminist fun with another production of That Takes Ovaries a play of stories of Female bravery... so be prepared for more updates on that. and hopefully helping out with a Feminist art show which I must away and do some painting for...

delightful.. I'm planning paintings.... if art school won't come to Muhammed..

So talking of art I felt the need to go and use my brain in Tate Liverpool and went to the rather excellent exhibition on Michael Landy and Jean Tinguely's Joyous Machines.. these machines started my brain athinkin' again which was somewhat a delight when it's been asleep deep in the crevices of banking bad trip... these machines are built to not only be kinetic and pretty well some of them, pretty in a Mondrian liney De Stijl way, but also conclusively to destroy themselves. They look almost like deconstructed Kandinskys with more colours ... each shape was more than one colour and the 3d element represents the fluid way Kandinsky must have wanted his paintings to look explosive.. Tinguely's excellent words put it as they would not exist without destruction. The Point of their existence is the destruction solely of themselves. This is coming from a rather rakish and artistic French man elaborating on why destruction is a good thing... deconstruction of his own constructions by themselves seems to totally make sense when eeer explained err.. like zees..
I loved the video they show of the audience's reaction to his, well I suppose it was a loose form of performance art but that makes him sound like a mediocre art student with a mime show. how he set the machine to die in the middle of Brooklyn I believe and realistically it died at the hands of the NYC fire dept. Less artistic but quite interesting.. Even the mini suicide pod that was created to escape the mother machine and dive into a pond to drown itself didn't quite make it ... they had to put it all out before the hidden fire extinguisher in the piano blew up. As that's what it was doing it was showing a life spectrum within the machine. It lived I suppose, it made noises, music, moved breathed in the mechanical sense.. and all due to the God of Tinguely. It threw open lots of ideas for the relationship between human and machine. For example the drawing machine he created. People put their names to the drawings made by the machine, they did however either make these machines or set them up or arrange the process for them to create certain kinds of drawings, even the random drawings were probably preconceived to the degree that the machine did not act on its own free will. However, does this make the machine the artist? Does this allow us to give the title of artist to any machine? could you say a paintbrush was an artist or is the machine simply a tool for the human to create art. is there any kind of art created without the middle man tool .. human to canvas.. but then the canvas and paint could be the tools.. does it need forethought? Am I reading into this too deeply because it's the first time in ages I've felt properly compelled by something exciting? The nature of human as the artist is amazing and I wish one day to have that title however, does this title only belong to the human? can it ever belong to "individual-machine or otherwise"?

anyway... ramble ramble..

Michael Landy created images of the destruction of the Tinguely's machine but also created a display on Oxford street concerning the destruction of all the items in his house. Surely something I could never do as I live in an almost entirely materialistic state.. not due to a love of consumerism just a love of objects but I don't live in an objective state really haha.. anyway yes.. this was almost beautiful as he took each item and weighed it, obviously remembered something regarding it and then destroyed it to its lowest form.. a pulp. a nothingness.. or simply destroyed it by making it not resemble what it once was... 7227!!!!!!

is something destroyed when it no longer appears as it used to be or is simply the same fundamental feelings and ideas or material melded into a new position? is it ever new or old or truly destroyed?

So yes there were many other exciting things in the Tate which amused me.. they have turned a sculpture museum into a sculpture disco.... Disco with the Sarah Lucases and the like... with a dancefloor and amazing lights reflecting of a naked golden man's balls... all to the musical accompaniment of disco tunes on your own little headphones.. Well Impressed!!!

and I spent a long time watching Gilbert and George and that was purely for my own exciting amusement......as we all know



"Gordon's makes us very drunk."........

Speaking of drink I'm somewhat enamoured with an advert for the twinings or some such tea where the man makes a picture of a waterfall with tea.... realistically ... it was blatantly not tea but I'm so tempted to get some exciting coloured tea and try it....

or put it in the bath... I've just had the most spectacular bath that smelt like tangerine oil (and weirdly the place between my fingers smelt like well it smelt like something or someone I'd not smelt in awhile which sounds dirty but it's not I promise haha...)

Like some rain and honey and the nice smell of the cold after you've been for a walk.. sigh...

So.. in conclusion for now.. I've mostly been reading: "Her Fearful Symmetry" as mentioned above.. a delightful ghost story about love and loss and OCD. and Making myself slightly miserable but philosophically so by reading Essays in Love... beautiful and insightful. even makes me smile to be totally honest..




I've mostly been listening to: well it was Christmas so "Fairytale of New York" which always makes me smile or sad can't decide which... and Last Christmas... but also the excitement that I got Julian Casablancas's solo album for Christmas so "I know I'm going to hell in a leather jacket....."

I've mostly been watching buffy. nuff said.. .no more I'm trying to wean myself off it. Promise. !

and I've mostly been knitting: a Scarf for Kieran. it's still not finished. oh well! Merry Christmas!
most unfulfilled dream I've had...: one I'm not going to share cos I keep dreaming about something... and also owning my own shop full of buttons, feathers and records......

and painting: a birthday pressie for my father.. based on Under Milk Wood.... Dylan Thomas and Christmas...


reminds me of this really....


and i've been mainly wanting all the things on here and all for a good cause.. bon bon bon..

http://www.yellowbirdproject.com/

Bon Soir Cheri xxxxxx