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

memory.

image: weheartit.com

Mummy.

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

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.

I shouldn't really post this...

...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'

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.