oh! darling

so much has happened within the last three weeks or so... i really haven't been this happy in years. i'm so lucky to have the people in my life that i do.

august playlist

1. pumped up kicks - foster the people

2. bundle up - the cool kids

3. terminally chill - neon indian

4. shadowboxin' - gza

5. my girl - the temptations

6. talkin' bout hey love - de la soul

7. auditorium - mos def

8. ex-girl to next girl - gang starr

9. little green bag - george baker

10. nutmeg - ghostface killah

11. bonita applebum - a tribe called quest

12. best of my love - the emotions

13. sacre cool - young montana

14. hip 2 da game - lord finesse

15. u-love - j dilla

my doom smiles at me

i love you. and i've been listening to way too much patsy cline lately, never a good combination.

the past month, bulleted (word to your moms)

• $3 white wine, apple cider, vodka and cranberry, but now mainly $3 white wine because i can't afford anything else anymore
• on that note, getting down to my last $20
• "remember that time when alex got drunk and...... oh wait, alex is ALWAYS drunk!" - one of my friends. well i can't argue with that.
• jump around - house of pain
• the toff in town
• befriending the british bouncer at the toff in town
• three day eurovision-viewing bender
• too many packs of peter stuyvesants
• 4th chamber - gza/genius (feat ghostface killah, rza, killah priest)
• wearing ridiculous clothes everywhere ie this -

• never going to uni
• writing essays the night they are due
• sleeping on other people's floors
• being stared down by pedestrians when i walk to the tram stop the next morning in the above ridiculous clothes and wearing dark glasses
• backstage work for a wonderful play
• eyes be closed - washed out

does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body?

"now i’ll never see him again, and maybe it’s a good thing. he walked out of my life last night for once and for all. i know with sickening certainty that it’s the end. there were just those two dates we had, and the time he came over with the boys, and tonight. yet i liked him too much -- way too much, and i ripped him out of my heart so it wouldn’t get to hurt me more than it did. oh, he’s magnetic, he’s charming; you could fall into his eyes. let’s face it: his sex appeal was unbearably strong. i wanted to know him -- the thoughts behind the handsome, confident, wise-cracking mask."- sylvia plath

love death

ok i know i say this about a lot of things but there are literally no words to describe how beautiful this is:

the sky too is folding under you

someone telling you that they don't love you any more is the worst feeling in the world
but i'll be fine, i think

a brand new start

on the very first day of this year, as i sat in my best friend's living room about to watch the new year's eve fireworks on tv, i put my earphones in and pressed 'play' at the stroke of midnight. i picked a song from 2009 that i wanted to define the next year, in an uncharacteristic stroke of superstition. the first song i listened to in 2010, one of the most perfect and beautiful songs i have heard and one that i saw live just last friday, was this:

and it wasn't until recently that i realised that my wish for this song to happen to me this year, kind of came true.

summer playlist take 2

1. a minha menina - os mutantes
2. buffalo stance - neneh cherry
3. write about love - belle & sebastian
4. things i did when i was dead - no age
5. c.r.e.a.m. - wu-tang clan
6. silver soul - beach house
7. heartbreaker - girls
8. it takes a muscle - m.i.a.
9. boyfriend - best coast
10. ce jour la - sylvie vartan
11. green eyes - wavves
12. slip inside this house - primal scream
13. rock & roll - the velvet underground
14. teenage spaceship - smog
15. alright - supergrass

2009's summer playlist

time has come today

it's the night before my first year 12 exam. i probably ought to be panicking right now, because while i tend to do quite well in english without making much of an effort, i am really a bit underprepared for this. and since it's late there isn't much i can do right now but hope for the best. at the moment i'm just waiting for the terror of this to hit me.

but the plus side is, in exactly 18 days i will be free from school. and then:
* schoolies
* blondie/the pretenders on december 1
* girls on december 10
* christmas in new york
* summer
* whole life being ahead of me etc.

ps. this song is PHENOMENAL.

in beautiful dreams

oh roy orbison, why do you depress me so.

"it's too bad that all these things

can only happen in dreams

only in dreams, in beautiful dreams"

music that has changed my life

in order of when it changed my life. nb: don't judge me.

2002

avril lavigne - yeah yeah, i know. but for whatever reason, avril struck a chord with my 9-year-old self, and misled me into thinking that if i wore cargo pants, spiky bracelets and excessive amounts of eyeliner then i was totally ~punk rock~. this misconception endured for the next 4 years of my life. thanks a lot avril.

2004

blink 182 - i had a huge crush on whiney-voiced frontman tom delonge (don't ask). really not much to say about blink in terms of musical merit so let's leave it at that.

2005
green day - i had a huge crush on the 5'7", eyelinered frontman billie joe armstrong (it just keeps getting better and better). getting into vaguely heavier but still very tame territory, and i was still inexplicably convinced that i was a "punk", how embarrassing. AND they were my first concert, sigh. eventually i started looking into green day's influences leading to....

2006

the sex pistols - finally i had escaped the influence of my friends with terrible music taste, who scoffed at johnny rotten's maniacal laughter at the start of anarchy in the uk as i drowned out their favourite "piano-rock" band, something corporate. i know they are often maligned as being a terrible band, and they probably were but deep down i still have a soft spot for the pistols, if only for partially saving me from musical purgatory.

blondie - probably the first really great band that i started heavily listening to. i don't know if it was some reference in school of rock or the mean girls soundtrack that compelled me to buy their greatest hits, but my life is all the more enriched for it..... apart from that time i tried to dye my hair platinum blonde and failed miserably.

the clash - i had a huge crush on joe strummer (still do.) i was a very anti-authoritarian child in year 8, the year i started dressing like a prostitute, wagging classes and consistently failing maths tests. for these purposes i chose know your rights as my personal soundtrack of choice. in retrospect, not their best.

the beatles - while i initially really disliked the beatles (dad used to play sgt pepper's on long car trips), by this age i was apparently mature enough to gain an appreciation of their music. additionally, around this time i realised i wasn't actually hardcore, which was a blessing for both me and my long-suffering friends. my beatlemania gained momentum and carried on through 2007 and beyond.

2007

the cure - not really that great a band but i loved them a lot back in year 9 despite almost solely listening to their poppy songs eg just like heaven, friday i'm in love etc. i also went through a worrying phase where i almost considered robert smith attractive, whew lucky i pulled out of that one relatively unscathed.
the smiths - i had a huge crush on morrissey (part of me still thinks he is my soulmate). i listened to the smiths at a point in my life when i was EXTREMELY whiney and had a disgustingly embarrassing, all-consuming real-life crush, so there are very few songs i can listen to now without feeling slightly shameful. i really did worship moz and co. at the time though and i still appreciate them a lot, i might never feel such a connection to a single band ever again even if it was based on a prolonged attack of complete pathetic-ness.
2008
the velvet underground - around the time i became completely obsessed with andy warhol, i started listening to the velvet underground, particularly their first album. vu are probably my most prolonged musical obsession as while my interest occasionally wanes, there is just so much material out there that i have yet to find and start listening to. such an amazing band. thanks, andy!

pulp - i had a huge crush on jarvis cocker, why did he have to get old and grow a beard. this was probably the start of the period when i listened almost exclusively to all-male bands that weren't really THAT great, eg suede and blur. i still listen to a few songs but played their hits so many times that i can no longer stand them in large quantities.
new order - can't quite remember when i first started properly listening to them but the trainspotting soundtrack probably had a bit to do with it. i worshipped new order and once again had the problem where i overplayed certain songs to the point where i can no longer listen to them quite so frequently. still have lots of love for the trainspotting soundtrack though.

2009
bob dylan - i owned highway 61 revisited for the longest time but for some weird reason i just couldn't get into it apart from a couple of songs (probably because back then i couldn't listen to a song longer than 4 minutes). in particular, i never got why like a rolling stone was so great - i had always skipped over it after the first 10 seconds (i know right, there was something wrong with me!). anyway one day i was doing something to my hair and couldn't be bothered skipping it, and all of a sudden it hit me, and i have never looked back. like a rolling stone is probably my favourite song of all time and i love everything related to bob dylan except for all albums after blood on the tracks (that level of brilliance can't be maintained forever y'know)
the ronettes - to be fair, i got into a LOT of girl groups last year but the ronettes were the first and most important. i will never get over the amazingness of be my baby, ever. just a timeless and beautiful and perfect band.

2010

pink floyd - i had a huge crush on syd barrett (still do). i hated pink floyd for the longest time but eventually came around one day when i watched a documentary and a) saw syd barrett, and b) heard the song brain damage. and to think i spent so many years telling my parents how lame and overrated they were, sigh.

these are only the ones that stick out, there are many more that i can't remember right now and of course the minor bands that had some influence on my journey to listening-to-semi-decent-music. and to think it all started with sk8r boi.

song lyrics that sum up my life recently

1. you do it to yourself, you do, and that's why it really hurts.

2. but will my heart be broken when the night meets the morning sun?

3. now i'm just crazy, i'm totally mad, yeah i'm just crazy and fucked in the head.

4. no fun to hang around, feeling that same old way.

5. my own friends hate my guts, so what, oh so what, who gives a fuck.

6. to your sister he explains, that you're tired of yourself and all of your creations.

7. cause i like you, yeah i like you, and i'm feeling so bohemian like you.

8. do you believe in something beautiful? then get up and be it.

9. seen enough to eye you, but i've seen too much to try you.

10. there will always be a space in my parking lot, when you need a little coke and sympathy.

wild horses

favourite music video of all time

it's so beautiful.

pills and soap

next year was supposed to be travel but now it turns out that i have a potential modelling contract that will start literally as soon as i finish my last exam, which is totally bizarre because i sort of forgot about modelling altogether for about two years, planned my fantasy life without it even being factored in and now of a sudden it's forced its way back into my consciousness again and i'm not sure quite what to do with it. the consensus is that i will not be hired for runway because at 5'8" i am far too short, but they think i will pick up quite a bit of photographic work. i don't know whether it will be particularly lucrative but since this agency is still interested even though i'm too short and too fat i assume so, which is comforting.

it's just strange because a while after i was a finalist in this modelling competition i was resigned to living a normal life, and now i don't know if it will be normal at all and i'm not sure if i like this idea or not. i could go to sydney and then hong kong and then maybe other places if i'm any good, but i don't know how to fit in all those other things that had always been a given, like university. i suppose i'll have to go back to my previous future-dream of becoming very famous, appearing in a series of arthouse films, stealing elvis costello from diana krall, being briefly married to morrissey, partying for several years and then dying tragically of a cocaine overdose at the age of 28. i'd better get started, only 11 years to go until deadline. (pun not intended)

in an unrelated matter, two posts ago it was my two-hundreth post. weird, i've never stuck with any creative endeavour for as long as i have this blog.

currently listening to:
i've gotta get a message to you - the bee gees
something in the way - nirvana
when will you come - wavves
gloria - patti smith

1979

oh elvis, how i love you so. no wonder this man is in part responsible for my ongoing obsessions with glasses and gap-teeth.

cherry flavoured antacids

distill the life that's inside of me
sit and drink pennyroyal tea
i'm anemic royalty
- pennyroyal tea, nirvana

i've been listening to nirvana and dinosaur jr. a lot lately, i'm not sure why. i never got into them that much originally but they both seem to fit right now.

i officially have 22 days of school left, ever. i'd like to say that this upsets me, but it really doesn't. school has been one of the most depressing and awful components of my life for a long time now, and the last few years have been a slow downward slide into a complete lack of motivation to do any work anymore. which is fortunate because i'm almost certainly going on a gap year next year, after so much of my time spent convincing my parents that it isn't, in fact, going to cause me to throw in the towel and never go to university. it's weird to think that i'm almost finally free, to an extent anyway.



currently listening to:
just like heaven (the cure cover) - dinosaur jr.
nothing but a heartache - the flirtations
back on the chain gang - the pretenders
daddy never understood - the folk implosion
_________________

i'm sitting in jayne mansfield's car

so like, i really need to stop pinning my hopes on things, because i always get fucked over eventually. i think my problem is that i'm one of those people that needs others to like them, but has no idea how to go about being likeable. often i wish that people could just tell me what is really, fundamentally wrong with me, and then i can fix it.
i'm going to stop now because it's going down the road of all those horrible whiney posts i used to write before i made my blog public. here is a nice song instead:

ode to the pistols

in year 8, i was suddenly, inexplicably infatuated with the sex pistols. i had graduated on from pop-punk like blink 182 and green day, and downloaded a few of their songs, instantly falling in love. while my friends started listening to simple plan and something corporate, i blasted anarchy in the uk and the dead kennedy's i fought the law (and i won) every morning on the way to school.

something in the sex pistols' music, and punk music as a wider genre, moved me, as much as a privileged private schoolgirl could relate to a bunch of working class british yobs. something in johnny rotten's maniacal laugh was exciting and rebellious, in a time when i started skipping maths classes, ringing my eyes with black kohl every day and putting safety pins in every item of clothing i owned because it was ~so punk rock~. i got a white t-shirt and wrote "i wanna be anarchy" in black permanent marker over the front; i drew the anarchy symbol all over my pencilcase with white-out; i got an electric guitar and turned up the distortion as far as it would go.

at some point in my life - and i can't pinpoint where because i think it was a subtle change over a long period of time - i started being more sad than angry. i replaced the sex pistols with the smiths, and the clash with the cure. but there is still part of me that is bitter and angry at something intangible, that wants to tear up all my clothing and pin it back together again, that wants to start a band without caring how rubbish we would sound. and "no future" still rings a little too true.

____________________

time

the only song lyrics that genuinely terrify me:

"ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
waiting for someone or something to show you the way

tired of lying in the sunshine
staying home to watch the rain
but you are young and life is long
and there is time to kill today

and then one day you find
ten years have got behind you
no one told you when to run
you missed the starting gun

and you run, and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
racing around to come up behind you again
the sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
shorter of breath and one day closer to death

every year is getting shorter
never seem to find the time
plans that either come to nought
or half a page of scribbled lines

hanging on in quiet desparation is the english way
the time is gone

the song is over
thought i'd something more to say"