For once I might advise that one reads this post before the other two that have been posted in the time between comments.
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I had three blogs going at once between my last post and now. The first, Thoughts Within Thoughts, a continuation of String Theory and Glowing Orb Of Superlatives, remarkably free of the extreme contrast between the two; the second my fable “Going Inside The Box” subtitled: A Far Too Well Thought Out Fable With No Meaning; and the third, this one, which was always planned but not with this exact intention.
You see, this blog was meant to be about deconstructing the process of writing this fabulous song about Melbourne that I have been crapping on about. It was meant to be about the joy and ease and method of the creative process, the brilliant quirkiness of the poetic mind and being up at 2:30 in the morning. The fantastic resolution of creating a catchy song that I am genuinely proud of out of hours of work… but no. This blog will instead mainly be about commenting on comments. Once I finish bitching about this song that is.
This song, which is yet unnamed and shall remain so – has been driving me mad. I had the idea for it the moment I heard that Coldplay tune on the bus to Melbourne. This is exactly the type of moment that I used to live for. I wrote about it in Noise.
“Nathan’s leaving today.
What?
Nathan’s leaving today.
What? I still can’t hear you.
Nathan’s leaving today, you deaf cunt.
Ah…”
I don’t know what it is about these phrases that just caught my lyrical ear, but I just smirked to myself and thought – I have to do something with those. Something has to be written or sung or something. It’s too good. [I want to] Just spread this grin across my face and shake my head and point at these people I don’t know, and say “That’s just brilliant. I love that. Thank you. Thank you. With just one phrase like that a day you can help save starving lyricists like myself…”
And I thought this song was so solid. I planned it out so well. From the moment I got stuck into it like good hard work, I felt like I was chipping away at some of my finest work. I wrote some initial lines, I made a list of possible topics to cover; I sorted that list into three piles and decided on a direction for the verses. I took some fully formed lines and I integrated them with others to form stanzas. I wrote a few lines for a chorus; I sweated on that for a few days and came back to knock it over in half and hour. I finished two verses and had half of an out of order third. I attempted to record myself signing it and achieved this unrepeatable perfect barbershop quartet harmony with myself on one word that nearly broke my heart… then after more than 16 hours working on this song, it occurred to me what was really going on.
This was hard work. This was toiling-away-at-it-like-a-sheet-of-maths-homework difficult. It wasn’t fun. It wasn’t really art anymore. I am the girl who used to be able to write a song in an hour. About anything, pick a topic out of the air and go – I haven’t written about this in a while, and do it. How the mighty and arrogant have fallen.
I give you two pictures to illustrate this point. The first was taken a good while ago, during my first, fleeting and incomplete hard patch. I cut up the individual lines to order them, in complete artistic frustration. I cannot remember what song resulted from it but it did reach completion and was a good song. I also can’t remember exactly how I managed to take this picture at such and angle and with such a view. But it happens to be one of my favourite self portraits, in all its patchy pixellated night mode glory.
The second is one that I took last night, or this morning at 12:30. It is the result of two images, one superimposed on the other; and I think it is a perfect visual representation of what song writing to me is all about. It’s dark, blurred and a little sullen. The dictionary, my crutch; the implements of choice, plain lined exam paper, pencil and sharpener and of course eraser; and a tissue, appearing on part of The Sickness; all piled beautifully on top of my folder containing my completed pieces, resting mournfully on my bed. It is the sort of shot that I would place in my very own Virginia Companion, but sadly I know it will never be used for such a purpose.
This is the practical (as opposed to theoretical) impact of not knowing what to do. It is sad and torturous. I can feel the dreams falling away. I don’t know whether that has made me better or worse at singing since I have tended to do it less often while I have been sick.
I don’t hate the fact that this indecision and confusion is apparently good, and I am not about to commit any axe murders as a result.
It all just (and still) feels so out of reach. I haven’t got my hands on a new course guide to see what courses are on offer and where, I haven’t been to any open days, and we haven’t cleared up the accommodation thing. Which is really the biggest concern. This has the biggest capacity for monetary loss, pain and ‘I told you so’. If I have to go to Melbourne because I find a good course and get accepted then I’ll most probably have to live with my grandmother, a prospect I am not keen on. She has a one bedroom house, doesn’t use the heating (unless it’s like 6 below), doesn’t have anything in the fridge since she lives on a diet of white flour, jam and meat; something which will not go down with my expensive tastes and diverse, whole grain and vegetarian diet; she doesn’t have room for anything, little own my bed, desk, computer, piles of crap and general artistic mess that comes with me; she is bossy and manipulative and sometimes downright mean to my mother – and I don’t have a single qualm about saying that, even if my mother is too sentimental to say it to her face (but not past bitching about it for hours on end to me, all that pent up frustration is not healthy). Then if I don’t find a course I still want to live there. Getting my own place is out of the question, and my grandmother’s is similarly un-enjoyable, but the worst part of this one would be how my mother would react to my moving away just because I believe the best opportunities await me in Melbourne. And… if I didn’t like it, I would never ever hear the end of it. How for years she had lamented the fact that I liked the city and wanted to experience it, and the fact that I didn’t like the country was somehow akin to not being grateful for my bit in life or (if you can believe it) not loving her as much as I could have. Believe me, it’s not something she hasn’t raised before. Then the third and fourth options include the much more positive possibility that in recent years somewhere nearby might have started offering a course that is of some value to me and I can stay at home and might only have to travel between half an hour and one and a half hours to reach it. Or, and I saved this one till last since it is by far the most plausible of the four: No-one is offering the course that I want anywhere near me, Melbourne becomes a complete non-event, I have to stay in the country and maybe take a year off, quite possibly ruining myself and my drive to study forever, resulting in me turning up as a mature age student to study… I don’t know, multimedia; then becoming permanently relegated to working as part of a small cheap computer firm; answering the same questions on the telephone all day, creative energy crushed with no hope of return due to the lack lustre music scene in the town; eventually taking on a second job as a shelf stacker at a supermarket in order to rent a shitty little flat where I would wither and die alone with my many cats. Finito, au revior – curtains.
Just kidding.
I got my own back today though. My mother came home from work and was banging around the kitchen in a state, going on about how hard work was, being absolutely starved, how much she hates cooking and how I would never ever do anything to help her. I am not completely cold-hearted or that thick that I can’t take hint, so I of course offer to cook her something. She tells me that I can’t cook anything. She continues going on about how sick she is and how cooking would hurt and how she would die without food and how awful being sick is and… and… I just turn on her and say “Don’t be so bloody fatalistic just because you’re sick! And let me help you.” Eventually she did and she got her omelette, didn’t die, and sat almost contentedly watching television. But that thing about being fatalistic as a result of the sickness, although probably not the best observation of my mother (since she is like that all the time when her blood sugar is low) it did seem to apply to me a bit. The awfulness of the aspirations did seem to coincide with the awfulness of the sickness. Maybe it was a little exaggerated, but I of course don’t discredit it completely.
You know what I decided I wanted to be last night as I was laying in bed – a film director. I think I’d be really good at that. Creative, fast paced, the possibility of fame, get to boss people around all day, put in my own artistic vision… its of course impossible. But a good thought.
I must look at La Nouvelle Star, her story sounds rare and inspiring. Thank you for bringing that to my attention.
I am way too talkative also, thousands and thousands of words I have written… I worked it out last night, Amanda, whom I always thought wrote a large and good amount on her blog, has a blog that consists of more than (but close to) 180 000 words. I have been writing for just over half a year and at this very word can tell you my blog consists of 87 683 words. And since Amanda’s blog spans 4 and half years, which is approximately 40 000 words a year, this means I am four times more prolific. Yikes!
And on a side note, Kimya Dawson is the best. I heard I Like Giants on the radio and listened intently for half an hour to find out what and who it was. She’s really good, I like the odd bit of her stuff, but I could see how a whole album could be tiresome. It’s strange how much weird, not well known and alternative music we seem to have in common, Idril. Have you seen my list up on my profile (though it’s by no means complete)? Have you seen Joanna Newsome? Also brilliant and along the same lines. I may even have a snippet of The Sprout And The Bean from The Chaser’s War On Everything making fun of the
I have never looked for a musician on The Shadow Box, but it’s Australia. Our Brigade is so thin it doesn’t even exist. And anyone who is from here lives in (in this order) Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, or Perth. No hope there I wouldn’t imagine. And the first step would be hearing a sample of some original work, and I’m not up to that.
Little Britain is also awesome; I love almost all British comedy. The Armstrong And Miller Show, That Mitchell And Web Look, The Catherine Tate Show, Little Miss Jocelyn, Teachers and more recently The Peter Serafinowicz Show… it’s all good.
And that I am afraid brings this blog to a close. I shall be off to work in a little bit.
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