The Swiss Navy. Monuments. Saints. All potential names for a project I'm going to be working on over the coming months; partially to kill time, partially to keep me sane/distracted. I can't think of a sophisticated way to describe what I'm trying to do without cringing, so I'm going to be boring and use plain English:

Post-rock in the vein of Explosions In The Sky, Russian Circles, Cult Of Luna, with lyrics which, right now, I'm thinking are based around the sea. I've noticed a lot of what I've already written down without this in mind has ended up being about the sea anyway, so I'm going to go with that.

However, I'd also like to do at least one song where the words are sent in by friends of mine, with the intention being that the finished thing would be something that, in a disjointed sort of way, sort of makes sense concpetually. If anyone reading wants to contribute, leaving something as a comment seems to be the most sensible way to do so. It doesn't have to be written especially, just something you're proud of, or means something to you. If you can figure out how, you can even keep anonymous. It could be like a musical post secret or something, I don't know.

I'll keep posting here intermittently about how this whole thing goes, even if no-one really cares. It'll be fun/interesting to see how this pans out.

Whilst I'm talking about musical ventures, I'd also really like to play a part in some sort of fucking mental punk/hardcore band, or something super-energetic where I'll end up covered in at least sweat, probably bruises, and possibly blood. It's not some latent-self-harm-tortured-artist type thing, it's just that the idea of being loud and passionate seems awesome. If anyone cares; The Bronx, Converge, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Cursed, and (odd one out!) the first Brand New album are all the sort of thing I mean. Again, get involved if you want.

I don't feel like mourning. So tonight let's raise the dead
With voices loud and songs sung proud and reverie in our heads.

I don't feel like grieving. Tomorrow let's leave home and light a fire.
And if the phone rings no one say a thing and then no one will be the liar.

This is a brand new feeling. Nail shut the coffin, open the door.
Eulogise nothing, synthesise nothing, nothing is over, not like before.

One night, three strikes, I'm down and out.
I know it makes me look bad but you really bring it on sometimes.
I can't keep on forgiving, you need to try a different perspective, see why I say what I do.
I hate to phrase it in rhythm, it dilutes the meaning when I should be fucking screaming at you. (But it's just how my hands punch this page)
When I should be screaming at you, I always bite my lip til it bleeds, I grind my teeth.
Being a friend means telling the truth sometimes, but sometimes being a friend means shutting your fucking mouth.
Being a friend means doing the right thing. Last night you should have shut your fucking mouth.

Remember how you tilted my head to see stars in the sky?
I will tilt the world to keep up the night
And I will learn to walk on the moon’s white light
To get
To you.

Remember how you pressed your hands to the glass?
I will press through storms to match your palms
And if I sink then I will learn to walk this ocean floor
To get
To you.

I will set foot on these shores
And I will bring to you
All you’ve searched the world to find.
Did you forget it was coming home soon?

You will dream one night
And then live it the next day.
Dream of love, dream of me.
And come back, and stay.

We got bored so we played with knives.
Because we knew when the tide turned and came in we’d have to run for our lives.
We sharpened our little blades on the nearest stones.
Til we drew blood from them, and then we sat, and waited to run back home.

We drew rivers with our tips.
We touched fingers, formed an ocean shaped like love, then touched each others lips.
Soft kisses, soft nicks at the skin, your skin and bones
If I can breathe you in tonight, then I won’t spend the summer alone.

If I can be with you tonight
You will be with me no matter where you go.

If the tide catches us and we’re drowning
I know hand in hand our bodies could float.

The knives are out to fight the tide that's coming in.
We don't have a hope.

I don't like the end to this one, I might change it later. Take away the last six lines and replace them, possibly in a different format. They don't quite fit in with what I'm getting at, and if I leave it as it is, it'll bug me.

Listen to Sigur Rós.

I'm holding a beaten up sheet of paper that has the words to a song I know by heart now written on it. I don't need it anymore, but I'm going to keep it because it smells of smoke and salt and as long as I have it, something's never going to leave me.

I'm sat here drinking one of a plethora of improbably stolen J20's, and even though it's midnight as I write, it feels like midday. My sleeping pattern is delicate anyway, and now it's probably wrecked for the next few days. Still, getting off a smoky beach at 5am will do that, as will only claiming sleep as your own to spite the dawn chorus. It was worth it, too.

Yesterday me and my guitar went to a barbeque on the grass by the sea down here, and though I didn't really know many people there, I was unafraid and unshy. I know I'm a good player, it's just the audience that does me in sometimes. Plus I'd much rather just play than sing. The irony here though, is that even now, as the Real World looms, and at an age when I'm sure right minded parents would think 'grow out of it', the only thing in my life I am sure of is that I want to play music, and I want to make people happy when I do so.

The reason I was so ready this time, I don't know. The only thing that comes to mind at this moment is the fact that I'm starting to stop caring; or perhaps some of out of character backbone. It doesn't matter, because despite entering into this whole thing sight unseen, what I was looking for, I found. And so the afternoon became the night, and the night became the morning, and I played and sang and saw the smiles and heard the voices sing with me. The fire never died until we killed it, and the sun came up to take its place as our warmth and light.

The last time I felt this same kind of shine moving around me, was the morning after being sat on a front room floor. Sat with a different group of people, but with the same hearts and hopes being floated in the air as the ones riding those ashen embers dancing on the breeze last night. I've been a fool for not doing this sooner, and to an extent I'm still a fool for doing it now, frantic in the face of all that's coming to take me away. I keep getting the feeling this is commonplace for the people I shared last night with, and that they seem fairly inured to it. But to me, it's new and beautiful and giving me many things I've been looking for for years and as much I'm going to mourn it for myself, I'm also going to hope they still understand how wonderful this thing that they are part of is, and remember that their luck in having it is something that should not be overlooked.

Ever think that it could be this good forever? Not really, I think I'm too grounded or pessimistic for that. Sometimes I refuse to dream, because I'm scared they'll end up nightmares. I'm scared I'll never be able to cope with that part of myself.

Ever think that it could be this good again? I hope so, and sooner than it probably will be.

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.

I've always liked that poem.

It's just a shame that it's becoming more and more relevant every day now.

Someone who can listen to can listen to frantic, blasting, deranged technical music and quietly come forward and say it's beautiful. Someone who can be lost in the vastness of intense instrumental twenty minute epics and then, merely via a shared glance, let me know that it's life affirming. Someone who will silently sit through an entire record of a man, his guitar and his secrets, speaking only a confessional when the record ends, and even then with a tear in their eye.

Someone who can lose themselves in the words and sounds that colour my dreams.

Bring me this girl, please.

Not so much a proper blog, more a collection of random thoughts this time:

Based on voice alone, Beth from Portishead? I would. Third is amazing; I might be a real geek in the near future and compile a list of best vocal albums, guitar albums etc. Third is in the vocal one for certain, and yes, when I watched High Fidelity for the first time I did see a worrying amount of myself in there.

I went to Brighton today. That city never fails to amaze me, on the pier there was a little boy fully tearing it up on an Ibanez (electric guitar, means business). People on those flexible stilts, possibly called something like Moonwalkers, were running down the main road, somersaulting and jumping over cars. On fucking stilts. And, just like every other time I've been there, beautiful girls everywhere.

I think I do mention girls and love and all that a bit too much here, it makes the place monotonous but it's only because here is where I come to put down all the things I can't talk about, which is mostly, wouldn't you know it, girls and love and all that. I mean, I can discuss them, just not in relation to myself. I'm sure I'll go into detail here eventually; I can feel it in my fingertips right now in fact, but there are more diverse things to talk about.

I got locked out my house last night. For the second time in a week. Not that I'd forgotten my keys or anything; my house 'mates' were too fucking ignorant and short sighted again, putting across the safety chain despite it being fairly obvious I wasn't in. This meant I had to: 1) call a friend at 2am, waking them in the process. 2) Sleep in my clothes. 3) Sit on a train for two hours, meet my parents, walk around Brighton, and then get the two hour train home which was now infested with the kind of people you sort of want to be neutered, all wearing the clothes I'd slept in because even at 9am the fucking chain was still on and I still couldn't even get into my own fucking house to change clothes or even get some food.

9am's fairly early, I accept, but if you can wake up at half 7 to put on the washing machine right outside my room and wake me up when I have no lessons at all that day, I'm going to think of you as an early riser.

It's absolutely insane, when I journey anywhere, I always gaze out the window and think of the people who I see for a brief moment, then I imagine what they're doing that has brought them to intersect with me in a camouflaged and irrelevant way. There are 24 hours in the day, and I'm sharing them with six billion people, yet I have no real clue what anyone's doing except for me, and even thats a little hazy sometimes. I don't know if that's clear, I hope it is though. Like, when there's a photo of you and your friends and their friends on a night out, theres you. You know what you were doing, and have every second of the night as part of your experience. Then theres your friends. They might have wandered off at some point, but they came back and you left with them. Their friends, you don't know too well, you just met, but you shared some time together and inhabited the same location and time together. They think of you in the same way, and that's what I mean, and it amazes me.

I feel like this has been a rather pointless and inarticulate one today. But maybe that's just because I'm not talking about things which make me want to sit down and turn the lights out and sleep to turn off.

Permit me to take this route; actually, fuck it; you don't get a choice. You've come here to read what I have to say, and therefore whatever I write is what you will read. That's just how it works. Anyway, this one's probably going to come across as tangential and irrelevant to you, but to me, it matters a great deal, both in terms of superficiality and symbolism.

I don't want technique. Technique stifles the emotion. Breathing in, breathing out, regulating and exercising; fuck that. I want exorcising. I want doubled up on the floor, screaming into a microphone as if you could banish all the bad out and down that cable, through that amp. I want looking into the masses and seeing nothing because all there is, is you and how you feel. I want a disregard for your own external wellbeing because it's more important to you that your insides get cleansed on that stage.

Take all the things you can never touch, turn them into screams. Turn them into soundwaves and let them crash upon both your ears and mine. Let us both know we're alive, we're hurt, but there is a way up, and a way out.