Music, Pussy Riot, Adventures // love a little bit more.

Hello!

I want to apologise for the lack of blog posts these last few weeks/two months. I've been all over the place - as well as results day stress etc partly literally - travelling through four different countries, working at festivals, going to cities in the UK I'd never been to before, and I've been lucky to meet so many fantastic musicians, writers, events people who are not only talented and hardworking but just incredibly kind.

I was a tiny part of the craziness that was Mumford and Sons curating and headlining an enormous yet very warm-hearted festival in Lewes, I've been to so many great gigs, learnt about Russian politics, told drunk secrets with my best friend in a dark flat in Amsterdam, listened to an entire James Blunt album more than once in a row, made a lot of new friends, swam in the English Channel at midnight.

Every day I am gaining faith, gradually starting to feel like there's people that do their jobs because they want to give an audience a great service, and to make this crazy industry and also this world a little bit of a better place.

Monday night was the Pussy Riot Commemoration event at Kraak, which I wrote about here before hand and helped out with on the day - bands from all over the country and even the world came to Manchester to put their love and their time into an incredible event. I was on the merch stand on the night, and loved chatting to everyone about their reasons for coming (and I met someone that read this blog?!), and local businesses and creators and artists contributed raffle prizes and auction gifts, and it was again, something that couldn't have happened without that sense of community spirit and giving from everyone involved. I'm proud of all of them.

As cheesy as it sounds, I keep thinking that that's what Pussy Riot really is: the more I've learnt about the girls, the more I think that this is what they'd want - on top of a protest, a headline in the paper, a cry out in the courtroom - this is a reminder to love a little bit more, to do and not just be. That's something you can do if you can't donate, if you can't speak out, just think about how freedom of speech affects you, and those around you.

I was telling someone about the event earlier today, and they asked "So why did you do that, was it for your personal statement and for work experience?"

I wanted to tell her "fucking course not".

It's so hard to imagine doing anything like this for a CV or personal statement, which I am constantly being told is valuable at the moment. And I'm honestly not attempting to seem gratuitously good hearted by saying that, that's not how it is at all - it's just so basic to care about something and put in what you take out, and I think that's the attitude we should have to everything we do. When you care about something, and love something, it doesn't feel like work, it doesn't feel like you're giving up time, it feels like you're doing the best thing with it that you possibly can.

Before these last few months I was told that workplaces are all bitchy, competitive, unfriendly environments, that people care only really about money, and that I should never have expected a change from that when I left school. I can honestly say that the majority of those I've worked with or been involved with in the last month in the music and arts industries haven't been like that at all, but love what they do, and work towards a goal.

And I know that real life's going to swoop back in and take over soon, and I'll be applying to universities and studying for exams and things and I'm so worried that I'll forget what it means to have this kind of passion for what you do. (re applying for uni, they tell us all the time not to use the word "passion" in personal statements so do leave your favourite synonyms in the comments)

Regular posts should be back to normal (as normal/organised as this ever gets) as soon as possible.

Lots and lots and lots of love. 

be brave and kind.