mind on my money and my money on new york!

"look for the dream that keeps coming back"

I'm hoping that by writing this it adds another building block to the ladder I'm stretching out across the ocean. I almost, almost bought a book today to ease myself into the technical stuff.

I have some plans and I have lungfuls of hope!

Otherwise, I've been rolling around with Battle Studies this week, throwing my arms around New York and pretty much trying to get everything else correct. The music seems to seep into the map I'm drawing and my goodness, I have no intention of shaking it. I'm just so much better when it's in the room. I do feel like I'm full to the top with all the dark I can muster out of my skeleton-filled-closets, but it also feels like I'm finally at the point where I get to tip some of it out rather than just fight my way through the murk. Bring it on, life. I'm ready.

Also been listening to tons of Peter Broderick, Temper Trap, Langhorne Slim and Neil Young. It's a mixed up month of November, but it still makes perfect sense.

I shall return with some whimsical posts when I'm busy procrastinating about my two essay deadlines for next week, but for now... listen, without prejudice.

War of My Life

image found on flickr

twenty-seven.

I always take the new year marker from my birthday, not from January 1st.
I make it personal. Personal is important to me right now.

My new year started two days ago and my fresher, slightly older face is up-turned and ready to live up to some expectations. Not too many mind, I'm not one to push the pressure. There are a number of things that I want to get ticked before the twenty-eight looms, but I'm also allowing for cracks to appear and let the unexpected beautiful stuff creep in.

Guess and check, with everything I got. Starts now.

Fink - Sort of Revolution

today, i am mostly feeling like this...

... but it's not "oh, i so can't be bothered to read all this shit" it's an "oh shit! when am i going to have the time to read all this wonderful stuff?"

I should start now, eh?

But first, a little Ben Harper with my tea.

Gold To Me - Ben Harper

away we go.

I almost have too many things to say about this film. About its words and its songs and its cast, mood, heart, laughter. I watched it for the fifth time a couple of nights ago and with each viewing something new is drawn to the front of the scene, a lost look is caught between frames or a sentence throws itself into your head. I can't hide the fact that I love both the writing of Dave Eggers and the likeability John Krasinski brings to the screen. When you sew these two together by way of the direction of Sam Mendes, it feels like they were all just waiting to climb into your pocket and go home with you.

Without any pretence, this is a film about belonging. About figuring out where you are meant to be in this world, and just as importantly, where you aren't. There is so much going on yet Burt and Verona have such a stillness. A simple individual kind of love that binds them together in the middle of everything. It's done with such humour and moulded by a wonderfully shared, private language that you instantly put a mental thumb tack in all that hope because it underpins the entire screenplay.

This film runs along so closely with my own philosophy of life that at times I have found, lost and then stumbled across myself again inside it. It has its fingerprints all over my skin.. Love, love, love this film. Top five, never to be shaken. Gush, hands-clasped, eyes-wide wonderful.

Here are three of the songs that the film guides you through.

Blue Mind - Alexi Murdoch

"...so watch your time turn to sand and let it spill quietly from your hands... don't be afraid of what you find..."

Song For You - Alexi Murdoch

"...so i'm trying to put it right, 'cause i want to love you with my heart. all this trying has made me tight, and i dont know even where to start... maybe that's a start..."

Orange Sky - Alexi Murdoch

"...you are my home. and here is what i know now, here is what i know now, goes like this..."

new york, new york.

So good they named you twice, huh? I'm been fumbling with this post for a couple of days because I could unleash a torrent or pull up empty. I'm aiming for middle ground.

A few things.

I have been dreaming about living here since I was fourteen years old. Don't ask me what triggered it, because I can't give you an answer that makes sense outside of my own chest.

During a stop gap, whilst travelling in South America, I spent four days dipping in and out of the internet looking at rental apartment sites, pages that told me how much it would cost to study for an MBA at Brown, where to buy tea from and ulimately printing a map of Manhattan out so that I could trace my fingers around the streets.

When I was twenty-three, I made a decision that I would have to live here if I was to have a shot at being able to settle down anywhere else.

source: tumblr/weheartit.com

I'll come back later tomorrow and add my new york, new york playlist (edit: soon, soon. I have not forgotten that I said I'd come back to this).

five hundred days of summer.

Question: How do I know I love a film?

Answer: When I come out of the cinema thinking any (or all) of the following.

a. wishing that I'd written the screenplay myself or at the very least, someone I know had written it so I can call them up and congratulate them.

b. a song from a scene half-way through the film is playing over in my head and I've had to write a snatched lyric on the back of my hand

c. my stomach muscles feel warm from all the laughing.

d. the air conditioning hits the tracks my tears have made and makes me shiver.

e. when I arrive home I look to see when the region 1 release date is because I can't wait for it to be released in europe.

So, yeah. All of that happened.

500 Days of Summer is one of those films that lives up the slow-burn of hype and even when you walk into the theater with all your expectations clasped tightly in your hands, within five minutes it's safe to let those expectations work their way up from your palms. This film is incredible. Every syllable in-cre-di-ble. The soundtrack covers the film like a second skin, the non-linear storyline plots the emotional rollercoaster perfectly and just, umm, GUSH. I wanted to take the film home and kiss it.

I'm guilty of playing threads of Summer out in my own life and just as guilty of designing my own heartache as Tom. The Reality vs. Expectation scene is a magical as everyone says it is. When Hall & Oates break through the emotional soundscape I defy your mouth not to smile. All the details that get lost in the everyday are illuminated in this film - illuminated and held up as reasons, coincidences but more importantly, as life. This is one of the truest films about love I have ever seen and the way that the definition of it is different for everybody.

I can't recommend it enough. Go see it, clasp your hands and fall in lots of love.

You Make My Dreams - Hall & Oates

i may have underestimated the early wanderlust ramblings...

...because this sounds like adventure.