Perception and person; musings on costumes and indiscreet questions

Today I annoyed the English teacher who is on maternity leave with her beautiful baby girl Amelia to go for a walk with me (Amelia bedelia came too of course). They’re so perfect but at the same time so unusual. The English teacher is blonde and jogs or swims or cycles the entire time, complains that she is too large now despite the fact that she is skinnier than I have ever been even though it hasn’t been a year since she gave birth.

Anyway, we were discussing The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James. An amazing book with two of my favourite children characters in adult literature. I’m half way through watching the BBC’s production of it which was shown this Christmas, and I recorded it then but am only just finding the time to watch it (as I approach what ought to be the busiest time of the year).



So far, I adore the children actors, but more especially the costumes. The governess (the stunning Michelle Dockery) and the little girl (Eva Sayer) have so far exhibited a stunning dress sense, especially the girl’s head adornments.

I was sitting on my bed (which has a cover at the moment which is covered in pictures of pieces of candy. It’s like falling asleep on a sea of sugar. Rather jolly) with a friend called Matty today, him lounging with a book by J M C Le Clezio, me sitting at his feet. The book is called Terra Amata, a stunning piece of writing which completely blows me away whenever I venture into its strange realities. There’s a chapter called ‘And asking indiscreet questions’ (the chapter before is called ‘saying incomprehensible words’). There’s a couple of these kind of strange chapters which I think are following the development of the main (and in some ways only real) character. Anyway, Matty doesn’t tend to go for the kind of linguistic musings I adore, but he did deign to kind of skip through the questions asking me some of them, the ones which fit with the more normal kind of questions you ask when you’re bored, the kind of ‘if you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be’ kind of ones, except better, of course, because the writer is a genius.

Anyway, one of them is now stuck in my mind. I can’t be bothered to go upstairs and find the exact wording, so, in essence, he says: ‘if you weren’t you, who would you be?’

Well firstly, is that something I could choose? I mean, if I wasn’t me, I’d probably be no one, but then, at the same time, I guess I could be anyone. The question looks at a distinction which I find hard to make, between the self and everything else. Don’t ask me about perception.

I think if I could be anyone in the world, live any life, I’d be thrilled if I could try out as Joni Mitchell. I mean, I adore her music, her life sounds fun, and she met all the greats. Furthermore, she didn’t get screwed over by Bob Dylan like Joan Baez (who also has the let down of emotions which I don’t quite understand obviously but which seem to be unable to really form a truly loving relationship with anyone. Although, on that note, who can?). I mean, I don’t know that much about her, but she sounds awesome.

Other people I’d like to be... I can’t think of any great writers who are women who had amazingly great lives. I mean, there’s plenty of people who I’d chose to be for what they did, but then you look at some aspect of their personal life and it’s like, look what they sacrificed! Is it worth losing what one can accomplish as an individual without the backing of fame in order to make an impact on the world, to do something which everyone can remember you for?

My mom, I think, could have done anything involving intelligence with her life. She was asked to work for the USA’s spy network people (like in James Bond, yes I am utterly unknowledgeable and vague about that). I think she could have been president. But no. She decided to have all us lot instead. And my dad, he used to be a diplomat, but he pulled out and became a teacher, I guess because he wanted to be around his family more.

So there seems to be a history of giving up the public for the personal in my family. I guess my issue with doing famous things is that I strongly dislike the idea of being remembered. It makes me want to curl up inside. But then, it wouldn’t be me who was being remembered if I lived someone else’s life. But then it would be, because I’d be them.

I think I’m too tired to think this out properly.

In the battle of sun Vs curtains, sun loses, and we sleep til noon

Alice pointed out to me today that there is a difference between characteristics and personality. The internet claims that a personality is ‘the complex of all the attributes--behavioral, temperamental, emotional and mental--that characterize a unique individual’, whereas character is a ‘feature: a prominent attribute or aspect of something; "the map showed pink rhinos and other features"; "androgynous oversized bunny thoughts are some of his best characteristics"’ or a ‘distinguishing quality’. This doesn’t really tell you much, although it mentions that the personality traits ‘characterize an individual’ (so it’s obviously really helped me out in life).

Anyway, apparently the main problems of me are more to do with my characteristics. I mean, that’s probably a good thing, because it means that at heart she considers me okay. But then bad characteristics are normally pure annoyances, which is indicative that I will probably drive away everyone I like by annoying them to death. I could make a plan of action which ends up with me stopping laughing nervously every few seconds, being nervous to the point of awkward freezing up when just saying hi to other people, and generally being a better person.

At this point I question whether that would involve staying true to myself. I mean, if I change that, what am I left with? And then I remember that I am changing the random bits which are about perception as opposed to being about me. So that’s fine. But a bit of an effort.

I roasted vegetables for dinner today. Chop up peppers, carrots, squash, pretty much anything, throw in a couple of tomatoes and halved garlics, heat oil in an oven dish, throw said vegetables in, cover in salt, pepper, thyme and stuff, drizzle some more oil, splatter with water after they’ve cooked for a bit to keep them nice and juicy, and they take like only a bit of time. Oven on 180C. They deserve much dancing and joyfulness because roasted vegetables are often unappreciated as schools shrivel them into pieces of elephant skin filled with water and string. I don’t know how my school manages it.

Today I argued with one of my lovely friends. Not sure how to make it up to her. As she might read this, I’m not going to mention that global warming is definitely happening, and is a problem, but I would like to state for the record that I feel bad that I let an issue like that get in the way of our friendship, and that I’m sorry I did.

I’ve had probably the angriest moment of the month when a music teacher who happens to play in my school orchestra but is in no way in charge of it stole my own personal, awesome, mug, and refused to return it to me as I was late to orchestra and was drinking tea from it when I did appear. I feel this is unjust. Also, she was laughing as she said it the first time, so I thought she was joking, and it turned out she wasn’t. I think if you’re going to be a bitch, then do so whilst looking like a bitch. I mean, she does look pretty evil, but the laughing was unnecessarily cruel. In fact, the whole thing is just vindictive, she probablyl doesn’t think I deserve to be the leader of the orchestra as I don’t want to devote my life to music. If I ever get to be a famous author, I shall write a short story about the incident and have an interview in which I look straight at the camera and profess my undying hatred of that woman.

In other news, I just spent about half an hour reading a friend of mine from California’s quote section on facebook. I did not have time to do this. I will die of exhaustion tomorrow. But here’s some highlights:

Jason: Here. Quesadilla.
Ben: Food. Yay. WHY DID YOU GIVE ME A SPORK?! IT'S A QUESADILLA.
Jason: In my defense, we were all incredibly high.

Ben: Hey, our exit's next.
Jason: It is? Oh yes it is! Oh goochie goochie goo!
Ben: Did you just goochie goochie goo our freeway exit? What the hell? I don't even know how to say that. Is that even an action? You can't goochie goochie goo a FREEWAY EXIT.

Ben: It's not working!
Jason: I know it's not!
Ben: It's like we have some weird telepathic bond!
Jason: You're trying to eat a frozen pizza through the package OF COURSE IT'S NOT WORKING.

Song of today is British Sea Power’s Down On The Ground, as can be heard here: http://www.britishseapower.co.uk/.

exhaustion strikes a girl whose phone hates her

Today I was in an all strings concert. Brass players would have had to be wheeled away for rehabilitation. In fact, any really good musician (I don't class myself with these, but the effect is the same) could probably be forgiven for spending most of the time eating copious amounts of pizza and hiding back stage. Furthermore, it took place in a beautiful old dilapidated church, the kind of place I image vampires will be very grateful for in some strange ‘Being Human’-esque situation. The atmosphere was utterly bashed in by the horrific tones of my violin teacher, whose picture which happened to be nearby, which I wacked in the face in a kind of desperate two dimensional idea of voodooism. Then, despite my having a solo, not a soul who had chosen to attend the concert because of me was in attendance. And, during the solo, in which I was tearing apart poor old Handel, I looked up to find the mayor glaring at me.

On the way home I practised walking like Mr Pitiful mixed up with a druid. This involves stamping, twirling, humming, jumping, and falling over. It’s quite hard whilst carrying a strangely heavy blue violin case. Especially when the wires of various headphones which one is not actually wearing keep tangling one up. And then I was humming the song of today (see below) and did a rather flamboyant twirl only to find myself surrounded by the disgusting little boys who parade around my school, in which I live. To be fair, I felt a bit sorry for them, because they gave me terrified looks and were like, sorry, we, uh, didn’t, um, want to interrupt, er, you. Apparently they’d been sent to return my phone. Which has, incidentally died. Again.

The story of my phone! This cannot be missed.

I never had a phone. I was about 14 before I got one. I was on a Suzuki course (think, band camp for small people, taught with Japanese methods. All on stringed instruments) with my approximately second ‘relationship’, who happened to actually be two timing to be with me at the time. Two of our friends, who I’d known for years and years, both kind of seemed to like me too. They decided that the time had come to END THE STARVATION OF PHONE GOODNESS IN THE LIFE OF ME.

But they only had a tenner each. So they brought me an Alcatel piece of junk which did, I was proud to find, had a colour screen, and £10 credit. You can tell that this meant a lot to me. Especially as at this point my guy was off gallivanting or whatever he did with his free time. I was also utterly shocked because it wasn’t my birthday or anything. Ah, I had so much to learn between then and persuading guys to spend extortionate amounts on drinks for me. And now, the next challenge: get strangers to buy me train tickets.

The point of the phone story is that my phone was brought by these lovely but skint guys as a temporary measure. It’s a useless, but light, and cute, piece of plastic. It would consider having a camera a sign of the deprivation of the new age. It would rather implode than receive a message which is more than one page all at once, because that would be a sign of weakness. It refuses to be dictated to about when it shall turn on, or when it shall accept messages, even when the inbox is utterly empty. Don’t even think about trying to persuade my phone that when a charger is plugged into it, that means it should charge. Oh no. When a charger is plugged in, you need to get the angle of said, perfectly round, charger just right, and even then it might decide that it is just not worth the effort. Why accept energy when one could just stop working for a good week or two?

Did I rant?

I think I did. I am ashamed.

The other soul-destroying occurrence of today was the advent of school photos. This involves everyone else getting out the makeup trowel and me standing awkwardly at the side wearing inappropriate clothing. Furthermore, we had the ‘leaver’s photo’ for all of us in the final year of school, in which all the really cool kids stood at the front and the guys took off their shirts or sat on top of golf buggies and the girls made human pyramids.

My friends and I all wore hats. I did go a bit crazy and add in a purple cloak. I’m sure that we will be hidden behind all the exciting things at the front, and we’ll probably all look a bit peeved. The thing is, it doesn’t matter, and at the same time, it’s hugely important. I mean, it’s an individual experience which can never be repeated, I guess. But there are so many photos of me with the people from there who I actually care about, that these are more just a general reminded that I managed, at some point, to escape from the groups which would have wanted to stand at the front. Do I sound bitter? Or does the fact that I’m exhausted and vaguely frustrated over my music come through?

Song of today: Laura Marling’s Old Stone. Kind of sad, but then ‘scream my name, a childish game’. It’s like some sort of iced tea, kind of not entirely one thing or another. And then it all builds up and I find I’ve stopped everything I’m doing to listen to it. I also am slightly obsessed with her song Night Terror. I adore the way that the lyrics are so strong and at the same time so fragile. The rhymes and repetition enhance the words – the dreamlike qualities. And then ‘a candle at my chest and my hand on his knee’ – such proximity, and the candle, kind of scary but also lonely and yellow and half comforting. And the screaming. My creative writing’s always really manic, full of screaming and trembling and so on, so this kind of strikes a weak spot I guess.

Like this:

‘Once he swallowed a silver burning star
which mixedsweet unbeing with old life,
smelling of moon shine blooming petalled cores.
Little to love but less to hate
in the lonely lessons in lust, losing
himself on rails, jumping lamb-green leaves,
skipping past mindless boats, cloaking his unrecognition.
Now he’s hopelessly entwined in rotting arms,
noticing nothing for leagues over his palms.

Tremble. The drowned man tugs them through
the ribcage of his silent lullabyed heart.
Strands lift gently to cloak death’s vision,
but his empty hollows awaken to follow
hopscotched eyes rolling to echo the sky,
and the seaweed – speared blue – on sands.’

This definitely needs reworking.

And the glorious Matt sent me this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTUbQ5kmaC8&feature=related which is apparently made with a music box and therefore is full of win.

An explanation of my existence

Better than chocolate is a reference to Ani Difranco, who I think is appropriately independent thinking and un-modern. It’s also a reference to my love of really good food. It’s probably the highest of praises, to be better than chocolate. Good chocolate, meaning dark chocolate. Things that are indescribably intense always equate to food terms for me. And it seems to me that ‘better than chocolate’ is more than likely that it’s a reference to sex as well. And as Ani Difranco was for a while rather uncertain about her sexuality, I rather appreciate it.

Over the last two days I went and had coffee with two friends of mine, both of whom are dark and small and pretty, both of whom are awesome people with whom I can randomly quote Shakespeare or T S Elliot at and not feel like a complete fool. There are some subjects which are always going to come up in such long meetings as these ended up being (both took all afternoon up, joyfully, so I have done no revision at all). I feel the need to get my thoughts on these subjects straightened out, so here I am.

I have of course timed this impeccably. I have less than a month until my first exam this summer, not counting the ISA paper I’m sitting very very soon. I don’t think it’s tomorrow. But it might be. What’s more, when I’ve finished with them all, I’m going to my friend’s prom, and then the summer ball which my school has instead of a prom, and then I’m done with school. And then I’m going to the Hop Farm Festival where I’m seeing so many amazing musicians I think I may implode, enough, in fact, that I’m looking forward to the experience more than I look forward to the next time I drink Highland Park whisky. I did mention that all things equate to taste terms, didn’t I?

Bob Dylan, Laura Marling, Pete Doherty, Seasick Steve, The Magic Numbers... I may well explode with joy.

Song of today, though, is Matt Costa’s Mr Pitiful. Because the movie is beautiful and pretty much summarises my life, and because the wonderful (in music terms) Mr Leo threw the name at me and so today was the first time I heard Matt Costa. His creative facial hair reminded me of the Avett Brothers. Whose song, Bella Donna, incidentally, is like a ristretto. That good.

Best coffee I’ve ever had was in this little Italian coffee and gelato shop in Bournemouth, where they put real chocolate ice cream (not gelato I think, although I could possibly be wrong) into a couple of espresso shots. I thought I would melt like the ice cream started to.

The point of all this being, that I am quite capable of getting absolutely distracted very easily. I’d like to pay homage to Mailee whose fault it is that I even have a blog, by copying the form of one of her paragraphs but replacing the key words so that they apply to me:

If I were an arpeggio, I’d be F sharp major. If I were a part of the 20th century, then I’d be the early 1960’s. If I were a piece of furniture I’d be a picture frame. If I were a decoration, I’d be a candle stick. If I were a season I’d be summer. If I were a song, I’d be a folk song. If I were a colour, then I’d be yellow. If I were a sound, it would be that of voices dying away. If I existed as a time, then I’d be 6am on a Saturday.

I need to play the piano more often.