Notes from a Bottomfeeder

There are no words to explain how much I owe to Amanda Palmer's new record Theatre is Evil. 

I have barely turned it off. I dance and cry and laugh and hide under my covers to it every day. It gets me out of bed and has made me feel things I'd forgotten. Not all welcome feelings, but important, sad, beautiful ones. 

I have had Bottomfeeder buried in my head ever since I first heard it. I was sitting on my bed with Anna and simply burst into tears half way through. My larynx felt like it was being pulled out of my throat. I was feeling a pain that I should have let myself feel many years ago but never did. I still get that feeling every time I hear it, though it's not as bad as the first listening. As awful as it is at the time, when the song finishes I breath fresh air and am just a little more okay with everything. 

It's always swimming around in my head which and I felt like it was a shame not to capture that passion I had for it somehow... I couldn't help but record it and put it somewhere and get it out of my system to an extent. It was so liberating.

So, yeah. Here, if you haven't seen. My first recording of anything ever. Unless you count my year 10 reciting of the periodic table that I used to play while falling asleep to memorise it.

...but you probably have seen it because I put it everywhere in the hope that it was terrible, someone would politely tell me and I could take it down as quickly as possible. 

I know my singing is average at best but I've never really sung at all. The entire idea of myself singing is rather alien. Is that strange? I mean, I have loved and listened to music since I can remember but always felt unworthy to sing along to it. I guess that's something I've finally taken from Amanda...The idea of doing something because you love it and feel it, which will make it beautiful, irrelevant of how technically good it is.

I wouldn't mind if people said they disliked it but no one has (yet). People are being so supportive and wonderfully constructive; giving me voice exercises and abundant encouragement and love. I'm not looking for a career out of making music but I'd definitely be up for getting better at it. I am so overjoyed that people are taking time out of their lives to help me and not to be negative. It's amazing.
 
So really, what I wanted to say is thank you to everyone. You are all beautiful and I love you all.
 
...and thank you Amanda & GTO for making such phenomenal art, all the time and everywhere. 

You can pay whatever the hell you want for the album HERE
 
long live the punk cabaret! 

Love x

Old friends.

In high school I did a lot of dancing.  Ballet to be exact. Not just a little either. I danced 24 hours of every week. There’s no real way of describing how much of my life it was. I guess I was kind of married to it. Everything I ate, drank and did; it was all for that one ridiculous thing that meant so much to me.

The 10 or so people I did ballet with mostly stayed at the same school from years 5 to 12. As we were all working hard at school too, the only free time we did have we usually spent together. The few other friends I did have between year 8 and 11 barely stretched passed talking occasionally in and between classes.  The ballet studios were on the complete opposite side of campus to the main school so we barely ate with other people. This over-exposure did lead to some pretty heated arguments, including a frenzied call of death threats in about year 10 which was only humorous in retrospect, I promise you. Looking back however, past all the competitiveness and the bitchiness I think that most of us really, truly loved each other. Ballet was really fucking tough. 4 years on I still sometimes wake shaken and crying from horrid nightmares of flooding studios and my yelling, cursing teachers.

The horror of the classes aside, I do have some wonderful memories of these girls. They threw me a surprise birthday party when I was 13.  I was a quiet, strange sad little thing and I think they thought it’d brighten me up or something. It was spectacular. In true dramatic spirit they leapt from trees in the park adjoining Jess’ house shouting and whooping holding presents and food. I was in no way expecting is and was so surprised and overwhelmed I fell like a heap into their arms; half laughing out of sheer joy, half crying in spite of myself. They’d spent hours meticulously constructing a beautiful paper mache pig. We named it after a girl at school we didn’t like and whacked it until the string holding it onto the string broke...it was indestructible, I swear. I found out later that my friends Veronica and Grace had made it and were keeping it locked in their upstairs bathroom completely unbeknown to me going to their house on quite a regular basis.  I kept that pig for years and only parted with it once my mother had decided if had completely rotted through and threw it out.

As a child, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that day. In all truth, I had pretty much forgotten about it entirely until last week. Looking back I see it as a beautiful act of selflessness and to be perfectly honest, I really miss this time. Ballet was so tough and emotionally draining but I met some absolutely magnificent people there.

By my final year of high school I stopped dancing. I won’t go into details of why exactly because that could go on for many more pages than I have time presently to write. There was a lot of crying and hugging and writing of letters from the ballet girls during this time. I have kept these letters and they are beautifully innocent and sincere; from hearts that had not yet been broken by uncaring hands and minds that were too sheltered by our dance to be corrupted by the world outside. Leaving ballet, I thought I had the most stoic and most supportive friends in the entire world.

After the initial farewell however, we all quickly fell out of contact. We were all going to the same school and taking the same classes but we might as well have been on opposite ends of the universe. Looking back, they must have all been working like dogs just to keep afloat. They were in their final year of high school, they we dancing more than they were sleeping and they were organising a mid-year performance season. I didn’t try to change it because it was all too painful for me to experience. I didn’t know why I stopped dancing really, I just knew that I couldn’t anymore and it killed me. Even losing the identity of a dancer...I still to this day cannot understand it.  So I just tried to block it out for that year and get by without them. I made new, excellent friends and nurtured old ties. It made it one of the most intense years of my life; with lows the depth of the ocean and highs that were like flying.

I felt it all.

Four years on from this initial extrication, we all speak very rarely. I still see Veronica quite often as she lives near to me. We started doing some ballet classes again just for fitness but they started making me feel ill so I stopped. Almost everyone else is at WAAPA dancing away like mad or overseas.  We sent messages out over facebook when someone is back in town offering dates to meet up but no one is ever free at the same time so it usually just peters out into inaction. Last week however everyone seemed to be back home and free to catch up and it happened. There was a reunion of sorts. I met the situation initially with a huge amount of anxiety; mostly worried about how much people had changed and how I would feel about being with people that were living the dream which I dreamt. They’d all finished vocational dance schooling and some of them were even earning money touring around with large companies. Who knew how I’d react to a subject so emotionally volatile to me. I didn’t want to cry in front of them all and look like a pathetic case of lost case of shattered dreams.

After much thought, I grit my teeth and said I would come. I even got excited. These are people that once were my entire world after all.

What lead up to me getting to see them almost made me think the universe was either conspiring against me or trying to save me. Work kept me 3 hours later which was already two hours after the initial meeting time and then flustered, I took the wrong turn on the freeway. I managed a car park in Northbridge thankfully and caught them for post dinner coffee.

Everyone who I had not seen was exactly how I remembered them. There was laughing and silliness and everyone talked as though it was only yesterday that we’d seen each other. Tears welled when I first sat down, overwhelmed again by the nostalgia of times almost a decade ago.  After this time though, I could be nothing but happy with their company right there in front of me. Like I said, I was not going to cry in front of them on pain of complete humiliation. After an hour we departed with promised dinner plans for the following week and smiles on our faces.  All was well.

The importance of having an open heart has never been so apparent to me as it is now. I am always worried of being hurt or rejected that I usually hold back until I can blame it on fate or something equally ridiculous. I may not hurt as often if I live like this but hell, I will rarely feel the love and companionship as I did on the table that night.  It’s something that I sometimes give up on. Here’s to humanity and the good within it.

LOVE x

I vomited and out came my cold, stone heart.

Okay, so I promised a blog about Bon Iver and the general stupidity of people. I was going to because I was irritated by how happy people are to not know about Justin Vernon but quite happily hate all over him anyway. Ugh.

But not today.

Something much more aggravating happened between the time I posted my promise and now.

Something I knew was coming.

We shall not speak the name of the day and I’m sure it is as horrifying and poignant a time in many peoples’ lives.

For now we shall call it... Viagra Day.

If you took part in this ridiculous ritual yesterday then let me try to enlighten you a little. Viagra Day is for couples to show off to other couples how much better their couple is than anyone else’s couple and to attempt to prove to singularities out there that they are alone in this world. You have been alone, you are alone and you will be alone.

FOREVER ALONE

As one of these said singularities I would like to clarify: I am not bitter about not having a boyfriend. Not now. They are too much effort and I’m far too busy with uni and blogging about useless things.  I am also insanely happy for some couples. The couples that I dislike are the ones that are constantly complaining about their boyfriend or almost breaking up with him...or simply not all that in love with them on a normal day...Then when Viagra Day comes along it’s an explosion of hearts and kisses on their Facebook wall and instagrams of fucking roses and teddybears with names and chocolates posted up over every networking site that ever existed with statuses like:

“3 valentines on...and I am still getting surprise roses delivered to lunch.. You are truly the most romantic boyfi in the whole world hunny”

Followed swiftly by:

“What can I say, I love making you happy:-)”

what. the fucking. shit.

 I’m sure they’ve pelted themselves into your eyes too. Yes. Flowers on Viagra Day would be very surprising. Nobody else would have received anything like it. Well done you.  I can see how it was important to share with all of us who don’t actually give the slightest shit.

Yes, it’s annoying that people are so ready and willing to use their relationship to score some extra cyber attention and possible jealousy but that’s not really the main point I have an issue with. It’s the absurd idea that love should be more celebrated for one day of the year. I may be a romantic but...shouldn’t we show how much we love someone as much as possible? Being provoked into spontaneity isn’t being passionate. Buying shit because it’s what you’re “meant to do” doesn’t mean you care.  Posting about how much you love someone because everyone else is isn’t love.  

It’s like for one day a year couples of the world unite and decide they’re all starring in their own romantic comedies coming out on Febuary 14^th. Everyone wants that highest grossing film and they’re willing to sellout in whatever way necessary.

Don’t misunderstand me, I’m all for love but for one day you’re meant to love someone more than you usually love them? Or at least, show them that you love them more? Love in my mind is not a variable quantity. You can realise you didn’t really love someone or you can love someone for different reasons and it therefore feel different...but it’s not something that should be thrown about as much as it is on this absurd Hallmark Day. Surely by exaggerating something as personal and pure as real love (if it exists in this context at all) for this one assigned day you are devaluing it? Not only for yourself, but for people that may actually be properly and wholly in love whose actual lives are being made a mockery by the dim-witted consumerist hordes.  

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is...if you love someone then that is wonderful. Just love them the same all the time. Make it real. Viagra is only for very old men and douchebags.

LOVE (ironically) x 

A beautiful week of my life.

I feel okay saying that my week has been fantastically busy. The only reason I’m really writing this now is that I have a spare 40 minutes and no internet connection in my room a million miles away from the router.  There’s no better time than this to document my week and I really do feel as though I need to, even just for my brain’s sake.  Writing it all down is my muggle pensive. 

First of all, I managed pretty much a full sober weekend at a great little place called Amplifier Bar. I say great  but g&ts are a complete rip at $9.50 and the floor is sticky and covered in glass by 9...what gets me in is the music. You can’t help but dance when the DJ dives into some of The Cure after dabbling in some Postal Service and then progressing into that song that you know you know from SOMEWHERE but just can’t think of the name. I was there and completely sober from 9pm until about 3am on both Friday and Saturday and I loved every sticky, sweaty minute.

Friday we just went along because Friday Amps is good fun with a lot of cute boys of the hipster variety scattered around. I’m usually too terrified to spark up a conversation with them but still, it’s nice to see them and know they exist. I hope they have kittens at home. Actually, I'm sure they do.

We went along again on Saturday because one of my favourite local bands Voltaire Twins was having a fundraiser supporting their trip to South by South West (SXSW) in a few weeks time.  I saw them live for the first time when I was completely gone at the uni end of semester show about 4 months ago. I bought their Romulus ep. They signed it. I had a proper listen to said ep and realised they were actually fantastic and it wasn’t my rose stained intoxi-lenses getting me excited over nothing.  So, I went to Fly-By Nightclub to properly watch them play as they supported The Joe Kings (another awesome local band. Have a looksies). It was a beautiful, Fremantle evening. They were wonderful again this week. I suggest you have a look:

If you do like them then I suggest you donate to their American tour page through the link below. You get some wicked stuff if you do and I can’t think of a lovelier group of people to give your spare change to.

For bands I love like Washington and The Grates, SXSW was the start for them. It’s all brilliantly exciting.

So...post amps weekend I gained many awesome pacman based stamp overlays (WINNING) and had a pretty spectacular time

As for Wednesday...

Now, if you’ve read my other two blogs (I know, I’m a prolific writer... ) you’ve probably gathered that I adore Amanda Palmer/The Dresden Dolls. One day I will probably go into detail of exactly why I think she is so incredible. Today is not that day. I bring this up because I went to a performance at The Perth Fringe Festival by a saucy minx proclaimed Meow Meow. It was a bit of a gamble as I’d only ever seen her on youtube covering The Dresden Dolls Song “Missed me”.  She’s a cabaret comedy but I don’t want to get into that because I think everyone should rock up to her gig as my friend and I did; completely oblivious to who and what she is. All I want to say is that she is one of the most spectacular and natural performers I have ever seen. Like, Liza Minnelli standard. For real. Her pianist Lance Horne was pretty great as well. You should have a look at both of their stuff.

That there is Meow Meow and AFP being ridiculous. The crowd participation is admirable. 

After the gig we bought cds. They signed said cds and my beautiful autograph book. I am falling more and more in love with those bound pages each time a person I admire writes in it. One day I might scan some pages on here, who knows. What really got me were Lance’s Amanda Palmer stories. Meow Meow and AFP are best of friends so there was bound to be some. They had coffee with her while she was deliberating dating Neil Gaiman and they attended her beautiful little wedding to him. The engagement and wedding I read so much about on her blog. Read it here if you haven't:

http://blog.amandapalmer.net/post/15120706154/the-wedding-blog

Seriously. Read it. 

They had actually experienced that and I was hearing stories from a first person source face-to-face. Fuck, I fan-girled so hard. I have no regrets. Both Lance Horne and Meow Meow were incredibly appreciative and friendly. Thank you to both. I never in my wildest dreams thought something like that would happen to me.

Lance Horne told me he doesn’t like The Little Prince. He even wrote a song about it.  He likes making puns about chemistry. He wrote a song about that too. Youtube it up bitches.

Yes, there was a carbon dating pun in there. So good.

I came home the next morning to find this masterpiece in the mail.

I then made myself a glass of deliciousness. Notice jealous kitty in the background...

Life is wonderful.

That’s all I really have time to say. I have a lot more to say. So much has happened. Didn't even mention going to the zoo. Shoot. For now this will do. I will become efficient and proficient at this blogging business at some point. I hope you are all having a fantastic February.

LOVE x

Something that looks a bit like a Frisbee will destroy us one day...

My dearest extreme web surfers,

I wasn’t going to write another blog until something absolutely spectacular happened to me like I got married or won a nobel prize. 

What changed I (do not) hear you ask? 

My life changed. 

This place is addictive as those RPG games like The Sims and Rollercoaster Tycoon. I was not expecting that. I was expecting to lose interest a day after my first blog when I realised that the shit I wrote was just floating around in a sea full of ones and zeros, not to be seen as anything but a muddled mess. My thoughts were a smudge of plankton in the middle of the ocean waiting to be pretty much inhaled by a passing sperm whale. If I was lucky it’d get stuck in his baleen.

While I was working today (Awesome work. I’m sure I’ll explain later), I had a quick look at my stats. I didn’t even realise I had stats. What greeted me was the COLD HARD FACT that four people had viewed my first ever post; people from Australia, Germany, Malaysia and America.  Or at least, they’d clicked on my link and had then been distracted or thought better of it. I dunno, like went out and ENJOYED THEIR LIVES.  I’ve never even been to Germany and someone was there reading my things. Things that I had typed into my computer with my very own fingers that I half hoped no one would read to save my embarrassment and half dreamed that someone like Jonathan Safran Foer had read it (eek) and asked me to be his protégé.  I am sounding like my mother. I digress.

What really got me was that my simple little thoughts were out in the universe now. My blog was like a tiny bit of space dust settled on a moon orbiting around a planet which is orbiting around a star which is part of the Andromeda Galaxy.  It’s what your peripherals have been observing for the past few minutes and it’s one of the most fucking beautiful things that I have ever seen. 

Andromeda is the closest spiral galaxy to our own- a mere 2.5 million light-years away. What of it, hey?  Bearing this in mind, it’s hurting towards us at a rate of 400 light-years every million years.  On a date around 4.5 billion years from now Andromeda will merge with the Milky Way, possibly destroying earth and most of what we know about our night sky. Not that the human race will still be plodding around on Earth by then but really, who couldn’t love something so powerful and foreboding?

I’m so sorry. I will stop with the tenuous analogies.

I feel like I am part of this beautiful entity now.  I’ve only recently started reading blogs and in the past few days I have laughed until my eyes watered and cried until I laughed at my own hopelessness. Now I have a blood nose. I should take that as a sign from the universe to shut the fuck up.

But hell, I love you bloggy people. Maybe not all of you, but enough to be overwhelmed by the mass of individuals that I have never met but feel like I could entrust my life to. This is what the twenty fuckin’ first century should be all about.

love

x