Because We're Dead: September 2010

I shall start this by saying that I have a ma-hajor girl crush on this woman. She is a sexy, kooky, dangerous, hilarious and extremely talented musician, and I wish I could put her in my pocket and take her home with me, but I don't want to deny the world of her. And you will be hearing about her, don't you worry! Soon the whole world will know the name Megan Washington!
This is of course sparked by me and lovely going to see her perform at the Corner on friday night, which was just brilliant; she was so full of energy, she looked gorgeous, sounded amazing, and you could just tell she was so stoked to be there. We were the first of 5 shows shes playing at the Corner, thus breaking industry records thank you very much, and as well as getting to hear all my favourite songs of hers (Sunday Best, Rich Kids, Navy Blues, Underground, Clementine, 1997 and my first and all time favourite How to Tame Lions, which gave me shiiiiivers) we also got to hear a new song (Plastic Bag, which was rad) a really hot cover of I Touch Myself, and a song about a Gorilla who fell in love with a lady at the zoo. Oh and I should break off from my swooning to say that the rest of the band played brilliantly too, I am always so captivated by her I forget to mention them (sorry!).
The only bad thingI have to say about the whole experience is that I should have worn higher shoes, and also I hate tall people who stand right in the middle of the mosh at gigs; I know you have the right to be there as much as everyone else but please, can you at least move to the side a bit? No matter where you are, you can still see, and you will gain masses of brownie points from hundreds of short people.

I couldn't find any good live clips of How To Tame Lions, so I'm just gonna post the clip, because its so cool

Oh and also, I would like to steal Dan Kelly's brain, and have it tell me stories. Or I could just steal Dan Kelly, that's probably less messy.
Listen to this song, and you will understand. Am so annoyed I missed this, I go here all the time -_-

So, if you can't tell from my ridiculous amounts of youtube video posting, i'm a bit of a music addict. Which I love, but it can sometimes make me very frustrated because I have no musical talent to speak of *sigh*. I suppose I would draw paralelles with Rob Fleming from High Fidelity (or Rob Gordon if you've only seen the movie; I highly reccomend both, by the way) in that I am a serial music appreciator, and unless I have a hidden talent for DJing lurking somewhere in my pysche (probably smothered by all my directionless ambition), it's going to stay that way. However, I've also come to the realisation recently how much I love EPs. Sure, you only get three or four songs, sometimes five if you're lucky, but those three of four songs sound like they were made to be together; you have the main one or two that are the definate stand outs, the ones that you know will be on the album when it is released in three or four months time, but these songs are accompanied by other little song children that both compliment the dominant ones and allow the band to establish itself in your mind; they are little slices of interwoven song children, each with their own personalities, like little families, that show the progression of the band and their creative processes. Some of my favourite songs by certain artists have come from EP's - I also love it when bands put demos on their EPs, cos although they arent polished, its like their letting you have a peak at the process of their creation (its like a musical documentary, and I love documentaries haha). A good analogy would be (and I'll go into typical girl mode here and use chocolate as an example) being given two chocolate buiscuits; they are the most declicious chocolate buiscuits in the whole world, but youre only given two, which means you have to appreciate them so that the taste lingers in your mouth, and you develope an often sensationalised opinion on how good they were. This is often better than eating the whole packet because after a while you start to get bored of the taste, and all you have in the end is belly full of chocolate and a stomach ache. That is often what LP's are like for me, unless the band is amazingly talented. I'm not sure how I got to music being like chocolate buiscuits, but I love them both eqaully, so that's probably why.

EPs that prove my point include:
Hey Jupiter - Tori Amos (especially the unreleased live recording of Sugar ooooooh my goodness)
Every Day and Every Night - Bright Eyes
The Recordings of The Middle East - The Middle East
Blood Bank - Bon Iver
How to Tame Lions - Washington
Chocolates and Cigarettes - Angus and Julia Stone
Jinja Safari (just got it the other day, am already in love :) )

So, I thought about my musical talent, which I am still sure comes to naught, and I thought about what I am good at, and apart from eating, baking and reading, all I could think of is writing. I looked at this and I thought to myself, why don't I make my own little EPs; they don't have music to go with them (except other peoples song's that inspire me to write), but if I look through my collection of poems and stories I can see which ones go together, and the progression of both my writing style and the events that inspired the pieces.
Hence, Literary EP No 1. was formed (I really need to think of a better title, but that is for an earlier hour in the night). So far, this contains three poems, and a series of images which will be added as soon as my computer starts letting me load them again *sigh* In the meantime, see if you can find the connection!

The Tipping Point

There is a star in my future
Burning
A bright blank hole
In the fabric of my conscious
dreams
I am pulled
To pieces as muscles fraying like cotton
Lose their ability to remember the shape
Of a woman
Who belonged to no one but herself

She still adores the taste of sugar
And iron
Red blood from minor cuts
From majors falls into pseudo love
She thought she was missing
something, it didn't fit
(and she never grew into my new skin)
So she changed the shape of her mouth
To a perpetual Cheshire grin
Like a bite into a bullet
Painted over bitten fingernails
And cut off all her hair

Soon the wounds healed over
And the diamonds and pearls (and rubies)
On her skin
from her youth
Were trapped inside
a layer of flesh, and a layer of ocean salt
Her opinions would change like a costal wind
At a glance
She could love you
But with a few false words scattered around
Like falling ash, you're the villain
Vitriolic accelerant of gossip
and a good natured assault
Until she was slave to their capricious whims
Her skin became diamond hard
But it shone like carbon

I can see a star in my future
A supernova
We will meet at the tipping point of this moment
And my atoms will become part of his universe
And he will obliterate her
But when
when will these pieces be mine?

Without Heat
For all that I lack,
I could have been a worthy woman,
And given my life for the girls
who'd been scorned by their lovers
I could have been their martyr
figurehead
And so rescued all the men
But from what?
From love
From me
From loving me
And now this consequent broken heart
Caused by bad timing and a desire
For opposites
I know him
And I know me, that I
without a second glance
would walk past their burning sorority
With my hand in his coat pocket
And a song in my heart

So I am caught
With my hands in the dirt
Of this relationship that was built
On foundations that have changed,
Have shifted like sand
By contacting hands
And eyes that tell stories so different
To those well rehearsed lips
Too often rehearsed
For the girl starring back from the mirror
I tell her, without heat
That I am spoken for

She says do not let your body or your soul be ruled
By social obligation
No matter how good the intention
You will always come out beaten
But I have flimsy loyalty to gender
To the ones who hold my ankles on the ground
And bury my conflicts of spirit
With flourishes of emaciated trust
She shakes her wild hair,
and growls lowly
Your first loyalty should be
To yourself
I tell her, without heat
That I am spoken for

It takes great bravery to be happy
And to sacrifice your comfort
For love
We are stagnant in our fancies
Which lash us to our ships
Mine will remain stock-still
Tied fast to the dock still
Because I could not bear the chaos of leaving
On a voyage deemed too far and dangerous
For me
So I will forever remain unhappy
Trapped willing but unwilling
In these too familiar waters of the bay

Friday Afternoons
So I was told I had issues with trust

By my mother, of all people
Who said she would trust me with her life
But not the colour of the curtains
I stood, point blankly staring
Dripping water on the carpet
From a rain walk
From a clenched fist
Crushing flowers I had picked for her
In my fingers
I knew this to be true
Yet, I am not defeated
It is inherited

I have a problem
With this empty space
Between your hand and mine
I stare at it when we sit, willing it into
Non existence
Calculating ways to have it
Surgically removed
This proximity, it does and does not
Make me happy
Oh, how can this be?
I have no issue with trusting you
It is only me (not mine nor he)
And her

To say that I was born heartbroken
Would be capricious
And untrue; to trust
Was once a gift of mine
Now it is a steady penance
Somewhere along the road
I dropped it, and it broke
with a sound like a music box
Glass shattering on wet streets
And I lost the youthful joy
in Friday sunshine, I loved so well.
I cannot sit and wait any longer
For the pieces to be found
By men
They are my responsibility
They trusted me, and I let them down
When I left them spread upon the ground

So I could not tell you how to win me over
Because you have already won me
(Over my heart) my head
Is not so permitting
She complicates my happiness with
Questions and consequence
Which are banned from the chauvinistic
fairytales
Splayed out stories across the pages
like a provocative centrefold
Taunting me with a possibility
Of something I didn't even know I was looking
for
Something I lost
When I stopped trusting in Friday afternoons

Except for the second photo, which was taken by Kat McDonald (from Little Buddah), and the last one, which was taken by Nan Goldin, all photo's are from lomography.com ( I want to make my own, but for now I have to make do with displaying other people's)