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
Wednesday, 7 September 2011
Wednesday, 31 August 2011
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.
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.
Saturday, 27 August 2011
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
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
Wednesday, 17 August 2011
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.
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.
Monday, 15 August 2011
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.
Tuesday, 9 August 2011
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.
Sunday, 7 August 2011
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
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)