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