a blend of colours in a black and white field

2010-03-16T18:11:00.000-07:00

Hello you. (a different you now; I'm keeping my word). Too much past has ruined the future, but I truly hope you like your escape. I know how much it will mean to you,

and hello you. I thought about you for the first time in ages today, and I considered getting in touch, just to see how you were, but then realised I simply couldn't deal with another teaser of what I really just want so much of.

You know, You were just starting to get past my defences too. Times, places, rights, wrongs.

I miss you in a different way to the rest. Too far away, too infrequent. But not too much to want rid of, not at all, because I think I see that you need someone like me, like I need someone like you. Still...

And oh, you. If you'd just stay still and let me speak, maybe you would stop running away. Maybe you'd stop chasing your dreams. But then how would I feel?

and you. You. I never thought you'd leave, of all people, but it seems that is the case. Will we meet again once you go? In a years time, be in the bay, because I'll burn up a sun just to see you.

All these colours, fading to black.

2010-03-16T18:08:00.000-07:00

I've not forgotten to write here. I've just not been able to, really. I missed out a whole month, nearly two, it seems.

Which kind of sucks, but kind of doesn't, as I've had to try to turn all the shit into gold in other, more productive ways.

Still, I intend to write here more often, or at least more regularly. Starting tonight.

2010-01-26T13:50:00.000-08:00

I want to introduce you all to what's going to be the new recurring theme around here: Feeling fucking good about life.

Not without reason either. It feels like I've not posted for a while, but maybe it's just that a lot has gone in a short space of time. And here's what:

-A jet black start to the new year made me shrink back into my shell for a bit, and prompted some serious self-analysis. A few key conversations and confessions helped, and though I've said it elsewhere, I can't thank those who saw me right enough.

- A band has appeared, and what a fucking band. Me and five of my best friends (because there should be no other way) are making the sort of noise I've always heard in my head, and I'm being given a huge amount of input and control over the riffs and the lyrics, despite being the most inexperienced member of the band. It's a validation of sorts, that my decade plus of writing seems to have actually been of some quality and purpose, but that's not as important as the fact that, well, this whole thing is actually happening. I wish I could be more verbose, and explain it in more colourful terms, but essentially I'm too stoked for words, and it's when I become tongue tied that you know I'm genuinely, truly excited. We've got plans to play shows, tour, record, the whole lot, and, admittedly thanks to knowing a few key people, it really looks like it might happen. Not on any grand scale that will matter to anyone really, but just playing anywhere, a toilet venue, a pub, even a front room will mean the world to me, it's what I've always wanted to do, and if I sound like another one of those boring pricks who goes on about his band I apologise because I'm trying to be incredibly humble about the whole thing, it's just I'm so fucking excited, more than I've been in living memory. We are just a local band, but dammit, it's my local band, with my friends alongside me, and yeah, fucking fuck yeah.

- I've seen some incredible shows recently, this has probably been the best month for music I've ever had. The Hope Conspiracy played the Camden Underworld the day after my 23rd birthday, along with the lovely men of Attack! Vipers!, and as amazing as it was to see my friends in A!V! playing, for lack of a better term, a 'real venue', Hope Con were incredible. Still coming off of a hellish start to the year, fighting the weather just to get to London, coming to terms with another year tucked under the belt or to be more accurate, punching below the belt, and not quite knowing how I was going to get home, I needed this to be a life saver, and it was. It can be hard to explain to people not into heavier music just how fucking life-affirming something like this can be, but to my mind it's always been about the same basic essential of what any music can do to a listener. The creation of a connection, a recognition, that feel of "Yeah, we're on a stage, but so what? We're like you." Ever since I first heard Hope Con, I've felt they spoke for me, my anger, my frustration, my wish for better things and that rage that they're so hard to achieve, and here I let it all out and decided to start again, building a better way to live. How many bands can you say have had that effect on you?

Then I saw Baroness. I can't really say much here, it's as simple as saying that they were glorious. Possibly the best album of last year, the Blue Record, being played in it's near entirety, along with various other stormers from the back catalogue, with my brother at my side and both stood front and centre, this was the release that music should provide, with moment after moment of utterly carefree headbanging and kinetic, primal movement. Why should I stay still? To look cool in front of a hipster London crowd? Why should I give a fuck? These grooves drive me, they grab my very core and shake me, and I'll air guitar when I want, and I'll sing as loud as I like, and I'll have a fucking amazing time, and this was incredible too.

Finally, at Wembley, I saw my adolescent love for Thrice (which has never really gone away) rekindle fully, but moreover I witnessed Brand New become the band I always knew they could be, and had been willing them to become since I first heard them. From soulless boxes to festival fields, I've seen this band more than any other I can think of, and never before have they been better. I like to think their journey as a group has mirrored my own growing up, from their simplistic yet passionate beginnings, to their contemplative slow down of a middle period, where they explored who they were, to their current, almost satisfied, comfort-through-acceptance state of being, whilst growing in stature all the time. The show itself was with great friends both old and new, making this the ultimate gig for me to see at this point in my life, watching people I've always identified with on so many levels, feeling like they were fulfilling their potential at last. Sheer magic, perfection in so many ways both superficial and deeply personal.

- Finally, and don't let the relative lack of space devoted to this fool you, but I've cut down considerably on doing the things which are bad for me. I hardly drink anymore, and when I do it's well within my limits and in moderation. I'm fucking proud of this.
Similarly, I've decided to exercise self control elsewhere, in the form of an indeterminate spell of vegetarianism. Nothing too high brow or militant, just that I don't like the idea of things dying just so I can live when there are alternatives to this. More than this though, this is about self control and restraint, proving to myself that if I don't want to do something, I can not do it. So far, it's been eight days since I ate meat, eight days since I started playing this game with myself, and though I'm starting to get sick of cheese and potatoes, every morning I'm waking up, adding another notch to make my tally proud, and feeling generally fucking fantastic about where I think I'm heading in life now.

So. Happy. Right. Now.

2009-12-25T16:29:00.001-08:00

It just dawned on me that after a certain point, being angry/disappointed/generally pissed off is a comfort, as it means that everything is normal.

2009-12-25T14:40:00.000-08:00

If you ever feel entirely contented with everything, look harder because no one is ever totally alright.

Even if you've got all the things you can think of under control, there is someone out there fucking with your life, and it's more than likely that they're doing it purely for their own benefit.

You may not ever be able to speak to them, or even know who they are, but these people are more in charge of your life than you are.

Fight them. If you're not angry about something in the world, you're dead inside.

When your blood starts to boil use the heat to light a fire under yourself.

Take no shit and fuck 'em if they care.

2009-12-25T13:23:00.001-08:00

But at the same time, this does not feel like where I ought to be, and I am not up for months of discomfort, being in the same place in my mind despite being in a different place with my body. So answer me this; where do you go to when you don't know anywhere that feels like home?

2009-12-25T12:40:00.000-08:00

This is not the time to speak in abstractions.

I think my time in Southsea is about up, I've been there five years, and speaking purely about the town as a whole (and not my friends, whom I love) if there was genuinely anything magnetic and alluring enough to make me want to stay, I think I'd know where to go for it, and where to find it.
Sure, things are taking form and shape; new friendships, my two bands, and there's always going to be places like The Wedge and The One Eyed Dog which I know I will miss no matter when I leave, purely because of how they fit in with the person I want to be, but the core is this, that in order to become this person, I think my time is up.

I want to see the world, I want to get a job I don't hate, and at the same time I love being able to bump into people I know on random walks round town, and this tight little community I am part of, I want to be somewhere where not everyone knows everything about each other, and maybe even where no one knows me.

I have been offered a job in Crawley, where I'm from originally, and it sounds like something I'd like to do. It's for the local council, working alongside different cultures, and at the same time I would be assisting them in the town, so too would I be finding out more about their own lifestyles and beliefs and everything, and it all sounds precisely what I want to do. I'll be able to put my degree to use in a second role too, filming and editing various videos, which is also something I actually enjoy, as well as proving quite financially rewarding.

Doing this, it would be most sensible to move back to Crawley, and live with my parents, graciously rent free for a few months. Saving up all, and I mean all the money I make, would mean I would most likely be four figures up from my current financial state, and this in turn would allow for some travelling, and then, who knows where, maybe back to Southsea, maybe to Brighton, I don't honestly know.

So what I am trying and I believe failing to say is that to everyone in Southsea who reads this (and I know at least a few do), if I end up moving on soon, I don't want you to think that you aren't important to me, and I don't want you to think it was an easy decision to make. Working on the assumption that I leave, I will be coming back very often I promise. It's just there is too much I want, too much I need, and I don't see any of it where we are right now.

My 2009 part two

2009-12-23T14:23:00.000-08:00

Picking up where I left off....

I've got a house now, too, just like real grown ups do. It's rented, I admit, but it's the sort of space I'd be happy to own and live in perhaps, if I lived alone or even more, could just truly make it mine. One room could be a recording studio/practice space (theres that money issue again), one bedroom could be a guest room, or just a place to relax in, and in the garden I'd have friends over in the summer, and we'd have barbeques and talk and joke and laugh. My bedroom would stay more or less the same, I think, with all the little things that have a story behind them on display, aching to be talked about. The house on the whole would be tidy and clean, the decorations on the walls would have character, but also taste.
As it is though, I don't think I'll be staying here when the contract expires. My housemates, let it be said, are starting to change and get more pro-active, which in the last few weeks has been both a surprise and a relief, but I've got this nagging feeling they'll soon fall back into their old routine of laziness, messiness, and perpetually being high, sometimes too much so to pay the bills and rent, both in terms of effort and having spent their money on fucking drugs. All the contracts are in my name, so constantly recieving threatening letters from various companies and authorities, which should really be addressed to them, is not something I am very happy with. I need to have things under my control when it comes to situations like this, and when I was living on my own, I didn't have to worry about that sort of thing because I was the only person concerned and so I knew where the cash was coming from, and going to.
I get all the hippie stoner bullshit too, about how it fights the system, man, and it should be decriminalised to further society, but fuck, they're the worst examples to support that argument. If they're anything to go by, it would only produce apathy, selfishness, and a lack of ambition in mass amounts. There is no glamour or rebellion in lying on a couch playing Grand Theft Auto, too stoned to be trusted to understand, remember or even hold a conversation about why I might have to go to court for tax evasion and it's their fault. And if they try to get me to smoke one more fucking time, I'll lose my shit completely. I've never smoked, not even a single cigarette. I hate smoking. I battled with my dad for years to get him to stop (and this year he did, which made me happier than he knows), and they know that, so how fucking low are you stooping when you literally tell someone, your friend and housemate nonetheless "Before the year is out, I'm going to get you smoking."
So I don't think I'll be staying here when the contract expires, unless they move out. I might ask them to, but then I'm stuck with the hassle of finding two new housemates, putting two new names on contracts etc, and I can't be bothered, this whole thing is constantly tiring me as it is and besides, I think I'm at the point where I'd quite like a change of scenery anyway, even in just a minimal amount. This might mean a different house, this might mean a different town. I've got an escape plan to Brighton all set up in my head, but I need time, money (that bastard) and the confidence to start over somewhere. And I need to be sure that this confidence is not in fact ill considered abandon in a smiling mask.

It might sound a bit weird, or obvious, but in this first post-university year, people have been a big part of my life. They usually are, for everyone I suppose, but this year I feel they've had more of an impact and mattered more than in previous years, with new wonderful people arriving, and old, wonderful people leaving. Just as my story is undergoing a twist, the cast has all changed as well.
There was just the one death in my family this year; an elderly family friend, natural causes. I guess most of the people you sort of expect to go have gone already; grandparents, their friends whom you see as a child, and the like. All but my mother's mother have gone, and I am dreading that phone call, I'll fucking break down and pound the earth when that day comes, and I am terrified that it's soon. This is my biggest fear. I never got to see my other three grandparents, and I need to say so much to her, to ask her so much and to tell her just that one short phrase that says it all. She is not ill, but she is old, and there are no exceptions to how this works.
The funeral for Kaye was perfect though, in that way only funerals can be. I kept composed throughout, shook and struggled a little when Sid kissed her coffin goodbye, now a widower, and then cried alone for a few minutes that night when I got back to Portsmouth.
Others have left me this year, moving away, going travelling and so on. I miss them too, and every time I see them, man, it's just the best. There are a few people who have stayed around, but changed and become distant, and I'm learning to live with that still as there is a unique kind of sadness attached to that sort of disintegration, but every now and then our wavelengths overlap and we get on like nothing was ever any different.
I've had a lot of people enter my life this year though too, almost certainly more incomings than outgoings, and most, if not all of them, have ended up brightening it up a little. I've got myself in a few bands finally, one which allows me to have fun playing the sort of music I love to listen to, and another which is the most pleasingly accurate expression of how I think and feel that I've ever found musically since I started playing guitar over a decade ago. I love both my bands, we're just getting started but the thoughts of what we're going to do, what we're aiming and trying for, and how feasible it is that it will happen, have got me genuinely excited, which is a rarity.
It might sound strange, but I think I keep my friends closer than I keep my family. You see, in my eyes, in my experience, family are almost bound to you, they're so close and inextricably bound to you that there's almost a sense they're sometimes acting out of obligation or foresight in the ways that they treat you. You're stuck with them for life, just as they are stuck with you, and whilst I do love my family dearly, sincerely, there is still that occasional feeling of sheer tolerance sometimes, and of being bound, lovingly, but bound nonetheless.
See, friends, they can ditch you whenever they want. If you act up, get out of line, then there's really, ultimately, nothing to keep them anchored to you if they want to float on. This is why I am truly amazed by friendships, as opposed to familial relationships. For all the times this year I know I've been an embarassment, a terrible person, or just acted in a way my friends didn't deserve, there's been a core who have never failed to give me another go and have always come back for me, and I sometimes feel they see me as being someone better than I even see myself being. I don't deserve my friends sometimes, I don't deserve people like them, who would sit with me through the nights when loneliness may well have been the end of me, or who have thought nothing of answering their phone at some ungodly hour, or who have steadied my hand when I was out of control and steering myself wildly off course into the darkness. Thanks guys, I regret that I don't say it ever and perhaps come across as distant at times, but you've been the world to me this year and I could never express that in a way equal to how much I've felt it.

However, so many of my old closest friends, whom I shared so much with, are gone now that while I feel more secure in myself than I used to, I still feel a little left behind as well, and as I mentioned, this has sparked a wanderlust in me. Doubly, so many people I know are starting to get it together and settle down with someone they love, that I often feel a little left out in that respect too. It seems that as soon as I look for that other kind of relationship with a girl, more than just friendship, then they leave through coincidence and no fault of my own. Just divergent courses in life, wrong place, wrong time and so on, but fucking hell, when four or five of these random coincidences mount up, I'd like to think I can be understood for feeling like I'm jinxed or fucking cursed. These routine disappearances of love from my life are getting too much to handle. I now find myself resisting new intimacy, assuming that this too will soon be gone, they will leave like all the rest, and I know that this is no way to live.
I feel the need to confess that in my mind there is a recurring, precise sight; I am in a house, photographs and keepsakes of lives both seperate and conjoined cover the walls, as if the home was made of our very selves, and there are two children, two girls (Katherine Rose and Alice, whose middle name I don't know but I think is Natalie) and I am married, to someone who, typically, is no longer in my life, and equally as typically, never knew quite how I felt about her, and they are ours. This girl, I want her back in my life quite badly, and I want to tell her that I love her, because I never did, and though I don't expect anything good to come of it and in fact think it would probably be the final thing I ever say to her, I want her to feel the same way and start us on the path to making this sight something real.
My house and my wife and my girls in my head used to scare me when I first began to dream it, but right now, it has grown into a comfort, a some-when ideal. Wishful, futile, thinking.

There we have it though. I've got a life mapped out all the same, and that wasn't there this time last year. It kinda looks like, I want to live in Brighton, with a family, and I think the fact I haven't really got anything further in depth than those two massive yet vague goals is due both to the fact that I know this is a pipe dream that won't all fall into place in the forthcoming year or so, but also the fact that I don't really want much more than that, when I think about it.

I think I've been so busy trying to stay young that I've mostly forgotten that I'm getting older. I know 22 may not seem like much to some, in the grand scheme of things, but in my mind, I am growing older, more distant from my youth and there's nothing I can do to turn back time. This is my life that I am living right now, not some game, and I keep forgetting and forsaking that. If I come across as angry or 'bleak', as the years buzzword seems to have been, it's only because I've realised that life is wasting away second by second and I'm frustrated and wanting more all of a sudden, while not really being in a position to achieve it due to forces beyond my control right now. The decisions that I make from now on will matter, and this is something I must never forget again.

My 2009 part one

2009-12-16T14:02:00.000-08:00

I think I grew up this year, in the sense that I feel I've stopped being a child in my mind and finally decided to shoulder the responsibilities of adulthood. I'm in two minds over how I feel about this; on the one hand it's sort of nice to feel like I'm actually part of the real world here and there, but on the other, fuck me, there's a lot of things it takes out of you. There's a certain feeling of finality about it which I don't really like, and I keep pushing away the question "Is this is?" which keeps looming at me inside my head.

I mean, I still live a fairly 'young' lifestyle a lot of the time; I go to gigs, I'm perhaps more into music now than I've ever been, and if you're reading this then I'm sure you know that I have a tendency to go out and get drunk, a lot.

But this last point has been fucking with me, for a long time now. Going out six nights a week is hammering me, I can feel it. I'm always tired, there's not a day in memory when some part of me didn't hurt, and financially it's doing me in as well. I actually feel pretty sure I'm not too far from the point of where, if I'm not careful, I incur some sort of major damage to my body, if I haven't already. I mean, I've already got quite a few minor scars from where I've done something stupid while drunk and it's gone wrong, and I've just recently realised that this should probably serve as some sort of wake up call. On a related note, having to go to A&E to get your fucking skull x-rayed, after taking the sort of sucker punch and fall which costs you two teeth and a mobile phone, but next week you read in a local paper has cost a man his life during a random assault and fluke fall in a club, really ought to inspire you to make the most of life, rather than pissing it all away. I've spent so much of this year busy burning the candle at both ends that I've never really stopped to think about the fact that my flame could go out as a resuly. I've come to understand that I truly like being alive. It's useful for doing cool stuff. I also like the idea of being able to remember it. There are photographs of me that are redundant, that don't conjure up memories, because though my body turned up, I simply was not there. That's horrific. So, if the 'days of my youth' are coming to an end, I'd like to be able to recall them when I want something to look back on.

(As I write this, I'm in a pub, and I've not had a drink for 11 days. I've had an unusual feeling growing in me the whole time, something unfamiliar. I think it might be pride.)

I've got a full time job, just like real grown ups do, and I hate it, just like real grown ups do. I think that if you don't hate your job then you're either one of the minority lucky enough to be doing something they like, or you're a little bit dead inside. I feel like I am letting myself down day after day just by turning up and agreeing to submit to a thankless task which I feel no connection to whatsoever. There is something intrinsically wrong about spending more time doing one thing you hate than doing any one of the multitude of things you remotely enjoy. My life for about five months consisted of me waking up, going to work, coming home, having a meal, and going to sleep again. This was me, on a loop. The hours have reduced since, but I still hate it. Still, it comes down to the matter of money. I want to go travelling round the world to various places in the next few years, starting with Kiev in the spring, and then hopefully somewhere else in the autumn, and so on, every two seasons, somewhere new, but it's being able to afford it which is the problem. If I could quit my job tomorrow, I would, but essentially it pays the bills and rent and I need that money. I wish I didn't, and I do wish I worked practically anywhere else, but right now I feel I have to choose safety over impulsiveness, even though it goes against everything I believe in and aspire to be. Almost all my heroes and role models never gave a fuck for work, and just did what they wanted, and this is the lifestyle I aspire to lead, but I don't know, maybe they were just braver, or had more integrity than me. It's thoughts like these that I fucking hate, that's the real issue here. I am currently spending most of my time doing something which makes me feel like a fucking failure and disappointment to myself.

I am a letdown to my own potential.

2009-10-28T17:54:00.000-07:00

So you want a healthy local scene? Go to shows, spend your money to pay the bands, cheer their songs, talk to the people there.
Help create your own surroundings, if you do nothing then you'll get nothing back in return, and certainly what you deserve.
Don't be so lazy and closed-minded that you'll get so stoned you lose interest and only support 'the music you love' because your friends have told you to come or risk being ostracised.
Likewise, don't feel so afraid to go somewhere on your own and see a band, because once you're there, it's going to be easy enough to make friends anyway. Such is our nature.
Stop talking the talk which makes you look cool and fit in to the scene you chose to boost your attractiveness to the opposite sex.
Start giving a shit and helping out the people who are in this for life and who make this their everything.

2009-10-23T18:12:00.000-07:00

Theres such a big emphasis on loving this town, that sometimes I think people forget to pause and question whether they really should; what makes them so special; what exactly is that amazing about this little community. Community as interpreted by and large round here means nothing to me, the forced commonality of our main street and the surrounding venues is a feeble excuse for money making and hypocrisy, the end result of outside influences and that perenial desire to not only belong, but to belong at the top of the strata. What ever makes you look cooler, what ever makes you more attractive, whatever makes you more fuckable, 'go for it'. Just be aware that some people are doing this because it has bound itself to their spine, to their mind, to their very essence, and so when you have gone, moved on to the next fad, we will still be here, and we will be glad you have gone.

You do not make this town,
This town makes you.
And I'm not sure where the blame lies,
But this all feels fucking doomed.

2009-10-20T04:25:00.000-07:00

What a learning experience this weekend has been.

Some bridges don't burn, but fall apart all by themselves anyway, decaying over time. And it's a shame, but it's probably inevitable. Oh well, this is life I suppose; and in a sense I'm glad. In a bittersweet sort of way, I am glad, because to my mind this life is all about growth and progression, and what can be seen to be more progressive than the loss of the old, and the re-emphasising of the new, and the prospects of the future?

This is not to say that I don't miss what once was there, the web we wove together managed to catch the best of times, and I will press snapshots into the scrapbook in my head, but I simply don't think things are ever going to be the same again. But maybe that's ok.

and on a different note

Everyone seems to be wailing about the winter coming in. I, on the other hand, welcome it, for now it feels like the world is finally in touch with me. It is cold, and it is grey, and it is bleak, and I feel at home here. This taken on it's own no doubt seems morbid, and perhaps it is, but personally, I genuinely do feel at home in the wintertime, and so right now I am starting to feel a lot better about everything than I have done for the past few months.
There is nothing I like more during this season, than going for a walk, often to the beach and the cobalt sea which arrives in these months. Here, putting on my favourite songs, having the world cradle and envelope me. Feeling my face turns cold though the rest of me is wrapped up and warm, as the dim sky lies draped like a grey blanket overhead. Letting every breath irrigates my lungs with the taste and smell of the very air itself. And all this, accompanied by vast, dark, velvet sounds, providing the perfect score to such a rich and overpowering time, as I open up my senses to the world, find that connection, and rediscover the home I have within myself.

2009-09-30T13:16:00.000-07:00

Is this city really worth fighting for? After giving so much of myself to just stay here, did I really ever stop to think why?

Keep taking.

I'll keep giving.

And one day, I'll take something back, and it will be something worth the fight, and worth holding on to.

That's how it's supposed to work, right?

2009-09-05T02:41:00.001-07:00

I am learning a lot about love these days.

2009-09-05T02:37:00.000-07:00

I've not been here for a while, so this almost feels gratuitous through it's size, but out of the many records I own, there is not a single other one which makes me feel like Jane Doe by Converge does. I can't even describe.

2009-08-10T13:36:00.001-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GfsP0jZnRo&feature=player_embedded

This.

2009-07-28T17:06:00.001-07:00

I'm not cut out for you fucking people, I go and stick my neck out for the first time in months and get a knife drawn across my jugular vein.

Thanks for bleeding me dry once again, guys. I'm now running on empty, so cheers. I'll let you know when I'm topped up again, maybe make a group announcement, so you can make plans together to cut me back open, yeah?

..... At 1.07am on a worknight I'm too tired for this shit, and none of you would probably give a fuck if I kept on screaming anyway, so good night and sleep tight, you ignorant terrible people.

2009-07-22T15:58:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to get to sleep but it feels like theres this twitch in my skull thats not letting me, and after setting myself to finding out what's causing it, I've decided it feels like theres just a bunch of jabbering and energy I need to expel. So here goes, an account of precisely why I love Doctor Who so very much, and subsequently get odd looks from my friends at times, which is about as brief as it is clear. Ie. Not enough. But we begin:

The Doctor: Nigh on immortal due to his ability to regenerate, and able to travel through time and space. The potential for what he can see or where he can go is endless, and due to his regenerative capabilities, he is able to go on indefinitely, recovering from whatever challenges temporarily overcome him. Basically, he can be seen as an embodiment of the aspirations of man: complete power over that which is unknown to us, and the freedom and lack of fear such power affords.
However, (noticeably found in the recent revival of the series) there exists a theme of loss, searching and, subsequently, powerlessness. Countless moments, most presciently under David Tennant's tenure as the character, have shown the Doctor to be utterly alone despite having the universe at his disposal, and emotionally devastated from the simple fact he cannot truly share his own entire life with anyone. Anyone and everyone he could ever love will die, while he carrys on, and on, and it becomes implicit that as much as The Doctor's companion's are awed by the sights he can show them, he too is just as enamoured with the fact he has someone there with him, and that he can make them happy. Even as he draws joy from these times, he lives with the burden of knowing that they will, in one way or the other, leave him alone again in the end. And isn't that what most of us do in our lives? Try to find someone who we can make happy, because it makes us happy (or vice versa), and make it through our existance with them? To focus not on the end we all face, but to fill the time we have with experiences and adventure and, ultimately, having someone to relate it all to. Whether in the heartbreaking exile of Rose, or the cruel, spiteful semi-suicide of fellow timelord The Master, there are moments of true loss dotted throughout Tennant's series': moments when The Doctor's facade of amiability and ambivalence cannot be maintained and his inner need to just feel that someone can care for him for once bursts through the surface.
No matter how much we see of his composed outer self, we know there is a deep need for a real relationship of any kind nestled in The Doctor's two immortal hearts (symbolism, perhaps?), and so there is always a lingering sense that his endless voyaging across time and space is as much a quest for this as it is for anything else. His never ending search across all that is, was and will be may well be ultimately be motivated purely by a wish and a belief that, for everything out there, one person cannot possibly be totally alone.

To have such a rich discussion of the human condition encapsulated in one vaguely ridiculous science fiction character blows my mind, but it is this humanising of the timelord which makes him such a profoundly affecting character for me. Certain episodes of this 'kids programme' have touched me more than almost anything ever, and while it would be amiss to ignore the incredible performances of the cast involved, the very nature of this character, so complete yet so empty, is innately powerful, and I truly find it hard to comprehend how someone, once made aware that it is so much more than 'aliens and time travel', would not at least be able to appreciate and be excited that, in an all too rare occurance, primetime mainstream, genuinely successful television is discussing what it means to be alive. It's borderline philosophical debate, and it's being broadcast into our homes on BBC One on Saturday teatimes under the equally as valid guise of pure entertainment. In my eyes, thats not just masterful programme making: thats an all too rare realisation and utilisation of the potential of television as a medium. Doctor Who, is to me, the summation and pinnacle of what mass popular media can, and perhaps every now and again, should do. Challenge. Entertain. Enrapture. Inspire.

Nerd much?

2009-07-20T10:08:00.001-07:00

I still intend to make a tit out of myself talking about Doctor Who, The Mars Volta and so on, be without fear, but right now I wish to provide a continuation of the post-before-last, which concerned, essentially, this burgeoning sense of disenchantment and wanderlust I am feeling lately.

I'm doing something about it.

Not on the grand scale I talked about, not yet, but today, my first free day in what feels like ages, was spent vagranting by myself around Brighton, a place that has always been somewhat of a reliable escape to me ever since I was a child.
As a friend mentioned to me once, there is a funny thrill that comes from being in a new place, and being able to almost re-invent yourself. I am always conscious of the image I seem to have inadvertently created for myself here at home: It feels like it is one of just being monochrome, only into what people may think of as gleefully phillistinic: heavy music, stupid films, drinking, just generally being a dick.
However, this is not all of me. It is a character I feel certain friends expect me to play, and when it becomes those friends who you find yourself socialising with the most, the character becomes the actor. This is an exaggeration, of course, but perhaps that's needed to emphasise this; so as to better emphasise my overall point.
Walking into a record shop or art gallery or book store and asking for the folk section, or the surrealist paintings, or the philosophy shelf (shit, reading any book at all can get you looked at funny in certain circles) turned out to be unusually liberating today. Chatting to the people in the shops, asking for recommendations and discussing just how magical certain records can be, recommendations and records that would have been unbroachable down our towns misguidedly beloved main street, was, to be honest, far more enjoyable than a mere functional conversation should have been. Turns out, talking to strangers is actually a very fulfilling experience.
Days like today are the sort of thing I'm looking for, and I've decided this is not due to a desire for escapism, but for freedom, and self-contentment. It's who I want to be in the open air, because it's who I am inside my head, and just as I want to be this person, I want this person to be informed and shaped by more than just one social circle, or town, or country or culture. The prospect of drawing from differing diverse sources to create my own perspective on the world is one which has me completely. It excites me, it scares me, it fascinates me and overall, it puts ticks in every single box on the 'do you feel alive?' checklist.
You know what? It's not even hard to externalise this internal attitude, because it's just that; an attitude, one of just liking what you like, doing what you want, and not really giving a shit if anyone says you can't. There's a lot of wonderful stuff out there, and I'm talking about everything here, from music, to film to just, y'know, LIFE, and you'd be a fool to feel as if you weren't allowed to experience whatever of it you liked.

I'm always half-convinced of some sort of providence, by the way. I tend to find that when I've got something on my mind, the answers, somewhat beautifully, can be found in the coincidences of the world. Well check this out: of all the trains in the county, and out of all the people on the train today, the one I chose to take, found me sat opposite an elderly couple from New Zealand. They were going round the world together after finally retiring, 35 years after marrying, and then working, day in, day out. They'd waited their whole lives together to do this, and now they were out seeing the world, just with each other and a suitcase, not giving a fuck for whatever you can imagine life was inevitably throwing at them in their old age. And throughout the journey, there were smiles on their faces and glistening in their eyes.

I couldn't add anything to that situation which would make that any more beautiful. Everyday life can be the most profound thing.

Anyway, back to earth now, here's what I actually got in Brighton, partly because I know people can be nosy, but also because I know exactly how one friend in particular who reads this will react to one or two things, and that makes me smile.

Books:
1x David Sedaris- When You Are Engulfed In Flames
1x Stephen Fry- In America
1x Chuck Palahniuk- Snuff
1x Henry Rollins- Smile, You're Travelling.
(Do you have any idea how hard it is to find his books? Fuck!)

CDs
1x Magnolia Electric Co- Josephine
1x William E Whitmore- Hymns For The Hopeless
1x Bill Callaghan- Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
1x Grizzly Bear- Veckatimest

and my ultimate prize of the day:

Neutral Milk Hotel- In The Aeroplane Over The Sea on 12 inch vinyl.

Yes, I have started buying vinyl. No, I don't have a record player yet. Yes, I am financially doomed now.

2009-07-18T16:16:00.000-07:00

Post number 100, don't you know? A momentous number... which I intend to commemorate and flesh out with more pseud0-philosophical rambling, in the form of some kind of overly intimate self-evaluation.

So no change there then.

Basically, right, my thing is the media and the arts. Film, television, books, pictures, music, even this here series of tubes we know as the internet, I honestly don't feel I could be without them.*

And I have noticed a common thread linking the sort of stories and songs and texts and everything I take into my heart and fall in love with, as opposed to just watching, reading, seeing or hearing.

This thread, as far as I can tell, is, thematically, the exploration of the potential for fulfillment and equilibrium, coming in the form of metaphore, surrealism, or other abstract vessels.

Or in normal English, I like it when stuff which seems weird on the surface is actually taking on what it means to be alive and striving for something, and is using its weirdness to do that.

It's 12:30pm and I'm too tired for any more depth here, but the next few posts I do are probably going to cover this in more depth, and will most likely be about why I love Doctor Who and The Mars Volta. (That's both a promise and a warning, by the way. Stick with me though, you've made it through the first 100 installments of my odd meanderings and for that I thank you.)

*Don't judge me. I accept that there are far larger problems in the world, but while I try to do my tiny bit to fix them, they don't affect me directly, I do not feel their impact impeding my day to day life, and the same is probably true for you. I mean, if you're reading this, then you're 'privileged' enough to have access to a computer or the internet, you know?

2009-07-12T14:00:00.001-07:00

You know what sounds good right now?

Jacking it all in down here and moving on. Taking my old job back and actually making use of my £10,000 piece of paper. Disappearing from this dead scene and starting again.

I'm not even being pessimistic or over dramatic. Here's some plain facts:

I'm throwing money at rent and bills, never quite making it above the line and getting out of debt but always getting just close enough to think 'one more month and I'll be there'. It's just not happening, and no matter what I try or how much I tighten the strings, this seems like it's not going to stop happening. Financially, it makes sense to leave.

My best friends are moving on and just really going for it, but I'm stuck feeling this ugly confusing mix of jealousy and joy and rejection when I think about them. I'm so happy for them, I really am, they're chasing dreams and visibly making them work, dotted around the world right now, but I'm not, and I find myself asking why can't they just stay and simply keep me company? Do I mean that little to them? I know this isn't the case but still, it feels like it sometimes. Is it selfish to ask where their time for me has gone? Theres not even a hint of anyone here who I think could be my little anchor either, and I'm increasingly aware that might be what I need, perhaps now more than I have for a while. Socially, I get the feeling now is the time to get gone.

And I'm reminded that, yeah, in some respects I ought to be grateful to be alive and able to have these opportunities that I only end up backing away from. But it's not enough for me to just be happy to be alive, whats the point of living if you're just drifting along? Fuck, if you ask me that's not living at all. Look at my last two posts here, so full of drive and where's it gone? Crushed up and swallowed by a routine I hate, and subdued by what I've been convincing myself are 'needs' rather than 'options'. I need to put promise into action. And as much as right now it feels like it would be giving in, I get the feeling that if I go, then down the line I'll see that it's not, and that it will simply be regrouping.

I don't want to do my job anymore. I don't really want to do any job. But funds have to come from somewhere, and, to quote a song, 'dreams cost money, but money costs dreams'. I do have dreams though, I've got ambitions. (Side note: I would quite like someone to share and fulfill them with, NOW.)

I want to go from coast to coast across America, with a few clothes and a guitar, not sure how to get places, but knowing that I will.

I want to educate children as to how important it is that they care, because they are about to become the ones who either save or doom this poor ailing planet.

I want to take in the deep south, to go where the blues was born, and visit places enshrouded in so much music that the air itself must feel heavy with ghosts of songs.

I want to play music in front of people, and have even just one stranger come up to me and say they liked it.

I want to go to Auschwitz and cry more than I've ever cried before or ever could again, willing forth six million tears and just praying that they come.

I want to feel ok about being alive as part of this disappointing, horrible human race.

I want to go to Iceland, and just sit on a glacier, looking out to a cold dark sea and finding completion in the solitude, with the sounds of the country's ice and earth and air playing in my ears.

I want to openly, unashamedly, be with someone I love, and who loves me, and make it last.

I want to get on a dusty bus or rusting old train somewhere in Northern Africa, or Eastern Europe, or Asia, and stick out like a sore thumb, amidst music and chatter and people and culture, going somewhere just because it's the journey, and not the destination that I care about.

I want to go to Japan, and become a tiny atom in all the neon and the noise. I want to be an alien, surrounded by the surreal and just utterly lost, so I can blow my mind, or find my way, or both.

And through all this, I want to stop every now and then wherever I am, and savour the air of the next breath I take, until I am fit to burst with the understanding of how beautifully impossibly defiant it is that I am alive on this earth.

I'm ready to see the big wide world now, and I know this because I've lost almost all faith in this little tiny one I'm living in at the moment. So if it means I have to lose a few things to gain so much more, I'm sorry, I really am so sorry, but I think that's what I might have to do.

2009-06-17T07:00:00.000-07:00

"Arousing, inspiring, comforting- music is capable of stimulating both passion and compassion, speaking to our very core and taking us to the heights or depths of emotion."

So reads the first sentence on the back of the book I'm currently reading; it's a set of case studies concerning peoples experiences with music in conjuction with brain abnormalities/unusualisms... I'm not sure if thats a word but you know what I mean, right? Anyway, reading it got me thinking, one of the things I'm most grateful for in the world is music, especially at the moment.
Now, permit me to take a detour. I promise it'll all make sense in the end.

I'll admit, I'm a little shaken when I think about it. I do think I got off really incredibly lightly on Saturday night, especially considering how much scope for further damage there is in that kind of situation.

A few weeks ago in a local bar, someone took one hit, like I did, but fell differently, hitting their head differently to how I must have hit mine, and they died. They fucking died. And that sort of thing, how you're hit, how you fall, what you catch on the way... thats ultimately random.

Similarly, the guitarist from one of my favourite bands was in a coma for a few days last year, due to a head injury. But when he came out of it, according to all sources, he'd written an album in his sleep, and it's one of the most transcendental, moving, epic pieces of music I think I've ever heard, given the context. Laugh if you like (because the band is Mastodon, the album is Crack The Skye, and the genre is metal, and obviously metal is just angry noise.... *sigh*) but it's nigh on life affirming.

The first time I picked up a guitar after Saturday night, one of the songs from this album was the song I played, not consciously, just cos I wanted to play the song, and it was incredible. It felt like playing for the first time, and moreover, I swear I felt something of what the song was carrying: a re-establishing of life, a denial to giving in. It's almost indescribable, but I'm pretty sure that I was doing something more than just playing guitar for that one song.

And then last night, I had the sheer joy of seeing a band with my brother and dad, and singing along with my family. That felt ace too, being back out in Portsmouth at night, and not only that, but being back 'home': a crowd of people there to take in musicians combining to create something which is both ridiculously complex, (scientifically speaking, it's unbelievable how a group of musicians interacts live, producing variations of sounds & timbres and pitches and rhythms on their various instruments and combining them, and it's also ridiculous how the listener then interprets and digests the sounds, then reacting as they do) but at it's heart, just a fucking good time. Especially with my family, especially after Saturday, this was euphoric.

And now, literally right now, I'm listening to the new album by Alexisonfire, with the Best Voice In The World (aka Dallas Green) leading the way, and it's making me want to drop to my knees and sing along as loud as I can. So I might. Seriously, this is amazing. Urgent and vital and loving and just FUCK YEAH.

I think I got a bit off topic there, or possibly even went to in depth because my overall point is this: isn't music a life saver sometimes?

2009-06-14T15:09:00.000-07:00

It's quite possibly retarded that it's taken something like this to sort me out, but I think I've found what I was looking for, or at least been reminded to get back on with that search. What I felt fleetingly for the first few times in memory, on a few occasions last year, has come back and it's ridiculous that it's taken this to get me back towards being in the state of mind I want to be in.

What I have right now:
The perennial taste of blood in my mouth.
A cut lip.
A black eye.
A grazed shoulder.
A grazed elbow.
A borderline immobile wrist.
One and a half missing teeth.
No phone.
The repeating phrase in my head 'It could have been so much worse'

What I don't have right now:
A girlfriend.
A job which I don't want to walk out on every day I am there.
A steady living situation.
The feeling that I am going anywhere in life.

What I am going to do next?
Change.

*If any of this seems a little garbled or hard to read; I've got a head injury, so fuck you ;) *

2009-06-01T16:00:00.000-07:00

So fuck you.
Fuck you for making me think I could be stable and happy and start getting what I want for the first time in a good few years. Thats not too much to ask, is it?

Fuck you for making me think I'm being selfish when I just want comfort.

Fuck you for painting this picture of yourself being so innocent when whispers draw you as a demon off the canvas, fuck you for making me so angry I can't even make a turn of phrase like the one I just used into a decent lyric or song.

Fuck you for not being the arms I want to hold me or the mouth I want to kiss me.
Fuck you for changing everything I knew about you and everything that I fell in love with. Fuck you for taking so long about it too, at least shift so fast I don't feel it burn me down day after day.

Fuck you for living your life and showing me how you're living your dreams, succeeding while I'm joining the living dead. And fuck you for your condescending advice, we can't all have the right friends, we can't all have these opportunities.

Fuck you for being happy without me.

I think I miss you so very very much.

2009-05-23T18:25:00.000-07:00

So everyones happy, people are getting married, people are seeing the world and my friends have left without me.
And everyone's ambitious and people are making wishes and they're coming true for you and you and you're revelling in riches.
But I'm empty and I'm angry and I'm alone and I am ugly. I feel nothing except nothingness and I'm afraid I feel it daily.
There is no city that could contain this, no town that could tame this, no house or home that I could know that could attempt to assuage this.

This is a lack of love. This is detachment. This is having a black hole at your core.
This is the future being taken out of your hands.

There is nothing worth trying for, anymore.
Where can you escape when what you hate is inside you?

2009-04-18T17:45:00.000-07:00

This town has a funny, beautiful way of bringing me something to love right when I can only see things that make me sad or angry.

So I'm going to enter into smoky underground worlds, and take a girl I love along with me. So I'm going to make friends with strange, wonderful people. So I'm going to drink when I want to, and not drink when I don't want to. So I'm going to sing loud and play songs for nothing other than the love of doing it all.

So I'm going to stay right here and live my life how I want, because it's mine to live.

Sometimes I might need reminding of that, but motherfucker, I've been reminded and I'm not going to forget for a long time now.

Yes.

2009-04-09T16:12:00.001-07:00

http://www.personalitypage.com/ENTP.html

Hello, me.

2009-04-01T15:45:00.000-07:00

Still having a shit time of it. Everyone's announcing they're going to be dropping like flies, which is worse than just going because it means I get to think about it for a few months. I gave up a lot just to be here, and now the reasons for me throwing away a life are letting me know it might not have been worth it.

However, things like a few key records coming out soon are keeping me going. A couple of bands should be putting out some serious shit in the next few months, I think I'm going to sink inside them as soon as I can and avoid living for as long as possible. Converge, Manchester Orchestra, Brand New. Right now, Crack The Skye by Mastodon is all over my life, I could exist inside this album and be fine, so I think I will for a while.

Been thinking a lot these past few days. I don't know if I believe in fate, but I believe we are all doomed in varying ways, and I'm starting to think I've found the course that's set out for me, no matter how hard I try to steer the other way. It's not too bad if it goes how I think it could; rather a waste of time, money, and emotion.

I'm rather obviously alone at the moment. No one seems to care too much. They're mostly wrapped up in enjoying the things I wish I had.

I walked home today and wished that everything I saw on the way home would burst into vapour and die.

2009-03-17T22:46:00.001-07:00

It has come to my attention that I have a problem/problems to deal with at the moment, and that I'm not dealing with it very well. Friday became Saturday became Sunday became Monday became Tuesday, and this week five days became one blur I'll never get back. This is nothing new. And this is what is a pain.

Empires have been built on excess. Name me one empire in all of history, that did not fall apart.

2009-03-15T22:10:00.000-07:00

This is a stream of subconsciousness:

This is the one thing I have which keeps me from feeling as old as I really am, and I'll be damned if I let you take it from me in one night. But does she even know how much she's torn you apart and left you scrambling to re-join the pieces? No, but this whole thing is testament to how she hit my life like a fucking hurricane, and how I'm still stuck on her, even now. Months have passed and I'm still here, talking about her like she's God when she doesn't even really know that she's anything to me, let alone everything.

Sounds like you need help. Tell me about it. I know it's not right, how I think and project sometimes. Certain films are meant to be cautionary tales, not semi-documentaries, and certain songs are meant to be melodrama, not biography.

Like them, their words and songs. Too right. And this is where the irony sleeps, that a band we both seperately lived through in our fragile headstrong youths is bringing us together in our fragile heartbroken adulthoods, just a few years too late. I know that every word we sing together will cut through me like a knife, and while I know my little sister will be there to hold me together, (and I thank something or someone every day that I've found her and she'll be there to hold my hand when I need her to) I still know that I'll be torn to shreds come the night.

Look at this, another tribute to how much you've gutted me, and how much I want you to step in and be my lungs that breathe and my heart that beats, even now.

I shouldn't be allowed out the house, people ruin me.

More songs that make me think of things and stuff.

2009-02-26T15:45:00.000-08:00

Journey- Any Way You Want It.
Not the obvious choice perhaps, given the recent, and justified, revival of that one about a small town girl (which by the way, is possibly how every epic song should be written, structurally.) But this is just as good. There's no specific memory attached to it, more a recurring sense of 'everything is really good in life' which might be spurred on by my listening to this song at a really upbeat point that I just can't remember anymore.
More likely however, is that the simple fact that this song is always guaranteed to make me smile, and has the rare capacity to turn my mood around as soon as it starts, if I'm feeling crappy. I can't be unhappy while listening to Any Way You Want It.
On a somewhat related note, there is a huge sense of irony attached to liking all these 80's radio rock bands. Fuck that horrible shit, and fuck you if you use music to score hipster points. I love Journey, for real, and this song is damn near perfect in my eyes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFjKFDvyJ80

Funeral For A Friend- Into Oblivion.
Not one of my favoured bands, but this story is too good not to tell.
Last summer, she graduated and was moving back home, and so decided to get all of our friends together to bid a fond, extremely drunken farewell to her house she'd been living in. Cue a raucous, decadent party, which inevitably ended with bodies everywhere and ensured everyone saw the next morning in feeling like they had been hit by a train.
However, we must get home, and so we all get in the car, and begin the drive back.
As we got onto the motorway, this song began to play, and as I sat in the back trying to guess what she was thinking, about ends and beginnings, all the while knowing that she didn't know what I was thinking about my own personal closures and starts that I foresaw at the time, everything was simply cinematic.
The world literally passing by, with my friends safe together in our little bubble watching it all fly past, it felt like a physical journey towards growing up. Of course, nothing came of it in the end, but that's irrelevant here.
Imagine the awe of hearing this song (pay attention to the lyrics) as a sense of hope, tinged with fear and sadness, washes over your fragile, aching body as you the world begins to pass you by and a vast blue sky is draped over you on a sunny summer day. Imagine making plans on how your life will be from now on, with this ringing in your ears. Ignore how it fell apart for me, and just try to place yourself in that moment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXDL9QG4h3g

2009-02-13T16:31:00.000-08:00

Most of what appears here is intangible.

I like to divide things in a binary fashion. Either things are one thing or they are the other, there can be no middle ground. Everything. Has to be. Something. Or I can't cope. (I do fully understand that life is simply not this easy, hence the name of this very place. There are colours, and they illustrate and enrich and play havoc with how I want things to be, but ultimately I think it's for the best.)

And so most of what appears here is intangible. Discussion of feelings, emotions. Things that cannot be seen nor touched.

I mention all this, because I am about to talk about some things that are fairly tangible, and, to be honest, wanted to try and provide a little clarification to myself if no one else. (There is a spiral of irony here, when this is taken in context. And everything is always about context. That is indisputable.) I want to simply talk about things that cross over into the material world, away from myself, and have a feel and a colour.

Music is pretty much all I 'do'. So obviously, seeing bands is very much a pastime of mine. To date, I've seen almost everyone I want to see, which is obviously pretty cool, but there remain a few names on 'the list' who I have yet to tick off.

I really want to see a few specific bands this year. Firstly, Glassjaw. The most emotive voice in music, coupled with explosive, thundering songs full of passion and heart. The fact they are constantly beset by chronic illness and near break ups only makes this even more of a must-see, whilst I can. Now tour, and play somewhere awesome.

Possibly get Circa Survive to support. This is music that sounds like a glimpse of the future,
being retold to the present via a man reluctant to relay the things he has seen. I saw them once, for half an hour, and it was in a horrible venue, with awful sound, and I need to see them somewhere tight and intimate, and lose myself in their sound.

Narrows are meant to be playing Europe at some point this year, but with the band being literally split over the Atlantic ocean, with half living in the U.K. and the other in the U.S., it may never happen. I really hope it does, it might be the nearest I ever get to seeing Botch, one of my favourite bands ever, whos frontman is now heading Narrows. Actually, I'd just love Botch to reform, even just for a one off proper goodbye. That would be one of the best things ever.

On that note, Sikth, Cursed and Refused need to get back together too. The opportunity to see any one of these bands just one last time would make my year, and for the latter two, just a one off final farewell/fuck you we were amazing would probably be the most anticipated, couldn't-possibly-go-wrong shows ever. I miss them all so much, genuinely.

Are GY!BE still around? I don't think they are, and this is not good.

Finally, as much as I love The Mars Volta, I would pay a stupid amount of money to see At The Drive-In get back together just the once, and if they were performing Relationship Of Command in one of those Don't Look Back style shows, where the band does the album in order and it's entirety, I would spend as much as I could to ensure I was there.

I would trade you a hundred Kurt Cobains, thousands of Marc Bolans, and infinite Jim Morrisons for just one show by any of the bands I mentioned here.

The above is all largely irrelevant, maybe even pointless, but at least it's not someone bitching about Valentines Day.

2009-02-04T06:01:00.000-08:00

The following list is comprised of things it is essential that you do not actively dislike if we are truly to be friends.

Freebird by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
The Clash.
Metal.
Horror films.
Doctor Who.
The Gaslight Anthem.
Pizza.
Christian Bale.
Me, obviously.

More may be added to this when I think of them, this is just a starter.

2009-01-23T16:41:00.000-08:00

So I don't know if you'd need to add a few numbers at the front of this to make it work, or even if they're genuine, but in case anyone feels inclined to say hi to some people whom I truly wish was dead (and there are surprisngly few people I would say that about. Despite how I normally may lead you to think, I don't take that sort of karma lightly....) here are what I am informed are a few key numbers for the Westborough Church, of Louis Theroux and 'God hates Fags' infamy:

(785) 273-0325 - Fred W. Phelps Sr., cell phone
(785) 272-4135 - Fred Phelps, Jr.
(785) 273-0529 - Benjamin Phelps
(785) 273-0277 & (785) 273-1080 - Shirley Roper
785) 272-8559 - Charles Hockenbarger
(785) 232-2485 - Fax for Charles Hockenbarger
(785) 233-4162 - Phelps Family Law Office
(785) 233-0766 - Fax for Phelps Family Law Office
(785) 969-9017 - Steve Drain

These will all most likely be in the relevant phone books stateside, so feel free to say hello to them all, or even pass them on to people who might also want to have a nice chat if they felt so inclined.

2009-01-22T15:31:00.000-08:00

I think I'm going to give painting a shot. I used to draw a lot when I was younger, and I kind of feel the need to be visual again, in a more overt way (as opposed to being visual via creation of imagery using words). I don't know what's going to come out of me, but I'm excited to find out. I'm feeling shades of grey with streaks of crimson. Fuck off, amateur psychology.

Also, I want to buy a plant or two or three for my room. I don't really give a shit about animals, but just having a little bit of something natural around for me to try to not kill would probably produce some sort of sense of achievement every day, no matter what other crappy things happened to me since I woke up.

Don't let this painting and plant shit confuse you though, I'm still well metal, ok?

Good.

/stupid post.

2009-01-21T13:50:00.000-08:00

Walking about this morning, in that brief window of time where your mind is still pulsing to the rhythms of the subconscious even though you are to all extents and purposes, awake, a thought crossed my mind. Well, it didn't so much cross it, as get halfway and remain stuck there for the rest of the day. The thought was this:

We look for the same things from music as we do from those we love.

(No doubt this comparison can be made between love and any other form of art, but for me, it has always been music)

Dramatic excitement at the same time as reassuring calm, a source of comfort doubling as a way to further the self. Familiarity, newness, validation, a constant source of wonder. At its finest, the eliciting of a sense of gratitude just for being alive.

There is no conclusive point I wish to make here, it's simply a thought I wish you to consider.

Music is my medicine (part two).

2009-01-21T13:49:00.001-08:00

So a few posts ago I did a little compendium of some songs and what they mean to me, and I found it quite enjoyable, and promised/warned that I would do it again. Well, here it is:

Foo Fighters- Everlong.
I imagine a lot of people have a special attachment to this song, but that's understandable: it's probably one of the most enduringly brilliant, heart-wrenching songs of the past 15 years or so. My Everlong moment (and I think everyone has one, whether they know it or not) came in Hyde Park in 2006, as the band themselves played the song to close what had been a long afternoon of music. Over the course of the day, the large party of six or seven that I had begun the show with split up, until I was on my own.
I found myself at the barrier for the close of the show, and as the soft strums of this song began, there was the expected surge within the crowd... which brought forth the most beautiful girl besides me, pushed to the fore by the movement. Underneath the emerald green lasers which scored the night sky, she and I sang every word together, sharing the occasional 'isn't-this-amazing-so-amazing' glance and smile.
I never saw her again after that one song, or even got her name, but for those five minutes of my life, I don't think I couldn't have been any happier. Just finding and watching the video now, 4.07 still puts me right back there.
"And I wonder, when I sing along with you... if everything could ever feel this real forever? if anything could ever be this good again?"
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8zvOrvgI_Co

Misery Signals- The Year Summer Ended In June.
'Regular readers' may have picked up on a theme here this summer, of agonising decisions and torn heartstrings. Not to be indelicate towards the other parties, but it was essentially a few months of hell. Then I heard this, and the season had a sound.
(The song itself is actually about the death of some friends of the band, so I feel a little bad for appropriating it for my own ends, but I intend it as a compliment)
I'm in no mood to be enigmatic right now, it's not in the spirit of things, so these are the parts that really chained this song to my heart in the heat of the high season, and what they meant to me.
"This time was our summer. It was something no one could take from us." (A year of waiting could have ended in those months, graduation had filled me with a sense of bravado and daring, and I felt like the world was mine for the taking.)

"Hope that tonight things are fine. As I lay awake, the light cuts the southern sky."
(For all the separation, I never hoped you were regretting your choice. We were in different countries, but under the same stars, and that thought made me feel like you were still near somehow.)

"Waiting to see and be with you again. Wishing the best for you my lost friend. Man I swear I'd give the whole thing up for you."
(I'm still waiting, I suppose, and I still wish you the best, but I send my wishes in envelopes sealed with jealousy and regret. I would have given up so much for you, and you don't even know, but that is not your fault.)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=CqRkYBTCv3Y

2009-01-15T15:55:00.000-08:00

If I'm being pessimistic about it;

I've got nothing to go on for. No future. No drive. No motivation.

All my best friends are shaping to leave, move on, make their lives without me, and expecting me to feel great about it.

Ten thousand pounds worth of debt for an education that can't even get me a job answering phones, let alone a job it was designed to help me get.

I don't think it's going to work out with her, and it's neither of our faults.

Faith has been lost in everything.

New Years saw me sat alone on a beach with rocks in my pockets and tears in my eyes.

2009-01-08T15:48:00.000-08:00

I like to imagine everyone leaves some kind of vapour trail throughout their lives. Like if you open the exposure on a camera for a long time and aim it at a single person, walking across the shot, their movements would be caught, and they would seem one long blur of motion? Well imagine birth as the opening of the shutter, and death as it's closing. And all that we do in between as being our vapour trail. Except it's not just all that we physically do, it's all we emotionally do too, to ourselves and each other. I like to imagine that they're all coloured, and the lives we lead affect the brightness of our trails.
Wouldn't the city be a more magical place if we walked it's streets leaving a bright and vibrant trail where ever we went, and if we wanted to, we could trace a persons steps to see how they've lived, how they've loved, the mistakes they've made, and hopefully how they made up for them?

2009-01-08T15:37:00.000-08:00

A montage of lives. The camera keeps cutting.

-someone crunched up on the floor, pounding it with their fists as tears stream down their face, past their mouth as it silently howls.

-someone in a darkened room, sat in their chair looking at old photos despite how it breaks their heart with every snapshot of times that have grown better with age, yet more painful with every second thats passed between the click of the shutter, and the cold, lonely present.

-someone shuffling under sheets, asleep but not at rest: alone and missing their lover, trying to ignore the fact they're not coming back.

-someone shuffling under sheets as their body connects with another, having forgotten how they are never coming back to a restless sleeper who at that moment is asleep, but not at rest.

All this soundtracked by heartbreak, and its child, recovery.

2009-01-05T17:28:00.000-08:00

NO.

2008-12-31T11:00:00.000-08:00

Death was just a simple glance across a dim lit room

And those eyes did it

Those three words did it

Those three words killed him

And I surrender to it all

Between you and me, I surrender to you

Forgive me for the sadness

And the bringing of you down

I just needed a lover and I needed a friend

And there you were

Running from forever like all the rest

Three simple words bled me dry

Three simple words bled us dry, bled us dry

I love you

(Heaven In Her Arms)

2008-12-26T17:30:00.000-08:00

Listening to Like Herod in my old bed in my old room in my old house, swimming on the waves of sound and watching my memories run through my fingers as I raise my cupped hands above where my body becomes submerged. Watching a slight yet steady stream of my past flow out of my hands, returning to this sea made of two parts song to every one part of genuine nostalgia.
It's ending now, and the feedback dies away, slowly forming a collage with the real-life sounds around me. The creaking in the floorboards and walls isn’t the secrets leaking out like I used to think, it’s simple physics as the atoms they are made of expand en masse with the changing temperatures of day becoming night becoming midnight becoming a cold December morning.
There’s a bubbling too, the sound of hot water flooding cold pipes. If someone was here, someone who wasn’t me (I am deaf to the sounds that my heart makes, though maybe before I wanted to listen, I could have heard) could they hear the blood pumping around my veins? My blood is warm, my body is cold, and so I think it would make a sound, what with it working on the same principles.
I think the only way for someone to really find out would be for them to listen really close to my heart. They’d probably have to put their head on my chest, and be really, really quiet. Maybe even silent. And I’d have to be quiet too, silent even. And we’d both have to just lie there, still and silent, so this person could listen to my heart beating for them, until this person could tell me that my blood is pumping in my veins and making a sound, or that it is, and it isn't.
Either way, I'd be alive, and there would be someone who cares enough to listen to my heart lying next to me, so I would be happy.

2008-12-21T21:22:00.001-08:00

If what went on inside your head affected what went on on the outside of it, I think I'd look like a Picasso.

2008-12-21T21:03:00.000-08:00

It's not something I think I've really ever talked about here, (and I'm not talking about it here, I'm not talking about it anywhere) but ever since people in my life started dying, they haven't really stopped.

This is something which plays horrible games with me, more than what I guess is the granted mind-fuck of having a succession of friends past and present, as well as family, die. A thought has crept into my head and stayed there, black and acidic, that somehow I'm involved like some sort of conduit for whatever it is that people believe in; fate, providence or whatever intangible factor it is we blame when someone we love leaves us.

That last sentance makes me seem positively insane. I'm not; I fully recognise that in reality, it's just a savage mix of coincidence and the inherent tragedy of being human, but still, I'm me, and if you've been keeping score, that means I'm liable, if not likely, to wreck my own head.

The cancers, the suicides, the illnesses, the accidents and those who simply grew old: I am saying sorry. Both as a condolence, and an apology, for what I know I didn't do, but am irrationally terrified I did. Now please let me go.

This is definately one of my stranger posts; it's even earned an italic footnote from me, which I avoid at all costs. But I want to assure you all, I've not gone off the deep end. I've just had this recurring thought in my head for about a year now, and tonight for some reason I felt comfortable enough to try and exorcise it.

2008-12-20T20:42:00.000-08:00

"So here's a message, to let you know I still exist"

At least, I think I do. It all got a bit blurry today, and so it depends on how you define existing. I think I'm existing... I'm not sure that I'm living though. I've talked about it here before, but theres still just a numbness in me where I know other people have heartbeats and feelings and dreams and all those things you're meant to have. I've been kidding you all that I'm fine, sometimes pretty badly, but it's been because I've had to kid myself that I'm fine.

Last night through to today I kind of broke down. The life I've been living caught up with me and I realised that for all I think I've learnt and become, this void is still there.

I'll try to be better in the new year. Theres not much of this one left, and what remains of if feels like a write off anyway.

Sorry everyone.

Music is my medicine.

2008-12-09T16:36:00.000-08:00

Certain songs aren't neccessarily what we'd listen to every day, but when you hear them, maybe for the first time in ages, you're back somewhere, or with someone, or just generally reminded of something. In a bit of a change to the usual programming of personal trauma and near tragedy, I'm going to just list a few songs that do this to me-

Gangstarr- Full Clip- Ahh man, 'way back when', skating was the shit for me. And for all the memories such a lifestyle brings, nothing for me is as synonymous with the summers spent rolling around as this. Fucking supreme hip hop, confident and swaggering yet laid back, this song is skating to me. Plus it soundtracked Josh Kalis' part on the DC video, one of my favourite things to watch ever. Just, cool.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XYAsGH6P_QM

Jimmy Eat World- The whole album Bleed American. I bought this on the first time I really ever went out with a girl (just into town, typical early teenage mini-win, ha ha). I'm not sure if it was fate or irony or my subconscious or what, but this album subsequently served... no, serves as what it sounds like to be falling in love in your youth. I'm not old enough to be over what pressing play on this record brings, and I think that's ok.

Metallica- Sad But True- Never my favourite song of theirs, but significant because it's the first time I realised guitars didn't have to be in standard tuning. I don't imagine it's the first song I ever heard out of EADGBE, but its definately the first one I recall being unable to play properly as I was just starting to play guitar, until I went down to drop D. Not necessarily a great story, but hey, fuck you, it's just a little anecdote about me remembering the first time I detuned a guitar.

Sigur Rós- Popplagio, Saeglopur & Gobbeldigook- These ones are rooted in the live performances. Shared, importantly, with the most important people in my life present, either physically or in my mind, these are binding experiences for me, almost indescribable in their personal significance, which kind of defeats the purpose of this post so sorry I guess. I can say this though, I never want to forget the way I felt as the water fell or the air was filled with colours on those nights. Popplagio, by the way, is probably the most powerful song I have ever heard, live or on record.

I might do this again time to time, I liked it.

2008-12-09T16:23:00.000-08:00

So it took 23 hours without sleep to make me see straight, but for the first time in about a week and a half, I feel driven to do something. Nothing specific, I suppose, just theres now motivation to be active whereas before there was none. This is good.
I'm not going to over react and say it was her that kicked me out of it, but I was lost in vices because I had nothing to work towards, and her words hit me as hard as i needed them to, despite her having nothing but the softest of intentions for me, and so now I'm back and I want to pretend the last week and a half never happened.
I was afraid I'd lost myself and afraid that because of this, I'd forgotten how to talk to her, but to my relief and joy, it's not difficult at all despite times and distances. She makes me laugh too, she makes me catch myself unawares, which not many people can do. Barriers down now, and masks aside, I've got to get back to being me again, and I'm looking forward to it for the first time since I got here.

2008-11-30T03:09:00.000-08:00

I must admit, I felt a kick in my stomach as I saw the first few miles clock up. Aborting my plans never was going to be easy, but eventually, sat in the passenger seat (as I had been all summer, it felt), I realised this termination had been coming a long time, and was for the best. And so:

- Feeling it all go as every second passes makes the feeling more vivid.
- Literal journeys as metaphorical ones.
- Seeing your life in boxes laid out before you.
- Making a house a home.
- Haunting the places you used to for the first time in a long time.
- Meeting the person you wanted to see the most, when you thought you'd see them the least.
- Not remembering going to sleep, but loving waking up.

2008-11-24T11:53:00.000-08:00

I'm going to do this more often, the walk home from work has been cold and dark and beautiful, rather than tense and worrying and anxious. It's like living in a film, the unconscious cinematography and mis-en-scene being re-interpreted by their soundtrack. Perfect interaction of stage and actor, art and audience.

Even the couples exhaling like they're smoking cigarettes between their kisses make me smile where I would have simmered and seethed, they're beautiful not because of what they might look like, but because of what they are.

Today I wrote a thousand words as a bird, flying the nest for the first time. Cautious, but ready to launch into the unknown. Yet I found I simply couldn't write the one final crucial word that meant the most of all. I stepped outside myself. Looked. What are you afraid of?

I am afraid of showing how I feel, which is ridiculous, because the whole point is to show how I feel. So today, standing outside myself, I took my own hands and I wrote. I folded. I sealed, and I posted.

Four letters, one word, a whole new way to live.

2008-11-20T09:20:00.000-08:00

I listened to them on the way home, cast against a pink sky. The Christmas lights are on now, blue and white and gold, and the reds, oranges and greens of traffic lights punctuated my journey. Colours everywhere, and they were the perfect soundtrack for showing me that the world can simply be a wonderful, beautiful place. As they always have been. And, I like to think, as it always has been.

I see them again tonight. Last time I saw them, two weeks or so ago, I made my way through a storm to where they were playing, and when they finished and I left and went outside into the real world again, it took a while to realise the storm had gone away. There's no storm tonight, not even a hint of one, and so whilst last time I had needed the shelter and a place to gather myself, tonight I'm going not because I need respite and warmth, but because I want to celebrate the fact that all the things I tried to find, I did, two weeks ago, and now I can find beauty in whatever I choose, because it is a choice and I know this again for the first time in a while.

2008-11-11T12:52:00.000-08:00

I fell asleep with her photo in my hands the other night. The only thing that stopped me taking in everything about her, over and over again, was how I eventually couldn't keep my eyes open. And even then I didn't stop seeing her face. She's got me good, and I love it, because this time it's not difficult, and it's not an effort, and (you know what? I'm going to say it in all its simplistic glory) maybe she genuinely likes me too.

Backtrack

I'm the happiest I've been in months. In years. Ever. A song of impossible joy is all I can hear, and confetti is all I can see, and I put my clapping hands in the air as high as they can go and I smile, not because I've been told to, or because I think it's what I should do, but because it feels right.

Everything I needed to lose, I left in that hall. This is a new start. Watch me.

2008-10-26T18:26:00.000-07:00

You are being written about here for the last time, this sentence is one big long full stop.

2008-10-26T18:09:00.000-07:00

I'm glass and I'm tumbling through space. Not in the sense of a lack of something, in the sense of planets and stars and beauty.
Anyway, I'm glass and I'm tumbling through space, and below me, miles below me, I can see the Earth.
And I fall through the atmosphere, the unimaginable cold of nothingness being tempered with intolerable heat as I burn up. But I don't change, I remain. Glass.
Now I'm in the sky, still falling, and a panic builds in my legs and works its way up to my head and down my arms, but at the same time I'm panicking, I'm unafraid because I know I'm going to shatter, and its the knowing that makes it okay. It feels like I'm falling ever so slowly too, I don't know why though.
I hit the ground and I smash into a million tiny pieces and there's not even a dent in the ground where I've fallen but it's okay because this is what I hear as my glass head, and my glass ears, and my glass brain becomes nothing more than dust. Sharp little snowflakes in the air, blowing across a field which has taken a life that was only ever glass to begin with and there's no sign anything ever happened here and I think I'm fine with that, I really do so be happy for me.

2008-10-20T16:37:00.001-07:00

I don't know about others, maybe it comes easy, but for me the journey from liking someone to actually doing something about it takes a hell of a lot out of me. I get tired, I get ill, I get all sorts of things going on that I don't like having to deal with, but force myself through because of what they might be for.

In that sense, I suppose you could say I'm all kinds of naive. To wreck yourself for a chance of happiness, or to be more accurate, and as I've mentioned before, just being not unhappy. It's not like I'm blackened all the time, ok, it's more like theres a lightbulb flickering above my head and if I could just jump up high enough to knock it and make it stay on, that would be perfect and (haha) everything would be illuminated.

(If you got that, it means nothing major, it's just a stupid private-ish joke that presented itself.)

Anyway, this is just to get out through my fingertips how I've already done this once this summer; how I've already harvested all of the energy and patience I had as far as love is concerned (for a nothing of my own choosing, I will add), and now that the seeds have grown into something once more, how much I'm not going to like the decisions I'm now going to have to make.

2008-10-08T16:14:00.000-07:00

Open up your mouth, breathe the night into my home
Let my words be bombs, dropping silently across your heart.
Let this room be our canvas, our Guernica, our warzone
Let your touch be the colour, let our bodies be each other's art.

You will know me by the fact I am on fire for you.

2008-10-01T00:41:00.000-07:00

Speak these words aloud so they may take up space in the air in your room, and then imagine that the shapes they make are my arms, around you.

2008-09-29T16:58:00.000-07:00

http://intendedtobescreamed.blogspot.com/

2008-09-29T15:09:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry.
I won't retract my words because they remain valid of themselves but I will atone for them because they are not how I want this to end and not how I feel any more.
You will be missed, of course you will. I have known you for longer, and we have shared more of each other between ourselves, but it is because of this I feel I gain license to say such things as those I now no longer want to stand by.
I know you are on my side though. When the tables finally turned last night, you were on my side when I had not been on yours. And for this, I love you.

2008-09-21T11:42:00.000-07:00

Realising how much you will be missed hit me like a punch to the stomach just now.
And I hope that when you realise how much I will be glad to be away from you, it makes you sit down and think about who you are.
And I think we could have been so much, if things had been different. You and I, you and I; we could have been so close.

And you.

You could have been it.

But now I don't know if I even remember who you are.

2008-09-20T18:06:00.000-07:00

Forgive us not our trespasses, we're only betraying ourselves, kick us when we're down, and teach us how to become better people.
Let the moon make us howl, let the sun make us burn, we are the kind of people that give this town a bad name.
What happens in the streets follows us home into our beds, and all that's left in the morning is a whisper and a sense of dread.
Drive that wedge ever deeper with every weighted word.
Smash your hammers down and crack our weak foundations.
Fucking with this is the worst thing any of us could do right now.
But we've all got our reasons, and that's the reason we're falling apart.

Never burn a bridge until you've got off of it.
The ground beneath our feet is cracking, we're all to blame.

This doesn't feel like mine, I don't think it really ever could. You all talk of ghosts and call up phantoms, and I am quiet, and I laugh with everyone else because it's more awkward if I don't. I love you all, but this is temporary. This is temporary and sometimes this is a fact that makes me glad when I wish it didn't. You all have a head start and a history and right now I can't wait to get home.

2008-09-15T17:28:00.000-07:00

It was an airport departure lounge in Portugal, and it was a pocketful of euros, which changed the life of a fourteen year old me. Checking in early coupled with an overestimation of airside facilities. Two hours with nothing to do except try and spend the last few notes and coins of the holiday.

A record shop, stocked with the typical exotic foreign sounds you'd expect to hear abroad, and the usual international stars, the kind that you can never escape no matter where you go in the world. The artwork on the sleeves held the colours of safety, of popularity; of nothing I felt.

I think it was the rack furthest on the left, and two sections down, where I found it though. The snake in the corner, barely visible. The pitch black which engulfed the case and even though effectively created a blank canvas, held an incredible power over my gaze. I turned over the record, and read the titles of the songs, and knew this was for me. The album was untitled, and it was by a band I'd never actually listened to, but had been told were something I'd like.

They were called Metallica.

2008-09-06T12:48:00.000-07:00

An ambition, to be nothing you admire. How far can it go, this experiment that lingers behind the eyes? It must breach my skin, descend and push past gritted teeth.
Just a test, an exercise in depravity and self indulgence. Bridges will burn, and the trail will trace back to my burning hand.
Live the dream, of living in a waking nightmare. Indulge every thought, never say no, except to spite you.
Dedication, to fucking up the things you love just to see what will happen. I'm on a knife edge, and everyone is going to get cut.

2008-09-06T06:27:00.000-07:00

Pick a place, pick an end, pick a coastline, you've found a reason to live, but taken a part of mine away.
Rely on love, to bring out the melodramatist in us all. Rely on love, to tear us apart. Rely on love, to engender our wildest dreams and endanger our reasoned thoughts. Rely on providence for nothing.

2008-09-04T16:46:00.000-07:00

"... Anyway, back to my thudding personal blankness. It's probably a bonus. On the one hand, I... am essentially just a blinking, shuffling mannequin watching events in his life merely drift past like underwhelming prizes on the Generation Game conveyor belt. And on the other, I just don't give a shit. It's a win-win situation. Or it would be, if I had any concept of 'winning' in the first place...
And it's hard to see what the cure might be. If you've fallen out of love with life- not to the point of actually disliking it, you understand, but to such a degree that you merely tolerate rather than welcome each passing day- it's surely impossible to get the spark back."

"There are no more barriers to cross... I do not hope for a better world for anyone, I want no one to escape, but even after admitting this there is no catharsis, my punishment continues to elude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself; no new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing. "

"It is no surprise to me that hardly anyone tells the truth about how they feel. The smart ones keep themselves to themselves for good reason. Why would you want to tell anyone anything that's dear to you? Even when you like them and want nothing more than to be closer than close to them? It's so painful to be next to someone you feel strongly about and know you can't say the things you want to.
I must tell you that I was always afraid of the fury with which I loved you. It overwhelmed me. I thought it beyond comprehension, therefore my silence.
I will never say the things that I want to say to you. I know the damage it would do."

Brooker, Bateman (not Ellis) and Rollins. But where am I?

2008-09-03T14:39:00.000-07:00

On a music message board.
Reading a thread about favourite album titles.
There is a post which reads "It's the Ones Who've Cracked That the Light Shines Through, by Jeffrey Lewis."

It's the Ones Who've Cracked That the Light Shines Through.

I may never hear the actual record, or even know who Jeffrey Lewis is, but what a fantastic thought.

2008-09-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

Not all, but most of us, will grow old. And some of us will truly fall in love, some of us us will die alone, but maybe most of will settle for spending our lives with someone we merely tolerate more than anybody else.

And some of us will have children, and give up everything to make their lives better. And some of us won't. And some of us will, because it feels like the thing you're supposed to do at a certain age.

When a lot of the people I know get married and have children, I hope that I'm invited to weddings and christenings. And when some of the people I know get married and have children, I hope I never find out. And if I find out, I hope I can find a way to live with it.

I've been running up a hill for so long and so hard, that if it turns out that it's actually a cliff, my momentum will surely carry me over the edge.

2008-09-01T12:37:00.000-07:00

I don't believe in love, I believe in fear, I believe in desperation and I believe in ego.

This doesn't bother me.

2008-08-31T06:33:00.000-07:00

I am a passionate drunk. You are my lullaby, and you taste of smoke and dust. If I can just make it to sleep tonight feeling like this I think I might be fine.

I fall in love, every town I travel to. (This has to stop, you're getting hurt all the time, you're not built to withstand the damage) The road is starting to walk all over me.

If we could just stay in the same place, at the same time, for long enough, we could be the best of friends at the least.

2008-08-26T14:10:00.000-07:00

This time I have nothing to say. Finally. And so, I have/am lost.

2008-08-24T08:53:00.000-07:00

I would talk to you until my mouth ran dry, not with anything to say, but because I know that sometimes, you simply need my voice. These arms were built to hold you, they will find you in our sleep. I love the way you weigh down the left side of this broken bed. The way gravity pulls us together. A constant, something that cannot be defied. A force.

I have started and ended days with this scene in my eyes. Give me more.

2008-08-20T14:20:00.002-07:00

Weight/wait.

2008-08-20T14:20:00.001-07:00

My friend has roadmaps in her arms, they tell stories of how she's travelled, and though it's an awful thing to say, sometimes I'm glad for them to be there, because she followed them and found me.

2008-08-20T13:46:00.001-07:00

Sometimes it's hard to stay positive. Things fall out of place after you've taken so long to put them together, and then the people who are meant to help you fix it all come along and stumble, kicking them further out of reach, or at least making you more aware of how it's gone wrong.

But it's like unwrapping a Christmas gift you'd forgotten you saw in your parents' cupboard months ago, when you get to the end of your day and stop, breathe, count to ten, and realise at somewhere around eight that, in fact, everything is vaguely ok. Better than it could have been, at least. Certainly better than it would have been before you made the decision to put up a fight from now on.

"...it would have felt like everything was simply alright for once, and for as long as it's been worth remembering, that has been all I could ever want. Imagine that; the best you can hope for, your ultimate ambition, being for things to be just ok. And then imagine that being in view. And then imagine having your eyes struck out."

That's how I felt not too long ago; thats how I occasionally feel even now. But thats not how I want to feel; I wouldn't imagine it's how anyone would. And for all the times that I have had things fall apart, or perhaps because of them, I am becoming better at not getting myself to this place where I am willing to simply settle for narrow escapes, and resting on the edge of the dark. I am becoming unafraid to want something better than just ok, and what's more, I am becoming unafraid to act upon this want. Because I know now that the majority of people will not help me. And because I believe that I deserve something better. I believe we all do and I believe it is a shame, an absolute waste of living, if we don't try and make our surroundings, on whatever scale, transcend tolerable, and become something we can enjoy as both communities and individuals.

What I have just expressed might seem to contradict itself, but it's meant well. I am no longer caught up with hate for the world, and maybe I never really was. Maybe I'm angry, and always have been; angry that we could so easily make so much of ourselves, and that we don't. Desperate for everyone to stop complaining about things they could so easily change, and take their lives into their own hands, and for better or worse, do as much as they can and just marvel at what happens when you get a little perspective, put in a little effort, and start crossing out the reasons to complain.

2008-07-28T14:56:00.001-07:00

Not an hour ago I was being backlit by flickers of electric blue in the sky, like a character in a film reel running out on itself through a projector. Every third or fourth footstep was enough to shake the air, it seemed, and the rain traced the veins in my arms, slowly gliding down my warm skin like a lover's touch until it reached my hands, and my knuckles, and my fingertips, and then finally my pockets.

And here's where I don't think the storm becomes what you think it's going to be. The choice to take it and use it as a hackneyed illustration of some internal conflict, some emotional dilemma rendered microcosmic by it's surroundings, is tempting, but this is a place for truth, and the truth right now is that I haven't got any duelling choices tearing me apart. Instead, seeing all the chaos which, you know, isn't chaos, but as natural as can be, taking place around me, cut loose a different animal, a new bull in my own private china shop.

If it is. (The other Three Words which turn me on). If it is natural for such things to happen, then, gosh, its meant to be. And if it is meant to be, then who am I to deny it. I'm no-one, really. Nothing. Just one in two hundred million who spent nine months waiting to be one of six billion and counting. So if it is just the way of the world that the air can roar and the sky can spit sparks of their own accord, I don't really think there's much I can do but to accept that. It's like how I was talking to friends this weekend, and the question came up about whether we were all scared to die. I was surprised that everyone was, that everyone dreaded what was inevitable, except me. Because if it is unavoidable that we are all going to die, the only thing to fear is not doing enough with your life. And in the face of all the things that are natural and meant to be, I don't for a second believe that myself, or anyone else, can't do precisely what they want with their life. As much as we all exist on this canvas, we can fill in the brushstrokes ourselves, however we want to. If we can do that, we haven't got to be afraid of death.

Maybe the storm has ended up being what you thought it would be; a metaphor for a collision perhaps. And maybe this isn't the best-explained piece on here, there are holes in my argument, and there are flaws to be chipped away at, but this isn't something based on logic. This is something based on feeling, born from the heart and not the head, and spat on a page like the sky with its sparks. This is from walking home in the rain and thinking everything is how it should be, and yes, things are going to be alright. Because I will make them alright.

2008-07-16T15:31:00.000-07:00

I did it. And it would be a lie to say I didn't wish you could have seen me, that your smile had greeted me, but it's alright because you were there, because I was there, and I am nothing if not an ever growing sum of your parts.
I play on the instruments you passed down. Every time I sit and lay hands, I hear the same notes that grew from your touch. When I was a child, I watched you, I heard you, and before I knew that your love would become my love, I was in awe of you. And now I cannot form a chord without feeling your hand guide mine, and hearing your patient voice conducting my stuttering melodies.
They have not gathered dust, your toys. They have become mine, and they are no longer playthings as I once saw them. I understand why now, and how. How they saw you through. They are keys that I can work, but they are also keys that can work me, and they have opened parts of me that few other things are able to. From them, from you, I have found something to spend a life on.

It was a dream but I felt your arms.

I am your boy.

And I hope I make you proud.

2008-07-10T15:41:00.000-07:00

We have both become each others parasites, now we are becoming each others everything and surely this will only end in blood and tears. The way we've interweaved is something quite unnatural, a blessing from the providence I don't quite believe in yet. A mirror, some kind of reflection. The glass is not cracked, it's a perfect double. The fracture is inescapable but no longer insurmountable, and for that, I let hope smoulder in the base of my mind.

A chasm which cuts to the core of the characters we play. We are our own rocks, suspended in nothingness, frustrated, anxious and aimlessly circling, alive in the dark.

We are intertwined, we are choking each other in our sleep as a reflex brought on by the words we share. At the same time hands made out of syllables tighten their grip through screens, at the same time our lungs are filled with each others sounds via telephone wires, we know we will share a single heart whenever yours or mine gets broken again and so we close our eyes and we wake with the sun. This is our comfort, this is our trap, sometimes I think to myself this is an accident waiting to happen. But we carry on. We persist. Because this is what love is. This is what love is. This is what love is. This is what love is. This is what love is. This is what love is. This is what love is. This is what love is. This is what love is. This is what love is.

2008-07-07T16:27:00.000-07:00

I actually really need, need, need, something good to happen soon.

2008-07-07T13:13:00.000-07:00

You're a fucking fraud, the worst kind of liar. That's right, I am spitting venom for the first time at you, and I hope it hits you right between the eyes again and again. Living anxiously inside your straw house you built in the hope that someone would blow it down, so you could put pen to paper and so you could profit. Then repeating the process.

The knife was in my back and it took days, weeks, months before I felt it, it just took the right twist for me to bleed. Persistence gets me nowhere, gets you everything you wanted. It's only fitting you put on so many masks, you act with such abandon, in such an old fashioned way that we've all forgotten how to pre-empt the narrative.

How will I EVER get back to where I was? If my fire was set to the tiniest grains of your sand, I know we would only grow into glass and become able to shatter. But the shards would be beautiful, they would be sharp, they would be something I'd hold onto until they got under my skin like you did.

The movies told you anything but the truth. They wanted the worst for you because it was best for them. Populating the child with hollow men and women, empty words born from bankrupt ideas. I think you should feel like the biggest star of all. I am your audience, and I want my money back, and I want my time back, and I want so much back, and I want you gone right now.

This is starting to feel like a set up. Clue me in, I'd laugh if I got the point.

2008-07-04T16:01:00.000-07:00

So, this was originally written a little while ago, and while it might not reflect where I am now, it certainly sums up how I felt when I wrote it. I sort of think it's one of the better written things I've done. I don't know, I just like this one, and felt like fucking off modesty and being a little proud for once.

--------------------------------------------------------

Oh I know they're made of cards but I'll still wish a plague on both your houses.
Get myself clean by infecting the king and queen of this fucking scene.
Oh and so it might sound hard but I just want to say to you your death rattle's gorgeous.
It will lull me to a decent nights sleep for the first time in weeks maybe months maybe years.

And I could dream
Of spotlights and searchlights and highlights and lows.
And I could scream
Or I could keep it all shut up and locked up and silent.
Quiet like a snake in the grass, like a snake in your heart.

Attention, seekers, I think I have found just the stage you were looking for
I know you've got a social ladder to climb but give thinking a thought.
How do you feel about life, love and literature?
How do you feel about another drink when you pick your white face off the mirror?

The king and queen are ridden with disease, taking applause, taking whatever they need.
The priorities of pointless hierarchies come to the fore at the coolest parties.

Playing dumb isn't cute anymore, so just as well you're no longer just playing.
Bring out the vultures.
You bring out the vulture in me.
We pick the meat from your bones, we're eating, but you're paying.

----------------------------------------------------
I'll try to make the next one not be a song.

2008-07-02T16:49:00.001-07:00

Don't look at me now with different eyes.
I can still be all I was.
I will still be all I was to you.
I never ever told you lies
I just didn't need to say
I never needed to say the truth

Father, mother, sisters, brother, friends, lovers
How do you like me now
That I am standing tall and proud
With my head in these black clouds

They are my halo
And so I think I can get away with anything
They are my halo
And if it slips down it can become my noose.

Father, mother, sisters, brothers, friends, lovers
I am what has become of the boy you knew,

And I don't mean to break your hearts
But there's nothing I can do.

Nurses, doctors, listeners, talkers, ghosts, survivors
I have heard you all but I have not learned.

How will you like me then,
When I have become your son again.
When I am a brother, a lover, a friend
When I have made my way to the end
When I have made it.
Home.

How do you like me now
That I am standing tall and proud
In spite of all that should pull me down
My head is in the clouds
And they are my halo
I'm coming home.

2008-06-30T15:17:00.000-07:00

I want to fucking scream in the faces of the ones I love.
Break their hearts a little with my secrets.
Father, mother, sisters, brother, friends, lovers, how do you like me now?
You're stood away watching clouds gather over my head like a halo.

And the nurses and survivors do nothing but show me scars and tell me stories.
How I can keep on, and what it looks like I will become.

2008-06-25T16:51:00.000-07:00

I feel kind of bad for posting this, but it's precisely what I was trying to write for the past hour or so, except worded better than anything I could come up with. So:

Am I correct to defend the fist that holds this pen?
It's ink that lies, the pen, the page, the paper
I live, I learn you will always take what I have earned
And so aid my end while I believe I'm winning
Our friends speak out in our defense
Pay ten deaf ears for two months rent
We burn the gallows they erect
And cut the nooses they tie for our necks
You constantly make it impossible to make conversation
We're comatose but audible
But I liked it the farther I get out
We passed it off, but it's all on us
Well common conversation, it took everything I got
And I liked it the farther I get out
Once said always said
I will hold the past over your head
I'll speak my mind whenever I feel slighted
I am hellbent on extracting all of my revenge
So take heart, sweetheart
Or I will take it from you
I slip concealed back to the keep
Concede to do the work for free
We prey as wolves among the sheep
And slit the necks of soldiers while they sleep
You constantly make it impossible to make conversation
We're comatose but audible
And I liked it the farther I get out
We passed it off, but it's all on us
Well common conversation, it took everything I got
And I like it the farther I get out.

2008-06-23T16:40:00.001-07:00

And so I had a vivid dream:

She pierced my skin with fifty needles
Each one tipped with a promise from the earth
And as the steel entered the skin I turned my eyes within
And welcomed visions of my birth

She held me in her arms as I laughed like a child
As new colours flowed in my veins
In her cradle I knew love, I knew gratitude
And I knew nothing could ever be the same.

To dream about dreaming.
To call forth on the chemistry which creates the sights we see in sleep.
To discover your meaning.
To control the central cause of who we all are underneath.

It's in all of us
It's in all of us
The most feared and illegal
Is legitimated by our very being

If we could pick the lock to these chains we are taught to embrace.
We could build shrines to ourselves and be our own gods to venerate.

It's in all of us
It's in all of us
The very thing we can never have resides in all our minds
And when we sleep we dream, and so we taste it each night.

We taste freedom each night
And wake to invisible slavery at the hands of all we 'love'

All the debris of the day to day
Destroyed and diminished and faded away
All the constructs that distract, man made, must be reduced
(We must journey through our own bodies to find our purpose)
We must travel in four dimensions, outside conventions of human thought, to discover the truth.

2008-06-23T16:15:00.000-07:00

"Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), is a naturally occurring potent psychedelic drug, found not only in many plants, but also in trace amounts in the human body wherein its natural function is undetermined. Structurally, it is analogous to the neurotransmitter serotonin. In the central nervous system, serotonin plays an important role as a neurotransmitter in the modulation of anger, aggression, body temperature, mood, sleep, sexuality, appetite, and metabolism.
Several speculative and as yet untested hypotheses suggest that endogenous DMT, produced in the human brain, is involved in certain psychological and neurological states. As DMT is naturally produced in small amounts in the brains and other tissues of humans, and other mammals, some believe it plays a role in promoting the visual effects of natural dreaming, and also near death experiences and other mystical states. A biochemical mechanism for this was proposed by the medical researcher J.C Callaway, who suggested in 1988 that DMT might be connected with visual dream phenomena, where brain DMT levels are periodically elevated to induce visual dreaming and possibly other natural states of mind.
Writers on DMT include Terence McKenna. Though most scientists who study psychedelic drugs treat their writings with skepticism. McKenna writes of his DMT experiences with a decidedly less skeptical slant, often presuming that the drug's "intoxication" is indicative of realms of consciousness equally as valid as waking-life if not moreso.

DMT is classified in the United Kingdom as a Class A drug."

2008-06-21T14:38:00.000-07:00

My bed is a sofa bed, and I always have it folded up into a couch until right before I go to sleep. It's innocuous enough, but I hate having it all flattened out, because it's a double bed, and so literally every night, every single night, the last thing there is to see is the space where someone else should be. The emptiness that should be someone who loves you instead.
At the time I should be most at rest, I'm at my worst. Literally face to face with the flood of thoughts that comes rushing to form the shape of a face, of a warm body. I should be resting, but I'm fighting for my life. In the dark. Silently. Alone. And the question I'm always left asking is: how did it come to this?

Also, I've started to grow more aware of people actually reading these, and thats fucking with me too. When they look and me, and they know, what are they thinking?

2008-06-21T14:31:00.000-07:00

We could have sailed on in this fragile little boat but we hit the rocks time and time again
Until a patchwork hull became all that was between us and the end.
Our lungs would fill to the brim with the ocean, we would lie leagues below the surface
I am adrift in your seas, I do not deserve this.

When the skyline got dark, I could have taken us safe to shore
We would shelter together, out of the weather, hidden from the passing storm
But the stars tell stories, and they have written that I shall sleep alone tonight
And that you shall rest your head on pillows that are not mine, living another life.

2008-06-20T15:47:00.001-07:00

It was all going so well, too. A little holiday in my head, from myself. I was building, and I was ready to grow.

2008-06-20T15:27:00.000-07:00

I feel a little sick when I think too hard today. Really. Since I woke up it's been a constant effort to distract myself from the one or two things which have made themselves bold in my mind, and while it's worked for the most part, I can tell that they are there. Physical things I can normally do, like songs I can normally play, have become harder or impossible in parts. On the one hand it's remarkable to consider that how the mental can affect the physical so strongly, but on the other it's frustrating and a little scary. And this is partnered by the sad fact that I've come to accept this as how it is. Rise and fall, and keep falling til you stop and start to climb again, with no one to really help you because they're all at the peak watching cluelessly, and you can't really shout for help because it's them you're climbing for, and if you really show how much you need their help they might go on without you. It feels like walking around in a bubble, and someone is slowly pumping the air out until theres nothing to breathe.

Fuck, I wish it was simpler to articulate the mess that's in my head sometimes. Like, I wish I could just paint a canvas a certain colour, and say 'thats how I feel', and have people understand completely. Thats the way. All the problems I find with this stupid 'hold-on-you're-talking-about-not-being-able-to-talk' thing, and the cowardice which gets further compounded by this backhand way of delivery, they would all be gone if only I could paint a colour, or create a sound, to show everyone what it is I waste so much time and so many words struggling to say.

Fuck.

2008-06-12T10:15:00.000-07:00

I realised today that if I'm buying an album or dvd which I think is embarassing, then I get it online because of the anonymity.

If I'm buying an album or dvd which I think makes me look cool, I buy it from a shop, and try to get served by the person who I think will appreciate my choice the most.

When I go to bookshops, I sometimes pick up books that I think will make me seem smart or trendy, and skim through the pages without actually paying attention. Coffee table shit about pop art, or aging literature which is lost on me, because in fact, I want to go to the graphic novel section, or the music biographies.

2008-06-03T16:45:00.000-07:00

If I can't be brave enough to follow up my ideals, if I can't forsake something I don't even like, and in not doing so, relenquish someone I love, then how can I feel hard done by? All the hopeful words that I have spoken, all the naive promises to myself that I exhaled became air, and dissipated. It's nature, simply put, and I can't see how I thought I could evade it, even just this once. I never have before.

Even now, this is cowardice; If this goes unseen, I will claim a failed effort, a wasted plea. I will be a liar; this is no profession; this is a secret, a hidden outburst designed to live in the dark. If she reads this, she'll either be too far away, or she'll be on the edge of leaving. These are the words no-one should be unable to respond to, and yet with my timing, and half hearted intent, that is exactly what they shall become. I don't feel like I've won anything, and nor should I. No tables have been turned, no blame has been shifted. I remain the idiot I've always been, I am in the wrong no matter what my instinct for wellbeing tells me, and now I am merely able to add calculated spite and well positioned callousness, disguised to some perhaps as a self-aware cry for pity, to my pallette.

I fear coming across as a victim here, even though you could argue against me and say that I am. I am not a victim of her, this is for certain, and I will not hear otherwise. She has done nothing except live the life I wish I could be brave enough to lead. We are cut from the same ragged cloth and yet I unravel whilst she floats on the breeze. In the quiet part of my mind which never speaks up loud enough to be listened to, I knew this would happen. For so long, all my dreams have ended up Catholicised abortions, murdered when they should have lived, and it is I who am the killer.

I have done nothing to deserve a love that is anything more than unrequited. I have done nothing to earn that which I want most, and I have thrown away every chance I have ever been given. Despite what else can be said about me elsewhere, here, I have failed over and over again. And these phrases, laid down to beguile, all these words gathering speed until they hit the full stop and explode, blasting coloured shrapnel from the page, are just distractions from this.

At 1.03am, tonight, I can't think about much except giving up, and this is more serious than it has ever felt.

2008-06-03T16:36:00.001-07:00

You who would jump in my boat and steer me to the rocks, you must stand now and bask in the sun til you burn. Come from under your rock, wear your own face. You stepped firmly but falsely, and it was I who fell. Give me back my time and trust, not in equal, but a direct return of all that I gave you. All the smiles and confessions I gave you. Strike them from our history, and then strike the whole thing. Stand down from your nest, I am not yours to protect. I am my own, and I wanted ease. I wanted night time sweat and touch, and simple day time silence if we met. If I would have been hurt it would have been my doing, and I would have been better for it. I remain unscarred, and you remain proud. I remain unscarred, but I look at her and I wonder. And then I look at her and sigh. And then I look at you and see good intentions in bad practice. I see selfishness, and I see youth.

And you, who would take and never give when I would send you your heart if you asked. I would have delivered all you could need when you needed it, but now I am open eyed. I don't think you see though, I don't think the thought ever even enters your head sometimes. The day has many hours, and the days never really end, but they have, and there was never enough time for you to spend time with me.
I will keep listening against my better judgement, because I think that's what love is. You are a mess of broken glass, which isn't finished until everyone's cut.

2008-05-30T18:33:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-05-30T18:21:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-05-24T16:57:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-05-20T17:46:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-05-20T16:23:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-05-13T16:50:00.000-07:00

Listen to Sigur Rós.

2008-05-12T08:11:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-05-11T16:06:00.000-07:00

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.