an excerpt

I was inside, sitting amongst a stack of CD’s, deciding which one to put on next when James walked in. He stood reading, as visitors often did, the wall we had covered with lyrics. Black biro burned into the greying walls above a sofa bed that nearly every I knew had slept on. Most of it was in my handwriting, but almost unreadable, I had a habit of swirling most of my letters together, making giant loops with the y’s and g’s. People always tried to spot spelling mistakes, or parts of the songs we had misheard, but they were never right, we checked it about a hundred times. At other times they would bring us crumpled pieces of paper with lyrics jotted down for us to write there (which we did without discrimination) - and I was afraid it would grow, tree-like, branches heavy with sadness to take over the walls of the house.

'i carry your heart'

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

-- e. e. cummings

Tired eyes and elaborate dreams.

1:33 am

I want something more.

More than work and drugs and sleep.

Something destructive, loving, surreal and explicit.

But what?

Sundays, lyrics, rhetoric and other such bollocks.

she was all right cause the sea was so airtight she broke away

she was all right but she can't come out tonight she broke away (Interpol - Stellar Was A Diver)

I hate Sundays. They are tepid days always fuelled with the faint feeling of impending homework or lately, riddled with hangovers. Today, I am in St. Kilda hoping that instead of smoking rollies and finishing the last night’s wine, covered in last night’s make-up, some sea air might convince me that Sunday’s aren’t entirely loathsome. I follow my nose to the beach, passed vegetarian restaurants, dimly lit bars and crab stalls until I catch it - that faint smell of salty air between a mixture of coffee and nicotine that hangs around the cafes invitingly. As I walk down a white-washed backstreet (I don’t know the area at all, I am literally chasing the smell) I see that first glimpse of the sea.

all this time you were chasing dreams,

without knowing what you wanted them to mean. (Jose Gonzalez - Cycling Trivialities)

What is it about the ocean that enthrals us humans so? The mystery of nature perhaps? The seemingly endlessness? To me the it is the day time equivalent of looking up at a starry night sky. (Though it often conjures up childhood nostalgia and the left-over guilt of skipping school to hang around with boys at the beach.) Looking at it gives you that terrible smallness that is so torturingly enjoyable, almost like an out of body experience or a shot of tequila.

we'll cut the whip and lose the anchor

as long as you jump the ride (Joan As Police Woman - The Ride)

All that beauty that we don’t understand at all. A feeling of shallow loneliness washes over me, thinking this, and I quickly change the music I’m listening to… something upbeat… ah, hip-hop.

don’t you go and let the world bring you down (Shapeshifter - Electric Dream)

I fear anything acoustic might Do Me In.

Now that I’m sitting, journal pressed against me, away from the wind, sun probably gleaming off my white forehead I dare to put on something melancholy.

but alas, I cannot swim

I'll live my life regretting that I never jumped in (Laura Marling - Alas, I Cannot Swim)

To maybe tap into some poignant, some trapped genius that may/may not be lurking in my lentil-burger-flavoured-breath. What is the best condition for us writers to write? Between the thirsty hours of midnight and day break? In this indulgent loneliness - when we seem compelled to act on some Sylvia Plath-like desire to drown ourselves? Should we be falling in or out of love? Should we have been neglected by our mothers and have a father complex? Should we have our tongues planted firmly in our cheeks? Should we be perpetually penniless and drunk forever? Or on some sort of Benzedrine high or look heroin chic? Writing is understanding, isn’t it? But I am twenty-one and have absolutely no clue to the workings of the human condition…

I know when you hear these sappy lines

You'll roll your eyes and say "nice try" (The Shins - Pressed in a Book)

Oh, sod all this, where did I leave that wine?

The Typewriter (a work in progress)

As a child I had a penchant for type-writers.

My mother kept one in the cold out-house that as children we were not allowed into, on account of my sister having fallen and cut her chin. Perhaps it was also to do with her dislike for anything eight-legged stealing it’s way into the house that instilled the fear in her warnings.

Unnoticed, however, I would visit that grey and enthralling machine nightly and return to smudge ink finger prints across walls in my bedroom.

love rhymes

"I have loved to the point of madness; that which is called madness, that which to me, is the only sensible way to love." - Françoise Sagan