Raves about anything, everything and yet nothing at all.

but you ain’t going nowhere, why you procrastinate girl

Taken at MoMA, New York City.

This is it — there are 12 days before my recital and 19 days before my first law exam. And then, perhaps by November 13th I will be able to con myself into relaxing and not constantly refreshing the “exam results” page.

I’ve been quite sick this week (had a fever on Monday night which carried into Tuesday) and I’m going to attempt my first full-day at uni tomorrow, but it will be Friday already. Words can’t even begin to describe how stressed out I am. I know I signed up for this workload so I’ve got to see it through, but my god — how did I ever think my mind and body are supposed to come of this intact?! I’m 99.999% sure that what I’m doing is unprecedented as I’m taking the maximum law workload along with probably the most important paper in my entire jazz degree (since it includes my recital).

Anyway, to brighten my hopes a little, here is a list of things that I look forward to doing in the fortnight right after it’s all over. In no particular order:

  1. Reading. I can’t wait to read. And read. And read. Recreationally. Without guilt as to what else Ishould be reading instead (i.e. law cases and textbooks). I will read in bed, on couches, in the sun, in the breeze, outside, inside, all night long until dawn — I will read!
  2. Play hockey. I’ve been skipping summer hockey games because I need to attend other people’s recitals, or be studying or practising. I can’t wait to show up to a summer hockey game not exhausted from my long day, and get to stay late after the game drinking beers with my team. I’ll probably throw in “go to the gym” and general “exercise” here too. They don’t really warrant new points.
  3. Writing. I have so many ideas that right now merely exist in some abbreviated, bullet-pointed form all over the place — in my phone, notebook, scattered on post-it notes, etc. I can already feel that I will be turning night and day around like I do every summer — reading and writing until dawn, then collapsing when the birds start chirping. It’s going to be amazing.
  4. Drinking beer. That’s right, drinking beer gets its own bullet point here. I fucking love beer and I can’t wait to grab a box of cold beer and be popping them open in the sun, at barbecues, whilst cooking dinner. My god… nothing beats the feeling of a cold, cold beer on a hot spring/summer’s day. I’ll be scouring for sales of all the yummy, hopsy beers, mmm.
  5. Beach. I don’t really care what kind of day at the beach it is at the moment, I just want to go to the beach. Be it to read a book, write some stuff, walk around, eat an ice block, drink a beer, read some more, tan, tan, tan, maybe even swim if it’s warm enough…
  6. Spend all day with my cat. Self-explanatory.
  7. Go to the art gallery again.
  8. Take a shitton of photos. I need to get my camera fixed ASAP.
  9. Remember that I love playing music and keep doing it. It’s not actually as much of a chore as I keep telling myself it feels like.
  10. Listen to music all day and all night long.
  11. Hang out with my friends and catch up with people.
  12. This doesn’t fit within the “fortnight” criteria but oh my god I cannot wait until my sister is home in December. It will have been over a year since I last saw her by then.
  13. Do other, spontaneous, miscellaneous, unexpected, stupid stuff. (Like suddenly leave without notice, maybe?)

all your words are so magnetic, generational pathetic. and I will do it on my own again, and I will say what I will

There are those rare, rare moments that make me perk up and feel thoroughly, substancelessly euphoric. Moments where I feel the most clear-headed, yet hazy at the same time.

Clear-headed because for a few short minutes or partial-hours, it feels so obvious — what else could be the point to everything? And hazy as the scarce appearance of pure happiness couldn’t feel more inebriating. I expected a good show, but I didn’t expect this.

I’m a sucker for atmospheric music with honest lyrics, and Beach Fossils nailed it on the head. Dustin Payseur’s banter carried well throughout their set, being the type of frontman that never said too much or too little. Having experienced too many awkward singers that carried jokes into the land of cringe, I was pleasantly surprised to be chuckling along to his assertions that they were [ridiculous fake band name] and that “Beach Fossils are next”. And whether or not the stories are true, there were touches of surprising intimacy when he explained what the songs were about, even introducing one as “this song sucks”. Other band members chimed in with suggestions such as “everyone should crowd surf at the same time” and they engaged in faux-fights, trying to push each other off the stage whilst playing.

Dustin hopped off the stage in what my drunken friend mistook as a crowd-surf-attempt during “Clash the Truth” and they ended up on a pile on the ground. Maybe I’ve been too bogged down by the daily slog, but it was just so much fun.

I really didn’t care that I had only slept two hours the night before, already endured a 10-hour day, or that I had a full schedule of law lectures and then tutoring to dread. For the first time in a long time, everything fell away and I didn’t care, didn’t worry and didn’t feel. I didn’t mind that I hadn’t done my readings for class, or that my recital charts weren’t finished. I forgot that I had dirty hair and was sweating from being in my own little bubble. Because for once it was a happy bubble.

To add an even sweeter ending to the evening, at the end of their set, they hopped off the stage and hung out with leftover fans like us. It was the second time in my life that I’d ever felt any level of fan-girl-ness*, and I ended up gushing to Tommy the drummer about how I really dig his time feel. Turns out, he’s actually jazzically trained (somewhere prestigious, on a different instrument) so I guess my ears weren’t lying! Jazz schools and music training aside, what a nice, genuine guy.

I think… it was just so lovely of them. To have played a great show, and then hung out and chatted to us. I don’t know if they’ll remember the moments and words exchanged, but that doesn’t matter. I’ll remember it, and regardless of how fleeting, I found some pretty intense happiness on a fucking stormy Tuesday night. I hope they survived their 40-hour trip to Brazil and didn’t lose any instruments on the way.

When I bought tickets, all those months ago, I had obsessively listened to them whilst studying and expected a good show. I’d thought, Diiv was amazing live, I’m sure the band they spawned from could do just as well. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I can get all analytical-music-student about it, but it’s not about just the music. It was the vibe, the honesty, the atmosphere, the ambience in the things sung and left unsaid. Just some cool guys doing what they love. They were mindset-altering, to say the least. I guess I had better work on an excuse to go back to New York soon?

*The first time being when I met Nick Zinner and it turned out he liked my photos enough to get me a press pass.

P.S. This really sounded like a half-review, half-ramble and I really don’t know what the point in this post was. Nor do I know where this blog is going, but I am going to write more. Maybe not blog more, butwrite more. I know bloggers these days are all trying to find a “target audience”, have specialised blog posts such as “Music Mondays”, etc., and some even monetise their blogs — but I really can’t operate like that. Sure, I write for “someone”, unnamed, uncertain, out there, but I never know who that is until I get the odd comment or email that really connects with me or something I said. Well anyway, this is just an archive of a tiny portion of things I see and do and feel and hear.

so close up your knees, and I’ll close your parenthesis

New York City on Ilford HP5+ 400 B/W film; Nikon F3.

Now that I’m twenty-two, there’s something I’ve been struggling with for a while. I guess I still haven’t really come to terms with my age (it’s too long to insert an explanation here), but this is an awkward stage in a woman’s life, where — see, it’s awkward for me already — let me start over.

Frankly, I feel weird referring to myself as a woman. I realise that I am indeed a woman, and have been old enough to be called one, for some time. It’s not that I associate myself with the word “girl” — I haven’t done so since well before fifteen or sixteen, if I remember correctly — it’s just that the word “woman” comes with so many connotations which I’m not sure I’m ready for yet. For some reason I’ve always felt that a “woman” is someone powerful who, for lack of a more poignant term, has their shit together. I’ll concede that I know people who get the impression that I’m all-confident and self-assured, definitely “powerful” in some way, and have my shit together. But that is just bollocks. In other words, by my own ideal of what a “woman” is, and all the symbolism it carries, I don’t feel like I qualify as one yet. A “young woman” or “young lady”, perhaps, but not quite a full-blown woman. I realise I need to work on this.

Why isn’t there a female equivalent of “guy”? It seems socially acceptable to call a male of any age a “guy”, albeit with varying degrees of acceptability. But I’m not going to call myself a “girl”, especially when I had issues with that word even as a teenager. I can’t seem to find  a solution besides ignoring it, or the practical alternative is to simply dub myself as a “student”. This will work perfectly fine… until I graduate. By then, another set of issues will be triggered, that is, to refer to people by their professions. This is a tangent which I would like to return to, perhaps in another post.

As a side note, I’m a fan of “fake it til you make it” in the confidence department, and I also subscribe to idea that life isn’t about “finding” yourself, but is actually about “creating” yourself. Having said that, I don’t condone any fake-ness and I like feeling that people are “authentic” and aren’t just brand-building, networking, social-climbing schemers. So although I can understand and empathise where people are coming from, I’ve never really enjoyed those bloggers or people in real life who categorise themselves as someone “looking for themselves”. My abbreviated interpretation is: you’re creating yourself and curating your tastes through the means of looking for what you like and love, rather than looking for yourself.

thin air I’ll share with those who care

I paid little attention as I grabbed a scarf, slipped into my Ksubi boots and dashed out the door for coffee with an old friend. It wasn’t until I looked down, whilst sitting his car, that I realised the zipper on my right boot was broken. And so I let loose a wild torrent of profanities.

Seriously — what have I done to piss off the karma gods so badly?! Barely a week had passed since I complained that I can’t seem to get through a whole week without something mildly significant going wrong. These boots were expensive! Even after the fact that I had bought them for half price. The exact same thing happened to the zip on the left boot a year ago, and my awful experience with a well-known shoe repair store meant that I was desperate to try out somewhere new.

A quick google and very friendly phone call later, I was on my way to Shoe Sheriff on Broadway in Newmarket. I’ve driven past this place countless times and have never stepped foot in it, but I’m really glad I did today. The man that owns this place (I believe his name is Peter Croad but I can’t be sure) is one of the loveliest people I’ve ever met. He urged me to try and fix the zipper myself so that I could save $40, especially since I should get my sole and heel replaced soon. I ended up sitting at the counter for fixing my own zipper, equipped with some special pliers and helpful instructions. He then clamped the zipper tight for me and sent me on my way.

I’m still in shock and a bit of awe. I feel really indebted to him for some reason. Not in a monetary way, but in a gushing, that was so kind of you, you didn’t have to sort of way. I will definitely be returning to get my soles done and I urge anyone else in the area to get their shoes repaired there!

The place reminds me of the luthier that I photographed in New York, but I didn’t want to make a scene so only took a couple of quick snaps on my phone.

and I don’t make particular plans cos they don’t matter, if you keep on foolin in bed with my sleeping patterns

I’ve been thinking lately that I’m really not that healthy or good to my body. Leaving aside all my sporting injuries and physical problems that I need to work on, I don’t think that I eat particularly well, nor are my lifestyle habits any good. You could almost say that I eat too well, meaning I love, loove meat (steak!!!) and my favourite green-type-food happens to be spinach, which is also high in protein. This is not a bad thing at all, but I’ve decided that I really need to balance things out.

Like many people my age, I sleep too late or too little altogether, drink too much, and eat too much bad food at very bad hours. So my first step towards encouraging myself to have a better breakfast regularly, was that I went out and invested in a decent blender. I got one on sale for $113.99 which was down from $189.99 — it’s one of those ones with a solid glass jug and the ability to crush ice efficiently. I then went to the supermarket and green grocer for supplies, and went home to make this smoothie:

I put in: yoghurt, almonds, frozen berries, nectarine, granny smith apple, banana and a tiny bit of ice. It’s a lot cheaper than the $5-7 that cafes charge for a smoothie and undoubtedly healthier as I didn’t add in any extra sugar or flavouring powder.

The boy has also ordered some organic goji berries, cacao powder and mesquite powder to usher towards us healthier diets. I know this all sounds a bit overboard, but I could never have the discipline to turn into one of those “clean eating” people (in fact, what exactly is “clean eating”?!). I just want to make sure that I at least eat something healthy every day to make up for my other unhealthy habits that are lot harder to kick.

I also couldn’t help but try my hand at making a soup, since I wanted to see my blender’s “puree” function in action. Considering I’ve never tried to make soup before, I think the results were pretty good for someone that literally made up the “recipe”. In case you hadn’t noticed already, I tend to make things up as I go…

I used: two large carrots, a whole bag of stalked spinach, chicken stock powder, a bit of water, five pieces of toast crumbed in, and obviously salt and pepper. I pan-fried a small amount of chicken with garlic, and towards the end I threw in a small amount of sliced salami to give the smell a bit of a kick. If I wasn’t so full from my smoothie, I would already but gulping this stuff down by the spoonful because it’s good!

This has turned into a bit of a “how lazy, unhealthy students kid themselves into thinking they’re eating healthy”-post, but hopefully I can eat like this more often. And go to the gym! The rowing machine is waiting for me again.

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