astrology is the study of the relative position of the celestial bodies in the belief that they influence events on earth

most of what we 'know' we have taken on the authority of others, and it is only as others continue to confirm this 'knowledge' that it continues to be plausible to use.

i have some current little influences right now:
astrology and images taken from and of space, artificial intelligence, nick cave, the balance mechanism in the human ear, the history, culture and natural environment of the Inuit population, ramona, christopher kane, existentialism, feathers, counterfeits and forgeries, criminology

there's a little truth behind every 'just kidding', a little curiosity behind every 'just wondering', a little knowledge behind every 'i don't know', and a little emotion behind every 'i don't care'.

i prefer those who don't feel the need to return my compliments with one themselves. that way, i know that when they pay a compliment it's genuine, and not just because of an awkward sense of obligation.

another story about vampires

Nothing that I have physically produced, nor thoughts or literary works of mine, are original. I am the combined effort of everyone that I have and haven’t met; a granule of earth from every corner of the globe that I have visited, as well as from those that I am yet to travel to..

I draw inspiration, subconsciously, from most aspects of life, but try to keep my chosen influences limited (in order to avoid directly copying from another source or work).
If i do create something that appears to be my own; an original design, that is only the case due to my attempt at emulating someone else’s work and failing or falling short, thus the creating of something new.

I am an optimist – perhaps on too large a scale. You see, I get myself worked up in looking forward to things that I hope to happen – dreams. When they don’t, I come crashing down to earth - it hurts. And, unfortunately, I bruise like an elderly grape. At least, I guess, old grapes can/do get turned into alcohol..which is one small up-side to it all.
Oh, woe.


Andy Goldsworthy is a Scottish ? artist who i really got into after doing a partial assignment on him either earlier this year or maybe in '08..i really can't remember which.
he works with nature to incredible extents, and often creates sculptures and structures that are only temporary - being slowly washed away by the ocean after being built in front of an incoming tide, or being made of loosely but skilfully-placed leaves and twigs - always always made out of natural things out of the environment around him. part of the reason that he does these temporary works is to mirror the constant movement and change within nature and the world around us, i think. i find that really interesting.



image via
this was about part of a rare indoor exhibition that he did in 07, with one room having the walls coated with a gorgeous thick layer of pre-made cracking clay:

another, called the Wood Room was just as impressively beautiful, but also a little haunting - at least from what i can gather from photographs.
the room is 'an intricate dome of coppiced chestnut branches that looks like an upturned nest. Inside, it's claustrophobic, oppressive.'
'I hope the room feels like entering the stomach of a tree, it's very intestinal.'

'The piece was inspired by his memory of a visit to the park in 1983. A much skinnier Goldsworthy tried to wriggle through a small opening at the base of a sycamore into a rotting cavity (the manoeuvre is recorded in a series of photographs also on display in the show).'
'I was under threat when I went inside that dead tree, I really didn't know if I'd get stuck halfway.'

andy has all of his works beautifully photographed (i'd like to grab one of his books for my own coffee table) at the time of creation, as a lot of them do not stay around for long.

this was also said by AG about the Wood Room:
[i created the Wood Room]'..because of the number of times I've been in woods, working in a strong wind, and have felt threatened. Big trees have fallen right on two places where I've worked a lot recently. This has happened throughout my life. When I was a student, I worked on one particular rock at Morecambe that I called my workbench rock. When I returned a couple of years later, a big boulder from the cliff had smashed the stone. In geological time, that was a near-miss.'


this was a whole heap of twigs stitched together with thorns, obviously a very slow and delicate process. like this one, he has included a lot of perfectly formed circles within his pieces. maybe that's got to do again with the continuation and impermanence of nature, i'm really not sure.:


andy g: 'since I have had my own children, and seen how intensely a child looks at things, you really can't describe that looking as naive.'
'After a visit to the Arctic in the late 80s, Goldsworthy experimented with snow and ice. Thus perhaps his greatest coup: thirteen large snowballs from the Scottish Highlands left to melt beside London's high streets and tube stations on Midsummer's Day, 2000. As they melted, bucolic debris packed inside - wool, crow feathers, branches, Scots pinecones, elderberries - rolled out onto the concrete. These melancholic acts don't disappear entirely, of course. They're documented and preserved, and sold, through Goldsworthy's photography.'

i could go on and on and on, but i'll refrain and instead leave you with the following images of some of his stuff. i had found a whole heap of great photos of his pieces earlier today but lost the site, so i just found these after a quick internet search in google images. oopz.
i hope you enjoy as much as i have and do:



images via








image via

so the fashn fest is on next saturday, better be there or be rhombus.

(& lately i've been listening to:
White Lies, The Big Pink, The Whitlams, Crowded House more than ever).
OH WOAH. just heard the best new song by the Basics, features the most awesome harmonies. woahaoahoahaha. google it or something. woah. WOAH.

i'm paranoid, but i'm not android.

there's a point in life when

you get tired of chasing

everyone and trying to fix

everything, but it's not

giving up.

it's realising you don't need

certain people and their crap.






be scene, not herd.

just the right amount of toe cleavage/getting high and mumbling german fables

'My name’s Jake - Jacob, or ‘yahcov’..I converted to the church of the big fish.
I’ve been listening to rock and roll and I’d even considered getting a tattoo, which was a low-point..for me. And then I met Stav.
I guess we were lovers for a little while, but it didn’t really work because I’d taken a lot of acid..and it had driven me mad.
..and Stav made me feel like that was okay, you know? It was okay to want to stab a man in a petrol station because he looked at you funny which made you think that he was Satan.
..and all of these beliefs that I had; that the world was made up of thousands of tiny spiders or the inside of Peanut Butter was actually negative space..
A lot of these things, that seemed to be ‘crazy’..
turned out to be..
quite true.'

Confused ? I just remembered THIS (see directly below) vid..so good.
if your humour isn't quite that similar to mine, be sure to wait it out til i think 1:10 or so when the song starts..i love that with each listen/watch, i feel the same way as i did the first time i experienced bluejuice. so good.
the take-off of religious-seeing-the-light-seizures toward the end is pretty hilariously dry, I just wish I was there/one of those 90 yr old ladies midway at 2:20 that were having a big and contently loud cackle .
So.
Good.:



ps, the new bluejuice song made me remember this - i recommend listening to/youtubing 'Broken Leg' by Bluejuice if you haven't already. it's so so much fun. THEY'RE so so much fun.
so dancie, and such fantastic harmonies. and bouncie lyrics all round and ahh just so much excitement in two little white singing/dancing packages.
i found a live version of Vitriol by them on youtube the other day, and the dancing was exquisite. but that's quite definitely another story that requires more time than i currently have on my hands..or feet. for that matter.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

so i was listening to Editor's An End Has a Start album this morning and realised there's a great little line/message in every single song on that particular release.
Editors are by a long stretch my favourite artist out there, and i completely missed their appearance at Splendour in 07, although my sister's boy went along just to see them.
i admit i don't know aaall that much about the band and aren't immensely in-the-know with every factfile that wiki and the internet is willing to throw my way like some band-crazed fans, but i will add that i have and will continue to appreciate their gems of compositions no end.. forever and ever.
the instrumenation is just so epic and full in ever track, and the lyrics are so dead-on in spots with tom's voice just hauntingly massaging my ears over the top of it all..
in fact i just found a blog that read 'His voice is worthy of making love to.'

i got the album one christmas a few years ago from my mum and dad after much wishlist-culling (and denying of a leather jacket for christmas, - which i really don't desire so much or at all any more, it now being three years on as well as being surrounded by the beauties day in/out). at the same time as i 1st listened to An End Has a Start i must have been reading twilight (i know, i know :s), bc i get huge de ja vu of that 1st book in the series whenever i listen to any of the songs. which makes me laugh a little..then cry.

some of my favourite lines taken from the album incluuuude the following..
they seem a little morbid on their own, but a lot of them raise really really interesting points/word things fantastically as well as sound phaaaaaantastic, i think. i recommend the album to anyone and everyone, it's just so wonderfully full of wonder.

Eg. Song 1.:
- The saddest thing that I'd ever seen were smokers outside the hospital doors.
- How can we wear our smiles with our mouths wide shut ?

2.:
- Theres spiders in your room, but there always will be.
There's people to be fooled, and there always has been.
- Hold out your hand, I will (i prefer to think it's actually "or we'll", the line doesn't mean so much to me with the correct wording. dang bad hearing.) carry you.
- With your back to the wall, you've got one place to fall. Sometimes its all better unknown.

3.:
- If a plane were to fall from the sky, how big a hole would it leave in the surface of the earth ?

4.:
- Keep a light on those you love, they will be there when you die.
- Every little piece of your life will add up to one.
Every little piece of your life, will it (also, here, i wish it was simply "will" sans "it" + the question mark) mean something to someone ?
- You touch my face, God whispers in my ear.
There are tears in my eyes, love replaces fear.

5.:
- It creeps all over you like a dull ache, it pulls you to the ground like soaking wet gloves; the change in your face when anger shows.
- In that moment you realise that something you thought would always be there will die, like everything else.
- How can you know what things are worth if your hands won't move to do a days work?

6.:
There's people climbing out of their cars
Lining the roadside, trying to glimpse at the dead

_____________________________________________________________________________________

alsho, to -quickly- quote a little favourite film of mine:
'Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around.'

those words remind me again a little of one side of the emotion that can be found in hospitals, like in the Editors song, but i won't touch on that for another millionth trillion bagillionth time.

_____________________________________________________________________________________


ps, are Empire of the Sun the more modern/successful version of the Dissociatives ?
remember them anyone ? Daniel Johns had teamed up with Paul Mac, much like the similarly indie vocalist Luke Steele has teamed up to collaborate with PNAU's similar electro music-maker Nick Littlemore.
i always had a soft spot for the original duo but they didn't seem to last long in the limelight, despite their talent and incredible idea of teaming up.
anyone agree that they were not vv v vvv v vvv great fun ?
..theyre sort of like the dead great-aunt who always smelled a bit funny like mothballs but made crooked but yummie home-made biscuits but still gets forgotten every year when home-made invites to the family christmas get-togethers are given out.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

i was sick as a canine on the weekend, and found myself watching a movie all friday ? night that i proooobably would not have otherwise.
in it, i found out about this great thing that nature has done on occasions throughout history.
when sand gets struck by lightning it creates a sort of hollow glass piece of awesome called a Fulgurite.
the secret movie - and this image will probably completely give it away to those in the know - had a scene involving these epic little natural structures and i was so caught up in it all. theyre so incredible!
i mean, in life theyre about a thousand time LESS impressive than the ones that look like THIS in the movie:

in reality, theyre just sort of these pebblie/glassie lumps of wonder, which are interesting and sort of intriguing - sure- but not attractive. haha. at all.

what appears to be the biggest one recorded in history, that i could find, was THIS one, though:


image via
so yeah, from my short researching it appears that often theyve been smaller/equivalent in size to most average-sized coins and not so impressive at all, so i wont include images of those..but doesn't that just blow you away that sand can be melted into a sort of glass when hit by lightning ?
dayum nature yo so scary.



this post was all over the place - as per usual really,
but i had a whole heap to just get off my chest and written down somewhere.
reminds me, i've always loved the lyric 'i've just got to get off my chest, that i think you're divine' :).

..i've got about an equal if not larger amount of jumbles to chat away about in the fairly near future, but they can wait a little bit. lots of school stuff to get done right now !
larder.