Daughter, Music, Ghosts & Souls

A church in Reykjavík, Iceland, with uncushioned pews and people standing in the aisles. The music had become applause had become blurred voices shufting winter coats scuffed shoefalls as the audience changed shift. I did not stay. 

A town on the other side of Glasgow, Scotland, but the supporting act was not who I thought it was. I did not buy tickets. 

The Corner Hotel, Richmond, on a Tuesday night. Some threshold has been crossed and now going to a gig is an ordeal. I'm tired, it's late, I don't want to wait stand be crowded make the long trip home. But I do. 

Daughter played an extraordinary set, one of the best shows I've seen a long time. Summoned back for an encore they hadn't planned to play, they kept a crowd silent, attentive, devoted. 

The skeleton is designed to drink music. I tilted my head and stretched my throat, and the beating heart of every song was played out in my breastbone. The heart cannot help but beat in time. 

She sang,

"I want you so much"

And the hanging guitar dropped out of hearing as she sang,

"But I hate you guts."

And we heard ourselves sing those words, alone and as a crowd, and a self-conscious laugh tremored across the room. In that moment, the number of people present had doubled, as before each of us stood the spectre of the one who had rent us asunder. 

You were my ghost, standing among so many ghosts. But this song is years too late. There are no scars I bear that you can lay claim to; to survive you, I had to change my shape. A shape I chose. 

When you are jostled to the surface of my thoughts, it is with affectionate exasperation I hold you. I forgave myself long ago. 

Music, this music, has power over space. Instead of watching my heart from the outside, the music sat me well inside, and this unpredictable meaty box became a grand ballroom by vaulted chambers with tiled floors and ornately-framed mirrors. The candle chandeliers are unlit, covered, curtains and veils and shadows, and there is naught but to watch ribbons of pale green music thread through these cavernous spaces, filling each room with exquisite emptiness. 

She sang,

"If you're in love you're the lucky ones..."

I stepped out into car lights, street lights and a brash moon. A train takes me to another train and I go home. 

To you.

Ólafur Arnalds - Live in the Lobby

As part of Live in the Lobby, a series of free concerts hosted by the Reykjavik Downtown Hostel, Ólafur Arnalds played a neat little set, and BY JOVE, WAS I EVER IN ATTENDANCE.

Setting up for Live In the Lobby in Reykjavik. by sirtessa

Accompanying him was a string quartet, and unfortunately none of my photographs of them are worth sharing. Tragedy, as they were glorious, and there really is nothing that can be compared to listening to stringed instruments being played live and perfectly.

In the music I could hear the landscape I beheld yesterday. I could hear the supreme absence of trees, bushes, shrub and growth, I could hear a land in which a note will never die, the wind will carry it on and on over the snow dunes and gracefully languid hills, with nothing to break it, and perhaps nothing to hear it.

They are scores that are stripped down to the bone, so reflecting that vast emptiness of the tundra. Perhaps Iceland could be captured by a full symphonic orchestra, but...that, to me, feels like too much. Too crowded. Too many voices, in a land that is voiced by only a few. Great voices, such as the sea, the endless wind, and grumbling volcanoes, great, but few. Not necessarily lonely, but lonesome none the less.

Having not seen Iceland in summer, I have to wonder how it would present itself in music.

Sublime; then disintegration. #liveinthelobby #olafurarnalds by sirtessa

An outsider's impression. I am projecting into the music.

I would have gladly payed for tonight's concert. Arnalds's music can be found at Erased Tapes (site down at time of writing) and BoomKat. If any of you have been curious as to my type of music, this is a prime example of what has been speaking to my heart of late. Should any of you be in town, he and the string quartet will be playing another concert at Harpa on the 17th.

Takk.

iDie

Hal III is dead. Long live Hal III.

There is no middle ground with memory and iPods at the moment, the jump goes from 60GB (which is too little) to 160GB (which is waaaaaay too much). As such I hit the nearest Apple Store and made an appointment with the Genius Bar with hopes of resuscitating Hal, because I am traveling and in transit and I bloody need all my music with me at all times.

They had some massive global infinite database which, when Hal's serial number was entered into, produced his date of purchase; 24 December 2006.

Five years old, okay, yeah, I guess we've had a good run.

He really was dead though, and I wasn't interested in spending heaps of money on a new shiny thing, so I then visited a second-hand dealer, and found a 120GB classic for significantly cheaper. Still money I wasn't intending on spending, but not a frivolous purchase I think.

Hal IV is all set up. Before syncing, 'Owner's iPod' indicated it had two songs stored upon it.

The G Line, Metropolitan Ave

I sat on a wooden bench opposite, jotting things in my note book while these two fresh-faced and earnest young men began busking on the platform opposite. Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am-

Metropolitan Ave, the G line by sirtessa

perfect weather to fly

There are only two things in the world that can heal me, comfort clean rejuvenate revitalise remind me; mountains and music.

Much money and time has gone into taking myself to mountains - the Andes! the Himalayas! - and it is effort enough that it only happens maybe once a year if I am particularly studious. Music is much more obliging. There's just some special power these two things...these ideas have, the power to erase an identity while maintaining an awareness. The power to make you so irrelevant and insignificant that you are free.



But it must be live, and it must be loud. I couldn't breathe because the music filled my lungs and there was no room for blood with the music roaring in my veins and there was no space for me-

And I am free.

This is. You see. The medication.
The medication is a thief. Perhaps it took the edge off the hurt, but it took the altitude from the highs as well. Take me away from me and I am a roaring fireball of joy. So often I am stormy seas, I am the howling heart, I am fury - the medication does not take that. And I can howl from delight just as loudly, the earthquake is from glee, the satellites buzz my ear I am so high so exhilarated so glorious.

It takes important things. They are all important things. It has stolen what this blog post was going to be about.

Of course I cry anonymous and alone in a crowd. The music demands nothing less than to pay fealty to its majesty. But I also cried from grief, as even as I was giddy with love, I knew this couldn't last. This magnificence is like smoke; you inhale and it is everything, and then, you exhale, and it is gone.

This message is for you. by sirtessa

I wanted to say to you, that, right now I am a superhero. I love you strangers known and unknown, and could heal all your heartsores by just looking at you, because I'm radiation, you can't see feel taste touch hear the wonder and I can't contain it, it's bleeding from me and into you and loosening your fears. All I need do is hook my littler finger around your thumb and you'll be up here with me, among the satellites. Tonight is beautiful, and tomorrow will be too.

I wanted to say that, while it was true.


But I have exhaled.









And it is not.

Cross Section of Strata Emotional and Forgotten

There is a marked difference between the previous two posts. Not in terms of the emotional megaphone confession of soiled laundry and public displays of melodrama, but where they came from. One typed, one dictated. The dictated is the shorter by far. Perfunctory. Concise. Not even attempting to furbish the reader with details or texture because the Dragon is not my voice. It is a translator, and even the best translators lose some ethereal poetry of being when taking meaning and filtering it from one language into another.

In terms of pure logistics, the Dragon cannot keep up. It mishears so many of my words, and so every sentence is broken midstream as I correct and correct and correct. Perhaps the Dragon could keep up with a train of though; it can only fail miserably and watch this crashing satellite flash by.

This is my voice. This, unheard and sometimes unseen. Chewing the inside of my cheek as I hammer furiously on the keys and burn up in the atmosphere - is there nothing so exhilarating as choosing your own destruction, brilliant and slashing the twilight sky caught only in the periphery of a stranger's eye, knowing that your end will be to disintegrate without ever touching a soul or crush all those present at your termination - because I am sitting here typing this, this small act this small slight act, and my stomach quivers with old excitement that runs too deep to ignore, and my wrists ache, my neck aches, my shoulders ache, and in doing this I will amplify that pain and the consequences will stretch languidly across the week ahead.

The choice is always one pain over another. I'm tired.

Last night I took myself to the Butterfly Club and saw Tom Dickin's one-man one-hour cabaret show "Fuck Plan B". Despite the fact that I adore simply sitting in and being surrounded by the curios and sweet lights of the place, arrived at the perfect empty time to have the bartender spend 10 minutes making me the perfect ridiculously extravagant red wine/chambord Bloody Mary, I walked out containing ground zero of a nuclear detonation within my rib cage, and watching the shock waves flatten everything and nothing.

Plan A is being a successful artist, travel the world, inspire others, and follow your dreams.

Plan B is the necessities of reality. Rent. Food. Cocktails and socks.

You don't have to follow many blogs of artists to know that it is a constant struggle to maintain balance between A and B, and the odds are stacked against A. It isn't as though writers even have much in the way over overhead; our tools are minimal and not specialist, physical logistics are rarely an issue and there is no use by date in terms of getting too old to write. All we need is time, and it is the one thing in which we are poor.

It is a privilege to pursue Plan A at all. Art is a luxury of the middle class and up, and yet, and yet.

And yet.

For so many artists, the pursuit of their art is not a decision they get to make.

They are artists because they must be. They can be and do nothing else.

















My dayjob was only ever to support a life that would let me do what I want. It was there to pay for the necessities; food and a roof over my head, and exploration and travel, for these too are necessities for me. My jobs have all been proof of this: they do not and cannot follow me home, they do not and I will not sacrifice extra hours to them, and they do not and I will not let them take up any more space in my mind that what is required between signing in and signing off. Some of these jobs have been shit boring, others exciting and interesting, and all of them have only ever been jobs. I am not career orientated in any traditional sense and am not even making eyes at the corporate ladder. Higher paying jobs I've left unpursued because they would ask more of me than I'm willing to give.

But we all know how that ended out. My dayjob was there to support the writing, and the dayjob required the same physical tools as the writing, and the dayjob destroyed those tools, and I had constructed my life in such a way that no amount of small alterations would be enough to correct this balance. Everything is over-balanced. These past months have been the topple. It is all too late. There is nothing to do but watch the fall, that moment between losing contact with the cliff and making contact with the ground.

I'm tired.

Tom said he'd taken out a sizable loan and traveled the world to allegedly study theatre, and instead wound up writing song after song and performing them to strangers in strange places, and that was...right is not the world. True, perhaps. There are so many trees that we forget to be the whole forest.

I've been looking at this 'scuttle your life move to another hemisphere make no plans and see what happens' caper and feeling nothing but dread and nausea, because I'm at the centre of that plan, I cannot escape myself, and where ever I go these aching bones come with me. Nothing is left behind.

I'm tired. Much as my friends feel shut out because I do not speak of these things, I've leaned on them so much, my feet are on the ground and my knees are hanging low. The only reason I'm not face down and blank on a city sidewalk is because they're holding me up. What resilience. What determination. What illusions have I that I will weather the stress and fear of being alone in unknown and survive without them.

















More strangers last night. More strangers the night before.

















None of these people are known to me. None of these people know me. I could be anyone.

I could be someone who is not afraid of strangers. I could be someone who listens to you for a drunken half hour and takes your stories and antics and uses them to attempt to conceal the void I am but a vessel for, and then I could use them again, somewhere and somewhen else, with my voice, instead of throwing them away as useless, as worthless, as having helped me not at all.

If no one around me knows I'm a nothingness, then, I can and will buy into that illusion.








What's that. Determination. Obstinate pig-headedness. The conqueror and king rolled over in her sleep and opened her eyes a moment, she who would view this as only a challenge to be accepted in order to prove herself victorious again, over all things, and would meet that challenge with teeth-bared and eyes-wild and welcoming all the damage that would come from the battle ahead. She who in conquering the world so conquers herself, over and over.

Excitement. Anticipation. Lick your lips and fantasize about the messes you will make for yourself.








It's hope. It's hope. It's hope. Hanging out with all the shit in Pandora's Box because there is nothing so agonising as hope, and my fears cannot decide which is the greater threat; depression or hope.

Spectacular failure, quiet lie. Tedious failure, thin-worn lie. The fish aren't a school.

















But. It was Plan B that got me here.

I'm so tired, and this hurts like this and like that, and I can't remember what point I was trying to make. Pointless. There are no points, on masses of fear and indecision that change shape and colour like so many metaphors you fail to capture because you have strangled your voice enough that nothing it says is worth listening to, but it must be said, it must be said, let it out out out out out.

I was considering not going. I was considering committing myself and spending all my hours staring at wall and waiting for my heart to stop beating as I can't find it within me to do anything else.

I'm tired. So much has died. Death is a cessation that is not wholly encapsulated in medical definitions. Wastelands and deserts. No fish in the open ocean.

Some perverse sense of curiosity is still twitching. The smell of all the stupidity of the past few weeks is coiling thick in the air and it wants to see what other messes we can make.

Some perverse sense of fury will not stop breathing. It will not let the consequences of Plan B be the victor.

There are no winners in this. But fuck it, I'm going to lose on my own terms.

Schrödinger's Tessa

Music that is loud, unrepentant and live, no, alive, and awesomely alive at that, music so loud it fills your mind and leaves no space for you to think even the smallest of thoughts, music that makes your hair shiver and your ribs ache and for which you cannot help but grin manically, shout incoherently, and be saturated by it, no, not saturated, by absorbed by the music until you are nothing and it is everything. That is catharsis. That is clensing, purging, hell, an enema for the mind as all the shit gets blasted out and lost in the bass line.

That's what I expect of live music, and perhaps sadly what I need of it as well.

I was standing in the Corner Hotel last week. It was a Tuesday night, and I was alone in the crush of bodies before the stage, too hot but armed with water, mindful of those around me, resigned to tall people in front of me, and the band was good, they were fantastic at what they did, an incredibly tight and smooth performance with unebbing energy, but-

But.




How to say this. My grip on my voice is uncertain of late, voice being such a slippery thing and I no longer have gentle confidant hands, I'm clutching and snatching too quick too tight and it's getting away from me.

How to say; I did not go away. How to say; I was neither saturated nor absorbed. How to say; I stood in the music, and apart from it.

I was waiting to be filled and full of something other than me, and so have some brief respite from the self-absorbed burden of being me. The spaces inside me were near quivering with anticipation of that storm of sound to come in and blow all the detritus of doubt and fear away and sweep all clean and clear, and those spaces waited, and waited, as the music beat in my bones and blood and came nowhere near me.

It's hard to control that little upwell of panic when one of your crutches breaks.

I kept moving. You can't help but respond to such volume when those around you answer the same call, but my hands were in fists and my teeth were clenched and I was already writing this post over and over, trying to define what it was that...what it was, what any of it was.

The invasion of living music into the mind serves not only as a clensing and purging process, it presents also the opportunity for a controlled instance of recognition. That is, the loss of self is defined as being the loss of the conscious and self-aware self, which in turns allows the unconscious and instinctive self a moment to rise to the surface and free of conscious oppression, be heard.

When the idea of Tessa is put aside, even for a moment, then foundations upon which that idea is constructed are bared.

That is my howling heart, resonating with the roar in my blood and bones, roaring free and uninhibited and anonymous in the roar of a hundred other voices.

I could almost feel it, almost, thrashing and gnashing and trying to get out get out get free. Here and there, in snatched moments, the music echoed something inside, for a moment there was synchronicity, but only for a moment. The show ended, and my howling heart had not surfaced.

This is perhaps an extreme example of the state of affairs of late. I find that I am fine, yes, I am fine. I feel solid and whole and well, and there are no undercurrents I am actively monitoring. But this being okay is, is, it isn't an illusion, it isn't a sham but it is. It is. It takes so little to rip everything out from beneath me, everything, with such swiftness and thoroughness and savagery I'm left gasping not only from the sting of whatever the world saw fit to slash me with, but with the seeming betrayal of my own self that it should collapse so easily, without even the semblance of resistance.

It is hard to trust myself, knowing that my limits are very much changed, yet still not being familiar with them, having as yet developed no understanding of how they lie and what weaknesses they possess, being now wary of anything and everything, for I do not know what will prove to be a fatal blow and set me back again and again and again.

Not knowing myself is a strange thing. It frightens me. A thorough understanding of myself and all my whys is the only certainty I've had, the only map and compass by which to navigate.

But it, I, it, that howling heart, it is still there. I felt it distant but straining in the music. I will feel it when looking at the carpet in my lounge room, or opening the fridge cabinet in the supermarket, or reaching for the phone at work. It is still there. It is still howling.

It is as though it is in a glass box. Double-glazed to keep the sound out in, of course. I'm sitting here at my desk, typing gingerly with my nerves sawing in my wrists, and this glass box sitting before me. It has no seams. Inside, my heart is a snarling, furious thing, all peeled lip and broken teeth. Thrashing and throwing itself against the glass when I fold my arms on the desk and rest my chin on them, trying to break that glass and have at me. It is so upset. There is such hurt, distress and rage in that wild mean little heart.

As it has always been, I suppose.

But.

I can't hear you, and so I don't know how to sooth you.

I've been trawling through my music trying to find something that will, without volume, let you out. Even just for a moment, even now, at 12.17 on a Monday with the sun out and lawnmowers in the distance. I think that, if I find the right music, if I find the right emotive harmonic that is the same frequency at which you howl, with combined resonance from inside and out we may shatter that glass box and set you free.

But that is wrong. It is old habit for me to assume that which is within me is mine to change. The glass box is an alien intervention. To remove it, I need only stop taking the medication.

I am afraid, my howling heart, of not being able to read you and interpret you, I'm afraid that not having that understanding and thus not having that control over you means you will find ways out over which I have no power. I am afraid of not knowing myself.

I am certain, if I were to remove the glass box, that the understanding would not help me at all. I am certain I would not be able to contain you by mere force of will alone. I am certain you would devour me.

Who is in the box, you or me? Are we dead when you are in the box, or when you are free?

I wanted the anguish to be gone, yes. I couldn't carry it any more. But not like this.

I didn't want you cut out. I wanted you to feel better.

José Gonzaléz - Love Will Tear Us Apart (Joy Division Cover)

Fairy Floss Chaser

Originally pimped by Warren Ellis. This blog needs more hand clapping.

(Hark! And awaken!) "-but not necessity, and-"

It can take minutes for my alarm clock to drill down through my dreams and the barricades of sleep. "Minutes" is plural, and not specific. "Minutes" could mean four, or forty (frequently, it means forty). When the radio (being my second alarm; I never hear the first ten minutes of obnoxious beeper alarm) finally registers as external and irritating, I do not wake. Instead, I'll ascend near the surface of waking, only close enough to have gross motor functions and slap the snooze button.

This generally goes on for an hour.

(Do not ask how early I set my alarm.)

Some people can leap out of bed right on waking. I'm not one of those people. My brain needs several run ups before it can work up the gumption to breach the surface and wake the fuck up.

This morning, I heard the radio within a minute. The music dove straight down like sugar-coated electricity, and my mind shot up, wild-eyed and quite awake, and I listened.

I thought it was bagpipes at first, but it was the war cry of the fiercely needless. Deep booming drums. Addictive stick rhythm. And then they started singing.

I was awake, so very awake, shocked to be so ambushed before the day had even started by something that tasted...like...

A feverish trawl of the Triple J forums with the only lyric the song had gave me treasure. The responsible party is kyü, a Sydney-based band, and the song itself, Pixiphony, is available for free download at Triple J Unearthed.

If it isn't rare enough to find a song that affects me so, I discovered another unexpected present; they're opening for Junip in January, a gig for which I already have a ticket.

Such fortune worries me. Bad things are going to happen in balance.

Suffice to say, I did not get back to sleep this morning.

now's a bad a time as any

Wednesday night I saw Imogen Heap play at Billboard, and she was extraordinary. Musicians who have mastered instruments to the point of becoming artists are always impressive, but she has branched out to master live mixing and looping, making music from the most unusual of found sounds, and to watch her create a thickly-layered and wildly-varying song on her own before a live audience was awe-inspiring. I have loved her music since first discovering her, and now love her even more. Anyone checking can see I've been spamming her on last.fm.

(Enjoyment of 'Hide and Seek' somewhat hindered by the girl behind me singing enthusiastically (you win points!) and so appallingly out of tune (YOU LOSE POINTS!) I had to exert will power to restrain myself from turning to shhhh her.)



'Speeding Cars' is one of the greatest songs about depression you will find. I can't listen to it without clenching my whole existence, it teases the tear ducts and closes my throat even as it soothes the heart. She performed it, and a bar full of drunks sang along, and I was glad the place was dark.

Today I attended a Beyond Blue seminar held through work, which looks at raising awareness regarding mental illness and equipping people with strategies to deal with it in the workplace. I've been wanting to attend one of these for a while, just to see exactly what is being taught and what attitudes are being brought to them. This particular one was tailored to sworn members in managerial roles, neither of which I am, but it certainly was interesting.

Loss of identity came up as a contributing factor for depression an anxiety, which I've tangled with far too recently. When discussing depression and anxiety and the circumstances that can trigger them, this is rarely something that pops up, yet now strikes me as perhaps one of the factors with most cause for concern. To lose a sense of who you are casts you adrift without anchor not only in the present, but renders your future vast and unknown, and your past invalid. You lose you, and if you lose you, then what are you fighting for?

Why fight to keep your head above water at all?

It was an exceptionally good session, and I hope it really does make a difference out there. I know, I'm all for pushing others to seek help while refusing to do so myself, and I'm a hypocrite. I'm a self-managing hypocrite.

Despite being really good right now, it was still a confronting day.

They passed a book around that detailed the various remedies for treating depression. The results regarding the effectiveness of chocolate were inconclusive. I ate a bar anyway.

No, they'll never catch me now.

The above comic is courtesy of Oglaf and DO NOT FOR THE LIFE OF YOU CLICK THAT LINK IF YOU ARE AT WORK OR IN A PUBLIC PLACE I MEAN IT. It's an adult comic, 'adult' in this case meaning 'full of quite sizzling steamy smut' and 'comic' in this case meaning 'fucking hilarious'. It just happens that my favourite two comics are entirely smut free.



I really mean it. Don't click that link in public.

I didn't make a New Year's Resolution because I was out of the country and thus out of my life and thus not in a position to see what needed resolving. So I made a February-Onward Resolution. Which I have now achieved. This year? Sorted. Next!

First week at the new job completed and oh I'm so in love. This thing! This not having my hands hurt thing! I could get used to it, I really could. My novel is growing so! And you should see what I have waiting for me on Monday morning. I can't tell you, of course, it's confidential. Which makes it sound much more exciting than it is.

Amanda Palmer played at the Forum on Friday night, and I went red, red, red and broke in a new red dress and new red boots and had myself a fantastic time. It was a brilliant show. Amanda Palmer never just does a gig, she does a show, selecting her opening acts and bringing in all sorts of guest performers and trying new things and taking risks and making hilarious mistakes right there on the stage. She played some new material, one song of which I'm going to call "Exhibit E" which broke my damn heart it was so beautiful. Cannae wait for her next album.

The sun is not yet set. To bed with me! There's DVDs to be appreciated!

the roarin' forties care far too much

MELBOURNE. PAY ATTENTION.

The Fringe Festival is imminent and YOU MUST SEE VIGILANTELOPE'S SHOW "THE TALE OF THE GOLDEN LEASE", and no, that is not a recommendation, it is a fucking ORDER the damn world will END IF YOU DO NOT SEE THIS SHOW and do you really want that on your conscience NO YOU DO NOT.

We saw this at the Comedy Festival last April. It was a last minute 'what the hell' ticket buy, based on a passing recommendation. I think we saw around five comedy shows all up, Danny Bhoy and Jason Byrne included, and this was the best show of the whole festival, by miles and miles. In fact, it remains the best show I've been to all year. It was spectacularly funny, clever, absurd, with dancing and singing and tomfoolery and, and, you know I am not capable of the lyrical waxing necessary to do these guys justice. It was that fucking OARSUM. Quotes have stayed with us and randomly tossing them out is enough to reduce us to tears STILL.

Tickets are cheap. Opening night is 2 for 1. 2 for 1! Take your friends. Take your cat. Just do something in character and go. Do something out of character and go.

OKAY NOW BRISBANE YOU START PAYING ATTENTION TOO.

I also discovered that Mono will be playing at the Hi Fi in December. This is not the Mono that released Formica Blues, this is the Japanese instrumental Mono that puts me in mind of Explosions In The Sky and the new album by Jónsi & Alex (part of Sigur Rós which I discovered by accident when I foolishly entered Polyester Records just to "look around" - you'd think I'd know better by now).

I also discovered the Hi Fi has a bar in Brisbane. This discovery occurred when my browser had a hissy fit half way through buying a ticket, and in the process of starting over I ended up buying a ticket for the gig in Brisbane. Which should hopefully be refunded, but anyway, Brisbanites, they're heading your way too.

NOW NONE OF YOU PAY ATTENTION.

Mammals Underfoot! An Interview With Emerging Writers

conducted by Jeff VanderMeer, featuring Jesse Bullington, N. K. Jemisin, Meghan McCarron, Shweta Narayan, Jeremy C. Shipp, Angela Slatter, Genevieve Valentine and some other muppet.

I like the idea of 'emerging'. It puts me in mind of the headhuggers in Alien. The egg peels open, I extend my creepy-arse legs over the lip, I emerge, and then I leap at you, shove my gonads in your face and ram my proboscis down your throat and lay eggs in your chest, and then those eggs hatch and a wee bebe alien emerges. From your chest. At velocity.

I would like to one day write a story that has that sort of effect on the reader.

It would probably put me in gaol. Oh well. Totally worth it. You suffer for my art!

Jeff sez:

Every once in awhile, it’s good for a fool like me, entering mid-career, to check the pulse of what’s going on among the emerging writers who will one day call you a curmudgeon. Keeping tabs on this unruly, diverse lot not only lets you see the end of the road coming from much farther away and softens the often abrupt transition from “young turk” to “old fart”—it also re-energizes you and helps ensure that your reading patterns don’t get too predictable. Usually, I keep up via blogs and online fiction, but I thought it would be interesting to interview a few emerging writers about subjects like their connection to the larger community, where they see themselves in five years, what they’ve been reading, and their take on mammals versus large reptiles. A kind of core sample, if you will.

Last week I received my ARC of Booklife, which I read in manuscript format. It was an interesting exercise, seeing as I've never attempted to offer constructive feedback on a work of non-fiction. It evolved from comments into a conversation, and bits of me scratching my head and saying "well, wot I think is-" have been quoted throughout (introverts and socially-disinclined hermit crabs of the world, represent yo!).

(Being an introverted and socially-disinclined hermit crab I find the 'Private Booklife' section - looking at the various internal aspects of being a writer, strategies on dealing with the emotional pitfalls and psychological traps most of us find ourselves in at one point or another - much more interesting than the 'Public Booklife' section - excellent strategies and tactics on PR, marketing, career goals and being a real go-getter. First read through, the Public section left me feeling inadequate. I am not the type of person capable of networking, promoting, or doing anything that, to me, smells like coming on with an agenda, all of which are becoming increasingly important in the current market. But everything I read has been stored and percolating in the backbrain for some months now, which is time enough for me to see what I could conceivably do without making a wreck of myself. Time enough for it not to be scary. It's an incredibly interesting and (depending on who you are of course) useful book - hermit crabs, I know you're out there and staring at the idea of PR and marketing with the same horror that I am. Read it, feel horrified and awful, go away and don't think about it...and later, when you need them, you'll find the ideas have already been planted in your head, and they're not so scary any more.)

Interestingly, I'm listed in the acknowledgments as a "constructive curmudgeon". Now, taking the above excerpt into consideration, what do we get when someone who has attained the state of curmudgeon calls someone who should be calling them a curmudgeon a curmudgeon?

Paradox! The universe is going to collapse in on itself! Run to the hills!







I have no idea what I was on when I wrote those answers, by the way. I don't think anything I said will be out of the ordinary to those of you who've been reading for a while, which probably isn't a great thing. I'm being a twat in front of a whole new audience. To those of you who have arrived here from Clarkesworld - there's just more of the same here, yep, years and years of mental diarrhea. I would apologise for bringing down the standard of a fine quality publication, but, er, well...

Heh. Hehe.

Tessa, I hear you say, Tessa, you used to post actual content. What is all this NEWSFLASH! you have going on?

Dude, I say, dude, I am still not capable of writing. Still. I don't want to. I just don't want to. I don't even want to think. I am not processing. The end is nigh, truly it is, and the cracks are showing, and I'm beginning to transition from whole person to loose swarm of neuroses, and I just don't want to.

(Totally the perfect time to answer questions about writing.)

I've just finished baking triceratops biscuits. It must be bed time.

Good Karma Right In The Vein

MELBOURNE,

Did you know that this Saturday is International Independent Record Store Day? No? Actually, neither did I until a week ago. It is only my duty to play chinese whispers and pass the message one.

Of particular note, I'd like to draw your attention to Polyester Records, who on top of celebrating their independent record store-ness, are doing a charity drive. 20% of all proceeds for the day will go to the Cancer Council Victoria.

So if there are a couple of albums you've been meaning to pick up for a while but just haven't got around to it, Saturday is the day to do it. Not only will you be supporting the musicians (something they always appreciate), you'll be supporting independent record stores (something they always like, and we must keep these babies alive or be bereft of so much joy), and you'll be donating to an organisation that is truly worth donating to. That's enough good karma to last you at least until the next time you jay walk.

I've carved a slab of my pay out for this day. A list of targets has been compiled. It will be ludicrous.

desire the horse, depression the cart

Book of Longing was not the mindquake-causing work of emotive genius I was expecting. It was strangely unmoving, which was disappointing, but from that grew a stillness that was more than the absence of movement. The shapes created by the poetry and music fit in with the shadows One Hundred Years Of Solitude cast, and in that stillness the water was disturbed. Somewhere in depths we rarely venture something passed through. Something vast and so unknown it defies the imagination, and though we strive to give it form, it will forever remain a mystery. We know not what it was, what it is, what it might be. We are left only in the passage of its wake, and the water disturbed.

Lady Sings The Blues

I spent the evening at Bennetts Lane listening to Barbara Morrison sing, and sing, and sing from Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holliday. I've no idea how old she is, but she rocks a shock white afro, and when she giggles and gives her age as 28, I believe her. The way she flirts, sasses and plays with the audience, she's younger than me, and more woman than I'll ever be. I'm in looooove.



We didn't have a full band and stage, as Bennetts is a hard core jazz club, ie, small and cramped and well-loved in a scuffed and tired sort of way, but there she is.

Makes me want to spend the night dancing and drowning in outrageous romance.

Sleep is poor alternative (yet has its allures).

The Red Paintings

I discovered The Red Paintings a little while back. I had one track of theirs, a cover of Mad World, which was just brilliant, probably my favourite version of this song, which says a lot.

Finally, I bought Feed the Wolf, which is one of those rare albums that on first listen I didn't merely enjoy, but had my attention demanded and grabbed and held hostage till the last note ended, at which point I put it on repeat and sat in the dark for some time. I love the cello, but the piano knows me best, and when both instruments come together I can't help but stop everything else and listen.



We Belong In The Sea has that effect on me.

Somehow I managed to completely miss the fact that they're playing a free show at the Hi-Fi Bar TONIGHT.

!!!!!

Tickets have already all gone, but I've been advised to just turn up anyway. And oh I shall, even if all I do is loiter at the door listening. Eeee!

Iron & Wine at the Athenaeum

Set List

1. The Trapeze Swinger
   
2. Jezebel
   
3. Peace Beneath The City
   
4. Innocent Bones
   
5. Pagan Angel And A Borrowed Car
   
6. Lovesong Of The Buzzard
   
7. Each Coming Night
   
8. Woman King
   
9. Wolves (Song of the Shepherd's Dog)
   
10. oarsum jam session
    
11. Boy With A Coin
    
12. Sodom, South Georgia
    
13. House By The Sea
    
14. The Devil Never Sleeps
    
15. White Tooth Man
    
16. Upward Over The Mountain
    
17. Resurrection Fern
    

Sam Beam looked like the living 60's. He has so much hair, he's like a bear. Throw water at him and I bet he'd halve in size. Can play slide guitar like nobody's business, and a voice so tender I could sleep on it. When at last the whole band started jamming, they filled the theatre with this incredible full-bodied sound that was crisp and clear and precise. It's a sound that has evolved far from the folky single guitars of the earlier albums. Hell yes I cried. In the first song. And the second song. Those two have always set me off. They're better live than I could have hoped for.

They're playing again tomorow at the Corner, and I'm more than little tempted to go. But that'd mean bailing on a couple of friends who would guilt trip me to the ends of the earth if I did. Oarsum band alone, or pretty good band with people who make me laugh. Hmm...decisions.

another train of thought too hard to follow

This morning, I turned off my alarm in my sleep. I think. It's entirely possible it didn't go off just to spite me. Either way, I opened my eyes at 7:07am, which was 7 minutes after I was due to start work. It isn't supposed to be light outside when I get up.

This is largely Andrew's fault, for if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have been at Toff in Town for the album launch of ii (pronounced 'aye aye', apparently, although in my head it's 'eeee!'), who I'd never heard of, but he reassured me they were great, and so far his music props have been on the money, as proven by various other music recs and the Adam Franklin gig down Brunswick a couple of weeks back, who I'd also had never heard of before, and you know in an infinite universe there's infinite possibilities, the whole monkey/typewriter/hamlet thing, so there is a chance that I might eventually be pointed towards music that is shit, but I find that as probable as the monkey/typewriter/hamlet thing, and should it ever happen, I'll-

-probably just type in capital letters for a while.

ANYWAY.

They were great. Like a mash of Mice Parade, The Album Leaf, and a whole bunch of other bands that I can't recall the names of off the top of my head, because it all mixed together to make a brilliant, deceptively easy-looking blend of incredibleness. They started with two drum kits having a duel, oh what an opening paragraph. At one point, someone came on stage to play a time machine. Truly, it looked like a car battery hopped up on high school science projects and duct tape, and it sounded like a time machine. He took us through light years of time and space, till the guitars came in and we landed on a cold alien planet, which was initially devoid of life, but time flies, and the cities were built and grew and took over and fell down again.

At least, that's what I heard in the music. They might have been pining over ex-girlfriends. That's why people make music, right? Maybe they were weeping over the fact that their girlfriend left them for their brother. Who went on to have a snip become their sister. And now they want them to step in and father their lesbian love child. Something fucked up like that. But, that isn't what I heard in the music. I heard landscapes and time, and my time in that music was wonderful.

Which was why I was home after midnight, with an alarm set to go off only a few hours later. To be honest, even if I hadn't gone out, I wouldn't have slept. I'd have just lain on the lounge room floor with different music playing, and probably gone through a box of tissues trying to cry out all the poison in my head.

(For the record, I don't have a couch, or any manner of chairs. The floor is pretty much my only option. I'm not down there trying to add to the emoness of my current state of mind, I just don't have any other place to be except my bed, and right now I fucking hate my bed. Nothing but horror there.)

There is a great gap between me and myself. The me that is out in public around other people is fine. I'm not putting on a brave face or forcing a smile. I don't feel the need to, other people just bring that out. I'm not clinging to my moodiness for the sake of feeling sorry for myself. Admittedly, it takes some time to get past it, but not that long. Other people crack me up. People, man, what a fucked up bunch of walking meat sacks we are. You're amazing, stupid, gobsmacking and eternally surprising. What's not to laugh with?

The me that exists in private isn't doing so great. The last few months have been eventful in that entirely non-eventful way which comes only from failing, failing, and failing. Every direction I've tried to go, in every area of my life, I've been blocked, denied, and quietly and systematically fucked over. The last couple of days I've been wondering if this feeling of being entirely powerless and having absolutely no control over anything is the final step towards becoming an adult. I fight. With myself, the world, anything that comes along, 'cause I'm trying to get where I'm going. I've lost sight of where I'm going. I've tried new directions, and they haven't worked, because sometimes you just can't win. There's only so many times you can 'get over it and start over'. I didn't know that, now I do. I'm running out of Plan B, C, D, I'm running out of alphabet. Running out of fight. Running out of desire. My mum keeps calling and asking how I am. I'm not dead, but dead in the water. Going nowhere. Nowhere to go. I've had months to stare at proof of my own worthlessness, and now I can't see anything else. Can't see past it, can't move past it, can't even breathe past it.

Is that division healthy? If the public me was a mask, I'd say no. I'd know no. But it isn't, I'm not hiding anything. There's nothing to hide out there, because out there I'm okay. I'm okay here, because here I'm home home with dogs and creaky floorboards and gum trees dropping sticks on the roof. If it is like a switch flipping, is my personality splitting?

Just what I need, MORE ME.

I censor myself so much, I don't know when I'm lying to myself any more. It's been getting worse lately; I'm more and more aware of how many people read this place, which makes it harder to put things like this here. This isn't written for you, it's written only for me. It's my survival mechanism. It's my sabotage of my mind. I betray my secrets so I can't keep them. This isn't written for you, but you read it, and without you reading it, it doesn't work. What's the point of exposing a secret if no one notices it? I'm sorry, if this is not what you came here to read, but I need to take it out, and put it down, here. I don't want sympathy or pity, I don't want advice or attention, and I don't want to talk about it. Just need it out, out, out. So, now, I take this space back.

This is Tessadom. The shit smells like fucking roses.

Incidentally, that is why I haven't been so hot on emails lately. It's a private me that checks my mail. It's a private me that's lost her voice and can't say anything to you. Responses will happen, sooner or later. (My money is on later.)

I don't know what I need to do to bring myself out of this, which isn't a position I've ever really been in. I've always known how to pick myself up, but this time, I don't have much reason to do so. Was it Nietzsche who said (paraphrased) that man can tolerate any how, as long as he has a why? I have no why. Don't know where to look to find one. Didn't even realise I'd lost the last one. There's nothing I can do, except wait for life to do what it does, and change. There is only time.

Until then, I'll lie on the floor like a melodramatic twat and weep at sad songs. I just preordered/downloaded Ghosts I-IV, the new album by Nine Inch Nails, which Reznor appears to have tailor-made just for me. In The Fragile and Still I found the most resonance. I consider all NIN albums to be fucking OARSUM, but those two resonate with an emotional complexity and maturity that gets in my blood and lives in my bones. Some call it self-indulgent. I call it beautifulperfectsoundtracktomythoughts. Ghosts I-IV has that same breath-taking resonance. It is pianos and cellos and so thick with mood I can taste it, and it tastes like-

It starts with music. It ends with music. Just ignore all that wank in the middle.

i found five fossils in your fingernails

I did actually make a resolution this year. Yeah, a proper one, not that cop-out "sit up straight" resolution I've used every year for the past however many years (which is forever ongoing and never gets any easier).

I resolved to have more live music in my life.

Is this not a good thing? It is. It really is.

I took care of January with Jose Gonzalez, who quite shocked me. I'd assumed his studio albums were multiple tracks of guitar layering, but no! Every single track is just him, doing amazingly graceful and complicated things on his guitar. It was amazing, and I have to say his cover of Massive Attack's Teardrop just. goes. off.

Supporting him was Emily Barker, who I'd never heard of and pretty much fell head over heels for. Her songs contain both England and Australia, and I can hear that in her music. Bought the album right there and then. Unfortunately, the best song, Orlando isn't up on that myspace page, which doesn't excuse you from having a listen.

The following night The Go! Team played at the Hi-Fi Bar, which is sort of fucking great, as it is quite literally a minute from my front door. They were a totally different thing all together, and I had a brilliant time dancing about like an idiot. Those guys go off, fucking OFF.

In February, I was introduced to TinPan Orange, a local jazz-but-darting-through-other-styles group, and because I'm an absolute hussy when it comes to good music, I bought both their albums. Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff. You like your low-key mellow slowly uncurling music, you like your stamping your feet swinging your hips music, you like your sullen sultry sexy music = you like this band. And her voice, oh my! Seeing them again in March.

And of course there was Rufus Wainwright, who is brilliant and varied and complex and intelligent and surprisingly hilarious. We're ever so pleased we saw him, oh yes. Saw his belly button even.

For the rest of February, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is giving four free concerts at the music bowl, at least one of which I'll be hitting up, with my old beach towel and a sandwich.

At this point, March will be fixed up with Iron & Wine and another session of TinPan Orange, and in April Porcupine Tree are touring, as well as the DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist gig - are the tickets for that even on sale yet? I saw posters going up today, but the internet is failing me right now.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is point out any touring bands you think I might like/should be aware of/are just so unbelievably awesome on stage that it doesn't matter if they're not to my immediate taste I'll have a good time anyway. Discovering new genius fantastic wonder music is just as good as seeing my favourites play right in front of me.

(Price is a factor.)

(I'm probably not going to attend any thrash metal gigs.)

(And I'm not going to see Celine Dion.)