Death Cab For Cutie are, according to Wikipedia*, an American indie rock band and the people I know who've heard of them either knew of one of their singles, "I Will Follow You Into The Dark", or have the Twilight soundtrack album.

I went to see them at Manchester Academy on Monday, and I although I was excited it wasn't as much as usually when I go to shows, mainly because I really like this band but don't know a lot of their songs, aside from the album Plans. I obviously would've enjoyed it a lot more, like with any concert, if I knew more of their music, and honestly for the first few songs I was disappointed by the fact that I wasn't recognising things (I know it was my fault).

Then, about four or five songs in, the band left the stage and Ben Gibbard picked up an acoustic guitar and Poppy and I just looked at each other and beamed, knowing he was going to play the song we knew the most.

He was strumming the intro chords over and over, and it struck me then how charistmatic he actually was. Whilst the rest of the band were talented and relevant and definitely a part of the show, from what I saw Death Cab For Cutie is so much more driven solely by its lead singer than some other bands. Not as much as IAMX, for example, but he did more than hold it together, he spoke and sang and honestly seemed like it was mostly just him thoroughly enjoying himeslf and interacting with the audience.

"I Will Follow You Into The Dark" was one of my favourite moments of anything, ever, I think. You could barely hear Gibbard's voice, because the whole audience were singing along, to every single word, and it's things like that that make me think I'm so much less alone in this place sometimes.

I felt so much more attentive after that. Somehow we were shoved very close to the front, and ended up in what I guess was the mosh-pit. My shoes are slightly torn, we jumped up and down a lot and sang along, all the time, because when everyone around you is belting out the chorus at the top of their lungs it's so much easier to learn the words.

They played "Summer Skin" and "Crooked Teeth" (one of my favourite moments!) and "Soul Meets Body" (possibly my favourite baseline EVER) and their new single which I vaguely knew, called "You Are A Tourist".

I don't know the name of the song, I'll google it in the next few days, but there was a really memorable moment where, with everyone around me, I was shouting the words to a song I was only just getting to know. And it went;

"WE ARE ALL THE SAME,
UNDERNEATH THE SYCAMORE!"

And there's something remarkable about yelling that with hundreds of people around you, when nobody can hear their own voice.

They played another song I didn't know and said it was a request, and a boy near me started screaming and smiling, and it was obvious that it was his request and his song. And nobody around seemed to recognise or like it as much as a lot of the others (you notice differences when you're so intensley close to the heart of the crowd) but watching him dancing and smiling so hard he looked worn out, with his friends, was sort of amazing. Poppy said that when that was happening, a woman stood behind us whispered "Freak." and that sort of ruined my memory of it.

I got a little teary-eyed at the end, and couldn't really form a sentence for a minute or so, then we were going to wait outside but had to go to the hospital.

I booked the tickets for that concert at a time there didn't seem to be a lot else going on locally. And as it got closer I thought I regretted it a bit, not because I don't really like the band but because people I'm a bigger fan of or more dedicated to started announcing tour dates. But I'm really really glad I went, I've developed much more of a love for Death Cab For Cutie, and for their audience, from the camp boy headbanging to the bearded guy beside me who between every song yelled "DEATH CAAAAAAAAB", and every single voice singing along with "I Will Follow You Into The Dark".

<3

*Hey this is cool, the picture at the top of their Wikipedia page at the moment is from my concert. :D

Thoughts from a Tate Gallery Adventure

Yo.




So it's just turned eleven o clock but today feels like one of the longest days I've had, ever.

This morning my dad offered to drive me to the bus stop, because I was going shopping with a friend, but as we were in the car Madi texted to say she couldn't go and I didn't really have the heart to ask him to turn around, and I still wanted to go and buy another John Green book (I haven't told you about "Paper Towns" yet? I will!). So I went on the bus to Chester. I went to Waterstones, I bought "The Abundence of Katherines" and... well, after an hour or so, I started thinking about how much time I've spent in Chester recently. And for some stupid reason it made me want to be further away, so I got on another bus to Liverpool because the last time I went there with my friends we were sort of interrupted (that's another story) and considering the amount of time I spend at home, it's big and far away to me.

A few awkward things happened - they always seem to when I end up on public transport alone. I nearly missed the bus home, my parents wanted me to go to their friends birthday party, and closely skimmed a pigeon as I ran through Liverpool One which was... well, terrifying. There was a boy on the bus who, now I think back, might've been flirting with me, but at the time after an encounter I'd seen he'd had at the station with his friend I thought he was trying to sell me weed. Things like that.

And it's weird, but being alone is nice sometimes. At about four o clock, I walked around the Albert Dock and, either because I'm desparately in search of something or just a pretentious annoying hipster, I went to the Tate Gallery, which is an art gallery beside the Beatles Museaum and Bugworld and other galleries, gift shops and cafes around the edge of the Albert Dock. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon, the streets were busy and it was cool inside, plus it's free and I had about £2 left in my purse.

It was the third time I'd been in there, and I vaguely remember once, with my mother when I was about eleven, there being this room in one of the sculpture sections where there was some kind of giant glass ball throwing light across the room in different spaces... I can't remember how it looked at all, I think it's gone now, but I remember being intregued by it.

Today, I discovered they have a section now called The Sculpture of Language, curated by Carol Ann Duffy. In one room, there's this huge magnetic wall and three satchels full of giant words on magnets - like "love" and "light" and "champagne" and "giving", it's almost like a refridgerator door, and people come up and arrange them into their own poems.
There's also a desk, with a big fat notebook and a pen on it, entitled "poetry". Leafing through it, it's full of poems and messages from tourists and guests, but it isn't like a conventional visitor book in a museaum. I think that the idea of it was originally to copy down the poems on the magnet wall, but it's full of all sorts of messages - I remember a poem written by a child about a teddy bear, accompanied with drawings, a plea from a stranger about the meaning of life and someone else's reply, and a very simple "I love you, Hayley".

I don't really know what I was doing but I found myself a page and I used the pen in my bag, because there's had run out, and I started writing a letter to someone. And it was words I'd tried arranging out before, ones that had come out in fifteen sides or just a sentence, and I must've looked a mess to anyone around as I was frantically scribbling away, covering up my work a little with my hand.

It probably didn't come out very clearly, or like I would've liked. I don't know if I regret it or not. I know it's something I've tried before. But the thought that although it probably won't find its recepitant, someone will turn through the pages of that book and they'll know, and maybe they'll laugh at me but I don't care because it's out there, miles away.

If you're anywhere close, go see this exhibition some time. Go to the book, if they still have it, and find yourself a page and write something - a love letter, a hate letter, a question or an answer. Write a story. Take some crayons and draw a picture of a unicorn. I can't tell you how magical it feels to loosely connect with complete strangers like that. There is definitely a bit of a weight off of my shoulders.

And if you're somewhere else in the world that isn't England and you visit here, make sure you go to Liverpool some time. I remember it being called something like Capital of Culture one year, and it's sort of true because I don't know any other city which celebrates the Beatles and is full of painted statues of lambs and has pianos in the street that anyone is welcome to play.

Strawberry Tea and Laura Marling and Bike Rides = Medicine

Hello! It’s Wednesday today, but my internet connection’s being sort of crazy today and so this probably won’t get posted until tomorrow. I could be wrong.

I’ve had a pretty weird few days – partly because of the complete change to my routine, and although I was just eager for anything away from school it was still harder to nestle into than I thought. I’m working at an independent book store, which functions as a café and also sells maps and music (it’s one of the last record stores in my town, and it’s barely even one of those!). One of the weird things is the complete change in the people that I spend almost a third of my waking part of the day with, and I probably consider them new friends.

Things go like this at the moment:
Wake up, dress and things
Cycle into town, then eat breakfast in Costa with Madison
Go to work at the bookstore
Leave for lunch, wander, read travel guides in the library
Work
Finish. Go for coffee with friends, or to a movie, or walk somewhere. Not have to think about what I’ve spent all day doing.
Sleep.

I was starting to feel relaxed and nicely disconnected from the things I do all of the time, even away from my usual methods of escapism, like concerts and the internet.
And then yesterday after I got home, two really crappy things happened within about an hour of each other, and it was like waking up on a lilo and being simultaneously punched in the face from both sides.
I suddenly felt really useless and small. So I went for a bike ride by the lake by myself for a while and took Imogen Heap and Noah and the Whale with me, and instead of moping around ignoring the cause like I usually do I thought about it directly and how sad and angry it was making me and whether or not it was my fault, and that made it better than just lying in bed. And I still kind of have that horrible weight in my chest, but I think that’s probably because I haven’t really talked about it yet, and I’ll probably call up Poppy or Emily sometime soon. There’s just going to be some really tough days in this next week so I apologize in advance if I get ranty on here.
Yesterday I turned off my phone and my computer, so I’m sorry I didn’t reply to your email Beth! And, having said that, anyone else who I’ve been ignoring. It isn’t your fault, I just have grumpy spells.

Sorry for just spending an entire post dropping mysterious hints about my personal life, I know it’s selfish and I’ll write something worthwhile soon because I know I haven’t been doing.

On a positive note, Zoe was fired on The Apprentice! (I guess one person's sadness is another's happiness)
The Hummingbird Bakery are coming to work!
I got a pretty shirt from Etsy today!
It's been sunny outside!
Isn't that worth keeping going?

Also I wanted to leave you something that didn't make reading this a waste of time.
This is "Alpha Shadows" by Laura Marling. -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JleuVxIlWaM
It is beauty.
I started listening to her a few months ago, and my love for her is complicated for some of the silliest reasons. I'll probably talk about that soon. But there's no denying Laura Marling's music has had a huge effect on my life in the last month or so.
(sorry that link was at the side. I couldn't make it do anything else, blogger is messed up today).

K. I'll see you next week and sorry for being annoying.

Lizzie

Milk Bottles and Artificial Flowers

We’re sorry what we’ve done to your dead.

We didn’t mean to let this happen,
And we’ll do something, we promise,
To fix;

The long, browning weeds, whose arms snake around sinking tombstones,
Though their limbs, too, hang weep and limp and without strength,
Like the rotting flesh and bones.

The bluebells, turned brownbells,

The traffic, breaking the hum of silence.

The headstones, eroded and grey.

But,
They’ll come, with knuts and bolts and hammers and nails,
Litter picks and plastic bin-bags,
And the preacher’s son will mow the grass,
Cut down the loose ends and the bedraggle,
And let it rise again, green and bright and full of life,

But for now we’re sorry
What we’ve done to your dead,
And we want you to remember that we apologized, and please tell them that we loved thy neighbour.

On "Choosing To Die"

I watched a documentary yesterday called Terry Pratchett: Choosing To Die. If you haven't heard of him, Terry Pratchett is a British fantasy writer: he wrote something called the Discworlds series, but the first of his work I read was a collaboration novel he wrote with Neil Gaiman called "Good Omens".

In 2007, Pratchett was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. And he's still in the early stages of Alzheimer's, but there were little things - he said that he almost always immedietly forgets people's names. He can no longer type, and instead dictates to his assistant when he writes, because Terry Pratchett feels he has to finish the book he's in the middle of writing. As a writer, I can't get my head around how frustrating this must be. Following this, he presented a documentary which aired a few nights ago, on BBC1, about euthanasia and assisted suicide.

The documentary focused on Dignitas, a clinic in Swizerland which helps those with terminal illnesses to die. The film followed a man named Peter Smedley, with motor neurone disease, who travelled to Swizerland with his wife to die in this odd little blue house. It was right in the middle of an industrial estate, because it was the only place it was allowed to be. Amongst all the tall buildings and cars, at the back of the house, was a small zen garden. It was a place of comfort - there were comfortable chairs, a bed, large bowls of chocolate and over fifty different kinds of tea.

The documentary followed both Peter Smedley's choice to die at Dignitas and his death itself, and after first watching him and his wife talking about it in the most impossibly straightforward and businesslike way, I was shocked by how quickly the transfer seemed to be between then and the man's death. Peter drank the mixture that would kill him quickly, then ate some of the chocolates his wife had picked out of the bowl from him after requesting that he didn't want the praline ones. His wife kept very sincere and unemotive, holding his hand as he first struggled to breathe then slipped into sleep, and I think she may just have been one of the bravest women I've ever seen.

Peter Smedley's death was calm and peaceful and just seemed so right - at least for him, then, in that situation. I agree with the idea of Dignitas and what it does for people. The process was thorough in ensuring the person asking to die was in right mind, knew exactly how the process would work and was completley sure.

But what struck me was the fact that the program said something like 21% of the people who die at Dignitas don't have any terminal illness at all. I can't decide how I feel about that, because I don't know if someone vunerable and depressed and scared should have the option to slip away so easily, depite how thorough the doctors at the Dignitas clinic are with ensuring the patient is of sound mind. There is a difference between someone who is scared and wanting an easier suicide, and a terminally ill cancer patient relieving themselves of pain.

Maybe, however, it's up to us. I have a lot of arguments in my head about what I think about suicide - whether it's selfish towards the people who love them, or whether ending our life is a basic human right. I have no idea why but at the back of a notebook I used to use when I was about eleven, I've written "You don't know another person until you've walked a mile in their shoes" and I'm fairly sure it's one of those things my mother used to tell me but it's true.

It would cause far too much controversy to compare mental and physical pain and struggle, whether either one is worse, but they are completley different things. And whilst it's kinder to consider the people around us and who suicide will affect, when being in the world is so much of a struggle, whether that means a strain on the body or the soul, the choice to end it or to stay can only be down to one person. I think that Dignitas dealt with this in a way that was almost beautiful, and although I'm sad about Peter Smedley and I will be sad about Terry Pratchett, and I even spent a few minutes after the documentary quietly weeping in the kitchen, it comforts me knowing that if I ever become terminally ill and am in a lot of pain, depending on the situation ethics, there is a little blue house in the middle of Europe, in the snow, that managed to deal with this is the kindest and most moral and graceful way I think possible.

FUSIATIFTPQ Part Deux: "When do you feel most like yourself?"

Feeling Uninspired So I Asked The Internet For Thought Provoking Questions: Part Two! (that abbreviation is not catchy :( )

Maybe you can remember that a while ago, I hadn't written anything for a while and I was feeling a bit bleh and so this happened. And... well... it did again.

TODAY'S GOOGLED THOUGHT PROVOKING QUESTION:
When do you feel most like yourself?

I read this and for some reason I thought straight away the answer was being stuffed between sweaty bodies at concerts, singing along and feeling all swept away, other people's spilt beer sticking to my shoes. And then I reconsidered, because although that's my favourite part of myself to be and the one that comes easiest, it's not the one that I am the most of the time.

I came up with a lot of things - when I'm with the group of eight or so of my friends that talk in the cloakroom at school every morning, and then the less tight-knitted group of about twenty I'm with at the bottom of the fields at lunch time. I'm someone else fighting with my parents than around my mother when I tell her about my day, when I listen to music with my dad in the car and we sing along. If I'm alone with someone, I like to think I try to cater to the things they want to talk about as well as myself, but my favourite people have enough in common with me than we don't have to, or I'm comfortable enough with to know that they can listen to me talking about what I care about.

And then I came to the obvious idea that we are "our real selves" when we are completley alone. Maybe that's true. It could be that the second we do, or even just think something we wouldn't necessarily want other people to know about, it stains who we are and becomes a part of us. I think we take it in turns to mask and unveil the bits of us that we need to show or to cover in the situation. Ultimately, I think every conversation we have is because we want to loosely gain something from it, and that could be anything from an information, employment, a sandwich or just to be brought closer to someone and find common grounds. We can pull out different ways of speaking, different interests and overall, entirely different people we want to be.

Although we could probably assume we're most ourselves left alone with nothing to prove to anyone, I don't think that's entirely true. Because the way we are around other people and how we react to things are what forms us. If I the things I do alone were what I did all of the time, all I would do is read and sometimes write, watch videos on the internet, listen to music antisocially outside at night time and occasionally drink heavily and cry. And without just sounding like I'm trying to escape that but I'm glad that isn't my entire personality. Being stupid and lighthearted around my friends and polite around my teachers and generally a mixture of everything/just awful around my parents is what makes me a person.

________________________________________________________________________________

I wrote something for Drabble Day Challenge again and I don't know how I feel about this:

"GARDEN"
The alarm went off at half past twelve.
He opened and closed his eyes once or twice, fighting the magnetic tug between his eyelids and yawned once, reluctantly flicking on the light. His clothes to dress into were where he’d left them, with his good-grip shoes and winter coat.
There’d be other boys when he got to Daisy’s house, out down the street, in the cold , and they’d climbed over the tall fence faster, with less struggle than him.
Then, imagining the winter and the elbows digging into his sides he thought, tomorrow night, and he slid back into the warmth of his bed.

_____________________________________________________________________________

As usual, thank you for coming and I'll see you next week :)

Lizzie

Shell Island

I went camping with my friends this weekend, to a fairly cheap campsite in North Wales called Shell Island. There were eight of us, and I had a really good time - the weather was ok most of the time, considering it's Britain, and I loved being in a place when I could just leave whenever I wanted. I honestly can't remember the last time I was alone (and awake) for more than thirty minutes, so one afternoon I left my shoes behind and took music with me and walked down the beach for what seemed like much less time than it apparently was.



I've been here a few times since I was about nine, and one of the things I always remember about it is this giant rock that looks a little bit like a dinosaur, then another large one a few yards across from it. I remember as a kid, my cousins and my friends and I separated into groups one night and sat on the two rocks, lay out stones and pebbles and shells and things in front of us and ran between the two, trading the stock from our "shops". At age twelve, two of my friends and I did the creepy "blood sisters" thing, making incisions in the side of our palms and stamping our wounds against the rock to make the vaguest smudge of blood. About a year and a half ago, my dad's drunken best friend fell off of it into the sea.

Another thing we did a lot this camping trip was walk along the tall sand dunes there are there, and I can't really explain how overwhelming it was to walk, pushing your body against the wind and feet through the sand, through the middle of the huge hills. You could tell how overwhelmed we all were, a group of excitable teenagers, because after sticking close together and chattering a lot of the way there everybody just split apart and walked in different directions. For once, everyone just dropped everything and sort of explored.





(all of the photos I used today are Alecia's )

I know this probably isn't the sort of place you write a "travel blog" about (I hope you know that's not what I was aiming for), but I felt like I needed to share Shell Island with you, just because I've revisited it so many times at different stages of my life. We were sat on a rock and Poppy was joking about how in later years, somebody would propose to me sat there. Despite all of the complications there are between us all sometimes, I really liked being with a big group of my friends outside of a school environment and making fires, dancing to "Bohemian Rhapsody" late at night, catching starfish and letting them go.