Would you betray me, Or save me – Save me from you?

I got interrupted half way through this post but am now leaving for Gisborne so thought I’d just post this anyway and finish it off when I get back.

I have completely no idea where the past seven days has disappeared to, except that it’s been an absolute blast, and that I need to front up to the reality of university starting soon. I went tosee Rusko at the Logan Campbell Centre last night, and was thoroughly surprised that they didn’t ID anybody! It annoying felt more like going to a high school reunion rather than a dubstep gig, and I was getting so frustrated with constantly hearing “woah, what are you doing here?! I didn’t expect to see you at something like this!”. It’s like Sorry people, I’ve gone to more raves and gigs of all assortments in my time than most of you so please shut the fuck up! Is it really so hard to swallow that a jazz student who played classical music, frequents alternative/indie bars and the occasional metal would also attend raves? Nobody at college ever really knew, but by 7th form I went to all the trancey dancey things, but now that scene is pretty dead around here and largely replaced by dubstep. Anyway, I just wanted to have a little rant – this is why I no longer pretend to be friends or even acquaintances of such people from school!

The minute I finish this blog post I have a gazillion things to do and prepare, as I am going to a 21st birthday party tonight, and then having to wake up first thing tomorrow to drive down to Gisborne for the first leg of our roadtrip down to Wellington to see Sufjan Stevens next Tuesday. I’m not too sure how the trip will end up being, actually – because somehow I have ended up being the 3rd wheel – but hopefully it all goes well, and no words of ice are thrown on these hot, hot days.

Here are some photos from Laneway Festival – note that this time I didn’t have access to the photo pit, and took a large proportion of these photos from the crowd, being pushed and bounced… dangerous for my camera, but rather fun – the rest can be found here:

We started the day at Huffer & Vice’s pre-party, for free red bulls and fooood!

The pop-up store’s location.

I ended up buying a mens jacket at a discounted price, which was apparently used in their fashion show.

Loved the fact that Laneway was in the Aotea Square – the view of the Town Hall was lovely.

This is how empty the day started off as.

An Emerald City turned out to be rather nice live, because I didn’t quite “get” them when I looked them up on myspace. Plus, bassist has niiice arms.

Dude looked like he had no teeth – this is how awful Children’s Hour looked, and sounded…

And this is what we did whilst they played.

Difficult-to-eat dessert?

I thank my mum’s long lens that I didn’t have to physically get tooo close to the stage to get shots of Lawrence of Arabia.

Holy Fuck was really HOLY FUCKing good. One of my favourite shots of the day, also.

Ariel Pink was weird. Really weird. End of.

One of my highlights of the day – Blonde Redhead blew all my expectations out of the water. They were soooooo good.

She may dance funny (possibly very drunk), but her voice was the most ethereal thing I’ve ever heard.

I’d say that this is a visual presentation of what they sound like.

I told my friend that I have to marry someone who is still that stylish and classy at that age as the Italian twins.

Sooo good.

The set felt super intimate, as if we were the only people there as we were in the front row, and he even smiled at me! Also because it felt like everyone behind me wasn’t that into them, or really knew the band, and somehow they pulled off a very atmospheric set, even in broad daylight.

I say the right thing, but act the wrong way – If you wanna be with me, baby there’s a price to pay

I’ve fallen asleep in so many places in the past week that I haven’t really been home/online/at my desk, thus the slack amount of blogging. I desperately need some form of decent daily routine to up my productiveness, but the calls of partying is just too loud as the end of summer grows closer in sight. This past week has been quite a whirlwind for me, reconnecting with old ties, severing some recent ones and meeting new people all at the same time. I’m definitely guilty of biting off more than I can chew all the time – starting up more projects than I can physically juggle, and keeping up a sort of rotation-like social life. On one hand, I really enjoy it. I thrive off the copious amount of choices I have with anything from what music I want to listen to/play/write, to who I want to see/chat/dance/drink with, to what I want to be reading and writing in bed, before I sleep.

I had a cold a week ago, largely from Big Day Out, being cold, drenched and tired, and then partying too hard. When it finally eased up a couple of days ago though, what did I do? Drank too much and slept too little again. Aka partied too hard. That, and the storm that New Zealand’s been hit with hasn’t really helped the chances of my immune system with keeping up with me. It looks to be a relatively tame Saturday night tonight, but I think my Wednes, Thurs and Friday nights have made up for it, haha.

The other day I caved and bought these killer shoes for half price. Although, having said that, half price was still fucking expensive. They are ridiculously comfortable though (took them out for 5 hours of dancing, standing and walking around to test drive them that very night, haha), and has resulted in me listing a pile of shoes that I don’t wear on Trademe.co.nz. I’m also currently selling a Sufjan Stevens ticket (Wellington), dress and various shoes. Click here for my listings :).

These bad boys make me veeery, very tall. I’m 5’7″ to start with… the platform itself is 1.5″ and then a 4″ heel wedge…

Mum didn’t say much (guilt, guilt, guilt about retail therapy, but I’m happy with them, haha), except that she looooves the leather. So soft and amazing.

So uhh, I don’t know how my legs ended up looking this tanned in the photo, haha. Very messy room though, am tidying out my wardrobe – dirty laundry on the floor, etc. Typical Amanda.

Aaaaand I’ve finally gotten my Laneway Festival Media Pass. Just smudged out my media outlet’s name until I have the photos and write up to link to.

This track – listen to it. I am so hooked it’s not funny. It’s a mash up of The Strokes’ “Hard To Explain” and Christina Aguilera’s “Genie In A Bottle”. Asides from being pure genius, they happen to be two of my fave tracks – “Hard To Explain” was the first Strokes song I ever heard, and they’ve been one of my favourite bands ever since, so there we have it.

Conversations from Wednesday and last night have really got me thinking about the chronology of my music tastes. I get really flustered whenever people ask me “what music to you like/listen to?”. Because I honestly listen to such a wide variety that I don’t even know where to begin to describe what my tastes are. I know it seems really superficial, but being the music freak that I am, I really do feel that these days, to a lot of people, what music someone is into makes a big enough difference on the impression they leave – akin to that of a first, visual impression. I can’t be bothered analysing my own musical etymology right now, but put it this way, within the two past weeks I have: gone crazy on a one-woman-dance-rampage over Ratatat + relived the nostalgia of my youth in the Deftones moshpit + creamed myself (awful expression, I know) over Rammstein’s set and pyrotechnics from the 2nd row at BDO + gone clubbing at places where “everyone goes” and they play supposedly the “most popular” tracks + had a blast to Tidball’s set at Cassette 9 + spent the rest of that evening listening to pop favourites from the past decade with friends (think Britney Spears, Blue, Christina Aguilera, Back Street Boys, Liberty X, Mis-Teeq sort of stuff)… not to mention, in the next two weeks I will see an array of bands at Laneway Festival that are more akin to recent music tastes + go to see Rusko + be at Sufjan Stevens’ concert in Wellington… I would also love to see Queens of the Stone Age again, but I can’t really bring myself to fish out $85 ish in my current state of unemployment.

Don’t even mention it – I’ve been looking and applying for jobs. And I know that I’m picky, because I want to keep whatever job I get as a part-time thing for the next two years, like I did with my last job – so I don’t want to hate whatever it is!

It’s not always easy, You gotta take the risk. But it’s better than living a life you miss

This is the longest time that I haven’t blogged for all summer, I believe. And this year’s Big Day Out is the first time I’ve been to where it got absolutely rained out. Remember how I mentioned in my last post that I was going to see The Black Keys? Well I bought my ticket a couple of days later, and then a couple of days following that, The Black Keys canceled.

Don’t get me started on how angry/distraught/disappointed I was. I felt thoroughly ripped off, because they were a large contributing factor to me forking out $158, since I wasn’t photographing the festival this year. How is stating “exhaustion” any reason to let your fans down? Whilst I feel sorry for them on one hand, I think it was really shitty of them to pull out literally days before the festival. Surely if they’re that tired, they would have been feeling that way for quite a while now? I think the one good thing that came out of them pulling out was the fact that then I didn’t have a huge dilemma as to how I was going to make it from the front of one stage to the other in record time. There were so many clashes that I didn’t end up seeing Crystal Castles, but that was okay by me.

I ended up going the bogan route, back to my roots. Seeing Steriogram bright and early brought back memories of the last time that I saw them live, which was at around age 14 or 15. Aside from the slight detour to Bang Bang Eche and Ratatat, the rest of the lineup that I saw was was pretty streamlined: Deftones, Wolfmother, Shihad, Rammstein and Grinderman. Had to stand through the sets of Airbourne (crazy frontman stunt with climbing, climbing, climbing…), Lupe Fiasco (sound failure x3? Lost count), John Butler Trio and Iggy & The Stooges, which were all on the stage next to the one where I was situated nicely in the 2nd row.

I’m too lazy to recount everything, but here are some high and lowlights:

– Ratatat opened with my favourite song, “Loud Pipes”

– Later on in their set, I yelled out “PLAY DRUUUUUUGS!” – which caused a few raised eyebrows around me, because I swear most of the people around here don’t really know who they are/aren’t that into them – and they played it, fuckyeah. I’d say it was more of a psychic thing (likened to when I called out “BRIANSTORM!” at Arctic Monkeys and they played it), rather than the fact that they heard me, haha.

– Rammstein’s pyrotechnics was AMAZING. Being in the 2nd row, I could feel the heat heat heat. I’ve never seen such a perfectly-timed display before. The only, only thing that was mismatched was the final drum cymbal crash with the last set of ka-BANG!s – and he looked thoroughly disappointed with himself about it, too.

– Did I mention Rammstein’s costume’s were fucking ace as well? Seriously. Google up some pictures, people.

– There must be something in the air at BDO annually, because it’s probably the one day of the year where I get hit on enough to last a life time. My friend Dale asked if I ever got sick of it, ha. There are the nice guys who try to make conversation whilst we all wait between sets, and then there are the dickheads.

– Dickhead story: [“you keen for a root?” me: “sorry, what? I can’t hear you” dickhead: *repeats it louder*] x4. Then when he finally gave up and turned around, I flipped him the finger, much to the amusement of everyone around. Seriously, people! Grow a brain or at least fake some class!

– My Canon IXUS camera got broken when my friend dropped it. I feel bad for her. Very bad. So I didn’t really snap any photos. Not that I was going to bother too much, really. But there were a couple of things that I would’ve liked a shot of, from the perspective of a normal punter behind the barrier. Y’know, as a normal person.

Next Monday: LANEWAY FESTIVAL! Just you wait, there will be photos, photos and MORE PHOTOS of bands such as Warpaint, Blonde Redhead, !!!, Foals, Holy Fuck, etc. For now, I desperately need to tidy my room, tend to this sore throat of mine, and get some work done.

I’m trying to put this thing to bed, I’ve drugged it in its sleep. There aren’t many memories I’m comfortable to keep

The painting that I had started in this post last month was finished quite a few weeks ago, but I kept forgetting to post the final product, until a friend reminded me about it just before. I couldn’t figure out the best quick and easy way to photograph the painting, because of the gold paint that I had used – it looks different depending on which angle and lighting you see it at. I didn’t think much about what I was doing when I was slopping layers after layers of paint onto canvas, but in hindsight there is so much about it that I could analyse about myself. This fact scares me a little. I hadn’t painted in yeeears, and I rather miss it; although back in the day I used to do more realistic, rather than abstract and erratic stuff.

I compiled the following playlist with a lot of emotion, and very lack of thought. I say lack of thought because at first glance it will seem completely uncohesive and probably make little sense to you, but I hope that the tracks get listened to. I literally didn’t “think” about what songs I wanted on this playlist, I just chose song after song, and dug up links for them. But once again, in hindsight, there is so much that one could read into my song choices. They all have relevant themes, lyrics and feel. For example, I just noticed that there are several songs on here that are quite long – there are 5 songs that are longer than 6 minutes, the longest being over 8 minutes. The songs are all either very old or very new loves of mine, and each song just feels… relevant. I wish I had a better word to describe this playlist, but maybe the best I can say is that it is very “right now, this moment, this evening” for me.

Click on the bold titles for youtube links of the tracks:

1. In Particular – Blonde Redhead
After a night’s marathon of listening to them, I’ve finally fallen in love. “Such a good band to escape into.”

2. Howlin’ For You – The Black Keys
Looking forward to seeing these guys in 5 days’ time! Their set should be super tight.

3. Hero – Regina Spektor
Hearing this song reenacts the scene from 500 Days of Summer in my head… of heartbreak.

4. Alabaster – Foals
Song from an amazing album, where everything just builds and builds so nicely. Layers. I love layers, and by that I mean I love layers in everything – music, paint, writing plots and subplots, the undertows of character, clothing… I could go on forever.

5. My Same – Adele
Oh, how this feels! I love the crispy accompaniment in this song as well… the tone of that guitar and subtle but precise, driving bass.

6. Tourist – Athlete
This song reminds me of my friend Sinead – she was the one who got me into this band, and this song in particular. Listened to it today, and just… its relevance is killing me.

7. Bees – Warpaint
One of my most listened-to tracks since Boxing Day. I could loop this and its precursor (Undertow) on their album over and over and over and over.

8. Only In Dreams – Weezer
I’ve finally stopped repeating this song obsessively, but last month I gave it a good enough run for a lifetime. I’m not a Weezer fanatic, but this is one song I love. I half wrote a song based on a tangent of this idea…

9. Belief – John Mayer
Something about this guitar line, so simple, but I really like it…

10. But Not For Me – Chet Baker
Unfortunately, this isn’t the same version as the one that I’ve got, which has a very speedy bass solo on it, woah.

11. Sister – Sufjan Stevens
Need to buy our tickets, but I am seeing this man perform next month in Wellington. The lyrical guitar just gets me, every time. From my favourite album of his, Seven Swans.

12. Here In My Room – Incubus
Everything about this song is beautiful – I’m a huge fan of Brandon Boyd’s lyrics.

13. The Lost Art of Keeping A Secret – Queens of the Stone Age
I need to fish together roughly $85 to see these guys next month, ahhh! Not used to paying for gigs again.

14. I Will Possess Your Heart – Death Cab For Cutie
The long build up makes it worth it. In my opinion it reflects precisely what the song is on about.

15. Your Ex-Lover Is Dead – Stars
For F.M.D., because we both know what it feels like.

16. When You Sleep – My Bloody Valentine
I will never forget the day I was introduced to this band and Loveless. So fucking ironic. LOVELESS.

17. Killing in the Name – Rage Against the Machine
Can’t believe they played this at a club last night. Danced/moshed/headbanged to this like the 15 year old I once was, except this time I was wearing rather high heels. This song was far more amazing when I saw it live though, of course – as opposed to in some basement club where sweat is dripping off the ceiling and we have to fend boys off with a stick.

I wish I could stop using this word in this post already, but even the post title is spot-on relevant. A lot of friends of mine don’t understand why I blog, and et cetera sort of questions surrounding the practice of blogging. Ironically, this blog documents my life better than my notebooks, in which I do scribble about “major events” and the odd mundane, daily happenings – but mostly I only ever craft in ink things that are nonsensical, lyrical, extremely painful, descriptive, or all of the above. And that’s why I’m saying this here, rather in some “diary” of sorts, which I don’t actually keep, because – this is it.

A couple of nights ago I had a huge emotional epiphany. It’s far too long of a story to even begin to explain, but I feel fucking great for finally having years and years’ worth of mostly self-inflicted emotional burden and pain lifted off me. Surely I’m not the only person in the world to have been so in love with an idea that you toy with it, torture yourself with it, lay it to rest and then wake it back up, repeatedly, until you can’t tell fact from fiction? And some days, you get a glimpse of the reality that you can see in the mirror, minus all the imaginary artifacts you’ve built around you… but you simply deny such insight as merely doubt. Why is it that we never want to see what we’re blindly in love with, for what it truly is? Something intangible that you concoct excuses for in your head. Largely a figment of your imagination that is based on only a mere strand of truth and reality.

So, reality, here I am. At last. I’ve unloaded a pile of the past, and now I have to deal with the present. I’m not sure I like how this feels right now, because everything I deal with is suddenly so much more tangible than everything else I’ve been living in my head. But it’s for this precise reason that I need to have moved on – the present affects the future, and this is the one aspect of my life that has had the most dire outlook. I can’t remain the madwoman that I’ve been for years, because “to repeat the same action over and over and expect different results is the very definition of madness”, and it’s a rather stupid and self-deprecating process to keep repeating, to be honest.

The problem is, all of the above sounds like a really fine and dandy conclusion to have drawn, to date – but now I don’t know what choices I want to make from this point forth. I am forever a slave to indecisiveness, and wanting to have the best of both worlds. The ironic thing is, one could say “both these worlds you’re choosing between are highly flawed, you deserve better, keep waiting for a new option” – but that’s not really living in the right now, in the today… and we all know that living in the moment is something I’m notorious for. Even when I was overshadowed by the past, and the idea of the resurrection of the past, I still lived too much in the moment, without thought.

What to do?! There isn’t really a right or wrong. Ultimately, I just feel like I’m being too selfish right now.

A reaction starts, when

When I sit down to blog these days, I get really confused as to how to structure the posts. These days, I’ll end up with a couple of dilemmas I can never seem to decide as to how I’d like to tackle: often I’ll likely have something in mind I want to blog about, at length, but then I will also often have a set of photos either from that day or that just got processed that I’d just like to throw in for good measure… the problem is, I can never seem to decide which way round to order it. A huge chunk of writing about whatever the topic of the day is, followed by menial ramblings and some photos; OR, photos and ramblings, then huge riff raff at the end?!

I’m so indecisive with everything. It pisses me off enough as it is, I’m sure people around me must be so sick of it. Maybe that’s why I often form “favourites” at restaurants and such, and I will 99% of the time order the same thing. Boring, you may say, but I tend to go to specific places for a specific dish, etc.

But oh shucks, I had meant to do my whole blog rambly thing and then post photos of my very delicious day, but now that I’ve mentioned food and all, I can’t escape this order. I partied late into the early hours of this morning, and only got three hours of sleep before mum hauled me out of bed to go to the Clevedon Farmer’s Market with her. That sounds like she did a mean thing, but I did promise I’d go with her. We ended up having a scrumptious brunch at Maraetai beach (pics below).

Then later this evening I had a catch up with some friends over an amazing meal at Mezze Bar – the restaurant that I raved about here, and once again ordered the roast chicken with risotto, as well as sharing some Spanish meatballs. It was thanks to that meal at Mezze last month that inspired me to cook risotto twice since, and probably once again, soon!

My solution to aforementioned dilemma – posting a second blog post for today. Why not?! Lots of people post several times a day.

Bottle and mirror art work on the wall of the cafe.


Mum’s brunch order… mmm!


My eggs benedict was amazing.


Mum & I on self-timer & the hood of our car. It wasn’t very well thought out, but we had a lot of laughs taking this photo – we were against the sunlight, and it was fiddly…





Lamb Kebabs – they were very well spiced.


My roast chicken and risotto, again!

SPANISH MEATBALLS FTW!

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