Zakynthos (2)

I did say back in August I would write more about my holiday. This actually didn't take as long as I thought, and I'm happy I found a different way to present a blog.

If I don't speak to you before, Merry Christmas!

- Lizzie

Kina Grannis - Friday October 21st 2011 - Bush Hall, London

I think the story of how I got to go to this show is kind of relevant: I have been a fan of Californian pop/folk singer Kina Grannis for around three years, it was through her essentially that I heard of most of my other favourite bands and it always impresses me how well she interacts with her fans. And rightly: it was the Internet and the videos she uploads to Youtube that brought her to fame, Kina is kind enough to put a lot of effort into interacting through Twitter and Facebook, and she told me personally through a reply to the Facebook message I sent her about her tour before she announced shows in the UK.

I was really slow finding somebody to go with me to the show, and seeing if I'd get time off school. Fortunately, it turned out I had the day off school and could get to London, but by then the tickets had sold out. I bought some second hand. Two nights before the tickets still hadn't arrived, which was very scary, but on the morning we were leaving a package was at the post office. Opening the package was a very worrying moment, I think it would've broken my heart if it had turned out to be something else.

Before the show we went to Hummingbird Bakery, where I bought a cupcake to give Kina at the meet & greet because I am a huge dork. I queued outside early, whilst my dad who I was with went to get food - he has less patience with queues than me - and talked to an Irish guy, who came on his own and had been to three of the shows.

Shepherd's Bush Hall is a tiny arena but really beautiful, it has red velvet curtains and a big disco ball hanging over the room. It's also really small and intimate - I stood really close to the front, my bag and drink were resting on the edge of the stage. They have hung up boards with information about people that have played with before, and a huge one about Imogen Heap!

The support act was also selling t-shirts at the merch table. His name is Jesse Epstein, and on stage he goes by the name of Imaginary Friend. I hadn't heard of him but I really like his music, he's a great singer and played a genius cover of "Fly Me To The Moon".

Kina came on and my first thoughts were that she was exactly like I'd imagined from all her videos and blogs - except much, much shorter. She opened with "World in Front of Me", played the whole show on one guitar, which she shared with Imaginary Friend and it was so pretty and intimate and just the way music should be. Everything about it was minimal - the way she was, one girl alone with just her guitar, and the only people on tour with her were Jesse and her manager, Jon, and music can still function like this. That makes me happy.

Kina was quiet but chatty and interacted with the audience a lot, talking about the reason for "The Goldfish Song's" title and being embarrassed about her bright green socks. Kina and Imaginary Friend played one of his songs together, unrehearsed, which was still flawless, and she also played a really great cover of Britney Spears' "Oops, I Did It Again".

The last song was my favourite, "Message From Your Heart", and she just unplugged and came over to one side of the stage - my side - and whilst she sang the audience joined in, singing the rhythm of the "bum bum bum bum"'s with her.

Being in the presence of Kina was strange because I feel like she's somebody I know, after seeing all her videos for the last three years, seeing her grow and change and without sounding too cheesy, her supporters online really have come along on the journey.

When it got to my turn in the meet & greet, we hugged like old friends. She said, "I remember you!" and for one weird second I thought she might mean from the few Facebook messages we've exchanged, but then realised I'd been stood near the front and she could see me the whole time, which is a funny idea to get my head around, though obviously I'd thought that the performer must look at the audience and see them, too. She also liked the cupcake.

It wasn't long, because curfews have venues, but I don't think I can think of a performer who's more enthusiastic about communication with their fans than Kina: she made sure she signed things, took pictures and talked with every single person at the show, just for a while.

Forever Day

I normally don't like to write blog posts that tell you to do things, and I especially don't like trying to get you to spend money but I believe that what I'm writing about today is a really worthy cause. For those of you that don't know already, Project For Awesome is a day every year where video makers on Youtube talk about different charities that mean something to them.

Thing One:

A guy called Alex Day is trying to get his song "Forever Yours" to Christmas number one in the UK charts this year. At time of writing we're at #4 on iTunes and I believe not far from #3. Today - "Forever Day" - is the first day that sales of his song count towards Alex getting the #1 spot. You can only buy "Forever Yours" once for it to count, but there are twelve different versions and remixes - this includes a demo, an acoustic piano version and a completley acapella version with each instrumental part replaced with a vocal track - each one of these that you buy will count as a seperate sale. It's a really great song, and 100% of the proceeds go to a charity called World Vision. I think that it's really inspiring that we, the internet and community of Youtubers and Twitterers and Tumblr-ers (?), have already gotten it this far. Every sale before midnight on Christmas Eve will count, and it would really make me happy if we can get an independant artist to Christmas #1 in the UK for the first time.

Thing Two:

Without saying much more, this is really powerful and affective, and to me was one of the best Project For Awesome videos on Youtube this year.



There's a link here if you wanted to see the information box for the video and donate, or go to any of the sites and helplines he talked about.

Thank you for reading this. Happy Forever Day.

- Lizzie x

*I must be starting to feel too involved.

Christmas Playlist

Some Christmas songs you maybe haven't heard before...

"I KNOW WHO TOOK THE MILK AND THE COOKIES" - KINA GRANNIS
A song about coming home.




COVER OF "FAIRYTALE OF NEW YORK" - BILLY BRAGG AND FLORENCE WELCH
"Fairytale of New York" is one of my favourite Christmas songs, and nothing beats the original but these two have really great voices and the mandolin part is lovely. Plus Florence and harps go together like... um. Suncream and skin.



"JUST FOR NOW" - IMOGEN HEAP
Beautiful layered harmonies, words about family feuds and false smiles and kicks under the Christmas dinner table.




"THERE'S ALWAYS CHRISTMAS" - ARDIE COLLINS
With a guitar rhythm that's kind of woefully cheerful, a song about a faltering relationship at Christmas time.




"TIMSHEL" - MUMFORD AND SONS
This is not exactly a Christmas song, but it reminds me of Christmas time and mountains, water, snow. I was torn between posting this or "Winter Winds", both sound like Christmas does. But this is so melancholy, both comforting and very cold.




"GOODBYE ENGLAND" - LAURA MARLING
Again, more a wintery song than a Christmas song but it feels like Christmas to me. I wanted to find a video of her playing this in a cathedral like when I saw her (I'm currently trying to get up to date on blogs about concerts from October) but couldn't. Hearing it with just her and a guitar, in a big dark, cathedral, was really magic. But this version is lovely too.

Held Hands, Stabbed Backs

When I was eight years old, I believed in ghosts.

I believed in ghosts because we all believed in ghosts; how couldn't we, when they were a regular occurance in our daily lives? We all knew about the Moaning Myrtle-like ghost girl who stalked about in the school toilets, because we maybe hadn't seen her ourselves but people in the class who told us about it certainly had. Some of the braver children had tried the "Candy Man" trick, calling out an incantation three times into a bathroom mirror to see if faces appeared. It was Year 4 and my whole class were obsessed.

Then, one night my friend called me and she told me that there was a ghost in her house she'd met. Her name was Stephanie, a little girl who had died when she was pushed down the stairs. Her and another of her ghost friends protected the two of us; they had to because for some reason or other, a man called Bob who was also dead wanted us to die, he had been the one that killed Stephanie. I remember Molly telling me that Jane, who correalating with my weird eight year old obsession with the Tudors at that time I imagined looked like Jane Seymour, would hold my hand and protect me when I stuck out my own arm. They obviously never appeared but once in the classroom my friend told me that man was there, that he was touching my back and I could feel it, I could feel this pressure and this pain, it was so real that I didn't want to look behind me because I really felt his nails digging into my shoulders and I felt that I would see them. Similarly, Jane held my hand when I was scared. I feared her at first but not after a while. Her hand was cold and soft, her fingers very thin.

We were so young that it's hard to work out how long this odd little playground game went on for. Maybe a month. Maybe six. Maybe a year. But one day Molly told me she'd made it all up, made up Stephanie and Jane and the killer because she'd just wanted something to go on in our lives. At first I wanted to smile at her and shake my head because didn't she understand, it was real. I knew these imaginary friends so well. Then she told me she felt the same, that they'd become real, that we'd felt and heard and maybe even seen them and it was so strange because it was the strength of both our imaginations, childish faith and belief, things we'd told each other and most of all a need for comfort from monsters that had really made them real, our Ghosts.

A few years back I went to a Mind, Body, Spirit fair as a kind of experiment with my mother. I was too young to see a medium but she did. He'd known so many things. He'd known the name of her baby sister who died, he knew about a cupboard in our house that things had been moved in. He said that she had a daughter who got a funny feeling in her left leg, and that it was "the big orange cat" - our family cat Ginger died about a year previous to this - rubbing himself against her leg like he always used to. And that was true, I did used to get a tingling feeling in my leg. At the time we all cried and hugged. I felt so happy.

But since then I've started to doubt it, and a lot of this is down to me discovering Derren Brown. In a documentary he gave readings like this, claiming to be contacting the dead and using names, dates and things from people's personal history, that he always declared was using trickery. He did this to make people aware of false "mediums" but I have no idea how, if it was a trick it is still somewhat incredible.

I think I still believe in the big orange cat against my leg. I know that sometimes when I think about it I feel it, but am I conjouring it up myself? Because I've tried to work it out and there's really no way to know.

One last thing; I was in an exam recently I just knew I'd done awfully in. I did what I could and finished forty minutes early and that's always horrible because all there is to do is sit, stare at the clock, think about how much you fucked up. It sends you into crazy ways of finding entertainment, because of how lonely it is being in a room full of people where everyone else is silent and concentrating.

I wanted comfort and I was imagining holding a hand. Nobody's hand in particular, just a hand. I shut my eyes. And after a while, it was there. I moved my fingers around, feeling mine tangle in their's, feeling the softness of their skin. We played with each other's fingers. I squeezed and they squeezed back.

I have different amounts of belief in all of the above, different kinds of seemingly physical contact with an imaginary force. The hand today was not real, I know that, and neither were the ghosts in the school bathroom and the girl that died on the stairs. I'm still not sure about Ginger the cat. I know it's something I'd really like to believe in.

***

There were some stories in that I wanted to go back and change to third person because I'm so distanced from them it was weird to say "I".

In other news, this song has my heart at the moment;



I'll be back soon.

- Lizzie x

Wakey!Wakey! - Tuesday October 11th 2011 - Night/Day Cafe, Manchester

Wakey!Wakey! is a band started by Michael Grubbs, a singer and pianist from Virginia. One of my friends introduced me to their music because she heard it in a TV show called One Tree Hill. I love their record Almost Everything I Wish I'd Said The Last Time I Saw You... because every song is just so different.

We were late for the concert, doors opened at seven thirty and we stumbled in after getting lost in Manchester at about ten o clock, but luckily they'd only played about two songs when we walked in, I'm guessing they started that late because there were two support acts and I think the venue probably had no curfew.

I'd never been to Night/Day cafe before, and it's a really special place; basically just a bar with live music sometimes, but there are posters and shirts and signed things all over the walls, and I felt oddly welcome even though I don't think I spoke to anyone that worked there. It held about eighty people that night, I think

Michael Grubbs played a keyboard, there were an arrangement of other musicians as his band that seemed to wander on and off the stage at will. He wore a plain white shirt, his hair was messy and everything about the show was so relaxed. He shouted across the room to a singer who'd opened for him, who was in the crowd, interacted with the audience, took pictures and told so many stories sometimes it seemed like he was forgetting to play songs. I laughed so much during a story he told about a karaoke bar in Toronto that there were little tears in my eyes.

But it didn't touch the music. Everything was perfect, the whole band in sync with each other and the violinist was particularly amazing in "Take It Like A Man".

Before we go to shows together, my friend Becky and I always predict little things that will happen, and I said he'd play an ironic cover of a song like Rihanna's "Umbrella". I was partly right, but it was "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" by Cyndi Lauper, which is even more awesome.

"Light Outside" had to be my favourite - it was two or three songs after we got in and I remember hearing those first few notes and just grinning because we hadn't missed it during the time we weren't there, and because so many people in the room were singing along with the song I love, and save for my worst days.

He did a meet and greet type thing afterwards, and as we stood around a few metres from him I didn't really feel starstruck or nervous, maybe because although I knew his music I didn't know much about the person until that day. I was planning what I was going to say to him and I had been throughout the show. About a really crappy night I had, about things being better and going home after everyone was gone and sleeping and listening to "Light Outside" and not knowing how to feel, but how that song made me feel like someone knew.

I didn't tell him that, I chickened out. But I did get my video camera and ask him to say something for my friend, who'd introduced me to his music and couldn't go. I still have it on my camera. We took a picture, he signed my ticket and we went home.

I wished I'd told him about "Light Outside" and how it's mine, because he wrote it and deserved to know. I kind of told myself that it was the situation, just like what's happened with me meeting heroes before, that the backs of bars and studios with people around are places for signing tickets and spelling names but it's hard to stumble out the words you really want to say, and I'm not sure he would have known how to reply.

I hope that Wakey!Wakey! stays at this level of fame forever, because it suits Michael Grubbs' charisma, to be able to tell stories and to sing songs.

Mostly Sleep-Talk

I'm feeling lazy but I didn't write a blog last Wednesday... or pretty much throughout November, but I feel like I owe my neglected blog an update so you get a list. I like lists.

- I am in bed and it is 1am.

- I read a book called Wintergirls, by Laurie Halse Anderson. It's affected me in such a way that I don't know if I want to talk about it at all, but it's the first book that's made me cry. That sounds really dramatic, but the night I finished it I lay in bed and wept, not knowing exactly why.

- I babysat tonight. fun fun fun.

- Exams this week and next. bleh. But I booked concert tickets so things are good.

- Poppy and I are playing a show next weekend. That is exciting.

- Lolita is a weird book but so far good.

- Thank you for all your responses on Twitter and Tumblr and things re the Caggie interview. I still feel really weird about it.

- Coming soon: proper post of relevancy and conclusion.

I like you sufficiently.

Lizzie xxx

Caggie Dunlop Interview

Caggie Dunlop is well-known for her appearance on the reality TV show Made in Chelsea, but she's also a singer-songwriter and working on an album which I believe will be released in 2012. I interviewed her about her songwriting process, the impact of TV shows like Made in Chelsea, and was pleasantly surprised by the wedding song she chose being pretty much the coolest thing ever.




What can people expect from your upcoming album?

I want to surprise people, and show that I can really write, and that I passionately care about my music. For me- it's all about the lyrics. When they come together, everything else is just.. decorating. The lyrics are the foundation for me. There's a bit of an eighties theme creeping through the works at the moment as well, inspired by the sound track to Drive. Which is really cool.


You’ve been shown singing a few times on Made in Chelsea. Had you thought about a career in music before this, or was singing not always one of the things you wanted to do professionally?

I never thought I had the talent or courage to consider singing as a career. So I'm very grateful to Made in Chelsea for that, they encouraged me to come out of my shell- as the first ep season 1 was the first time I'd performed in front of anyone, my mum hadn't even heard me. But it's all about building confidence, you're never going to be every bodies cup of tea, and thats okay. It's really when you're performing your own songs when you feel that satisfaction. Like you shared something of yourself...and people can take it, or leave it. First and foremost I trained as an actress so singing has taken me in a different direction that I expected. But I'm loving the journey so far.


Why do you think that people are so interested in Made in Chelsea, and TV shows with a similar format like The Only Way is Essex and The Hills?

I don't know...I think it's the insight into other people's lives, maybe a sort of escapism from their own that makes it so attractive. The knowledge that it's real seems to be more engulfing; the pain, the happiness is all heightened because you know it's not acting. It could be argued that it ruins entertainment though, I'm part of the genre so I don't want to slander it- but we must always make room for real art in theatre/film and TV. This type of genre doesn't stretch the mind particularly...probably why it's such easy watching.



Made in Chelsea exposes, or maybe we should say represents, a lot about you and your friends’ personal lives. Have you found that people you haven't met seem to think they understand a lot about you from what they’ve seen on TV?

Yes, very much so. Which doesn't bother me, no one has been nasty, so it's lovely really, to have people hug you like long lost friends. I'm a very open person so its suits me fine. But it's funny because my most shaping experiences (for lack of a better term!) as a person, haven't happened when the cameras are on.I feel like I've already lived a number of lives in a way, and this MIC part is just one of them. But that's the only one people know. And I guess with my music I want to introduce to people the other "me's" so to speak.


Do you think that when fans of Made in Chelsea hear songs that you’ve written, they’ll look for some connection to what they’ve seen on the show? (For example, trying to figure out if songs are about Spencer and things.)

Absolutely. And that could be frustrating. But completely understandable. That's what people know of me so of course they will look for connections...I can safely say now they won't find any. Well they will, because they'll be looking for it, but they'll be wrong. I've never written anything to do with the show.

Who are some of your favourite bands and artists, and which ones influence your song-writing the most?

I've always loved Jessie J, and Rhianna. Bastille are a great band, To Kill a King, Sam Beeton, Ben Howard, Will Heard is a fantastic up and coming singer song writer so watch out of him. Marcus Foster, Fink. But I like every genre of music- the above are my easy listening regulars. But I love a bit of Chase and Status, Devlin, Tinie Temper, Plan B. And I love the old school song birds like Edith Piaf. I listen to regularly.


And finally, which songs would you have played at your wedding and funeral?

Easy, wedding song is Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap. Funeral song would be Youth Group Forever Young. Or Stay by Shakspeare's Sister. But that might be a bit haunting! No swap that for Where Do You Go to My Lovely by Peter Sarstedt. One of mine and my dads all time favourites. It makes me happy.

New Forest October (1)

I missed you. I did.

Almost exactly a month ago, I went away on my own for the first time to the New Forest in Hampshire, the other side of England to where I live. I got scared, and lost, and into some sticky situations but it was an adventure.

Pictures:




Ponies, everywhere.



I have stories and they're coming soon, I'm just so busy recently. I've written a ton of half-blogs which may eventually get posted, and I have exams and NaNoWriMo and it's stressful but know that I'm still here.

I'll see you soon!

- Lizzie

An Oppositional Reading

"An Oppositional Reading." A term everyone uses quite a lot in my Media Studies class, meaning the consumer of a text has a completely different interpretation of the meaning behind the text that its producer intended (as opposed to the more obvious interpretation, the Preferred Reading). It's often because of religion, sexuality, lifestyle choices, or perhaps most importantly, personal experience.

The example of this I remember from class is two people having an argument about James Blunt's song "Goodbye My Lover". The first argues the Preferred Reading - "This song is about someone going through a breakup."
But the second says, "I know why you think that, but it's actually about somebody who stepped on an insect and they're really guilty about it."
Obviously "Goodbye My Lover" isn't about an insect at all, but this person has a really traumatic experience and they're so desperate to find something to relate it to that they grab at the nearest thing to find similarity and comfort in.

The insect thing is a really bad example, but this whole theory is really interesting to me, especially as a music fan and somebody who often tries to find things within the lyrics of a song. The problem with the example above is that it makes it seem as if any Oppositional Reading is obvious, obscure and insane, which isn't the case. Thinking about it, I realised people have them all the time.

A few months ago, my dad was starting to like Noah and the Whale, one of my favourite bands, and we would listen to them a lot when it was just him and me in the car, and his favourite song of theirs was "Tonight's the Kind of Night". I remember one of the first things he said about it was, "It's about a boy leaving home to go to university."

It made me smile. I can see where he's coming from, "Tonight's the Kind of Night" talks of a young boy getting on a bus to leave. "Tonight's the kind of night where everything could change." "He waves goodbye to the town he grew up him, he knows that he'll never go back." "Tonight he's not gonna come back home." "His heart is full of perfect joy, his eyes begin to flood." He's going away from where he's always lived, moving away from his parents and his family, and it's an adventure.

My dad grew up in Bolton, an area that was quite a tight-knit community, and left there at eighteen to go to university and from what I know I think he loved it there: he met some of his current best friends there, did really well in his degree, was in a band etc.

Him leaving to go and live in Coventry is easily relatable to "Tonight's the Kind of Night", because it's about a boy of age eighteen-ish leaving home, but if you think about it there's no reason he should think it's about going to university. It's either an easy assumption to make about somebody student-aged, or my dad just subconsciously applied this to himself and his memories.

I've done it myself, too. There's a song on Laura Marling's new record* called "The Beast". After I'd listened to it a few times I started to really focus on the lyrics, and I thought I'd found it and someone was finally talking about this thing that causes all of my guilt and rage. It's probably more complicated than that, it's difficult to explain because I don't understand it either - Poppy referred to this unexplainable negativity as my "monsters" before, and "The Beast" also seemed a good way to put at it. I really recognised the illustration of the guilt and dread as something that comes at night and lies beside you in bed, and that sometimes you submit to.

I've thought about it and she probably isn't referring to that, at least not specifically, and it's childish that the identification of what I thought was a common ground increased my love for Laura Marling's music. I think it's likely that "The Beast" is about similar feelings, but probably not that "snap!" exactness that I thought I'd found the first time around.

Does it mean we should stop listening to songs and applying them to our lives? Is an "Oppositional" reading any less of an interpretation? Of course not. That is one of the things music is for, a comfort blanket and a friend, a lifeline in the dark because somebody else has probably felt like this before.

I don't know who Imogen Heap wrote "Swoon" about, but I know who it will always have been about to me, the feelings it stirred in me, and for that I can give the song a name and a face. "The Beast" will still always be a description of someone having similar feelings to mine, "Tonight's the Kind of Night" makes my dad think of things that were happening to him when he was eighteen.

A song's story starts with the thing that happened or the person that it was written about, but once it's out in the world and provides a listener with emotion suddenly it's about them to and thousands of stories are unknowingly interlinked. I think that's an incredible representation of the music community. And that's why of course "Goodbye My Lover" by James Blunt is about a squashed insect.

*I hope nobody's counting how many times I've said "Laura Marling" in the past month...

Yoghurt and Tea

Three companies released major advertising campaigns in the UK this week.

You wouldn't think this would particularly have any effects on me, apart from seeing TV commcercials, but they have. More than TV ads have before I guess.

Six months ago, on my family skiing holiday I was sat with my parents and Sam eating pizza in a restaurant and my dad started talking about a new campaign and TV commercial that the yoghurt company he works for were releasing in October. I wasn't really interested until he said he'd had to sign a confidentiality agreement, which obviously made me want to know more.

My dad built this up over months, he kept telling me about billboards they'd bought and things but it turned out he hadn't and wouldn't see the advert until it's first airing during The X Factor last Saturday.

Poppy and Emily were round and we were eating Chinese food in the kitchen when my dad started squealing from the living room like a little girl. My mum was there too and we all gathered round the TV to watch this advert, which my dad's whole office had been excited for for months:-



There was a silence for a few seconds. A sort of "... Oh." Then we all sarcastically jumped up and down and hugged and then my friends and I left and finished our take-out food and my parents went back to to the movie they were watching.

Haha, read the Youtube comments.

I've seen it a few times since and I guess it's okay. I think they were aiming for one of those Cadbury gorilla style ads that's catchy but unrelated and it works. Maybe you could spin off from it. I understand about recognition and things. It's definitely creative, it just... doesn't make me want yoghurt.

Then, one day this week, my dad came home from work, mostly laughing about it, and said that everyone in his office was annoyed because another yoghurt company released a major TV advert that week. It includes a boy band of farmers and the song is avaliable on iTunes.



I don't really have much of an opinion about this. It wasn't as funny as I thought it was going to be.

I'm ridiculously passionate about it and the third TV commercial that was important for me this week was for tea, though it barely references tea at all. I'm reluctant to even call it an advert it's so beautiful, a film made up of crayon drawings. Poppy was singing the song from it all of Thursday (Charlene Soraia's cover of "Wherever You Will Go") and it's lovely.



It's so pretty and clean and every time I see it it affects me. I don't know if it makes me want Twinings or not. But the way it makes me feel is extraordinary, for a tea advert.

Illegible but Necessary Typewriter Blog

All Is Fleeting

I had a solid idea of what I wanted to write about today, but I'll save it because right now it seems very important that I share this with you:



Charlie Fink and Laura Marling play "Give A Little Love" and "Alas I Cannot Swim" together in the back of a taxi. I think she must have been around seventeen at this time.

I put "Give A Little Love" on before purely for the lyric all is fleeting. A while before that I'd read something on someone's tumblr post about the value of life, and it made me feel quite guilty because of how I'd been thinking lately.

I turned it off because it was brilliant but didn't seem quite right, and it was the same when I saw Noah and the Whale on Thursday and they opened with "Give A Little Love". They're an amazing band live, passionate and energetic and open, but the first time I heard "Give A Little Love" was this video, and because of that I think of it a little differently.

I've found that with the community of music involving Laura Marling, Noah and the Whale and Mumford and Sons, all of who's music has become a part of my life these last few months - everybody seems to think they know quite a lot about their lives, specifically love-lives, during a certain time. I go between thinking it's interesting to listen to a song and have an idea who or what it is about, to thinking that it's possibly interferring and unhealthy to feel like we have access to this, or have opinions about who should or shouldn't still be together, things like that. These aren't people we know and they don't know us and it doesn't seem quite right.

But I think seeing this, it's okay to watch it with the feeling that this isn't a concert or a performance, not really, but two people in love and in coversation. Music is a platform for connection, not necessarily just for artist to fan, and music is a communion in many different ways. Charlie and Laura. Years ago, looking at each other and singing about how they feel.

Dying Thoughts

There's something about being alone late at night that I think seems to loosen the limits of the imagination. You can start to think about something, like the fact that it's very important you learn to speak Japanese more than anything or that there's a serial killer outside, and for some reason the conscience just doesn't shush it. There's no "but there's other things that happen in my life" or "there's no reason there would be a serial killer outside" like usual. You seem to react much quicker to your thoughts, can scare or inspire or upset more easily than in clear, waking hours.

Having said that, last night I ninety percent convinced myself that I was going to die.

I want you to know that normally I'm not a hypochondriac or anything. But before I went to bed, I took a sleeping pill yesterday, for the first time. For some silly reason I was slightly nervous before, I think I just don't like the idea of putting nerve-altering substances inside me. Also I didn't read the packet clearly, therefore missed the "thirty minutes before going to bed", so I sort of sat on my bed, cross-legged, for a while after I swallowed it as if in exactly thirty minutes I would just click straight out of consciousness. And then all of a sudden I started to regret taking the sleeping pill and instead start to think, "Crap, I'm going to die."

It was completley irrational, and so I got up out of bed again and restarted my laptop, because it was the closest I could get to being surrounded by people I guess, it was late and I didn't want to call anyone. So I tweeted a few times sort of jokingly and then I shut the computer down again (I'm supposed to not use the internet an hour before I sleep, unsurprisingly I'm bad at that...) and I lay in bed and shut my eyes.

Then it really started. I obviously knew I wasn't going to die, but I was thinking "Just in case...". And in my head I started going through things I felt like I should summarize for myself before my untimely death, so I kind of forcefully pondered my friends and my family and this guy but then, as we do as we're falling asleep, my mind just started to wander.

Obviously I don't know the exact last thing I thought before I fell asleep. But I know the last thing I remember thinking about.

It was the fact that I'd tweeted before I went to bed, and this brief picture came into my head of the fact that my tweet count ended in 11.

That was an odd number and it wasn't a very neat way to leave things before I died.

*sigh* I am pathetic.

Obviously, my life is full of enough excitement and importance that Twitter and odd numbers was the last things I would've thought about. Before, y'know, I died from taking a herbal sleeping pill.

Room

I read a book this week called "Room", by Emma Donaghue. It's about a boy, named Jack, who is just turning five years old, and lives in an 11 by 11 ft room with his mother, where they are being held captive. They are looked after by "Old Nick", who takes out the trash after Jack has gone to bed, and brings them food and the things they ask for for Sundaytreat. Jack knows of nothing else, and has trouble understanding when his mother explains to him that there's an Outside World to Room.

I was talking about this book with my mum, and the way it was written - how Jack calls the different things in room as if by title, Table and Wardrobe and Rug are the centres of Jack's world.

I thought about it and we all live in a Room, I suppose. Maybe mine's broader - the places I constanly go between are Home and School and the Pool and Poppy's House. There's greater distance between them than in Jack's Room, of course, but it's the same - I've been in the same place for a long time and feel slightly like I'm growing out of it. A combination of an age thing and a dash of wanderlust.

I'm definitely not comparing life in a small town to being held captive as such but it seems to be like living any way for too long – whether in a village populated three hundred or in a huge city, we develop a routine and habits and it becomes our Room. It’s probably healthy, and natural instinct for us to surround ourselves with things that we know to feel safe. But I’m starting to feel too safe. I want to go Outside: maybe not forever, maybe just for a ten minute walk, but the trouble is I don’t know how and although reading “Room” it frustrated me, I’m definitely starting to understand how five-year-old Jack feels, of course in a very different way. But still; not sure whether it's better to be on the Inside, isolated and suffering, or on the Outside, lost and scared, overwhelmed and exposed.

Recommendations: 2 (Maida Vale Edition!)

Pretending people care... in September. There's kind of a Maida Vale trip theme to this one - a place I ate that day, the book I read waiting in the street, and the CD that reasoned it all.

Place: Hummingbird Bakery, Notting Hill



My mum bought us the Hummingbird Bakery recipie book about two years ago I think - from it we've made brownies, cupcakes, pies, and always meant to go. When my dad and I were in Notting Hill the other week, we saw a girl who worked there in a Hummingbird Bakery sweater and chased after her when I realised how close we were. I had Hummingbird brownie, which was rather wonderful, but surprisingly my dad's Black Bottom cupcake - chocolate, with cheese and buttery icing on top - was probably more delicious. A small place, a lovely atmousphere, they give you your food in cute boxes with handles. If you're ever nearby, go. Or if you're not nearby, plan a pilgramage before you die.

Book: "The Radleys" - Matt Haig
In a world of "Twilight" and "Marked" and things like that, it's definitely reassuring that a novel like this exists. Whilst it definitely isn't a spoof, "The Radleys" is a book that's hilarious as well as being able to be taken seriously. Making you think to be concerned about the neighborus, this is the story of Helen and Peter Radley's realisation that it's time to tell their teenage offspring the reason they feel ill without eating meat, why they have trouble sleeping, why they can't go outside without coating themselves in Factor 30.

Album: "A Creature I Don't Know" - Laura Marling
Because, how could I not?
I'll review this in more detail, one day. But every so often you buy a record and fall in love with it. And by that I don't mean like it a lot. I mean every song is fantastic, you get to know the order better than your friends' birthdays and most of the time it stays with you for ever. This has been one of those.
From "The Muse", which introduces the new liveliness and odd enigma of this album, to the concluding thought of "Flicker and Fail" it's a wonderful arrangement of guitar and mandolin and strings, melodic surprises and lyrics that tell tales way beyond the expected maturity of a twenty-one year old.

Owl City - Thursday September 8th 2011 - Manchester Academy Two

Ok, so I went to an Owl City concert a few weeks ago. It's probably not something I would have done on my own, but my friend Becky loves him and when she asked if I was coming I said yes, because even if it isn't someone I'm really enthusiastic about it's a concert, still, and I owe it to her because of coming to Imogen Heap with me when nobody else would/could.

This was my first time at Manchester Academy Two (though not One) and I feel like I should mention how nice it smelt... at the start.

Owl City - or Adam Young - makes pop-y, quite electronic and definitely unique music, songs about animals and love and the universe and often quite everyday situations. You've probably heard of him because of his hit song "Fireflies" from 2009, but he's sort of more than that. All I've really heard is his album "Ocean Eyes", since then he's released "All Things Bright and Beautiful".

I haven't really managed to form an intelligent opinion of Owl City's music yet - it's definitely catchy, and although the lyrics aren't the deepest they're definitely interesting. The only thing I dislike is that it contains some of the stereotypes of "electronica", which I feel like I often ending up arguing Frou Frou and Back Ted N-Ted out of. It's sometimes cold, and at times doesn't sound like it stemmed from a sound that was ever natural.

On stage, he was undeniably the most cheerful human being I've ever seen. He wore a fluffy lion hat his support act had also adopted, and opened the show saying "Hoodily-hoo Manchester!".

He opened the show with a song called "The Real World", the energetic opening to his new record containing the line "Reality is a lovely place, but I wouldn't want to live there!". His band contained two violinists, two drummers at times, a female keyboard player who also sang with him and a guy on the bass. Adam himself went between guitar, keyboard and drums at one point.

I feel like he wasn't really a great instrumentalist but he sang very well - his voice must be a lot less edited than I thought, it carries over nicely onto stage, and his confidence and audience interaction topped it all.

Highlights for me were "The Bird and the Worm", in which it was nice to be in a room full of people singing something you didn't realise was popular, "Cave In" and of course, "Fireflies". One of my annoyances was one song he played (I've looked and can't find it, it may be called "Rockets") included the vocal track of the rapper he'd recorded it with. I didn't like that, I think a live show is about everything being reproduced.

The audience was very enthusiastic and dancey, though I'd say split between the hardcore fans singing along to everything, and a few drunks who just called out "PLAY FIREFLIES" constantly.

It was undeniably cheesy. The audience was largely teenagers, and he said so many things that were so forcefully cute they made me laugh or just feel a little sick, like at the end of a song called "Angels".

"I guarentee that there are angels around your vicinity... Especially in MANCHESTEEEEER!"

At one point he also said he was enjoying the show so much, he'd call his mom about it afterwards.

To conclude, no, this is not something I would have done alone and I appreciated that. It's so clear that Adam Young loved what he was doing, and if he didn't he put an awful lot of effort into making everybody there feel like it - he was an entertained for the hardcore fans, and for the university attendees who'd just come to find somewhere to drink beer and dance, and I think that's great. It might not be the kind of music I like listening on the bus, but I think that the way his music is bringing it onto stage must have been a challenge, and that was done greatly most of the time.

* * *

This was hard to finish off as I've still not gotten over Laura Marling and how great she was.

Remember if you're in the UK - eight o clock. Tomorrow. BBC Radio 2. She is wonderful and even if you don't enjoy it you can listen for me "woooo"-ing.

I'll see you next week.

- Lizzie xx

Salinas, where the women go forever, and they never, ever stop to ask why

Today, in Maida Vale studies, London, Laura Marling recorded a set of fifteen songs for a studio audience which will be broadcast on BBC Radio 2, next Thursday at 8pm.

And I was there. My dad applied for tickets a while ago, mainly because he knows I love Laura Marling and it was free, but didn't think we'd actually get them - only two hundred were released. I didn't want to tell a lot of people when we got them, because the ticket states it does not guarentee admission (they release more than there are places avaliable, just to ensure seats are filled I guess).

So, to make sure we got in, we left the house for London at 10am. I love being in the car and first coming into London, because it reminds me of some of the things that make it my favourite city: the way everything seems sepia toned, even the sky, and the personality and atmousphere it has that I've never lived around.
We arrived at Maida Vale at around 1pm, needless to say there was nobody starting the queue for a show starting in four and a half hours, and one of the staff told us which door to go to and that people probably wouldn't start queuing until at least four thirty. So we drove to Notting Hill, where we made comments about the movie and debated how much of its population were tourists and I looked at small apartment prices (I'm fifteen, yes, but it's where I plan on living after university and it's never too early to start looking). Notting Hill is a beautiful place, full of antique shops and bicycles and hipsters and coloured houses. We also found the Hummingbird Bakery, and I had my very first Hummingbird Brownie which was delicious. I'm sure it's not the last time I'll go there.

We got back to Maida Vale around 2:30, and it was still empty. It looked like we were definitely going to get in but I sat down next to the door and decided to start the queue myself, albeit three hours early, because there was no reason not to, and I read "The Radleys" for a while and it was four o clock before anybody else joined me in the queue (my dad went for a walk). Yes, I am an overenthusiastic fan.

By half five, the they let us in, the queue had extended to still only about sixty. They gave us stickers when our tickets were validated with our line number on, and I am the very proud owner of ticket number one!

A few moments before we went through the door I saw a small blonde woman smoking a cigarette going through the second door, and I wondered but I wasn't entirely sure...

Then we went into Maida Vale studios, Studio 3, actually, and the set-up I would say was kind of like a cafe - there was no actual platform for the stage, just one half of the room, and the audience sat on tables and chairs with little "electronic candles" on them. We were really close to the front... I mean literally, about four metres from where the central microphone was, and we shared the table with a guy and his girlfriend, who'd seen Laura Marling three years ago when she was touring with Noah and the Whale. I was very jealous.

They were playing pre-recorded BBC Radio 2 in the background and "Tonight's The Kind of Night" came on.

A BBC representative came up and told us that Jo Whiley would be coming on stage soon, and to cheer enthusiastically and things because it would be audible on the radio show next week. Then Jo Whiley appreared, and everyone did cheer enthusiastically, and she said that Laura and her band were in the corridor. At this point there were only about 80 people in the audience, maybe less.

And then, very suddenly, Laura Marling and her band were walking onto the stage and everyone cheered and by this point I was trembling slightly because one of my heroines was literally stood about three/four metres from me.

She was wearing a grey jumper and jeans, just like the girl I'd seen outside.

Laura is twenty-one years old, very blonde and very small with dark eyes and probably one of the most beautiful human beings I've been in the prescence of.

The first song she played was "Rambling Man" (unfortunatley it was spoilt for me because I saw the setlist stuck to the stage) and it was lovely. She has a really odd stage presense - it shouldn't seem lively or anything, because she's quite small and stands still looking distant and staring upwards sometimes. It's so intense just to watch, seeing someone doing something they're so caught up in that it's almost as if they're not quite there.

Which is a brilliant skill, seeing as at the same time she's singing beautifully and being a complete genius guitarist. Her band was made up of a second guitarist who also played piano, a cellist, mandolin, banjo, trumpet, a double bass and a really good drummer.

Oh, and I got the setlist!:



Here is the exciting part.

Afterwards, I asked my dad if we could wait outside for a little while to see if she came out. And he is used to this, as is Poppy or anyone who's been to a few concerts with me, but I've never ended up meeting anyone or waiting that long.

We stood outside the front door for around five minutes, nobody else was, honestly I didn't think I'd see her. It sounds stupid but then I saw her reflection in a car or something, and as that happened my dad came from where he was waiting with the car, saying "Lizzie she's there! Quick!".

She was coming out with some other people, and for about three seconds I was scared to approach and I just went still. And then I said "Laura," and sort of came towards her quietly shaking and took out my copy of "Alas I Cannot Swim" and I asked if she'd sign it and found a pen. She asked my name, and then if it was spelt with a "y" or an "ie".

I felt slightly less dumbly starstruck seeing her and realising it felt a bit like being around someone I know and also like being around a superhero. I said something like "Well done, it was magic." and she said thank you and asked about how we got the tickets. I told her. Then my dad came and joined in the conversation and told her about how we're seeing her at Manchester Cathedral next month. And that was it.

I wish I had a picture of us together but forgot to ask, and besides I think I'd have been embarassed to post it because of how much I'd have looked like crap compared to someone who is so beautiful in person.*

The whole way home, every few minutes, I just came out with "I can't believe I met Laura Marling ____" minutes ago. It will go on for a long time.

To conclude: today was wonderful.
I was ticket number one.
I waited three hours.
I got the setlist.
And I met Laura Marling.

I think I'm too much of a fangirl and don't mind. I also think I won the concert if that's possible.

I'm going to bed now because I have school tomorrow. I just wanted to tell you how amazing today was.

Did I tell you I met Laura Marling?

*I just typed "compared to Hayley G. Hoover."

"Doing This."

“My mind’s made up – if I’m doing this, I’m doing this with you.”

- A line from the Head and the Heart’s song, “Coeur d’Alene”.

I think this is beautiful. I’ve had this album a few weeks, but I was listening to it whilst leafleting today and for the first time it popped out to me. Because it’s one of those, if I twist it from what was probably the preferred reading, it can fit me just right.

I’m going to have to try and very badly explain something I’ve been avoiding since my friends started reading this blog, and I think I’ve mentioned it in passing or made vague references from time to time but that is all.

I wouldn’t go as far as saying that I’ve contemplated suicide. But recently my outlook on the world has changed – and by recently, I mean over the last two years or so.

It was already happening before – a feeling set off by things I watched or listened to or read. Lots of little things inflicted it. I was about thirteen and I enjoyed it at first, this new way of seeing the world. Special is not the right way to talk about how it made me feel, but I know I was glad of it and I tried to apply it to life by writing more often and going out for walks and just taking in more as I lived, in activities like eating and reading and running laps around the 400m course at school. It’s impossible to describe, but I’ll try my best; do you know when you’ve listened to a really good song, or had a “heart-to-heart”* conversation with somebody, or cried out a problem that was stuck in you for weeks? Maybe you get it seeing a piece of art, or a really beautiful film, or a sad story? I hope so. The best explanation I can attempt is saying that it’s like being exposed to so much more emotion than when you’re just doing everyday activities, your thoughts push down on you more heavily. I was starting to get that all of the time. It could last days, and then weeks, until I think one day it just got to a point where it was never really not there, but the entire backbone of my brain and my thought process. If you’ve read “Looking For Alaska”, “Paper Towns” or maybe even “The Earth Hums in B Flat” then maybe thinking of that could make it more understandable.

I met this person the following year, and after a while we started to realise that we both have this thing. (Really… feel to leave, I feel this is not making sense, I’m sorry.)
The difference is that they had learnt to handle it well, to use it to make things better and to find more. Almost to explore. And I really admired that, because I was getting worse at it every day – I found making myself do homework difficult, not really because of procrastinating but because it made me feel like I was giving in. If I threw myself into school, got all A’s in my GCSEs what good can really come out of it? Maybe I’d end up going to really good university and then throwing myself into that and concentrate on a career and then be a lawyer or a doctor or a rocket science, I’d never be satisfied because of this underlying thread of promise that maybe if I go out and look for this unnameable force then I’ll find it. But if I focus on it to much, it costs me money and it costs me good grades and even, eventually, friends. I don’t know which is the lesser of two evils.

This person tried to show me, a little, not how to deal with it, which indicates some sort of removal, but make it not so much a negative part of my life. I don’t know if I ever did that but I know that when the two of us talked about it, knowing quite fully it was there, it felt like I was finding it and it was more real, it didn’t scare me as much anymore. It’s not something to run away from, see, but something to chase.

But then over time it became that we just weren’t in each other’s lives anymore. We didn’t really know each other that well to start with, but when you’ve talked about some of the things we have with basically a stranger I think it’s a hard concept when they’re not there anymore – at least, I know it is my end.

In the last two or three months, and especially in the absence of the person I talked about, either the feeling’s gotten a lot more overpowering or I’ve become worse at bearing with it, possibly both. My two best friends and I were out somewhere recently, and I had this transition of about a minute where I realised how bad it was, how bad it was going to be, and from there I burst into tears and it went on and on, I don’t know how long for. My friends were scared; they were asking me things like where we were and who I was with. It scared me how worried I’d made them.

I haven’t seriously considered suicide, but one night I sat awake and tried to neatly formulate all of the ways out of this and as much as it scared me, in the moment back then, it seemed like one of the most sensible ways to make this better. I wondered if the only reason I wasn’t opening myself up to the idea was because I’m scared of pain. But I will not let that be an option. If I go on forever without finding this thing, it doesn’t matter. The other day my mum reassured me that I have a family and friends and cats who love me and it’s true. I don’t want to make a generalisation about suicide, but if I give up just because of a stupid fear of living wrong it will be selfish, and cowardly. I have things to do and people who it seems genuinely want me to be alive.

Going back to “Coeur d’Alene”. It made me think of the person I gave up on and it made me think of wanting to put hope and trust in them again. I am, it seems, “doing this” anyway but without a guide for now, and it’s harder but there are crayoned to-do lists and concerts and cats to stroke and while there’s nothing like swapping similar thoughts with a second brain or the exchange of a soul high-five, maybe it’ll be a thing I find again and don’t go out and look for just yet and that’s ok. I want to keep going without there being an "if", and with more than just one person to depend on.

*I hate that phrase.

Love From, Thirteen Year-Old Lizzie

I was in a hotel room with not a lot to do recently, and I had my laptop but no internet. I started going through the files on my old computer, and I found this.

* * *

Computer, I’m in love.
Not with a person, in particular, but more with an idea. That over the last year and a bit, perhaps, I’ve started to notice things like parts of songs and little moments on TV and such, and it’s a feeling that kind of stirs something in me. An excitement and devotion and a kind of sadness that it took me a while to pin to a word but I think that’s maybe love.
I don’t know, though. It surely can’t be love, when there’s never a particular person involved, as in a person that I know, but words like simply crush are much too shallow for this.
The feeling is like a sort of warmth, the feeling of maybe that someone really wants you to be protected and safe. The feeling that someone is protecting you and that you are safe. And you, or I, I suppose, feel pretty and small and precious and like you want to nestle into this imaginary person’s arms and let them hold you and feel like nothing can touch you. There always has to be a small threat involved, and you know this person is protecting you so you can overcome it.
That’s about the soppiest thing I’ve ever written and I’m never going to read back on it for fear of embarrassment.
I could list all the songs and TV shows, a certain three people at the moment, all of them famous(ish) and considerably none of them real, not that they are fictional but real in a realistic sort of way but things about them I have fallen half in love with.
Yes, I am thirteen and “romance” and such in my little high school world is only starting to spread from it’s limits to an upper circle of popular people that I do not belong to and probably won’t, ever. There is only one person that I can really imagine being happy with and I, in fact, don’t know them very well at all, I think I just made myself decide on a person to pin my little inner bottle of imaginary love to, and I’ve sort of painted a picture of what he is really like. I doubt that Mner has ever thought about me very much, and that either of us ever will.
Yes, very mawkish indeed, but please don’t think I am in love with him because I am not. I hope to meet, one day, the montage of people in my head, of feelings and hopes and happiness, perhaps in a human form. It isn’t that I don’t have time and I know it’ll be a long, long time before anything like this happens. I don’t want to meet the person I’ll marry or anything. I don’t know what I want, in particular. I’m moaning because I’ve smelt a new kind of happiness and it’ll be a long time before I experience it. I hope I do, though.
That was really soppy, wasn’t it? I don’t do that a lot. Savour it, computer.

* * *

There are a few more "dear Computer" letters that I probably will never post, but ignoring the rest of it the first paragraph kind of makes me think that that was the age my mind started to mould in this completley new way I started to think, which maybe started out as sort of a good thing, as being more observent about the world in kind of silly ways, but it's getting quite destructive.

In short, I don't really have a lot of time to write a post but my past-self did it for me? :D

I might not be here next Wednesday because something very exciting is happening next week. I don't want to talk about it until afterwards because there's just a >20% change that it won't, and I'm sure I'll end up cracking if I try to blog on Wednesday. But I'll see you at the weekend, probably.

Bye xxx

Recommendations: 1

I have to write today's post in the daytime, which I almost never do and this has made me sort of force myself to think of a solid thing to write about instead of chattering on like I do usually. Then I started thinking about how much of my blog I spend telling you "listen to this", "buy this", "read this".
For someone that loves music and books and film, it's hard not to do that a lot so instead of giving up completley I'm going to try instead to condense it all into one post every so often. I stole the idea of a recommendations section from this.

So the idea is, I write, say, one of these a month (though that will speed up and slow down, we know how bad I am at sticking to things). I will also try to "recommend" one thing from each area, but there'll probably be more or less of those depending on how I'm feeling.

LIZZIE'S RECOMMENDATIONS (August 2011)

Song: "Maria" - Dizraeli
This came up on my tumblr dashboard yesterday. I'm normally quite quick to be judgemental about music with spoken lyrics, but this is sort of brilliant, at the same time completley heartbreaking. A story.

Food: Lily O'Brien's chocolate
My mother buys us these whenever something bad happens. Things of deliciousness which I think started out being made my an Irish woman in her kitchen. When I was twelve I sent them a complaint letter because a label was wrong, they sent a box of toffee to my house. Happiness.*

Book: "Five People You Meet in Heaven" - Mitch Albom
An old man passes away and goes through the first stage of "Heaven"; his life is explained to him by five people that played a role in it, not necessarily the ones closest to him. A wonderful novel about people and how we relate to each other, about guilt and most importantly about forgiveness.

Film: "Beckie0 in Technicolor"
I was thinking of choosing Enduring Love, or another, y'know, full length film. But Beckie0, a Youtuber, is extrodinary and a brilliant filmmaker. I think it's fair for this to count just as much.

Album: "The Head and the Heart" - The Head and the Heart
Since I was talking about them a few weeks ago, I bought their record and it's brilliant - I might even go as far as to say that at the gig, they were better than Death Cab For Cutie, who they were supporting. That is saying something.

I was going to do a TV show as well, and when I couldn't think of anything I decided I'd make one of my friends who are coming round do it instead, but we'll probably just eat nachos and talk about how much we missed each other.

I'll see you soon! (I'm not going to say I'll see you next Wednesday, because I go back to school then and I don't even want to think about it.)

baiiiiiiiiiii. <3

* * *

*Don't even be surprised that there's a food section.

Zakynthos

Hello!

This is where I'm sat right now:



Zakynthos, or Zante, is a Greek island, and the area of it I'm in is called Tsilivi and lives off of tourists, turtles, and oranges and lemons.

So far my dad's gotten into a fight with a German who yelled at him for taking the sunbed he said he'd been in for ten days, I danced with a guy who had pom-poms on his shoes, we bought a giant loch-ness-monster floatie and Kathryn, my holiday-sister, was beeped at by a van driver. Also for the first and also last time I drank so much that I threw up in a sink, which I'm not really very proud of. It's lovely having a sea that you can swim in without acquiring blue feet, and we saw a sea turtle the other day.

Because of the fact that my dad is sort of a social butterfly, a lot of the hotel seem to be acting like family friends - Ivan, an entertainment manager who used to be a singer in a rock band, Nico, a Greek waiter, an adorable Russian couple, a demented kitten named Howard who hangs around other tables and a half-Greek half-British man living in London who's name we don't know. Secretly we call him E.D.G-ar - short for "Eating Disorder Guy", because at the buffet dinner he sits alone and tucks three napkins into his shirt, then lines up every plate of food he's going to eat in front of him. There'll be a plate of only chicken legs, or one of tomatoes, and there's always odd numbers of each item. It's really interesting to watch.

I'll post some footage or photos when I get home. I hope you're doing well and I'll see you soon! :D

Lies

This came up on my tumblr dashboard today. Normally I put pictures over there, and the words go here but this just summed up my blog too much to ignore.



I had a hair appointment today, and a different hairdresser than usual, and whilst he was making hairdresser-small-talk with me, I realised he'd been asking about my holiday and I'd lied to him about something not that significant but for no particular reason, what I'd said didn't make me seem a better/worse person, I couldn't have gained anything from it. I hadn't even noticed I'd done it until afterwards.

And it links in with what I've kept thinking about recently: we lie to each other. All the time.

Yesterday I was at my friend's house. She has a brother who is three years old, and we took him to a shop with us to buy him sweets, and on the way we saw a dead sparrow at the side of the road.

"Watch out," she said, "there's a d-e-a-d bird there."

I laughed. "Why did you just spell out dead?" I knew it was for her brother's sake, she was shielding him from something, but it seemed completley stupid to me.

"He's three! You can't teach him what dead is!" She went on to tell me, "The other day, my mum came in crying because she had to tell him that insects are bad."

"What do you mean?"

"He's used to having ladybirds crawl on him, but there was an ant on his hand and Mum had to explain to him that ants are bad and it made her cry."

I can't even explain how much this conversation confused me.
1. Regular brown ants don't bite.
2. By protecting him from things, in these watered down versions of the truth, it doesn't make them go away or even stop them happening to him.
3. I hadn't thought about what age we start to know about death.

"But what would you tell him if someone in your family died, someone he'd know to miss?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. Something like "oh, they've gone to be with the angels"."

"But they haven't! And he'd know, I think, a little bit."

"He couldn't understand. You can't explain to a three year old that someone's just gone."

I'm trying to think of phrases you could use to describe death to a small child. Things like, "he's gone to sleep forever, now" and "his body stopped working".

My grandmother is a schizophrenic and an alcoholic and aside from that just a mean person. I didn't know any of that until I was about eleven or twelve, and she babysat me and two of my cousins. She was telling us stories that now I think back had no truth in them, but I didn't quite know whether to believe because I was quite young, and because I'd never been introduced to her as someone not to trust before. But it was explained to me, over time, or it just because obvious. My mum says it's not so much that we were being shielded, but she wanted me to be able to form my own opinion instead of carrying around everyone else's resentment. And I have.

I think that was a good type of lie to tell, but I think lying or shielding someone from the truth also requires a knowledge of how much they already know, especially with a smalll child. There is protective and there's white lies, and I can't really decide which side of the line some of these things fall on.

a crab called One, and more adventures in "pays de galles"

Sorry there was no post last Wednesday. Here is why.

isaline and mélanie in the uk, summer 2011 from Elizabeth Hudson on Vimeo.

Riots

The validity of this picture is unconfirmed, but alledgedly this tiger ran out onto the street tonight after the London Zoo break-in.

There are currently riots happening in several different cities across my country. I'm honestly unsure of how this started off, a few days ago in Tottenham, and it didn't sink in to me that it was serious until tonight, seeing a pinpointed map online of where things are going on right now. At around midnight I saw that Kyle Cassidy had tweeted this:
"Oh England, I don't want you to be like the rest of us. These images break my heart."

It's scary because I've always felt like I live in a kind of safe bubble from the rest of the shit that goes on, in Egypt or Libya or Afghanistan, but not here, we all like to think we're far too civilised for that. Then, constantly refreshing my news feed, over the last few hours I've seen that Manchester's been affected, and now Liverpool.

That's what made it feel close and feel real. That and the tiger.

Liveblogging a Loaf of Bread

I found the bread machine we used to use all the time in the garage this morning, so I looked for the instruction manual on the internet and currently bread is baking. It's going to take over two hours so I'm going to be annoying and liveblog my attempt at machine breadmaking.

The little green light is next to "kneading" at the moment.

It's nearly two o clock and my hair's still wet. I'm listening to The Head and the Heart, who were the support act when I went to see Death Cab For Cutie and probably drawing with Back Ted N-Ted as my favourite support act I've seen. They're a folk band from Seattle. On stage they were just all completley into it and happy, three of them sort of took it in turns to be lead singer and I saw the most enthusiastic shaky-egg playing I think I ever will.



The music video for that song is also pretty freaking beautiful. I think I'm turning into a fan of theirs. Someone said in the Youtube comments; "if fleet foxes and mumford sons had a happy sparkly-eyed child they would name it head and the heart." S'true.

It's exactly 14:00. Going to check on the bread machine.

We're now "Resting" at 14:03. I keep repeating "Lost In My Mind".

"Oh-ooh..."

I know it's the middle of the summer, and I'm really close to going somewhere really hot on our family holiday, but I miss winter. Is that stupid?
Up to recently, I'd never really appreaciated that England is pretty; it went from being just the place where I live, to somewhere I started to want to escape from, but in the last month or so I've started to be able to find beauty in places I am all the time. I think it's partly because of Laura Marling's I Speak Because I Can, talking about rides on bicycles and England in the snow and a walk past a village church she used to take with her father.
It's funny, last year I discovered wanderlust and friendship through the internet and electronica. 2011 has so far brought me love for folk music and green fields and home. I think I can find a balance of those things.

14:14. Time for another bread check.
Still "Resting." I got rich tea biscuit because I'm hungry and haven't had lunch yet. Now it's gone.

14:31. Kneading again. It's starting to smell delicious and I'm hungry.

Okay I'm really hungry now but waiting for the bread. I think I like to eat more than is healthy.

It's 14:44 and the machine's stopped making noise.
"Resting" again. It's a solid ball of dough now instead of just ingredients. Yay.
I also just ate another rich tea biscuit, because it has over an hour and thirty minutes left.

See... things like this is just exactly why the internet's shaping the future.

I'm reading a book at the moments called "When God Was a Rabbit", by Sarah Winman, and little things in it keep reminding me of "The Earth Hums in B-Flat". I think it's great when a writer writes from a child's point of view in an adult book, because a lot of children's books seem to patronise and just miss how children think and feel and the things they notice. I know that a book aimed at ten to twelve year olds can't exactly be filled with violence and sex references, but I know that when I was around that age I tired of children's litereture and even some YA novels and read adult books, where sometimes they were too linguistically complexed but the themes in were more interesting to me than a lot of children's books, which seemed patronising.
I got really off track there, because "When God Was A Rabbit" isn't a children's book at all, it just has a good grasp of them. It makes me laugh a lot.

15:13. Bread is rising now! It's also filled the shape of the tin it's in but still sort of a dough ball.

I don't have anything interesting to say anymore. I feel a bit like we're sat here and we're making bread together and now we're awkward and silent around each other whilst we're waiting for it to be done.

15:31 Bread still rising.
I read more of "When God Was A Rabbit" but I won't spoil it for you. Just under an hour left. I'm watching an episode of Charmed to pass the time.

16:44 I couldn't watch Charmed because I lost the remote batteries but the bread is done. It rose too much but was still delicious. Thanks for... um... keeping me company?

Times played "Lost In My Mind" this afternoon: 8

Best Day/Worst Day

These last few days I read a book called "Looking For Alaska" by John Green (AMAZING.) I'm probably going to write about it a lot in the next week or so, so do your homework if you want to... or I'll just be relatable. Sorry if I'm being too niche recently, but in short having read "Looking For Alaska" isn't really relevent to today's post. But you still should, because I really recommend it. It isn't hardgoing at all, but still provoked me to think about so many things.

They play a game Alaska spontaneously invents, called "Best Day/Worst Day" - everyone tells the story of first their best day every, and then their worst. It's also a drinking game, but I don't have anybody to drink with and getting drunk alone for the entertainment of an empty space on the internet seems stupid.

But I'm still going to play it. Though instead of choosing one I picked multiple for each, because I'm painfully indecisive.

BEST DAYS
(in no chronological order)

1. Going to Camelot Theme Park with my dad, I think I was about aged ten. I think my mum was writing her dissertation or something, so we had to do something to get out of the house so went her. It was grey and it rained, and my dad went on at me to go on a rollercoaster called The Whirlwind. I was in about a two year phase (eight-then, I love them now) when I was scared of rollercoasters, and I planned to pretend I was going to do it then get to the queue and chicken out. But I just didn't, and we got in the cart and I shut my eyes tight the whole time and that was the point I realised I quite like being thrown around over and over again.

2. Royal Albert Hall Day, 2010. I did write a post about this. Seeing my favourite musician, with my best friend, in my favourite city, and spending the weekend there.

3. Geneva, 2011. I go skiing with my parents and my cousin every year, and we drive there, a long journey through Europe, and usually cross about three different countries. This year, we stopped at a roadside bridge my dad spotted and all of us raced along it.

We spent the rest of that day in Geneva, in Swizerland, and it's one of the most beautiful places I think I've been to. We were only there for about an hour but walked through a park, saw the Lake, payed a busker and took pictures of some swans.

4. Spooning in the park, July 2011. A few weeks ago, the day we broke up from school, I went to a slumber party with just my two best friends and nobody else. It was at someone's big farm house, and I think that period - from about 5pm to 3 the next day, I was completley honest the whole time, we all were. We ate a lot of cookie dough and watched High School Musical 3 because I was deprived of it my whole childhood, then ended up getting drunk but not crazy-drunk, just the kind of drunk that opens you up and makes you laugh too much. So we walked to the park and all just lay down in a heap and talked about all the things you're not supposed to the rest of the time. I felt warm and I felt loved.

WORST DAYS

1. Harriet, the girl at the out-of-school club, 2002. The summer I started school, I went to an out-of-school club in the summer whilst my mum was working. Usually my best friend Charlotte was there, or another girl called Maia, but this one time my mum dropped me off and the only person to "play with" - that's what we did then - was a girl called Harriet. I mean, there were a lot of boys, but boys were icky. I recall playing a jigsaw computer game with Harriet, which she made me watch whilst she repeated, and shouted at me that she got three goes in a row, then I could have ONE turn. Aside from that, I can't quite remember what she did to me but I know she was some kind of four year old psycho bitch. I really clearly remember that in my mum's car on the way home, I thought to myself "THIS was the worst day ever. Nothing that has happened to me before or will happen can possibly compare."

2.Sitting on the shower floor after drinking Tia Maria, 2010.
The first time I drank a lot was at someone's house towards the end of last year. I remember a gap between when we were doing shots and it seemed fun, and then some other stuff happened and after that there's a gap between lying on a mattress being hit and then drunkenly sobbing whilst somebody stroked my hair. Then I hugged the person who'd hit me and I told them I was sorry and I don't know why, I wasn't, I was mad at them but I desparatley wanted them not to be mad at me. The next day I got home and I felt like crap and I was still angry so I sat on the shower floor and wept. That was probably quite a low moment.

There are some more worst days I can think of, but they're all similar and hard to explain.
And isn't it better to have twice as many best days than worst days?

"Never Let Me Go" review

(there's spoilers, yes.)

"Never Let Me Go" is a book by Kazuo Isiguro I read back in April, and watched the film adaptation tonight. The story takes place at Hailsham, a seemingly idealistic boarding school in the English countryside, and the narrator is a young girl referred to as "Kathy H". The first portion is mostly tales from Kathy's youth, and of being at Hailsham with her two best friends Ruth and Tommy, but there are odd little things we're told about the school which suggests something behind it all - visits from Madame, a Belgian woman with an art gallery who picks out some of the children's art work, the way that the children's health is a huge priority - and the film opens with the headmistress, Miss Emily, scolding the entire hall after some burnt out cigarettes were found in the grounds. The children don't ever leave the confinement of Hailsham, or seem to want to, also their parents or families are never mention, nor are their surnames.
And although they already seem to know, it's spelt out to the children by one of the teachers - or "guardians" - that they were brought in the world purely so that when they grow up, these children will donate their organs to patients of private hospitals in need of replacements.

Considering how much I loved the book, the film was always going to have a some faults in it for me, but I really enjoyed Never Let Me Go. For one, it was just so well cast. Carey Mulligan was brilliant as Kathy - she showed all of the mature and sensibility she has in some ways, compared to Ruth and Tommy, then also the fact that she's also naive in a different way. But I think it was Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightly who stole the show for me. Garfield just was Tommy - the rage, the heart, and most of all just the tiny bits of clumsiness in his walk, and so many of his manerisms were so genuine to the character, he is a child all the way through. And Keira Knightly, who I think I've only really seen as a protagonist or a love interest type character, was absolutley brilliant in this where she was bitchy sometimes. In those early scenes in The Cottages, she showed all the tenaciosity and bitterness - I'm mostly referring to the scene where she completley downgraded Kathy in the attic. She was also wonderful playing the aged, weaker and worn out Ruth in the recovery centre.

There were only really two things I was annoyed that they missed out on.

The first was the scene in the book where Kathy listens to "Never Let Me Go" on a Judy Bridgewater tape - she thinks it's about a woman who finally has a baby after a long time of waiting, and she dances around the dormitory clutching a pillow, then notices Madame just watching her. I know it would've been hard to explain without the narrative there is in a book, but this scene was just the key to portraying how Madame saw the children at Hailsham, and how they saw her (Kathy knows she feels awkward around them, and she thinks that she's upset when she sees her dancing because she knows the Hailsham children can never have their own babies, we don't know why at this point).

The second thing was that so many little moments between Kathy and Ruth - them sitting together talking about sex on the pavillion, how Ruth came up and talked to Kathy in her bedroom every night they were together in the Cottages, were missed out on, and although their not that relevant alone, I think this ended up completley forgetting to show a lot about Kathy and Ruth's friendship. "Never Let Me Go" was hugely about friendships between females to me, and really in the film Tommy is much more of a part of Kathy and Ruth's relationship than in the book.

Visually it was beautiful - Hailsham and that area of Norfolk and the Cottages and the boat and really all of the locations were pretty much exactly how I'd imagined them. It was a weird time to watch this, because recently I've developed this odd amount of love for England (maybe it's because of all the Laura Marling music) considering normally I complain about living here. I shouldn't, really, it's beautiful, and Never Let Me Go showed that not in dramatic landscapes or anything incredible but just on what is here and what is real.

Other little things - Miss Emily was too harsh-looking, though I really liked Chrissy (even though she wasn't like I'd imagined) and Rodney (Bill Weasley?!) - I loved the scene in the cafe where Tommy, Ruth and Kathy are quite socially anxious around the waitress and have no idea how to order.

In short, Never Let Me Go was brilliantly cast, visually lovely and a very underrated British film - although I did like The King's Speech, I really think this deserved much more of the credit that had.

Um... fin.

Today we turn one!

(yes, this was sort of just an excuse to colour instead of doing homework...)

(EDIT - 31st/07th: Sometimes, you post something to the internet but then you missed a t out. And it's sad...
Also did I mention I realised we share a birthday with HARRY POTTER?!)

I'll warn you this is probably going to be really sentimental.

A year ago today I packed for our family holiday to Turkey, listened to some Imogen Heap, opened a bank account and that night sat up at my desk and started writing a blog - something I hadn't tried since I was well, twelve.

And since then I've been to see Imogen Heap twice more, visited a continent I hadn't been to, made new friends, done well in exams, done awfully in some other exams, discovered folk music, been kissed, been slapped, read new books, watched new films, been drunk and learnt that being honest is usually a better idea than not.

I know that this isn't really something people read, but I'm pretty proud that I've stayed comitted to posting here regularly, considering how much I procrastinate and the shortness of my attention span.

The title of this was going to be "We are one!".
Then I remembered that song by Same Difference...

Happy birthday, whether you're people or just a blank space. Here's to another year of more of the same.

I'll see you on Wednesday.

- Lizzie xx

Amy

I was at a party on Saturday night when someone announced to us all, almost half laughing, that Amy Winehouse had died.

And what I kind of picked up on that made me sad was that not only were some of my friends that were there not at all sad about it, but people were chiming in with "Well, she deserved it eventually taking all those drugs" and "She did have it coming". They were almost acting the same as with Osama Bin Laden's death - as if it was completley socially acceptable to be happy about what had happened to Amy Winehouse. So it was almost comforting when I got home to the internet and saw that not everyone - not even close - was acting like this.

At the start of the year in my Media Studies class, we were shown two photos of Amy Winehouse. One was of her climbing out of a cab, barely dressed and clearly wasted, which was from a red-top newspaper. The other was from her official website, and it was this:



Words like "fresh faced" and "young" and "graceful" were written on the board. The point was that different parts of a person can be used to represent them differently. And then the teacher asked us which one we thought was the "real" Amy Winehouse, and I think that the answer is that it is both and it is neither.

The people I've come across seem to be in one of two groups about Amy Winehouse's death. There are the ones who class her as a low-life and an addict and an equivalent to a mass murdering terrorist, then there are those that, maybe regardless of whether or not they appreciate her music, understand that this is a huge loss, and a very sad way to die. (I know that we're unsure at this point the exact causes of Winehouse's death, but I'm refering to the drugs).

I wasn't really a huge fan but when I heard about Amy Winehouse, I was eleven years old and my dad played her cover of "Valerie" to me in the car, and I thought that her voice was brilliant. Then I watched some Youtube videos of her singing. And there are a few things that make Amy Winehouse iconic - there is the beehive hairstyle, the red lipstick, and the drunkenness there seemed to be behind all of her live performances. But I think at the time I thought that the slight slur when she was talking and the way Winehouse staggered around the stage was sort of romantic - quite sad, but glamorous too.

Since then I have grown up some, I've had my own experiences with drinking (though let's highlight, never constantly or to the extent that I can empathise with an alcoholic, just more than when I was eleven) and also found out that most of my childhood I was shielded from the fact that a member of my family is an alcoholic and has been in and out of rehab, restbite care and various hospitals my entire life.

Amy Winehouse was twenty-seven and that's the same age as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain all were when they passed away. Artists take drugs because they're a part of the glamour, because they spur creativity, because they're desparate and because they're sad and lonely. But I also want to think about how many people go through this all the time, who instead of a terrifying throng of people are scared to face their job, their bills, their empty bed. This is something that can affect a businesswoman or a rockstar or someone sleeping in a shop doorway with an aching back.

I don't know if us telling ourselves people with an addiction to alcohol or drugs "have it coming" is a way to tell ourselves that the whatever it is the way we cope with things is right, because it probably is, but it's unimaginable to understand a drug addiction, and I don't think I can try to. And maybe I'm wrong and it's just a part of living so completley on the brink, that although Winehouse and Hendrix, the rest who are known as something called the "27 Club", and also Vincent Van Gogh and addicts who can't put up with themselves, and all of the other rockstars and the like who've died young, aren't ready to have to grow old or face up to whatever's coming next.

But whether or not Amy Winehouse's death was an eventuality, someone has lost their daughter, many, it seems, have lost a close friend, and the world has lost a beautiful singer. Amy Winehouse has achieved a lot - she had an excellent voice, she collaborated with and was admired by so many artists, I'm sure she has a very loyal fanbase that loved her and the world is lucky we still have her music left behind.
RIP <3