rush.

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.

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.

one year.

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.

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

memory.

image: weheartit.com