scrabble, for music.

Fresh.

2012-01-26T02:32:00.002Z

What am I conscious of this year?

I'm conscious of not letting enough of my thoughts out. It seems like it should be the simplest thing in the world but, certainly for me, it's often the hardest part. I don't know where to start, I don't know if this is the right thing to do but I'm writing a life and I have to begin somewhere.

moving house. bye bye blogspot, good morning tumblr.

2011-04-01T22:38:00.004+01:00

After thinking about this for a few days, I've decided to move over to Tumblr and start fresh.

If you're so inclined...

http://www.scrabbleformusic.tumblr.com

the maybe break-up.

2011-03-29T01:55:00.005+01:00

This is quite a hard post to write.

Having just spent the best part of the last hour flattening down edges and clearing out the unnecessary chatter I'm in two minds whether to keep this space, move it somewhere else, or pull back completely.

The thing is, I've not always been like this. I've not always held back from rushing forward. I've always thought my way through things, but I've also not waited at the gate to be let in either. This self-awareness often catches me - especially when I find myself looking back over something I've written and grimace at the number of times I've used 'I' as an identifier. I can feel it now. I'm trying to resist the urge to backspace.

There is something to be said for distance. Not disinterest or detachment.

Distance.

The gathering up of your stuff and moving it to a different corner.

The garnering of perspective is something that you can't negotiate when you're deep down in a space that you're not sure you'd recognize if someone else told you what it looked like. I'm certainly caught up in moment of trying to align the time behind me with where I seem to have found myself.

Essentially, there seems to be an element of simplifying required. The removing of some layers. A starting over. That sort of thing.

So. Deep breath. Here's the deal (I'm running with the changes).

I'm newly single, trying to write a book and am going to be twenty-nine in seven months.

My writing is bookended by those two facts - my heart and the pace of my life. What will this space will end up as? I'm not sure but here's hoping I'm right on time.

phoenix.

2011-03-04T23:56:00.003Z

“You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?”

—	Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

making. things. happen.

2011-02-15T22:22:00.003Z

making things happen

rush.

2010-07-13T20:32:00.006+01:00

Over the past few days I've been swinging around an emotion I didn't really want to feel and it's made me quiet. Quieter than usual. It tends to be around time like this that I just let things rush in. And my goodness, music has been RUSHING in. It's been making me draw lyrics on the back of envelopes on buses and songs that have moved past me before have now pulled up a chair next to me. It got me to thinking how it really is all about what you're ready for. And that maybe, just maybe, that's all we can ever try to be. Ready. Ready for it all to rush in.

Timshel by Mumford & Sons; Daughters of the Soho Riots, Slow Show and the entire new National album have been on repeat with me for two hours.

It's going to be a quiet, rushing summer for me.

dear jade.

2010-05-04T02:09:00.007+01:00

You will probably never read this unless I direct you to it but either way here are a few things I think you should know.

1. You are an extraordinary inspiration. Your brain makes my brain work better and with more colour when I'm in the same room as you. Thank you for being such a good human.

2. I admire pretty much everything you have done and I can already preempt the massive amount of admiration I'm going to feel for everything you will do.

3. There have been several times during our still young friendship that I have wished that I'd had you in my corner for so much longer. That has been translated into the overwhelming LOVE I have for you now because I feel like I'm playing catch-up.

4. You wrote me one of the best cards I have received in my entire life. And my entire life has a good few years on yours which is entirely significant with regard to this point. So, yeah.

5. I want to write a screenplay with you one day. This thought alone makes me want to high-five myself.

6. You are the best one. And you are very good at drawing dinosaurs. And elephants.

role authors.

2010-03-08T17:09:00.008Z

[thumbtack removed]

I am re-inspired to write. My free time is slowly creeping back and it's on my side from May. I have four essays left to write, two exams to alarm myself over and then a summer of... well, a summer of I'm not quite sure yet.

The role model thought, as much as I'm loathe to admit it, was born from watching the Oscars and listening to all the speeches. I am not someone you will ever catch staying in on a Friday night to practise how to attach false eyelashes. I watch award ceremonies because I like hearing the thank yous and watching the tomfoolery of the hosts. I'm in it for the little laughs and the breaking voices.

I then started thinking about who I would thank in a speech, who I would want to have sitting in my corner. And that brought me round to thinking about who I admire and what I admire in people.

I don't have a huge list of role models in the traditional sense. I think that when you try to overlap your life with the life of someone else you're playing with a fire you have no way of controlling. I certainly admire qualities in people that absolutely act as fuel for my own aspirations. I just want to clarify that I don't want to be these people. I am learning to be happy with me. I am, however, wholly aware that there is a canvas of wonderfulness that other people can inspire and bring to your life if you allow them to permeate your boundaries sometimes.

In no particular order...

Role models #1: the authors.

Dave Eggers, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nicole Krauss, John Green, Sylvia Plath, JD Salinger, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck.

There is an endless list of authors that I wish I was able to have a conversation with but above all the crown would have to be given to Dave Eggers.

I think the man is a genius. For his words and his ideas. A friend gave me 'You Shall Know Our Velocity' three days before I left to spend a year in South America. It woke something up when I read it. I was 22. Since then, everything he has touched looks different to me - the McSweeney's journal, the screenplays for Away We Go & Where The Wild Things Are, the 826 Valencia projects and all they bring to people and his wonderful, heartbreakingly hopeful books.

image: portroids

Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss write the kinds of books I can only dream of writing; John Green is a voice that is still too hidden amongst young adult authors and I think that what he does and what he writes about are more important than I realise; Sylvia Plath & J.D. Salinger are perhaps obvious choices for a list, but I think it's the way they write about their truths that got, and continues to fizz, under my skin; Scott and Steinbeck wrote sentences that I carry around with me everywhere.

[thumbtack back]

one year.

2009-12-04T22:22:00.006Z

It's been a year since I started writing in this space. Just having the word in print is making me think that I need to shake it up a little, or take a couple of steps to the side or maybe I just keep the progress going? Plotting the course is mighty fun when its happening, but then when you turn around and look back... some days, you see how far you've come and others you see how much time you spent standing still.

I should try for the balance.

image: flickr via we heart it

away we go.

2009-10-17T19:50:00.017+01:00

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.

2009-09-25T03:47:00.007+01:00

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.

2009-09-13T21:29:00.008+01:00

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

memory.

2009-09-06T23:51:00.001+01:00

image: weheartit.com

Mummy.

2009-06-02T21:24:00.008+01:00

The older I get the more of a person my mum becomes to me and the more I am amazed by all the character traits she holds. She is the strongest, most wonderfully honest, generous person I know. She is generous with everything, almost to a fault, but especially generous with her love. Her love overflows and covers every word, every birthday and well done card, every embrace.

I've been thinking about writing this for a few days, but I've just picked up the phone instead. I always have to ring, or text, or contact my mum the minute I feel I want to tell her something. She always picks up her phone. Always. I am literally terrified of the day that she won't be able to. When I don't have someone to reassure me that I've got the right temperature for lasagne, or to have her listen to my outpourings of negative energy, or to hear her tell me the truth, or to hear her say "chin up, young person." I don't know where a part of me will go when she does.

I'm the independent, free-spirited one in our little trio and yet my mum can hear the tears or happiness in my voice within a beat. She lets me stand as my own complete person, but her hands are always hovering just underneath my elbows. This used to suffocate me and I used to scream about it; now that I need it, I understand just why it's there. I love every single shadow, laugh, bump, bruise, colour, smile and story she has. And she's helping me piece mine together. Mum, you know how much I love you.

Plus, without you I'd have no Otis and no Beatles.

In My Life - The Beatles

Revolutionary Road

2009-05-24T11:19:00.004+01:00

I read this book just after I left school, about 8 years ago and although I can remember passages it had very little impact on me at that time in my life. I picked my copy up again a couple of weeks ago and threw myself into it and have come out the otherside with a new addition to my notable pile.

I was just caught by the way Richard Yates writes, from the very first page... "He let the fingers of one hand splay out across the pocket of his shirt to show what a simple, physical thing the heart was..." through the argument that Frank & April Wheeler have in the middle of a street to having to pause, resting the book in my lap after being overwhelmed by reading the sentence "...and they fell asleep like children", on a train journey home.

The book was so hopeful, so contorted, so full of betrayal and grief, so well written and so honest.

Gush.

2009-05-21T01:06:00.004+01:00

I've been toying with the idea of posting this for a while now and the reason I'm even pausing over doing it is because it's so achingly sincere, that it might be a little too much. I can feel the heat rising to my cheeks already just thinking about it. Gah.

Anyway.

Here are some places on the web, that I have grown to love. This is mainly a thank you.

All the lovely, glorious image-book marking websites:

wehearit

ffffound

vi.sualize.us

...which in turn led me to make my own scrapbook: blackwhiteandcolour

http://pleasefindthis.blogspot.com/

I Wrote This For You was started in July of 2007 by Iain Thomas (words) and Jon Ellis (pictures), neither of them really know what I Wrote This For You is supposed to be but several thousand people seem to really like it, so that’s ok with them.

"I need you to understand something. I wrote this for you. I wrote this for you and only you. Everyone else who reads it, doesn’t get it. They may think they get it, but they don’t. This is the sign you’ve been looking for. You were meant to read these words."

All the design/craft blogs that I keep stumbling into, and refuse to stumble out of...

:::Homebodies::: - lovechild of Liz Arnold, who blogs about the bodies of the homes she goes to visit and what people choose to surround themseslves with.

design is mine:isn't it lovely? - vintage, typography, design, photographs & thoughts - a million and one avenues spiral off from this place. I often feel like Alice in Wonderland, wide-eyed and curious and completely out of my depth but boy, I can't wait to be able to drill holes into my walls. Eventually.

BOOOOOOOM! - *Create*Inspire*Community*Art*Design*Music*Film*Photo*Projects*... speaks for itself, huh?

Something's Hiding In Here - I think this might be my favourite, Shuana & Stephen, make me want to make every single thing on these pages.

And the music spaces that I love to crawl into...

BLACK CAB SESSIONS

rockfeedback

The Hype Machine

EAR FARM :: music information helps grow ears

La Blogotheque (especially the Take-Away shows)

as well as the personal touches... who have introduced me to so many, many more.

Terrible Love Songs - a big blog crush, Chalky writes without pomp or circumstance and is a first-stop for all the music in mine and our lovely London.

Certain Songs - a new-ish found blog crush, Blair writes with wit, honesty and unbridled love for songs, words and what happens when the two meet.

But what I love most about all these spaces, are the places they lead to... for that, thank you.

I shouldn't really post this...

2009-05-21T00:24:00.005+01:00

...for fear of repeating someone else's sentiments but the song has been circling around my head, throat and heart for so many days that I almost feel I have to, just so that I can let some other songs in. This song has long been my favourite Broken Social Scene track, but for a good while they were a band I knew nothing about aside from seeing the covers of their albums frequently on 'Top 100 Albums of 200X' lists. A friend burnt me a copy of one of their albums, and I still didn't get it. Then, in 2006, I saw them live; my heart fell out of my mouth and as the evening progressed it found its way back into my chest. This song got stuck to the inside of my skin from that point on. Along with my completely healthy love for all things Kevin Drew.

Leslie Feist's redux of it aches in a similar way because her vocals and instrumentation seem to pull you into the late night until you're saturated in the smoky, lust of the whole thing. Late night passions, with closed eyes. Sigh.

Feist - Lovers Spit (Redux)

p.s for more wonderful words and musical things, visit here : the blisslist :

'Her Morning Elegance'

2009-05-21T00:17:00.004+01:00

Not only do I love this song, but the video is just a perfect piece of art. I dare you to look away. You can't, can you? A little piece of heart, for the eyes.

Don't Apologise.

2009-04-19T04:29:00.005+01:00

I've been listening to a proper mish-mash of stuff tonight, and it's got me thinking about music taste and what it's 'supposed' to say about you. (The inverted commas are my online winking device...go with it.)

Where did this rule book come from that liking one sub-genre of music makes you infinitely cooler than another sub-genre lover? I get the music snobbery part, hell, I'm as guilty as the next person but does liking such a wide range of things somehow dilute your character? Are you spread thinly over toast, rather than scooped out and slapped on? I wrote my dissertation on how your personality affects the music you buy and it was the highest grade I got for my entire degree. I think the fact I quoted Jeff Buckley, Van Morisson and Rob Gordon (well, Nick Hornby if we're getting pedantic) helped.

I have bands and artists that I love and they could not be further from one another in sound, tempo or philosophy. Otis Redding does not sound like Biffy Clyro. Sufjan Stevens does not sound like Hendrix.

I've got an image in my head now of one of those heavy-coated, street-vendors who have a tendency to fling open one side of their jacket to reveal pockets overflowing with watches, trinkets, treasures and old handkerchiefs. Gulp. Is that what my music collection looks like? Let me try to qualify what I mean.. you know the quizzes you can take in magazines where they ask you to tick various coloured boxes to decide your relationship/career/fashion/supposed pet choice? You end up ticking 5 red boxes, 4 yellow, 3 yellow and 3 blue. At the end of the day, this is someone else holding up a definition of you with the boxes they've created but I do think my music collection is made up of blocks of colour. Shades, tones and textures that all somehow fit together like a Rubik cube.

Sufjan sits down with Buckley, Bird and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy.
Otis can share space with Franklin, Cooke and Brown.
Biffy Clyro live with Pearl Jam, Pumpkins and Jimmy Eat World.
Hendrix bonds with Stevie Ray Vaughn, B.B. King and Buddy Guy.
and... Paramore, Panic At The Disco and Kelly Clarkson can all hang out together in perfect harmony.

I'm not ashamed of a single piece of music I own, or like, or shouldn't like. From my perspective, at least, they all thread together because they're mine. I can see that I lean towards the more acoustic, earnest, lyric based stuff but there is always space for the balls-out guitar solos, the bar-jumping, throat-screeching vocals, the thumping back-beats, the undefined electronica, the twang of Americana and the all out pop-power of the universally accepted.

I like cool stuff, and I also like really uncool stuff too. I don't care, all I do care about is that I can complete a Rubik cube. Therefore, I am cool regardless of what you think of my musical taste.

Tattoos..

2009-04-13T12:57:00.009+01:00

I've been cheating on Tumblr again, I'm sorry.

I'm here to talk about tattoos. I've been talking about getting one for at least 3 years but am finally starting to narrow the decision process. Hello, I'm indecisive.. plenty nice to meet you.

I'd like two, possibly three, the first of which I've known about for a while.

Esperanza.

It means hope, in Spanish. It's to represent what that year away meant to my life, meant to my headspace, meant to my heart. I'd like it either on my ankle, or wrist. The font, however, is a bitch to decide on. Maybe something like this?

The second is a little harder to stamp. And the third is going to be a quote I haven't found yet.

Here's what I got as inspiration:

Don't you dare.

2009-04-02T04:53:00.009+01:00

Note to self: Don't claim to be doing something in your blog unless you're actually going to do it. It's all well and good to use the space as a post-it note to remind yourself but don't you dare write something and then not follow through..(I'm not going to talk about best friends, nor am I going to do anything alphabet related. At least not today, I'll just wait the topics out).

I'm in a weird head space tonight. I'm going backwards into musical nostalgia and wanted to just get all this stuff out of my head about growing up with artists, and what that means. And how fucking rare it is to have an artist that sticks with you.

Everyone has music that reminds them of something, a place; a person; a feeling. Music has this strange power to pick you up and put you somewhere else - hearing the songs on the debut before the second album that got big; hearing the translation of those songs into a live show; hearing the rough cuts and the finished mixes. It grows. The music grows. When it grows along the same timeline that you're headed there's a different lock on the relationship you have with it. This is not to say that you're confined to the music that evolves within your generation - half of my life is mapped from compass points in too many decades - it's just that a different relationship develops. You get to be completely present with an artist of your generation; you get to take home the ticket stubs and close your eyes in a crowd.

When you find an artist that grows up as you grow up there's a unique element of symmetry that seems to appear - not a set of parallel lives, but more a case of patterns. Those patterns seem to weave into and out of your own life and the music pins them to the walls. It works with artists that are almost gone by the time you come round to them - hearing a live version of B.B King's 'Worry Worry' works two-fold, first I'm in a crowded theatre in November '64 and then I'm lying on a bed in an in Argentinian coastal town in '06. The music gets pulled through the years, into your lap.

I feel it works like a family does. The music you get in your generation is like a sibling, or a best friend. The music that comes before is all shades of your parents and their peers. You love both but for different reasons - with your parents you get to hear about how things were, why they happen and how to solve them but with your peers you get to figure it all out for yourself. Your parents might steady you with their advice but it's your peers that you get to share it with.

Can I count on you if I fall apart?

2009-03-26T12:34:00.005Z

Can I?
What does that sentence acually mean?
Count on you for what? To not run, to not judge, to stand back or jump into action, to let me figure it all out, to listen, talk or neither?

Is this the definition of friendship, in the sense that if you can answer yes to the question you're a definite, full-bodied friend? Really?

Want to talk about this a bit more and about the alphabet. But! I have things to learn and dinners to cook and singing of Pearl Jam to do.

Also, I cannot stop listening to this song today. The Notwist are brilliant - find them and love them.
Consequence.m4a

Is it wrong to start with the new?

2009-03-13T01:22:00.004Z

I've been thinking about this for months, well, years in fact.

So much of my music taste shifts backwards and forwards and around and under.

I can remember having a conversation with my uncle about not really listening to much Bob Dylan but raving about Bob Marley, Tom Baxter, Jeff Buckley... he said to me "How on earth can you justify liking these artists if you don't listen to Bob Dylan? You can't possibly know what a songwriter is."

It stuck to me. I spent ages trying to figure out if he was right. I don't think he's right.

Everything I listen to has an influence - an influence from the past or the now or a vision of the future. I didn't buy a Led Zeppelin album when I was 9 years old. I'm nowhere near that 'cool' nor did I even have enough money to do any such thing. In 1989 I think I owned Starlight Express and a Belinda Carlisle album on cassette and had worn out all three of my Wham tapes. I didn't own a Nirvana t-shirt, nor did I even listen to a single Nirvana track until I was at least 14 at which time I was also in love with Robbie Williams. I collected Blues cds from a Blues magazine that my dad bought, but I think I listened to about 10 of them.

Music was always there, but it wasn't there big until I knew a little more about my own tastes.

My first gig wasn't Faith No More at the Astoria, or Eric Clapton at The Royal Albert Hall. It was a Take That concert and I was 10 years old. I believe I screamed quite a lot, my Mum took me and she had ear-plugs in for the whole duration. I then started to go to gigs with friends, my first being a trip to Wembley to see the Stereophonics where we spent the whole journey home dreaming about being in a band and making up band names. I have no 'cool' claims to fame. I did not sit on my dad's shoulders at Van Morrison gig, I didn't seek out music with the curiousity I do now until I was 17 years old. I bought a lot of cds, I overplayed 'Pocketful Of Kryptonite' and some really bad R'n'B. I listened to everything, I made radio mixtapes and cut pictures out of 'Smash Hits' and stuck them to cassette cases with purple UHU glue (not Pritt Stick).

Anyway, am going totally off point. I'm constantly discovering old and new music. I meet some older music after all members of the band are dead, I will never ever see them live or have access to the original vinyl. I meet some music that I should really have known about earlier but for some reason... don't. I didn't know about Cream before I knew who Eric Clapton was. I couldn't name the members of Pink Floyd when I was 15. I had no idea who Buffalo Springfield were. Joni Mitchell? Who? You get the picture.

I've come late to the party with lots of my artists and I've wrestled with what that means. I feel disappointed with myself when someone brings an album to my attention that I should own, why? Musical guilt. Ha, that's a good one. I think I'm just aware of the shallowness of coming to these acclaimed/celebrated/niche artists after all their successes or failures or early beginnings. You can take a shortcut via their 'Greatest Hits'. I'm not a 'Greatest Hits' person. It feels like I've cheated the evolution a bit, almost like opening a jar of jam - it's been passed round, and loosened by everyone else, so when it gets to you it's just a case of lifting the lid. Is there anything wrong with this? Is there something wonderfully right about it too?

On the flip-side, for every new thing I'm exposed to I get to re-trace the steps of influence or even become introduced to more. Through Ben Harper, I got Bob Dylan and G.Love. Through Jeff Buckley, I got Nina Simone. Through Counting Crows, I got Van Morrison.

I've never had so much fun playing catch-up in my life.

Hearts.

2009-03-08T01:31:00.004Z

"Half of my heart is a shotgun wedding to a bride with a newspaper ring/Half of my heart is the part of a man who knows he's never really loved a thing." JM.

Welcome to my heart, too. I'm not going to labour on who said this but this is what I've been feeling like. It's that emotion where you're fit to burst when you're not sure if there's enough time for everything you want to learn, read, write, experience but there's this nagging part of you that thinks that you've not got enough ambition for your dreams. It's that emotion that tangels itself into a battlefield when you're scared that you're never going to be able to love anything for long enough for either yourself or for the person you're with, yet you let yourself love far too easily. What do you do when you lose love? Where does it go? I was talking to a friend a few days ago about being in love, and he said that love was a choice. If you choose to stop loving, you'll stop loving. If you choose to love, and keep loving that person there's no reason for it not to last. Is it a choice? A decision you make to love one person.

source: le love, as always. thank you.

Who needs a title?

2009-03-02T16:07:00.005Z

I'm wondering how much you can gleam from someone, about how much of a person needs to be exposed before you settle into a friendship. Degrees of friendship. Human relationships are so endless, so transient, so powerful, so shallow, so shy of any easy definition. Do we all really just want to connect? How many points of connection are there? Blurgh.

There's a post on a webzine (shit word) I follow about the 15 albums 'Important To You'. It got me thinking about snapshots, or rather it got my commitment-phobic self thinking about snapshots. I can give a list of albums that are important to me now, but I can't narrow it down to a 15 all-time list. How do I know that there won't be a #5 that I haven't come across yet? Or a #11 I'll be bored of in a few years? Then surely, they wouldn't be on the list in the first place if they could so easily be usurped.

How about I remove the 'The'? Just 15 albums that are important to me.
Aaah, that's better.

In no order:

Otis Redding - The Definitive Collection & every album that came before.
I borrowed (stole) this album from my mum about 12 years ago and it's the most worn cd I own. I've given it first-aid a few times, and it still works. I'd listen to this album in my room, lying with my head hanging over the edge of the bed watching myself sing the words in the mirror.

Counting Crows - August & Everything After.
This was the first album I loved listening to as a whole. I was just 14 and listened to it for a whole week, non-stop, on my discman. I used 8 pairs of batteries and I never skipped a track. There are memories I have of falling asleep to this on the cdplayer by my head whenever I stayed at my friend Sasha's house.

Ben Harper - Welcome To The Cruel World.
My senses got opened up when I first started listening to Ben Harper, it was in 2002. I was playing catch-up because I'd heard 'Live From Mars' first and that made me backtrack to the orignals. His mucic made me start to feel again, I could hear it... feel it... taste the dust. I've got two Ben Harper songs dedicated to me, too.

Jeff Buckley - Grace & Live at Sin-e.
Jeff gets two, because they overlap and because he is lots of important. I didn't know he had died when I bought my own copy of 'Grace' - in 2001 - and I cried, openly, in the middle of the record store when I read the liner notes of the Deluxe edition. Live at Sin-e saved my soul at university. His music just puts me in a different place, a different time, a different head-space. There are certain lines, in certain songs, that just stick themselves to me.

Nizlopi - Half Of These Songs Are About You.
This album, plus the songs born from their live gigs, had such an impact on what I wanted for myself. I think it had something to do with the proximity of them, and the feeling you got standing in a room with their music. They helped me remember why I sat on a plane and flew to Brazil.

Damien Rice - O.
Urgh, heartbreak and beauty all at once. This album seemed to connect across all the people I was friends with - from school, from uni, from gigs - and it came along at a time when I could understand it.

No Doubt - Tragic Kingdom.
This album made me want to be in a band, made me want to cut off all my hair and dye it blonde, made me want to sing at the top of my lungs into a shampoo bottle. I will always love 'Spiderwebs' and 'Sunday Morning'.

Pearl Jam - 10.
I used to sing to this with my head turned upside down, drying my hair. The fact my chin was drawn into my chest made me sound a bit more like Eddie Vedder, or at least that's what I thought. I'd initially liked them to impress a family friend, Aimee, but my love-affair has outlasted such fickle tendancies. This band introduced me to Dave Matthews, Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Soundgarden... the list is endless and full.

John Mayer - Room For Squares/Heavier Things/Any Given Thursday.
Ha. JM gets 3 on his bill, and I'll just keep adding. He's all compass points. He made me dig out all my dad's old records. He made me look for different pieces within music I'd been listening to for a long time. He makes me write better.

Biffy Clyro - Blackened Sky
This album set me on fire. I will sing so many of the songs on this album until my throat burns. This band, mixed with friends, is an experience to behold.

William Fitzsimmons - Until When We Are Ghosts.
The new love of my ears, I can't get enough of the voice, the words, the guitar. This man is in a mould unto himself and I'm so glad I've found him. I feel lucky to have him.

Jason Mraz - Waiting For My Rocket To Come and other MP3's.
I've never fully got into the produced versions of the songs that first found their way into my cd collection. I listened to clusters of Napster-sourced MP3's of live recordings and just tumbled into Mraz's head. It's all about them words. Over numbers, unencumbered words.

Jimi Hendrix - Axis: Bold As Love.
Hendrix extended my vocabulary of music. He makes me think I wasn't born in the right decade, and makes me want to be able to know all the technical terms you use when talking about tone. He's made me discover the 1970's from a 1999 standpoint. I have him to thank for Van Morrison, The Police, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, BB King, Albert King, Stevie Ray Vaughn and on, and on.

Jimmy Eat World - Bleed American.
This album has memories escaping from the seams, I'd bought this before hearing Clarity & Static Prevails in an HMV in Bristol having spent 20 minutes talking to a sales-assistant (who I'm pretty sure I fell in love with there and then) about the Smashing Pumpkins. This has summer dreams and travelling buses written all over it, along with Futures.

Explosions In The Sky - The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place.
Changed the way I heard instruments, listened to instruments, heard words in unravel in instruments. Owing in part to a huge love for Sigur Ros, Aereogramme, Mono, Godspeed You Black Emperor. They all came along at the same time for me, in the middle of my second year of University. They kept me sane, over and over and over.

Honourable mentions:
Deftones - White Pony.
Hundred Reasons - Ideas Above Our Station.
Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream.
Ben Folds Five - Whatever And Ever Amen.
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - I See A Darkness.
Coldplay - Parachutes.
Death Cab For Cutie - Transatlanticism.
Derek & The Dominos - Layla.
Fiona Apple - When The Pawn...
Frank Sinatra - In The Wee Small Hours.
Muse - Origin Of Symmetry.
Radiohead - The Bends.
Rufus Wainwright - Poses.
Ryan Adams - Gold.
The Shins - Chutes Too Narrow.
Sufjan Stevens - Greetings From Michigan....
Tracy Chapman - Tracy Chapman.

post-script: I'm aware that this list misses out lots and lots of my musical influnces and possibly the influences that lead me to picking them in the first place. It's hard to pick an entire album that moved you - I've got bundles of songs, but there are some albums that just changed the path I was on, or showed me others.

Ed Sheeran & Jamie Woon.

2009-02-14T01:48:00.003Z

This is all about loop pedals and soulwhiteboys. I missed a fantastic gig last year where they were both on the bill, and so I'm going to nestle them in here for selfish purposes.

Ed Sheeran.
Ed just seemed to bounce into our space, I've got to know him a little bit better after a couple of late night post-music sessions and he's everything his music is. He's supported Nizlopi on tour, he's recorded more songs than should be possible given his years and if he's not playing a gig, he must be asleep. There's gut-bursting honesty to most of his tunes which brings elements of innocence, politics, sense-making, humour and questioning onto his musical plate. Last time I saw him play, he told a story about how he ended up sleeping on a park bench recently and wrote a song about it. That sums him up more than I could. He just tends to make everything around him better, and more orange.

Jamie Woon.
This man should be on the tip of everyone's tongue, at the end of everyone's cd collection and in the most played section of everyone's ipod. There's something about his music that picks you up, takes you outside and literally throws you to a different place. He doesn't sound like anyone else and stands in that description with so little effort you can't help but count yourself lucky you've got to hear him. I think I listened to 'Gravity' on repeat for about a month when I first heard it which is in essence what I feel his music is, it's intoxicating. You feel elsewhere when he's in your ears. I'm stumped for a suitable adjective, and also can't decide with which video to post so I'm going to post two. Check out everything about him (www.myspace.com/jamiewoon) and some of the best collections of artists, in every sense of the word, you'll ever find - these events are amazing - www.onetaste.co.uk.

Missing Person - Secret Garden Party.

Goosebumps.

2009-01-16T20:03:00.003Z

Sorry 'bout the shakes at the beginning.

Listening to this song makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. The lyric 'have I found you, flightless bird?' has lodged itself under my skin and keeps on repeating. Why? I know why, and it's the beauty of interpretation. I've taken from that lyric what I needed to, and gave my own inner monologue an outward voice. Over the past eight years, I've always written down lyrics or passages or quotes that refused to let me go, for whatever reason. I've got books, and books of them cluttering up the drawer space in my little room.
This will be the first enty of 2009.

Two things.

2009-01-16T17:57:00.003Z

I'm setting the whole contents of my Ipod on shuffle as I write this a.) because I'm going to be here for a while, and b.) because it's exactly what I'm trying to say.

Two things have got me here, one is X-Factor and the other is this http://www.indie1031.fm/

Alexandra Burke's version of Hallelujah was Number One at Christmas, Jeff Buckley was Number Two. Now, this can be looked at two ways - it could be that people simply wanted the definitive edition of the song as introduced by Burke, which my less cynic-fuelled side can see in perhaps 0.2% of cases. The truth is that the music consuming public (forgive me for the generalisation) showed all it's colours. Distinct. Not blurred.
I don't want to use the word 'revolution' because it's far too premature and throwaway, besides
I'm reluctant to believe there will be a revolution that bursts at its seams - I think what we're experiencing now is the product of years of undercurrents but something that will continue without any loss of pace, tenacity or importance for the rest of my music consuming life. My business degree was not completely wasted on me, as I recognise the various types of music consumer and the needs inherent to each. I quite enjoy being able to at least read the other side of it whilst sitting firmly in my chair on my side of the divide. Balance, understanding, all that good shit.
Music is consumed. Consumption and its methods and mediums adapt over time. Music adapts.
You don't argue with people about how they listen to music, in all its forms. We can fight till our teeth itch about dwindling physical sales, about the liner notes, about how it used to be. I'm not advocating that people don't fight against it, I'm just not sure how much resistance is there to meet the fight. Record companies want to make money by whichever means possible. That's a fact, money drives it and turns it around and makes it stick. No fighting there.
But... and here's where the two don't meet.... the industry is only as good as the music coming out of it. Perhaps what we're seeing now is the result of a decade (if not more) of poor development, greed, more poor development and yeah, more greed? And sadly, a numbness of consumer.

Wiki says:
In the music industry, a record label can be a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion, and enforcement of copyright protection of sound recordings and music videos; conducts A&R; and maintains contracts with recording artists and their managers.

Lots of elements there, huh? I'm not differentiating between majors, independents, sub-labels or any other 'type' of label the industry creates. The loosest definition in my eyes would be that a record company should be a distributor, a supporter, a management matrix. It's exploitative by it's very nature, but what seems to have happened is that the divide has become so wide that it takes an almighty run-up to get you safely to the other side. The run-up involves money, or a favour, or a famous daddy, or luck and occasionally talent.

My rub with record companies lies in the lack of artist development, and subtle ignorance of the men with the money. There are so many artists who should have their music made available and that's exactly what's been happening. That is the ongoing nature of the revolution. People are consuming music that they find, not the music that's been made for them. The Internet is picking up the pieces the record labels are missing, they're holding up the distribution arm of the deal. Music is being made that people want to listen to, and not be pummelled by. Artists have stopped trying to get a record deal, they've stop manipulating their decisions to reflect the expectations of others. They're making music for themselves and just keeping their fingers crossed instead.

And that's what makes it so fucking brilliant.

This will always win.

Otis.

2009-01-03T13:05:00.005Z

There are an awful lot of artists, both dead and alive, who I would have loved to see in smoky old venues. This song just rips my heart out. Otis Redding is my favourite soul singer, hands-down-absolutely-no-contest.

And this, is my favourite song of all time.

Cigarettes & Coffee

It's early in the morning, about a quarter till three
I'm sitting here talking with my baby, over cigarettes and coffee.
And to tell you that, darling, I've been so satisfied
Honey, since I met you, baby since I met you.
All the places that I've been around, and all the good looking girls I've met
They just don't seem to fit in, knowing this particularly sad, yeah.
But it seemed so natural, darling, that you and I are here
Just talking over cigarettes and drinking coffee.
And oh, my heart cries out, love at last I've found you,
And honey won't you let me, just build my whole life around
And while I complete, I complete my whole life would be, yeah
If you would take things under consideration, And walk down this aisle with me
And I would love it, yeah
People I say it's so early in the morning, it's a quarter till three
We're sitting here talking, over cigarettes and drinking coffee, now.
And I'll like to show you, well, I've known nothing but good old joy
Since I met you, darling, honey, since I've met you, baby.
I would love to have another drink of coffee, now
And please, darling, help me smoke this one more cigarette, now
I don't want no cream and sugar, cause I've got you, now darling
But just let me enjoy, help me to enjoy this good time that we'll have,
Baby it's so early, so early in the morning
So early, so early in the morning
And I've got you, and you've got me
And we'll have each other
And we don't, we don't want nothing but joy, y'all
Nothing but joy...

There's some debate over the lyrics, but I think sometimes you just hear what you want to hear.
I've kept one of them in, 'knowing this particular sad', and altered 'walk down this aisle (hour?)' to what I think he's singing.
Every time this song comes on, I know exactly where I'm supposed to be. I'm right there.

December, forever ago.

2008-12-30T16:27:00.007Z

I've been listening an awful lot to William Fitzsimmons and it got me to thinking, whether certain artists replace others in your life. I hold my hands up guilty as charged with regards to being as obsessive as they come with music, but with that obsession comes a certain amount of fluctuation. I'm a phased obsessionata. Ha, that phrase makes perfect sense to me. I get hooked on something play/read/watch/talk/drink/make/eat it over and over again, until I take a breath and leave it for a while and then come back around.

After procrastinating about this for a bit, I think what I was initially trying to say was the about impact of artists, as apposed to the artists themselves. There will never be another Jeff Buckley, for example, but there may well be people who punch my heart with the same ferocity.
Fitzsimmons is having an early Damien Rice, Bonnie Prince Billy, Iron & Wine type impact on me right now. Him, The Weepies & Bon Iver are defining my December.

Old vs. New

2008-12-22T01:42:00.004Z

I've got very loose definitions of old and new music because they interchange for me so frequently. I'm often finding old, new music and new, old music. It's with this thought that I want to avoid the 'albums of 2008' post that staples itself to spaces on the internet at this time of year. I'd quite like to talk about my albums of 2008. Some old, some new, some re-discovered in no order other than they way they come into my head.

Ray Lamontagne - Gossip In The Grain
'Let It Be Me' is all strings and magic. Ray's voice on this record just pushes its way through every sigh and every word, sharpened or smooth. The lyrics are flawless, the stories are dusty and beaten but with drum brushes of hope. I really, really, really like it.

Edie Carey - When I Was Made
I'm not sure where I even heard this first. It might have been from CDBaby (http://cdbaby.com/). It ties in with my new found appreciation for Americana - I heard about 8 seconds of a song and went straight to Amazon new & used to dig out a copy. Her voice got me in the door, but it's her lyrics that made me stay and take my coat off. There are two songs, 'Open Wide' and 'If I Start To Cry' that make me stop typing and hold my breath, so I don't miss the words.

Ed Sheeran - Want Some? & Nizlopi - Make It Happen.
Ed is to Nizlopi as Cheese is to Marmite. Each taste perfect on their own, but together there is some kind of amazing taste explosion. Nizlopi are Marmite, Ed has a little way to go before being entitled to that crown but none the less.. he's still full of B Vitamins. It's bittersweet that this is Niz's last full studio affair but it's packed with old, new and the poetic justice they fight so hard for. Everytime the bass introduces 'Start Beginning' I have to turn the volume up, it stays up until the aptly named 'Drop Your Guard'. Love is... well, is all about this.

Sara Bareilles - Little Voice
The album doesn't do her voice justice, but when I first heard Vegas I was there. I was dreaming of quitting my job and moving to New York, that lyric threw itself into my stomach and got lodged. Gravity is a perfect, perfect song.

Jamie Lidell - Jim
Pure, unadulturated, 'I'm going to strut whilst walking' SOUL. I don't like the whole album, but the majority of it just makes your face break into smiles. This is what summer should feel like. This used to make being at work at 7am in the morning the best part of the day.

Laura Marling - Alas, I Cannot Swim
Voices. Female voices. I think at any other time I might not have been quite as receptive to this album, but her voice just makes the fact that it rains lots in this country okay.

Patty Griffin - Living With Ghosts
I've talked about Ms P. Griffin previously, but this album from 1 to 10 is just full of something raw that I wish I had in my pocket for so much longer.

Susie Suh - Susie Suh
A recommendation from a friend, and now something that I cannot stop listening to. I can't figure out exactly what I like about it, because in some ways it's like I've heard it all before - her voice is so old, so fragile it's like it's been picked up from a vinyl, dusted off a little and laid over the songs again. You can hear her singing with her eyes closed, you can see the songs in her head. It's simple stuff really, there's no huge instrumentation, but her voice makes everything better. Oh, so much better.

William Fitzsimmons - Until When We Are Ghosts
I was 'had' about 43 seconds into hearing this album, and then I just kept getting 'had'. He has such an interesting story to tell, and listening to him sing about it almost feels like you're being sung to sleep by a bedtime story. It's so intensely personal it's hard to listen to sometimes, it's hard to listen to his breath catch over a word and not feel it. Hearing this album made me buy everything he has ever done, turn all my lights off and sit at dusk with a cup of tea and closed eyes.

Shuffle.

2008-12-16T01:45:00.004Z

Now, 'shuffle' is one of those oxymoron functions - it's decided yet indecisive; controlled defiance of order, almost. I sometimes like it, I sometimes don't. I depends what it throws up. I've just put my whole itunes account on shuffle to see where I get taken for 30 minutes. I press shuffle on the tube a lot, and because I don't like getting my ipod out in large groupings of people (ha, check out my paranoia) I generally don't hit skip that often. The thing I love about the function are the hidden surprises, those tucked away songs that get lost owing to the fact that you blur out half the A-Z when you're scrolling. But, there was always going to be a but, it's not a mix-tape, nor a playlist, it is what it is... a random continuation of songs. At present, I've gone from 'Oratorio - Hundred Reasons' to 'Strawberry Street - Jeff Buckley'... now that makes sense, or at least sense in terms of volume.... and then, oh good, 'Pain - Jimmy Eat World'. Okay, my arguement is unravelling. Normally, it's the volume of songs that gets to me. I've gone from Pixies to Sigur Ros before. I don't like that. It scratches.

Ha. Now my point is proven, I've just been presented with '2.45am - Elliot Smith'. Following Jimmy Eat World. That makes me start to itch. Maybe it's my need for balance, because I can't exactly blame the function seeing as it's only doing as it's told - shuffling my songs. If anything, I should blame my eclectic music taste, I've now got 'Eloquence & Elixir ' The Kissaway Trail' as the soundtrack to this part of the story. I like flow, I don't like erratic. However, I do enjoy giving the control away at times. Sometimes you want itches to scratch, because the relief they bring has a tendency to last just that little bit longer. And with that, here's that hidden track I was talking about... 'North Hanging Rock - British Sea Power'.

Quotation....marks?

2008-12-14T04:02:00.002Z

I've got this weird love/hate relationship with quotes.

There are some I read that articulate what I was trying to say with such clarity it's not only frustrating but blinding. Then, I just get annoyed that I didn't think to use the adjective in the first place. Why should one word win out over the other? What makes that particular word resonate?

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." Oscar Wilde said this, and I adore it but it ties in with my disdain for cliches. Cliches are such a wasteful way of saying something, it's like cheating your way around a sentence.

However, sometimes, something just throws itself at you and sticks.

"Don't let anyone, even your parents, break you. Find good people who care about you and surround yourself with just them. If you can't find them at first, find good music and fall into it, let it hold you until they come." As said by Davey Havok (don't worry, I had to Wikipedia him too). Someone told me this quote about three years ago, and it made so much noise inside my head that I never forgot it.

I guess the point of this late-night-ramble is that quotations are lyrics, just in a smaller box.