update

Hello, So a lot's been going on recently - I spent an entire day blind, the last fortnight I've been watching Imogen Heap's entire songwriting process webcast, and I watched a really, really awesome film called Map The Music, and did a lot of exams - all of which I'll write about in time except for the latter. And those are my excuses for the fact that recently I haven't written here - and also that there's the writing project I'm about to start, and the coursework I have, and the fact that I'm trying to learn to make my own guitar picks and also that I'm just lazy sometimes. But I thought I'd check in here briefly because tomorrow I'm going away for a while - we fly out in the morning and then I'm going to stay with my French exchange partner, Isaline, and her family for a week. They live in a town called Brive in the south of France, which is exciting to someone who lives in a small town in Cheshire because it's possible we'll actually feel sunshine. So I'm home from that next Wednesday, until the following Sunday when I'm going skiing with my family, and being with my cousin for that amount of time every year is like having a sort-of brother for a while, which is sometimes annoying but mostly awesome and just nice to experience something I missed out on. So basically, that's what I'll be doing for the next few weeks and I'll write as much as I can along the way. Take care of yourselves, I'll see you soon :) - Lizzie xx Also I'm really sorry you don't get spaces today. For some reason they disappear as soon as I click "Publish Post". blogger is messed up.

the brightest moon in eighteen years

My field was empty tonight.

It's stupuid but I'm writing this in sort of a rush. One of my favourite bloggers always seems to write best when he's drunk, and I'm not quite sure, because you never are, but I think I might be and so for some really naive reason I'm hoping that this means anything I type will turn into gold.

It started about an hour and a half ago, when I could have been quite drunk but, being sat on the internet doing nothing I didn't really notice any change. Everyone on twitter was talking about the fact that the moon's the brightest it's been in 18 years, and so, because my parents were out and my friend cancelled on me and I was home alone. So I went out for a walk, to a field near us and took the Mumford & Sons CD I bought today. I lay down and started singing along because there wasn;'t really anyone around, and that lasted a while, and then I sprinted all of the way home for no reason at all, and it was only when I got to the door I realised any of those things were even slightly weird.
But right now this little cynical voice that's in my head all the time is gone, and I feel kind of lighter. And it's nice

So there y'go. Don't think I'm trying to glorify alcohol or anything, I just wanted to capture feeling like this. I've never gotten drunk alone before. Maybe it measn I'm desparate and bored.

In terms of the moon, there were some clouds and it wasn't really that bright in the end. It looked fuzzy and apologetic. It took three attempts to spell apologetic.

Goodnight,

Lizzie xxx

thank you notes

An idea I stole from Kayley Hyde/owlssayhooot

Maybe I'll do this more often, it made me happy to write them :)

Love,
Lizzie

Something Exciting Is Happening! & 2011 Reading List, Update Number Zwei

Hello! I'm sorry it's been a while. Here's some books I've been reading...

"Neverwhere" by Neil Gaiman
The story of a fairly average sort of guy being thrown into a situation where he has to change - after one night he takes in an injured girl in a battered leather jacket, it isn't his own decision when Richard is dragged off on a quest through Neverwhere, a fantasy kingdom underneath the city of London, for those who've slipped through the cracks.
My trouble with fantasy sometimes is that I have problems keeping up with the "rules", but this was so wonderfully out of the ordinary that there were barely restrictions - our main characters rode the London Underground, slipped through paintings, drank wine from Atlantis with the Angel Islington. The main characters are lively and developed and real, Lady Door and Richard and Hunter and especially the Marquis de Carabas are unforgetable, and best of all, they weren't perfect and heroic, they were human.
I'll blame the fact I couldn't keep up with it sometimes on myself, and that's not because Neil Gaiman's one of my heroes and I'm defending him but just because I have trouble, for some reason, fully conjuring up parts of fantasy or sci-fi novels in my brain.
8/10

"The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd
In the 1960s, South Carolina, 14 year old Lily runs away from her father's peach plantation with her only friend, black servant Rosaleen. Inspired only by a photograph with her late mother's belongings, Lily hikes towards Tiburon to locate the Boatwright sisters, who make and sell honey, wrapped in a picture of the black Madonna.
This was brilliant, and although I've read a lot of novels with romance in them, watched a lot of shows, and I don't think I've ever wanted anyone to be together as much as Lily and Zach. That's probably wrong - there's been Callum and Sephy, Ron and Hermione, Mickey and Stacie, Brittany and Santana, but still this came close.
It's about love, the romantic kind between teenagers, unconditional love between sisters, biological and otherwise, and the love between Lily and the mother she can't quite remember. It's also about music, and honey, and bees and it made me happy.
9/10

"Water For Elephants" by Sara Gruen
I finished this in the bath just now, and woah. One of the reasons I wanted to read "Water For Elephants" is that it was initially somebody's NaNoWriMo novel. Events like this I always leave behind the product of, instead of attempting to do anything with them, like edit, or ever touch again - except for maybe what I wrote last November. I liked the idea that what was just someone's NaNoWriMo story is now a bestseller which is being made into a film with Robert Pattinson in it. But I loved "Water For Elephants" much, much more than I expected. I wanted it to inspire me, but I got caught in the story and spent the last few nights staying up late, just to read one more chapter, then another one, then another one. When Jacob Jankowski is called out of his final exam before becoming a qualified vetenarian, he's informed that both of his parents have died in a car accident and everything falls apart. With no money, and no family to go to, he finds work with the Benzini Brothers' Greatest Show on Earth, working under equestrian director, the charming and brutal August. But when Jacob falls for Marlena, August's wife, it causes nothing but trouble.
This story is so lovely. It's powerful, exciting and intense and at times I seriously couldn't put it down. I have a feeling I'll read something over and over again. 9.5/10

Also, I'm working towards a sort of challenge with my friends Beth Holmes and Kathryn Stant to raise money, and it's to do with those with loss of senses. Beth explains it much better here, but basically, I'll be spending a day blindfolded to experience the day to day struggles of being blind. We're each raising money for a charity, obviously to do with our "theme", if you like, and I haven't found a blind charity yet but I'll update you as soon as I do. I'm also looking into setting up an online sponsorships page.

I apologize I haven't been hanging round much recently, I think I'm slightly tired after February or just sick of listening to myself. Things should be back to normal soon. Though I should warn you, if I'm not back this time next week it's because I've run off to elope, and I'm not sure how much of that was a joke. I'm going to get in trouble for writing that now.

See you soon, hope you're doin' well!

Love,

Lizzie xxx

Things I Wish I Could Feel

I want to get something off my chest. It sounds sick, and twisted, and selfish, and wrong, a tiny part of me wants to experience the death of someone perhaps quite close to me.

Not really: I don't want anyone in my life to just be gone and, of course, I'm not talking about anybody specific at all. I love my parents and my other family, and my friends, and I really, really hope nothing bad happens to any of them for a long time.

Urgh. There's really no way to get all of this out without me seeming like an awful, awful person.

But today, I was reading the blog of someone I barely know, a writer, and someone close to them had just died. It was the way they were talking, the way it was written that just made it so clear how they felt about this person, and also how much they'd changed them.
It wasn't completley mournful or full of regrets: it was evaluation and reflection, and it sounds stupid but it was so strong it almost made me cry, and I almost felt astounded that I felt this amount of sadness for someone I don't know very well.

I want to take back the sentence up there.
I don't want anybody close to me to die, of course not.
But the thing is, every so often I see something or watch something or listen to something which brings me to this heavily delicate state of empathy and emotion. It can be happy or sad, but it's ridiculously blown out of proportion, how nowadays my strongest emotions are hardly ever brought on by my own situations, but by the feelings of a fictional character, a songwriter, an author, something which isn't so real to me.

I'm just so fucking sick of everyday life. I'm tired of polite conversation and smiles and watching movies and eating food and walking and driving and too short notice and stopping because I have to wake up in the morning, and restrictions. I want to feel really, really passionate about something real, not just a book or a film or someone else's thoughts. I want anger and violence and tears and strength and patriotism and laughter and argument and love. I want something to happen that can really, really change me. I've had escapism and it's incredible, but I'm starting to need involvement and it isn't here.

Today Was Chocolate Cake in the Park, Plastic Forks and Someone Else's Green T-Shirt

Hello.

First, as it's March now, I wanted to apologize for failing completley to write a blog post every day in February. I was going to post a picture of myself looking puppy-eyed whilst holding a stuffed dinosaur to gain some sympathy, but I won't :p In the end, I ran out of things to write about and doing this wasn't fun anymore, it was just another thing stopping me from sleeping. Meh, excuses.

When I was in my first few years of high school, I definitely didn't see music as as much of an importance as I do now, but I still listened to it, just at the same amount as any normal person. My musical taste wasn't completley mainstream, but it was much more obvious and accesible than what I listen to nowadays. I'd say there were about seven artists or bands that I'd listen to most of the time (this is in about 2008), most who I still like now, and one of these were the Killers.
Though their album "Hot Fuss" was bbig for me, now I think back it was more of one of those CDs where there were about five songs I really loved, and then some others I'd tend to just skip past.
Every few months or so, within about the last two years, one of these songs I used to ignore comes up when I had my iPod on shuffle or something, and I'd think Oh, this is really good. Why did my twelve year old self skip past it like that?
A few days ago I was talking about the Killers with one of my friends and he mentioned a song called "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine". I was about to say something about how I hadn't liked it as much as some of their other music when I realised I couldn't remember listening to the song at all, ever.
It reminded me of a time a while ago when I was going through a friend's iPod, which was full of mainly just Now! CDs, though from one she did have a song I knew called "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend" by The Black Kids. She was like, "Oh, I hate that song." I asked why, she said "Well I haven't heard it, but it's by The Black Kids and that sounds like a really racist name." *eyeroll*
But present me didn't want to be prejudiced, when it came to music or anything else, so I listened to "Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine", and it's brilliant.
Sometimes, after listening to a song once or twice or even hundreds of times, you have this moment where you realise what the words are really about, and I think this is even more special when the song's about something a little diverse or quite specific. The last few days, since hearing "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine" for the first time and slowly realising its story has been like reliving the time I started to see "Goodnight and Go" was about a stalker - yes, I'm slow and it was a whilebefore I payed attention to the lyrics in that verse.
Sometimes, once you understand a song's lyrics, I see new things in it and match them up. There's so many oh.... moments and I always want to hear it again, it takes over the most music I listen to for maybe twenty four hours, two days, never much more than a week. It's like getting to know a person you really, really like much more and it's amazing.
it's going to be embarassing now if me theory about the song is wrong. I just don't think it is.

I'm leaving now, my teeth feel ewwy, they have for a while since a friend told me to drink some oil. And I have to learn to play ^^ on guitar before I go to sleep! I'm feeling nice today, my cold's getting better and I just watched a movie.
Have a good weekend!