Dealing With It

Today I woke up feeling really hungover. Of course I had not been drinking but it was the closest thing to what I imagine the real really bad thing is like. I was also adamant that it was Saturday. I was really unhappy about this.
For one it would mean that the day after tomorrow I have to go back to school. And I still hadn’t finished my homework. Everything was a mess and a total disaster. Metaphorically and ironically speaking, the hangover was the perfect embodiment of what a person in my situation should be feeling.
I crawled out of my overly hot and tight, but thankfully clean bed, onto my floor which was covered with shoes and paper bits. Squinted my eyes and winced at my headache as I looked across at my desk which was overflowing with crap, CDs, paper, software, make up, money, hair accessories and Other Shit I Had To Do. This reminded me that somewhere under all that was the English homework that I had so carefully laid out for myself a few days ago; peeking out from under the frayed corners of the dreaded Vacluse Lament and some over stuffed folder full of bits and pieces on Andy Warhol. Then, my already hazy and freaked out mind starts thinking of all the things I have to do today – of course all of that homework, not to mention take a shower, do the dishes, collect all of the stuff from my pencil case that has migrated out of it over the holidays, pack my bag, wash my school clothes, wash the things that I bought yesterday (including my very sexy gothic school formal dress), make lunch, freeze a drink, let the dog out, feed the fish, feed myself, clean my room, the dining table, the house, make coffee…
Ah yes, make coffee. So before I got out of my pyjamas I went out into the kitchen and put some water in the jug and set it to boil. I then went straight back to my bedroom got dressed and began frantically cleaning up. Starting with getting all the shit out of my school bag, turning it right upside down on my bed. You don’t even want to know what was in there. Then I did the dining table. Then I boiled the water for my coffee again, then I sat down and in 15 minutes I managed to defeat most of the awful somewhat hard to understand English work on The Catcher in the Rye. Do not get me started on this book, I do not like it one bit. I understand the message and the meaning and that it’s a freaking American classic but I am just not into it for so many reasons. I hate it almost as much as I hated The Things They Carried (shudders involuntarily). But I got that done and I packed my bag, froze my drink and stuff. Boiled the water for coffee again. I mean, not doing my homework isn’t a disaster for me, I know it’s all my fault, and I was getting much better at not procrastinating, but this just sucks. So then I got out the washing that needs to be done and I finally boiled the water again, made my coffee and drank it, cleaned something else I can’t even remember now and then I hopped into the shower. Then I got out of the shower, and I was sitting on my bed getting dressed and I heard Kiralee Lynch talking to Dools and Linda on Triple J – “So Kiralee what are you thinking about on this Friday afternoon?”
Friday?
Friday afternoon?!
You’re shitting me? You mean I don’t have school that soon? I didn’t just miss all the morning music shows? Life is not as drastic as it seemed and I still have two whole days of guilt free living to enjoy?

Oh OK.

The great thing about having any kind of feedback on your blog, is that if you don’t have anything to write about, you always have somewhere to start. I always have so much to think about now.

For one the song poem things. I knew I couldn’t keep talking, bitching and otherwise alluding to them without a certain amount of curiosity about what they actually sound like arising. I knew, and a part of me wanted someone to ask, to be interested enough. The vocal track I am afraid will be staying safely in the folder for my strange vocal creations on my hard drive.
As for trying to create music to go along with it, I would regard Prophecy For The Failed Musician as a testament to my trials. And as for other methods of music creation for my songs, I have tried that too. I did the whole computer music thing for a while, I still want to learn how to do that, my program really wasn’t that much chop and the samples were limited, but it’s fairly complex and I just didn’t have the feeling for it in the first place. I am learning/I have learnt that my gift (if one can call it that) with song writing is not the music part of it. I have very little musical aptitude, I appreciate and like music a great deal, but I couldn’t compose it to save my, uh, well - dream. I am a writer, I am happiest when writing, it’s the thing I always turn to and the thing most of my other interests revolve around. This is where I think I can see the compromise coming from. But how that all fits in with my burning desire to perform, love of music and my half decent acting ability; I do not know. I always thought rock journalism would be cool. I could see myself as an English teacher (and I say that whilst currently attending high school, gasp!). I thought about radio. Or maybe working with a band. Another appealing option is to find a band and with a talented vocalist-
(Ooh, they’re playing Yves Klein Blue – Polka on Triple J, I love this song)
-who is a really good singer, but not much of a performer, I would love to be the entertaining backup singer. If I have someone to follow apparently I’m pretty good. And even I will concede to agree with that. But finding a band with those dynamics might be hard, or a singer that is willing to let me steal their thunder as such, when it would be obvious that they are the real talent in the band, and then also convincing them to sing my songs. But if guess if there are people like me who have the writing and performing, there must be some who are have the singing but are the complete opposite.
I know this girl, well she goes to my school anyway, fantastic captivating voice. She sung some Patsy Cline at the school assembly and the whole auditorium, even the little punks up the back, was just stunned. But the whole time that she did it, and I’m not saying this necessarily as a criticism, just fact – she stood there holding the hem of her dress in one hand and the microphone in the other, stock still. She didn’t sway or dance or gesture. And I must say, if you ignored her exquisite voice she did it with about as much enthusiasm as someone hangs up their laundry with.
And the two other girls, whom she sung her next song with, did exactly the same thing. I wish I could have taken a picture or made a sketch of it right there and then. Three girls, all different heights, weights and hair colours, lined up perfectly on the edge of this stage with their microphone stands. The first one hand on the microphone and one on the dress hem; the second one hand on the microphone and one on its cord; and the third one hand on the microphone and one hanging by her side. All in the same position, still as statues save for the mouth, and so impassive about the whole event. It was scary, it was like a Ronnie Johns’ sketch featuring those Germans and Gretchen’s dirty dirty hair.
Aaanyway, back to me bitching about my dreams – maybe, maybe we must always consider this, that things will turn out well and that I will learn to sing, and find some method of having music, whether that is with a band or by myself. Maybe at University. I actually got distracted during this blog trying to sing and stuff. And it feels, so maddeningly like I am so close. Like it’s a question of finding the right song, or the right volume, expression, accent, or voice; like its all one singing lesson away (although I doubt it is). It feels so close, but there is just this air of not right-ness over the whole thing. This inherent drone through it, these few off notes and sounds that I might get right in the next go, but then some others will be out instead. It makes me really uneasy. That’s why I gave up for tonight and came back to this.
I was looking through my folder of songs (all 72 I might add) and thinking about which ones I would use as poems. And I came across this particular one, which I thought might be the last thing that I would share, as it is about that person that I said I would never talk about or deal with on here; they are the person that I found a connection with that was even more powerful than what I feel for Amanda. In a lot of ways it was like the relationship Amanda had with Ben. I quote from last year’s blog:

“I admit, that once I think I did meet a kindred spirit. But it’s hard to talk about, and it’s not like that now. We were best friends, but in such a strange way. Not how you imagine best friends as being: doing everything together, sleepovers, road trips, regular visits and phone conversations. We never did any of these things. It was like she lived in a different world, and only when she got sick of that one would she come to mine. We wrote letters, we didn’t talk much when and if we would see each other. We would hand over the letters. This is where my love for and ability to create blogs comes from, it replaces all the things that I would normally have “blogged” to her. Yet it was more gratifying than any friendship I’ve ever had. She understood so perfectly at times that it was painful. We came to some of the most profound and life changing conclusions. But there was that distance, (were we scared of how deep this connection we had was?), I know she was too like me, and yet more confused. I think in the end we both dismantled the relationship, as it our communication got poorer I became more selfish and she went off with another group of people. Sometimes I see her and it’s almost like it was, but we’re both to grounded by the past. She will read this, a paragraph reminiscent of the letters to her; somehow yet more honest because I can stand back now, and say those things; and she’ll think… I don’t know. I think we’ve grown too far apart and I have learnt my lesson about making assumptions.”

I don’t know why I suddenly felt like actually writing about it now. It might explain a few things. I have been thinking about her more, and she has mysteriously been in the corner of my eye quite often. I even thought about writing her something again, because I felt like (to borrow and annoying American phrase) that I had closure about the whole situation. And I might write something yet.
And I know, now (instead of how it was right after I angrily thunked that bag of ever single letter she had ever given me in the four years I had known her in her face in the middle of class in front of all her tragic plastic friends) now; when we pass each other we only think about how easily we just pass one another. But we do think, each time we see it in one another’s faces, and I think that’s the point. She thinks about getting rid of “HER” from her life. Me. But I don’t think we ever did. Here we both are, talking about one another on our blogs. It’s such a great point from which to reminisce and write songs from, that I don’t think, creatively, I will ever let go of it; and personally it was a very important time that we shared. I don’t think she looks upon it with the same fond indifference that I do. I know she was a better friend to me that I ever was to her, and it took me two years to ever make an apology befitting the gravity of that injustice.
Anyway, I shouldn’t crap on too much about it all so as not to spoil the poem song thing that I have actually decided to share with you on this blog today. I take a deep breath and hit Ctrl+V…

“Anna”

Whenever I see the one thing of yours
That I forgot to throw out or throw at you
In that jealous rage of mine
That I’d so rarely admit to
I do a better job of hiding it now
Though I’m afraid it’s not by my will
Time doesn’t heal all wounds, but
It certainly got tired of crying over you

I create these reminders all day
And script things that I couldn’t say
You might be civil to me
But our friends know how you really feel

I like how the sky is today
It’s the universes cruelest tricks
It forces my mind to think of you
And it forces my fingers to text
And another walks by with that air of yours
That they couldn’t
hold
like
you

The neat little letters on the wall
That remind me to forget it all
I might kid myself that I have friends
But I used to know how you really feel

And I could be melodramatic like you
And say that you ruined my life
But this damn thing just keeps on going
Although that’s akin to ruin too
I could spend the rest of this life, looking for you
With an optimistic glow in my eyes
While you trudge along from 9 to 5
Without a second thought for me

So as they stare at you open chest
With looks only I used to suppress
I know that I had friends
But they prefer you to the stores of my immense hurt

Sometimes I wouldn’t know that I thought of you
But I watch myself more the closer you get
So I can slip by unnoticed to you
And still get the best seats for the show
By all definitions there wasn’t a chance
To stuff it up, properly

We played it out in our minds
Debating imaginary lines
I may have backed down on this one
But I don’t think we’ll ever be friends

☆Anika☆