Dreams, and balloons

I've had a lot of dreams recently. In one of them, we went on a school trip to a field where Derren Brown was sat at a table. He was telling fortunes and also there was a raffle, and I bought a raffle ticket because I was scared to have my fortune told but I wanted to meet Derren Brown.




Some amount of time seemed to pass, in a chunk of darkness or perhaps just sleeping without thought, and suddenly I was in my school art block shed with my friend Emily. She told me that I should go to Derren Brown and talk about my problem, because he convinced her to have an abortion and it was good advice (know that neither of us are actually pregnant). So I did, and I told Derren Brown something and he talked back in now what seems very vague and unfitting, but it made sense at the time because dreams are a different way of thinking.



He talked about a character called Jasper in Shakespere's play, Heartbeats (which isn't real as far as I'm aware).



I also dreamt that a lot of people in my class were doing NaNoWriMo, and we were all writing out novels in a lesson, instructed by my bitchy form tutor Miss Bates. She checked all of our writing, and told me to join two sentences together (I remember the word "Faithfully" was the first word of the second). I told her no, that wouldn't have made sense and both her and the school caretaker, who I've never spoken to in my life, yelled at me.



Then I dreamt I was babysitting Prue-Carla and Max, and I left the house and went to a shopping centre for some silly, important reason and was scared when they came back that their parents would be mad at me and they were.







I wanted to write something just now but I didn't know what. Looking round my bedroom for inspiration, I saw this on my computer. It is from the vinyl of Beirut's Flying Club Cup CD.

And then I started to write, with a pen and paper for real, and now I'm going to type the rest straight on to here. We'll see what happens.
___________________________________________________________________

It wasn't even twelve hours ago that all of this kicked off, was it, Clementine?

Only you could have triggered me to do something like this, and only you did. This is not what I am. I've only ever been this choirboy haircut, the Decathalon sweatshirts my mother buys me, oversized glasses and pockets full of stones.

I'm not sure I'll know how to be anything else.

I saw the meaning of life when I was walking home from school yesterday and it wasn't forty-two but it was a big, big balloon. I watched from my window as they blew it up, bigger and bigger, like a volcano ready to erupt or an egg waiting to hatch, or a pimple about to pop.

So I'll admit, it wasn't ideal. If I could have my say, you and I would float up to the moon with a red balloon, not this one. It's grey and has the name of a big car company across it, and it upsets me that it won't be quite as symbollic, the fact that we're going to defy society, Clementine, you and I.

All night I watched from my window. I've written some plans in the back of my Chemistry excercise book and assembled a bag containing some bits of food from the kitchen, my iPod docking station because I'm going to need to charge it eventually, somewhere, a couple of salads I bought from the Late Shop and money. £71.85 to be exact.

I'm practical, see, not some kid with a stupid plan to catch a bus somewhere to run away. It's a lot of money. I've packed enough clothes that I can carry and I have a penknife, so that I can protect you. Perhaps it'll be a good tool when we're flying our balloon.

I packed my mobile phone, only because I'm going to throw it off board when we're floating over the ocean.

It was 5am when my alarm went off first, and it's 5:25 now. The sleep sand from my eyes is unsticking and it's an hour and a half before I'd normally have to start the day. Next door you're asleep in your bed and if I don't do something, you'll wake up soon too, and straighten out your pretty red hair, apply the tones to your eyes that make you look severe and grumpy, eat those Ryvita biscuits you always have for breakfast, then head to your school.

If I don't go soon, they'll fly away somewhere on our balloon and we'll be stuck here for another thousand years but I don't know how. Perhaps I'll take a handful of pebbles from the garden and throw them at your window, will that wake you up? I don't know how to tell you that we're going to get away, you and I. At first you're going to think you're worried about your parents and friends, and other strings tying us down to the ground, I know and I try to understand that for you, Clementine, but it's hard.

You won't mind when we're up in the air, I promise.

____________________________________________________________________

I think there's more but I stopped, because I have to be up tomorrow and it's past midnight and I didn't realise.

Goodnight xx

five haikus

It's a Sunday night, I'm sat in bed and my cats are taking up all of the covers. Seeing as it's almost NaNo and I got an urge to start writing my novel - this is bad. I must wait until November. So, as my Nicorette patch, I decided to try and write some haikus.
They're pretty personal, and they're about various things. I like them. They're quick and fast and mean a lot and not much, they aren't very good but I'm proud of them for some reason. It's like when I talk to my friends very abstractly. I can say things without explanation, or certainty that anyone's listening.

Together, we walk
A motorway but stay between
Double yellow lines

I force each dose
By night, a self inflicted
Punch in the stomach

I am growing fat
Soon I'll burst out of these walls
And flop into Oz

To a pencil sketch
I add strokes of the rainbow
Until you glow gold

I beg for demand
But bat off all that you ask -
Flies on a hot day

I had a pretty mundane weekend. I did nothing at all today. Yesterday, I went out for lunch with my parents and it was in Trentham, so I bought some coffee syrup. I made myself a caramel latte when I got home. It didn't taste as good, because I knew it wasn't from Costa.
Exciting things are happening soon, though - this weekend I'm going to a family friend's flat in France with two of my best friends. The Friday after that, I go see Imogen Heap in Liverpool. A week later, I'll see her at the Royal Albert Hall, baby xD And NaNoWriMo is approaching. This is the few weeks I've looked forward to all year, and it's very nearly here and I'm happy.
Goodnight,
Lizzie xx

Hocus Pocus

Ôi orôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi ohrorô poPÔYôi orôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi ohrorô,
BoumPÔ,
Aaaah aaah aaah aaahUuuh oooh oooh ooooooooh


"Hocus Pocus" - Focus





Yes, yes I did just google those lyrics, and copy and paste them, because I feel like I should always use song lyrics at the top of my blog entries nowadays.


I also saw someone on songmeanings.net comment on the meaning of the song.


They said; "I think this song holds the secret as to the real meaning of life. "





Last Tuesday morning, my dad came into my room and told me that the night before that he'd been to a Focus show in Wolverhampton, the night before. After the show, Thijs van Leer, the lead singer, had been walking round the small club the gig was held at afterwards.


I've known some of Focus' music since I was very young: I have a distinct memory of being in my dad's car at around eight years old, listening to the song Hocus Pocus. There's a part where the frontman introduces all of the band, they're Dutch and I misheard all of their names. "On the bass guitar, Bobby Chelcoms... And on the drums, Betchy Smark. Peter Yann-Doo-May." But


I never misheard, "On organ, and flute, Thijs van Leer".


I imagined this flute playing, yodelling organ-ist (That's a word?) to look like a wizard.





I hadn't thought about them for a long time until Tuesday when my dad told me the story; he'd met Thijs van Leer, now frail and old, about sheet music for Le Cathedral de Strausberg. And he'd said that he had it in his hotel room, and my dad went back with him and talked about Jan Akkerman and music and my dad seemed fairly mind-blown. He gave him his personal email address and he'd said he'd remember him, because his name was Robin, also the name of the club he'd performed at. I get excited over small claims to fame, yes.





On Thursday, we went to their gig in Manchester, with my dad's friend he'd seen them with on the Monday. I haven't seen Stuart or his daughter Nicole for a long time, but we went skiing with them when I was about nine. Since then, Stuart split up with his wife. His current girlfriend, Rachel, came with us too.


We were mostly silent in the car. It's always strange when you see someone you were really close too as a kid. I recently saw my parents' friends' son for the first time in a long time, and he is eighteen now and going to university. I spent an entire night with when I was eight thinking he was awesome because he introduced me to Runescape, and typed "penis" into Google Images.


Nicole is two years younger than me, and I think we were pretty good friends when we went skiing. I don't remember much about her, so I don't know if she's changed a lot except that she was Older. She wore hoop earrings and looked bored, was constantly texting and wore a pouty bored expression. One of the things that made me laugh a lot was listening to her talking to her dad about walking home from school and having to go through an alley which, she declared in a matter-of-fact tone, "I can't go through, because it's haunted."





I could go on to further describe all of the other people there, but I won't because it isn't going to matter.


The support act were pretty good. Band On The Wall is a small club, and we went into the basement and met two of my dad's friends from high school. He hadn't seem them for twenty years until a week ago, and they seemed oddly comfortable around each other and I'm not sure how I feel about that, or how I'd feel if I met my friends from school after twenty years apart. I was amazed because they were a whole new breed of person I haven't come across before in the real world: the kind that go to gigs all of the time, one of them had seen Sting three times a week recently. And knew who Imogen Heap was.
The stereotypical audience member was a man, 45-ish, slightly long hair and a baggy black t-shirt. Perhaps he was alone.




Thijs van Leer came on stage, stood aside and the rest of the band led on.


He looked like a wizard.


I liked the concert a lot more than I thought; I was skeptical and maybe thought I couldn't enjoy music as much simply because it was instrumental, I was very wrong. They played the song my dad requested: Le Cathedral de Strausberg and it was pretty and sounded like bells. Another highlight was Focus III (I think) was the first song they played, I didn't know it but it was brilliant, and my favourites were the ones I knew, Sylvia and Hocus Pocus. Thijs van Leer held his arms wide open and the audience sang.



"Yodeadodoyodeadodoyodeadodoyodeadodoyodeadodoyodeadodoyo-bab-baaaaa

Ahhhhhh-aaahhhh-aaaaaa-aaaaAAA!Ohhhhhh-ooohhh-oooooo-oooOOO!"

does not seem to describe the beauty and epicness of it, but there is sometimes no way to write music down.



Pocus was the last song they did and afterwards, we hung out at the merch table. My dad bought a shirt and we met all of the band and it was surreal because I wasn't ready to translate what I'd seen on the stage to actual human beings yet. Maybe instead, they were some of the first famous people, if you can call them that, people I've met and I was surprised at how human everyone was acting.

On the way home there was a bit of a fight with Stuart and his girlfriend, because he wanted to stop for kebabs and he was tired, and I went home and ate a slice of bread and it tasted like the best food in the world.

Lizzie

a day in the life of a "music snob"

"Music is worthless unless it can make a complete stranger break down and cry."

- Frou Frou, "The Dumbing Down Of Love"



I feel like I'm the only person in my life that feels like I do. About music, and words, and people and The World.

I doubt it sometimes but it's true. I am what the Windows Live homepage (it could have been Virgin Media, actually) once referred to as a "music snob"; they defined it as someone who has a very certain taste in music and is sort of arrogant to other suggestions.

I think I probably come across as being like that sometimes, but I'm going to defend myself. Here is why.

I am not un-open-minded.



When I was younger, I didn't like mainstream music very much but I didn't look much furthur, which is how I became a strange kind of twelve-year-old who carried round an iPod on which she'd listen to 80s rock music, along with Scouting For Girls and Paolo Nutini, at that time before they were popular.

It wasn't until about a year ago I started to find the true value of music, until I started listening to Imogen Heap who I found through the internet. Her music wasn't only wonderuful, but led me to a network of other alternative musicians, most of which are completley different to each other; I discovered IAMX, Amanda Palmer, Blue October, much more. Then there are others, various people have introduced me to, Beirut is a good example. Over the last year, I've bought about twenty physical CDs which I think probably a record for me. It doesn't seem like a lot.

Because I like my blog more than I'll admit and I have too much time on my hands, I even drew a diagram with Paint to show this.






The other thing it did was turn me away from mainstream music completley. I don't hate Justin Bieber and Cheryl Cole and Britney and The Wanted, I just don't like them. A lot. It annoys me that I can't get away from listening to all of this. I'm made to acknowledge Top 40s style music every day, it gets played on the radio stations my parents listen to and on people's phones at school or whilst I'm waiting for my Subway sandwich, it's in everyone's Facebook status. Most people I know haven't heard of any of the above in their lives, and that makes me angry.

The thing that's brought this on is a coversation I was having (which turned into a joking type fight, which turned into a really huge and very real fight, which turned into us both hugging and crying because we're teenage girls) with my best friend yesterday in which she told me she'd decided Beyonce was the best singer, ever.

I felt pretty betrayed. Poppy is an Imogen Heap fan, she goes to shows with me and a lot of the time likes a lot of the music I like - I didn't realise until yesterday that she's the only person I know that does like the music I do, that's non Internet-wise. She also listens to things like Plan B, though, she likes Eminem and pretty much everything that the cast of Glee cover. It makes me sad that my friends and I will never like the same kind of music; we went bowling quite recently, and I have a distinct memory of sitting eating chips whilst they were all singing along to the song Billionaire. I knew I'd made the right choice, that the week's number one hit would never make them cry late at night, that they would never find anything that made them feel in "eh eh eh eh eh eh eh eh eh eh eh, stop telephonin' me", find that five second point in a really well produced song that actually makes a lump in your chest rise, see a live show as good as the ones I've been to, but it felt lonely and it makes me sad, sometimes.
Whoever is in between their earphones spent a fortnight singing in a recording studio, not two and a bit years writing, producing and playing every single instrument on an album.

I know I'm right. But sometimes I feel like I everyone else to.

An Invitation

Hello...

... it's October 1st today. This means things which are special.
- It's four weeks/twenty eight days until I go see Imogen Heap for the second of three times this year.
- It's one month until NaNoWriMo starts again.

Maybe you know that I'm a huge fan of the Office of Letters and Light events. This time last year, I thought of myself as a writer but hadn't done much outside of fanfiction.net; NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy got me writing.
NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month - is a challenge to write fifty thousand words of a novel in thirty days, every November and I can't urge you to partake enough.
Through both events I've met some amazing people through the internet, particularly Script Frenzy, people from all over the world. They helped me a lot during Script Frenzy, one of the reasons I enjoyed it more than NaNo, I think, was those last few days when one by one, we would pass the finish line. After a while, our group of writers grew too big for instant messaging conversations, and we decided to create a forum.
Scrends was born. It's small and friendly and we're hoping this NaNo will bring in a lot more traffic during November and onwards. My friend Bob is the admin and it's wonderful over there.
I want you to write books this November and I want you to join us.
'Kay? :)