just quickly,

i'm going out now, will post a longer buonch of words larder revolving mostly around inuit culture, the growing list i've been making of words i aurally love, the davinci code, ear balance and much much more hehehaha..luckyyy

oh, and mr squiggle even..if you play your cards right.

oh my g, :(

i completely forgot to vote for My Happiness by Powderfinger.
i love that song.
more than most things.
i love that slinky in the vid clip even more,
oh my god.
i feel so un/dis(?)loyal..
bah. what a hopeless case i am,
i'm so angry at myself !

i think i'm going to vote for it on my old email address..
I'M SO SORRY BERNIE BEAN + fellow band members of the gorgeous band that you are.


ahhhh i do not win !

WOAH MUM HAVE YOU BEEN TALKING TO BRUCE & OLD ENGLISH DAVE ?!

i'm frightened by:
- large birds' shadows overhead, when you're not quite sure where the beast actually is
- that back-ward playing of songs, sometimes coined 'backmasking', that reveals secret/accidental (aaalways satanic i swear!!) messages (youtube videos of backmasking always seem to use Stairway to Heaven as an example of this)
- kids/babies screaming/talking/group-singing in songs (hello radiohead, pnau, justice, avalanches, michael jackson, every artist in the world using a sample of this in at least one of your songs that could have been amazing otherwise)
- maybe finding a/the special person semi-accidentally after years of half-arsed searching,
- nick cave. he amazes me, i feel really vulnerable around (the sounds of) that man - he seems so ridiculously powerful and wise and grizzly-bear-growling. i think i'd run to mars (run?) and back if he told me to :s

i finally voted for the triple j all-time hottest 100 tonight,
i'd compiled a list of 10 tracks the other day..and that had been really difficult. i don't want to sound cliche and 'omg i just have sooooo many fave songgssss liiiike it was just reaaaally hard to pick just deux'.. but 10 is hard !
initially i had brought it down to the perfect 15, but 5 had to go..which hurt.
haha.
i ended up getting rid of ones that made me nostalgic but hadn't actually impacted me or made me take a step back and go 'wow' orrr approach someone/a topic in a different way than i had before hearing/reading up on the meaning behind that song.
for eg., i culled songs like Teenage Dirtbag and Freestyler - songs that played a fairly huge part in my childhood, but aren't really that special in the great scheme of things.

BUT the one song that i would have loved to have squeezed on is Fred Jones Part 2 by Ben Folds; it's really devastating. Cigarette by Ben Folds, written a few years earlier is pretty short, lasting only a little over a minute, but it speaks of the same Fred Jones character and is as equally saddening and guilt-inducing, and as equally simple ! ..just bennie and his piano really.
i was contemplating putting After All These Years by Silverchair on too, bc the album Diorama got flogged in my house for a couple of years, and i love that simple little sad piano song too, but it got removed from my shortlist in the end.

SO i ended up voting for THESE songs;
1. CROWDED HOUSE - Don't Dream It's Over
2. RADIOHEAD - Pyramid Song
3. COLDPLAY - Shiver
4. BEN FOLDS FIVE - Brick
5. JEFF BUCKLEY - Lover, You Should've Come Over
6. AVALANCHES - Frontier Pyschiatrist
7. ELLIOTT SMITH - I Didn't Understand
8. JOHN BUTLER TRIO - Pickapart
9. BEN FOLDS - One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces
10.EDITORS - Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors

old buckie pulled out the top spot for me, (my ten songs weren't ordered from best to tenth-best or anything, i just pulled them out in the order that they'd been written in on the hand-written list i'd made as songs occurred to me/i went through my music library) simply bc it's my favourite song. ever.
he repeats himself amazingly, and makes that a brilliantly okay thing to do.
how emotional are the lines: (and i think i've actually included them in a blog before ?)
- my kingdom for a kiss upon her shoulder
- all my riches for her smiles when i slept so soft against her
- all my blood for the sweetness of her laughter
- she's the tear that hangs inside my soul forever
god, jeffrey ! you're the tear that hangs inside OUR collective soul/s forever, poor poor boy.

oh, and, i would have like to have voted for some Magic Dirt or PJ Harvey orrr even the PJ/Thom Yorke collab orrrr even any radiohead song. god. all gorgeous.

because i'm a spazmo and never finish anything, i started a dress with leftover material the other day..i think it was during exam week last week but really can't recall exactly which day..
stupid me ran out of material after making half of a half haha so i guess i'll be going super assymetrical or something..but i shouldn't even worry about that..as if i'll ever complete it..that's clearly not how i do.:
it's pretty hard to make out but is really just layer upon layer of bulk gathered-frill action and due to the gathering and stupid hand-sewing skills of mine, it took hours. like 3/4..and you can't tell that in the least, which is a little annoying.
the blue material is stretch which was a poor choice for a gown ish-type garment, but that material was just lying around so i thought i'd put it to good use. it did drape really naturally cool at the bottom though, which was one pro i guess.



on the same day i was feeling a little rodarte-esque i suppose and had a little weaving/knitting session. this took about 1-2 hours..bc i'm slow. but i think once it's started it doesn't take as long.

i'm hoping to make a scarf out of materials like this - a really holey one..but i think that may be a little wasted - our cold snap for the yr seems to be over already ? far out brussel.


wow, feels like i have so much to report on..
i finished this off a couple of weeks ago for art at school:

it was supposed to be a (cow's) skull with a little flower at the top - to speak about the way beauty can be drawn from simple/raw things and also about the way in which there is often beauty in the things that people automatically assume are ugly. (eg. bones, skulls, etc)
(the flower = beauty, but i think that is assumed almost in this instance ? hope so.)
it's just graphite/pencil sketch-work with some brown cheap watercolour over the top to bring out some of the shaded sections..
it looks a tiiiny bit better in real life, pretty crap/small photo qual here..but you don't really want to see it up-close hehe, too many bloopers.

i've got some less than exciting fashn sketches to post soon, but they can surely wait.
if you've read this far, i have a huge lot of respect for you, and owe you a fair bit of time..
goodnight, loves.

tarsier

we had qcs today; a 'serious' 'practice'. reminds me sickeningly of non-competitive competitions, can't stand the thought of those time-wasters. they're always supposed to be about 'character-building' and everything that teachers/parents alike like to throw at us at any/every given chance.
the first session was a writing task about 'essence'.
i chose to base my nonsensical words around a quote with a little image of einstein behind it. i think it said something like 'the energy of the mind is the essence of life'.
i tried to write as if i was a man (actually i just realised something really stupid; i could have been a woman.. i don't know why the whole time and up until writing this i had imagined myself as a a man ? hahaha..that's so bad) who had woken from a coma and found this world to be unsatisfactory and ridiculously boring compared to what he had found himself amongst in his state of coma.

i took a lot lotlot of inspo from regina spektor/my last blog ( so obviously, makes me look so uncreative now, three thumbs down) and the mars volta. which is pretty bad, i wasn't v creative at all, but that time limit didn't leave much time for my imagination to go wild.. (saying that makes me feel a liittle better, even if you didn't believe it either.)

please please keep in mind that a bloody lot of editing went on between the writing of the draft that i typed this up from and the copy that i handed in..hm.

and so i present to you..'MORBID ANATOMY OF THE HUMAN BRAIN':
some argue that the colour blue is the central core upon which our entire human existence orbits. our veins are blue, the sky and the ocean blue, and, similarly, as is our planet when viewed from a distant point.
others claim that our humanity is predominantly white. after all, there will always be volumes more silence than noise in the world at any given time. thus, the coining of the terms 'white-noise' and 'the sound of white.' (hahaha i realised after writing this that that makes noo sense whatsoever, white noise has v little to do with silence, but i left it like that..sounded better that way..)
i, however, disagree.

in speaking from experience, it is with ease that i argue my opinion. so plainly is the essence of our being and mental make-up and capacity; grey.
grey is the most human colour, so aptly representing the lack of energy that is the morbid anatomy of the human brain. what colour could better depict the lack of creativity and innovative thought of the human mind ?
although, perhaps thankfully, we are mostly blind to the blandness of the lack of life that we lead.

we are born within the confines of grey concrete walls of a hospital, or in some cases (that are undoubtedly shunned in humoured dinner-party conversation), in a similarly grey-hued toilet bowl.
we live life with no excitement; no vibrance nor motivation. those who do believe that they were born for a reason and have a meaningful life are simply the ill-informed. to live a life of magnificence, one must leave this planet and travel to further, greater places; to go beyond.

the scientific quota of protons, neutrons and electrons that have been designated to each human is far too minute an amount to be able to provide and persaude the amount of mental energy that is required to lead a life of vibrance. dreams and comatose are more or less the only opportunities in our lives that depict these unreachable visions and experiences that can not be obtained on our planet.

in death, we are grey. our bodies lie hauntingly still beneath layer upon layer of earth. our lips become grey and unmoving, whilst our hearts no longer beat a healthy rhythm, instead lying stagnant and cold; consumed with stale blood.
in death we again become grey, our lives become grey, our world..grey.

if only you could see ! the colours, the movement, the unimagineable; the sights that i saw !
if only you could hear ! the music, the lights, the energy that could be felt in the air !
this world cannot compare to my comatosed visions, everything now seems so monochromatic. all sounds and voices seem so comparitively monotone.
in my visions, so clear was the energy that your minds and lives lack on this earth.
with so much clarity could i see the colours that we are so subconsciously craving. to regain consciousness was as if to have been swept head-first into the throes of a horrific war. this landscape seems so barren, faces collectively gaunt. living bodies move lifelessly as if ghosts or shadows.
here it is all grey, only grey.

within this hosptital, so still and quiet, every day i see life and death and the emotions that are brought into existence as a result. that human emotion seems so extreme, but even that is just a tiny drop of water in comparison to the great oceanic multitude of drops that were my visions.
i see grey-faced babies gasping for their first breath beside the grey-haired, grey-skinned elderly and young, alike, who have finally reached death.

an outlet is all i ask for. my only request is to be given an end to this suffocating engulfment of grey. i am told that there are drugs to induce coma, yet this request remains ungranted.

grey skies, grey lips, the grey energy of the human brain.
grey; the most human colour.

usually i can tell by your eyes - the twinkle when you drinkle.

serendipity.



image via

regina spektor's 'Laughing With' made me sit down and try and write similar lyrics yesterday. obviously, i didn't get very far..my pen didn't even reach the page.
but i've never had a song literally make me want to write a song like that before.
i guess that i want to be able to have the talent to order words like regina has in this song, or like John Lennon in Imagine; words that can move people so hugely or open their eyes to massive or even just simple little realisations about our world.
i want to be the one who can make people take a huge step back and look at our society with new eyes.

'Imagine there's no Heaven; no hell below us, above us only sky.
Imagine all the people living for today.
Imagine there's no countries; nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.
Imagine all the people living life in peace.
Imagine no possessions; no need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man.
Imagine all the people sharing all the world.'



image via

'No-one laughs at God in a hospital, no-one laughs at God in a war.'

^ hospitals are so incredible to me.
i think its due to the fact that theyre simultaneously the most devastating/uplifting places on earth. i guess airports are similar, but on a much smaller scale.
hospitals bring life and take life away every day, every second, in someone's life.

since the first time i heard Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors by Editors, i haven't been able to stop being amazed by its simplicity and shockingness. while it's incredibly complex in its instrumentation and the whole dramatic and percussive make-up of the song (there's so much huge sound that i can't even begin to desribe),
the repeated line,
'The saddest thing that I'd ever seen were smokers outside the hospital doors'
says exactly what needs to be said in the most simple, shocking way.

the best songs, to me, are ones like these..songs that suggest great things, but also open your mind to all these other great thoughts/observations about the world.

sometimes i wonder why i hadn't written certain songs, some have the most simple wording - thoughts on aspects of life that i/everyone have thought about on a thousand occasions subconsciously, but never actually considered until its presented so simply in a song.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

last night i found this great thought in a great book by Billy Connelly..of all people.
i've learnt that he's this really interesting/unbelievable well-travelled/funny/intelligent person. he has a great knack of being able to words things that have been at the tip of my brain forever but i have never really been able to put into words so well/at all.
he said:
'the timing of my journey was perfect, as the Arctic is losing its great silence and isolation..i hate the way humans are give the blame for everything, though.
i can't take another evening of watching programmes or reading articles telling me that if only we would do this or that there would be more spotted bears and it's all our fault. my message to them is simple: Shut Up.
the human race isn't given enough credit. sure we have made some horrible mistakes but we have also done some immmensely big and good things.
those people who cook your meals or deliver things, who cut your hair or chop your logs, who catch your fish or make your shoes, who herd your cattle or push their children on the swings - they don't have a spokesman and i would like to be that guy.
many of the people i would meet had an innate appreciation that things don't need to be extraordinary to be beautiful.
they understand that there is deep beauty within ordinariness and plainness and a lack of desire for richness and sparkliness;
the kind of beauty that can be found in people's eyes and in their hearts and souls. the sort of goodness you can tell by the shake of a hand, especially if it is a big, happy, handsome handshake at the end of a chance encounter.



----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

oh and, i found this to be a clever/interesting little thought:
'blue lips, blue veins, blue - the color of the planet from far far away.
= blue - the most human colour.'

our new home phone's ringtone sounds like an electronic wannabe rooster trying to cough while being strangled

as i seem to always start blogs with something i've re-discovered or something i want, (living in the past/future too much or what) - don't expect to fall off your chair with my super-spontaneous words when/if you read on..

yesterday i was thinking of cool books to get for upcoming friend's birthdays (and comings of age that i've recently overlooked, i'm sorrrryyyy).
i was thinking back to some of my favourite presents that ive been superdoopz lucky enough to have received in the last few years - and a lot of my most preciously loved ones have been kookie/unheard of/good-quality-smelling-&-feeling books that ive only really taken the time to appreciate afterward - i can't get over the fact that someone has thought about me and wanted to share something special with me - i love that. sometimes ive gotten mixtapes and once even a friend's sketchbook, oh and homemade cards or some words jotted down on a piece of paper are just as sweet. to think that someone has cared enough to put some of their time aside to make/get something blows me away - i feel guilty even sometimes.. but of course theres no complaints. hehe.
ANYWAY, i digress..
with the books thing i was thinking of books id like to get people; ones that i'd like to receive myself - if that makes sense. i always try to get presents that the person would like, of course, but also ones that i know that i'd like to receive if i was them..haha. if that makes sense either !
i don't know if it exists even, but i ex-secretly really want the scrapbook full of photobooth photo off-cuts out of the movie Amelie.. you know the one that the photobooth fixing guy carries around ? ahh i've forgotten his name, but i'm talking about the cute jewish-nosed man that Amelie's got her eye one.. his book ! can you imagine ? so cool !

anddd as i've knocked off the thing i crave, here's what i discovered last night; hoolllyy doolie. i wrote this in a notebook last night up in my room while i was caught up in the moment, just so i didn't forget any of my little thought-tangents that i had in the span of about 3 hours when i was listening back to my re-discoverd and much-forgotten-about cassette tape archives in my bedroom. was mind-blowing:

there's nothing like imperfections in live music/live recordings. i don't mean when the vox are grossly out of tune with the back-up harmonies or anything hugely turning-off, but just the little slip-ups which make you realise that the artist/band on stage are actually real people too..
like for eg., when a voice breaks for a split second or a guitar string snaps (hello The Girl music vid :d),
or, if you're chris martin; when you start hecticly spluttering and coughing during the Scientist at the Splendour weekender in '03..which was followed by 'true professionalism' & a british chuckle as the band kept playing without his singing for a few lines.. that recording is seriously one the highlights of my musical life - it's tearjerking and laughy - all at once. and i wasn't even there !

or, maybe you're missy higgins and play a bung note after you realise you're live on the radio, being recorded - and get scared.
i remember when i was listening to that Live @ the Wireless session from oh so many moons ago.. i was in my little old bedroom at my desk, so probably drawing or writing a letter or something, and had tuned into jjj for the very first time in my life.
missy higs was debuting The Sound of White and my brother, sister and i were all separately tuned in, listening to it in absolute amazement.
the only song i remember specifically was The River, but geez it was a fab set.

but last night, i got to re-listen to both of those moments ! again ! yaaayyyyyyy TEAM NOSTALGIA, WOOO.

i dug out a box of prime cassettes that i'd accumulated over the years, since late primary school or so - and found a whole heap of live @ the wireless recordings of my sister's (eskimo joe, silverchair, s'thing for kate, jebediah, ben harper, coldplay, missy higgins, cody chesnutt etc), old mixtapes (!!!!!!), lauryn hill, will smith, the eagles, bob marley, blondie, the deltones, jjj hottest 100 volume 8, AND MUCH MUCH MORE KIDS.

a lot of the tapes were mis-labelled - which was sad bc a whole heap of great-sounding playlists had been taped over or couldn't be found in the epic shoebox to beat all shoeboxes - but it was almost equally great, bc i didn't know what to expect half the time !
there was a super cute mix my sister and her friend had made in primaryschool/highschool with quotes/songs recorded from 10 Things I Hate About You mixed in with some sweet old Michael Jackson and other gems.

one that i haven't found yet, sadly, had the best-sounding track listing, my word.
hello childhood:
SIDE A:
killing heidi - weir, pearl jam - last kiss, santana & rob thomas - smooth, blur - song 2, killing heidi - mascara, s club 7 -s club party, red hot chilli peppers - the other side, ultimate kaos - anything you want, nirvana - smells like teen spirit, RHCP - around the world, christina aguilera - what a girl wants, will smith - will2k, salt n pepa - brick time vs giddy up
SIDE B:
tlc - dear lie, all saints - pure shores, chris franklin - bloke, cake - going the distance, backstreet boys - show me the meaning of being lonely, blink 182 - all the small things, killing heidi - superman, supergirl, marc anthony - i need to know, sugar ray - falls apart, mel c & left-eye - never be the same again, kelis - caught out there, bardot - poison

BUT my absolute fave, no actually it ties with the old hottest 100 tape i found, was a mix made by someone in my family about half+ a decade ago - i can't even put into words how stoked i was to find the songs...faaarrr out it was an amaZING find.
(note: the other side of the tape had some foreign orchestral songs on it hahah, what a fun mixed bag)
i found:
silverchair - pure massacre, coldplay - shiver, radiohead - pyramid song, sophie ellis bextor - umm can't remember the title of the song, was the second one she released.., fuel - shimmer, morcheeba - rome wasn't built in a day, george - special ones, limp bizkit - rollin', magic dirt - pace it, outkast - ms jackson, my happiness - powderfinger, oh and there was about 10 more.. but i've lost the piece of paper with the rest of the songs..it must be in my room somewhere, qqqqqqqqq. :(

AND JUST QUICKLY: another (!!!) had on it:
big heavy stuff - hibernate, u2 - beautiful day, magic dirt - dirty jeans, bomfunk mcs - freestyler, r'head - everything in it's right place, wheatus - teenage dirtbag, living end - pictures in the mirror, ataris - teenager of the year, avalanches - frontier psychiatrist, ? - i love you, but..., area 7 - start making sense, foo fighters - generator, superjesus - gravity, moloko - the time is now, powderfinger - d.a.f, etc. weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwww

HAPPY BEYOND BELIEF/DESCRIPTION/ANY EXCITEMENT YOU CAN POSSIBLY MUSTER UP.

(all were terribly recorded of course, with starts and ends of songs missed and some rosie beaton voice snippets here and there, hehe. man i miss standing over the tape player every waking minute; ready to press record when the next best song comes one.. i think i'm going to make casettes mixtapes for birthdays this year, how fun !)

hahaa.
i really love/d it.

also, i did some fashn sketches today, was totally inspired, but i might post those later - i've run out of typing energy, and dinner smells way better than you :)

hystexexex

in some music revision for the upcoming exam just before (which i'd like to burn, or at least singe the edges a little bit) i came across a little footnote i'd written about Freud's Studies on Hysteria. it tied in with the Expressionist music/art/literary period in germany/austria about a century ago..
from as much as i can gather from wikipedia (it's an absolute whoops of a site, i know - but how great is wikmo for summarising ?)
anyway, it sounds as if the studies were the first sort of understanding and public acceptance of hysteria and mental disorders. the nicknames given to some of the most famous cases are great fun and some of the wording that i found (in bold) is really nice - even for wiki.org:

[Studies on Hysteria (German: Studien über Hysterie) was a book
published in 1895 by Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer.It was not until
years after the book was published that psychoanalysis was recognized
as a legitimate psychiatric tool. In the book were presented two different
viewpoints: a neurophysiologic and a psychological cause for hysteria.]

Anna O. was the pseudonym of a patient of Josef Breuer, and was, in fact, Bertha Pappenheim, an Austrian-Jewish feminist who was treated by Breuer for severe cough, paralysis of the extremities on the right side of her body, and disturbances of vision, hearing, and speech, as well as hallucination and loss of consciousness. Breuer observed that whilst she experienced 'absences' - a change of personality accompanied by confusion - she would mutter words or phrases to herself. In inducing her to a state of hypnosis, Breuer found that these words were "profoundly melancholy phantasies...sometimes characterized by poetic beauty".
Following progressive and eventual recovery, Bertha went on to, under her real
name, translate the diary of her ancestor Gluckel of Hameln.
Gluckel was a Jewish businesswoman and diarist, whose life account today provides
scholars with an intimate picture of Jewish life in Germany in the late-seventeenth/early-eighteenth century.
The first part is actually a living will urging her descendants, for
whom the diaries were intended for, to live ethical lives.

Sergei Konstantinovitch Pankejeff (Russian: Сергей Константинович Панкеев) was a Russian aristocrat and patient of Sigmund Freud, who gave him the pseudonym of 'Wolf Man' ('der Wolfsmann') to protect his identity, after a dream Pankejeff had of a
tree full of white wolves.Pankejeff later published his own work under Freud's given pseudonym, and underwent analysis for six decades - despite Freud's pronouncement of his being 'cured' - making him one of the longest-running famous patients in the history of psychoanalysis.
A few years after finishing psychoanalysis with Freud, Pankejeff developed
a psychotic delusion. He was observed walking the streets staring at his reflection in a mirror, convinced that some sort of doctor had drilled a hole in his nose.

'Rat Man' was the nickname given by Sigmund Freud to a patient whose case history was published as Bemerkungen über einen Fall von Zwangsneurose ['Notes Upon A Case Of Obsessional Neurosis']. The nickname derives from the fact that one of the patient's symptoms was an obsessive fantasy concerning two people close to him, in which a pot of rats was fastened to their buttocks to gnaw into the anus. (!!!)
Recent researchers have decided that the 'Rat Man' was in fact Ernst Lanzer, though many other sources maintain that the man's name was Paul Lorenz.In a footnote
Freud laments that long term follow-up of this case was not possible,
because the patient was killed in World War I.

in other news, it was dress down day at school the other day - and i think
99.99999999% of the zero people who actually read this go to my school anyway ? - so would have seen my comfie get-up.but if you were blinded by its goodness or something and missed it, then how lucky are you ?
the vest was just a cheap boy's jacket that i'd bought for dress-down day and didn't end up wearing. i cut the sleeves off it bc i already have a similar sleeved version, and it works really well as a loose sort of square-shouldered/square-shaped piece, i like it. i haven't yet had the chance to wear it out of the house (haha) but i've been buttoning it up a bit wonkie and it's fun. like leaving 2 or 3 buttons hang out the bottom of one side and so buttoning each one a few higher/lower than the normal..if that makes sense ? i remember doing that in primary school just about every day; buttoning it up wrong and being out by just one annoying little button, and having to start all over again bc i only ever realised after i'd finished haha.
weew

oh, and my hair was so great yesterday, i wanted to scream it from the rooftops. it's been so dry and dead since i made it white for no particular reason for mocktail, months ago ! i'd washed it saturday and it was > average then, but yday i just had to brush it and it was one big fluffball..or hairball, i guess. if we're being literal.


and oh, i just remembered, hahahahhahaa. i woke up this morning..and you know when you wake up crying when you've been sad in a dream, or you wake up with words in your head..like, the thoughts that you had been thinking in you dream..you wake up with those words running through you head ? ..i had one of those times, was so great. and funny. and weird. and why am i telling you ?:
"what's the feminine version of 'boyish charm'? I WANT BOYISH
CHARM!" hahahah. why had i been wondering that ? man i love dreams.


ch ch cheeeeeeowwwww