Oh, I'm alright, but sometimes I break down into random spats of heartbreak. Usually at songs. Songs have always brought emotions to the surface for me and they always will. Married to the pain.
The number one song that kills me is 'Nobody's Baby Now' by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. It's from the album Let Love In, and if you want to get into Nick Cave [which you SHOULD] I'd recommend starting with that one. In Frank's words, it's fucking classy.
Anyway. I cried rivers the first time I heard it, and for many days to follow. [There's another Nick Caver reference for all you sharp tools in the shed.] Mainly because I remember it playing the last, very last time we ever had sex, and also because it's a beautiful song on its own. From the first line 'I've searched the holy books' to the last 'Nobody's baby now ...' it's pure lyrical genius. I knew I would like it when I heard the lines 'I've read the poets and the analysts/Searched through the books on human behavior'. It's as if it was written for me. Anyway, the best part is the middle:

I loved her then and I guess I love her still
Hers is the face I see when a certain mood moves in
She lives in my blood and skin
Her wild feral stare, her dark hair
Her winter lips, as cold as stone
I was her man
But there are some things love won't allow
I held her hand but I don't hold it now
I don't know why and I don't know how
But she's nobody's baby now
This is her dress that I loved best
With the blue quilted violets across the breast
And these are my many letters
Torn to pieces by long-fingered hands
I was her cruel hearted man
And though I've tried to lay her ghost down
She's moving through me even now
I don't know why and I don't know how
But she's nobody's baby now ...

It honestly is one of the saddest, most beautiful songs I have ever heard. I think it's tying with Regina Spektor's 'Samson' for the top spot right now, and that's saying something considering my long love affair with Samson. Anyway, I think that song gets me the most. Then the other day I was listening to 'Good Day' by Jewel [of all the songs!] and broke down into tears in the part which goes:

I shiver, shut the door
Can't think standing here no more
I'm alone, my mind's racing
Heart breaking
Can you be everything I need you to be?
Can you protect me like a daughter?
Can you love me like a father?
Can you drink ... me like water?
Say I'm like the desert
Just way hotter

and I was gone. All the way gone. Also in the chorus:

It's gonna be alright
No matter what they say
It's gonna be a good day
Just wait and see
It's going to be okay
Cos I'm okay with me

the old crying-at-positivity because you can see where it lacks in you. And today I found another song - I'm really a genius at rooting up these self-destructive songs. This one is 'I Will Follow You Into The Dark' by Death Cab For Cutie, but I found a cover of it on Amanda Palmer's MySpace and she does it slowly and with piano and makes it a million times sadder. No need to recite lyrics here, the whole thing is devastatingly sad.
As well as all these there were the usual suspects - 'Samson' of course, that pretty much goes without saying. And 'First Orgasm' and 'Delilah' and anything, really, by Coldplay or Dido.

Sometimes I wonder whether anyone but myself will ever read this. Some part of me hopes not.

Procrastination

I'm writing this to put off studying for my Ancient History and Politics exams - both of which are on Friday. Today is Wednesday. I had no exams today. Yesterday I had English, the Friday before I had Maths. Tomorrow I have Modern History. Then Politics and Ancient, then Japanese on Monday.
I made a decision last night - I couldn't sleep, again - that I was going to stop beating myself up about not studying. The fact is that I'm not really disciplined enough to do it, and I get good marks anyway. I think that I'm good at taking exams, and I'm good at bullshitting. So this morning I spent FOUR HOURS finishing my Modern History presentation, which I hope will score me an A. Maybe tomorrow I'll do some Ancient/Politics study. Maybe.
On Friday Marisa and I spent the afternoon at my house tearing up the Bible and smoking joints rolled with the torn pages. While I was stoned I thought of a wonderful idea for a book. The title would be "I Was Going To Do It On My Own, But ..." and it would be the stories [real or fictional, who cares] of women who had decided to reject feminism and why they had chosen to do so. Perhaps when I'm old and have nothing else to do I will write it.
I'm going to New Zealand in eleven days. Next week.
One of the headphones for my iPod has broken. I need new ones. $20. I also need new jeans. $25. I'm going to dinner tonight with three of my friends and my father is making me pay myself. $???
I only have $80.
I am listening to 'Mother' by Danzig. One of the numerous songs Frank has sent me. Last night he sent me 'Heroin' by The Velvet Underground and 'White Rabbit' by Jefferson Airplane.
Remember what the doorknob said.

So last night, Marisa and I went to a Nine Inch Nails concert!!I know what you're thinking: Oh my God I'm so jealous. Especially you, Maddie. I know you're just green with envy.Anyway, let me start from the beginning. Risa and I got there at about 5:30, doors opening at 6:30. As soon as we got there people began to form lines at the gates, so we joined the Under-18 queue and prepared for an hour of waiting. However, we hadn't even been there five minutes when Marisa spotted her brother and his friends at the very front of the queue! Usually we pretend not to know Cameron and his associates, but for the next hour they were our best friends. We hung out with them, told a few Jew jokes (So these Jews walk into a bar ... and ten minutes later they own it) sang some songs with Marisa accompanying on air piano (Coin operated boy. Sitting on the shelf *ding* he is just a toy *ding*), came up with a few ideas for band names (Cameron? At The Disco), started a sitting down trend and I got head-raped by Alex many, many times.And THEN - they finally opened the doors. I was the third person in, which is a really cool feeling especially when you look back and see the hundreds of people in the queue all glaring at you. So we ran down the hill (it was at Riverstage, open-air arena) to the mosh pit and joined the thirty or so Spiral members who had already been let in. Somehow we had lost Cameron, Alex and Tim so it was just me, Marisa and Gabe. We were all excited to be so close to the stage (third row from the front) but our excitement slowly waned over the next hour when nothing happened ... and nothing continued to happen ... and we knew that the opening band was due on at 7:30 ... and still nothing was happening. Cameron, Alex and Tim joined us in our prime spot after maybe half an hour (much death-staring from all the people they had to push through to get to us). It was starting to get a little bit uncomfortable, since we had all been standing in very close proximity for about an hour. Everyone's legs and backs were sore, and I think Gabe was a bit worse off than most because he was standing behind me. I have very long, very thick dark hair and the general humidity of the situation had made it frizz out. In Gabe's words: "This wouldn't be half as bad if you didn't have all that hair!" - but he wasn't the only one suffering. The back of my neck was boiling. At 7:15 I was seriously considering chewing off one of my bra straps to use as a hairtie. It didn't come to that, though, and at 7:30 or thereabouts the opening band came on. I think they were called something like Serena Maneesh, and they were Finnish. Well, as soon as they came on the crowd started chanting "Finland! Finland! Finland!" They turned out to be pretty bad. Their songs all sounded the same, with no lyrics sung in English as far as we could tell, and the guitarist/singer/frontwoman chick had no stage presence at all. She didn't address the crowd, played with her back to us half the time, and in the last song when her piece was over she just put down her guitar and left the stage without thanking the audience or even looking at them. When they left I heard someone (I think it was Gabe) say "Thank God they're Finnished!" which struck us as a pretty good joke at the time. Another half hour went by, in which we watched techincal guys come in and out and halfheartedly yelled "Take it off!" to the good-looking ones. The crowd grew restless and started up several chants "Rez plz!" and "Nine Inch Nails!" among the popular ones. Suddenly about ten minutes before NIN were due on, I looked behind me and realized that while before I had been in the third row of a mosh pit containing maybe 50 to 100 people, I was now in the third row of a mosh pit containing about 300 people. I swore, and everyone else looked at what I was looking at and swore too. A chick in front of me said to her friend "We are going to die. But it'll be a happy fucking death."And then - and then - they finally came on. The crowd went absolutely wild. Trent had hair a few inches long, and looked even hotter in the flesh than he does in photos. He was wearing a dark green shirt. Then they started to play, and I was suddenly being crushed to death. There was a very tall guy beside me who up until then had been very nice, apologising to the people behind him for his height, but when the music started he turned into a crazy moshing machine. I was being shoved from all angles and literally had to turn my face up to the sky to be able to breathe. But then I noticed that it was raining! A Nine Inch Nails miracle - it hasn't rained in Brisbane for months and months. And it was the best feeling, to have cool rain on you when you're moshing along with a few hundred other hot and sweaty bodies. I lasted in the third row for maybe three songs, but one of them was Survivalism and I wouldn't have missed that for anything. Being in the mosh pit for that song completely owned. It got the biggest response and it was truly incredible to be there with all these people, all screaming "I got my fist I got my plan I got survivalism!" My thoughts during that three-song period alternated between "This is so amazing" and "Oh fuck, I'm going to die."Then I decided to move out a bit, and I got to the middle of the mosh pit where I could breathe. It was a really good spot, I could see Trent and Jeordie really well and I could mosh but also avoid death by crushing. Over the next few hours they played (not in this order):
Gave Up
Down In It
March of the Pigs
Suck
The Hand That Feeds
Only
Wish
Closer
Hurt
Heresy
Burn
and a few others that I didn't know. It was all really good and there was a feeling of mutual appreciation between the crowd and the band. Everyone was respectful to the band and to each other and Trent thanked us between songs. Their performance was fantastic, they screamed and smashed and threw themselves into garbage cans as per Beside You In Time. I knew Marisa - wherever she was (we'd been seperated not long into the show) - would be happy since they'd played her favorite, Hurt. I was happy that they'd played Closer and Only, two songs I had really hoped they would play. But I was still hoping for Head Like A Hole, which was granted to me as the last song. I made sure I got back into the front of the mosh pit for that, and it was totally worth it. I was tired, but when the chorus started I wasn't tired any more. There's nothing like actually seeing Trent Reznor screaming "Head like a hole! Black as your soul! I'd rather die than give you control!" and screaming along with him, and hearing thousands of people doing the same. That was the highlight of my night, and I couldn't stop smiling afterwards. Ris and I had a little bit of trouble afterwards, because we'd arranged to meet where we came in, and only later did we realize that that could have been about twenty places up and down the walkway. It was made doubly hard by the fact that we were both dressed in black like the vast majority of people and I was wearing a NIN shirt that about one-third of the audience seemed to also own. But we did find each other in the end, so it all worked out.All in all it was an incredible night, the best concert of my life. NIN put on an amazing show and I would encourage anyone who has the chance to go see them. They are fantastic musicians and Trent Reznor is the hottest man over 40 ever. It was all completely worth the $83.60 ticket, hours of waiting, shitty opening band, sore back, stiff neck, many mosh-related injuries and the $3 I paid for 600 ml of water. I'm so glad I went and I can't wait to see them again.

Home

Everything is catching up with me
I awake
To find I'm not at all where I
Should be
And it feels
I'm getting to the end
And it's hard
To figure out
What's real and what's pretend

To break from what we're tied to
God knows how much I've tried to
And I am still inside you
And I am still inside you

I escape
Every now and then
And to think
I find myself
Back here again
And again, and again

Now you should know how I was
Until you came along
I return
To the only place I've ever felt
That I belong

To break from what we're tied to
God knows how much I've tried to
And I am still inside you
And I am still inside you.


That from Nine Inch Nails' song 'Home' which is summing up pretty much how I'm feeling at the moment. Today is two months until I go back to New Zealand. Mixed feelings. On one hand I'm excited as fuck. Seeing Frank again is the big thing. We talked for about 5 hours on Friday - he was on 2C-T-7 in the Cue Club. So we're good friends again after a few months of losing contact, and we're going to abuse several substances upon my return. I'll have just had block exams, so I'll be about ready for it. I want to see him again, and reunite etc, but I really DON'T want to do last year again, which was pretty much the pits. So yeah ... I'm not exactly sure how it's going to pan out. Apologies for the lack of [good] writing lately. School is getting to me somewhat. Still, I have all of tomorrow off to:
1) Study. Study. Study.
2) Do Japanese homework
3) Eat & go on MSN [most likely course of action]
4) Straighten hair.

It's a long hard road into hell

I purchased and read Marilyn Manson's autobiography yesterday, after months of reading it in Borders. Well, I bought it at 4 pm yesterday and had finished it by 1:30 pm today. Fucking amazing, sick shit. Some of the most unbelievable stuff I've ever read [getting bones that were sticking out of the earth in a graveyard, chipping off fragments and smoking them], and also some of the smartest. Made me lose all faith in organized religion, and immediately after finishing it I went straight to my iPod and listened to the entire Lest We Forget album. Which is I suppose the aim of the book.
In other news, I taught myself how to play the first few lines of 'We Wish You A Merry Christmas' on the piano. Musical talent!

Let's party like it's 1699

I went to a party at Mel's house last night. I've been to many a teen party in my time and it's always the same even though I know it's stupid. I spend hours on hair and makeup, deciding what to wear. This time I even bought a new dress, black, knee-length, strapless, tight bust which [thankfully] flattened my boobs a bit and was kind of a fullish skirt 1920s affair. Hair straightened [somewhat] and pinned over my face a bit to one side. Gray ballet flats. All this, and for what? A group of teenagers getting together in a garden or a house or in the case of last night, a garage/driveway area, boys and girls casting nervous glances at each other, boys talking about sport or music, girls complimenting each other on their outfits. The heavy scent of awkwardness and sexual tension hangs in the air, everyone wondering when it's going to be okay to start drinking. And finally everyone does start drinking, and the awkwardness is gone, and everyone is dancing and sweaty and too drunk to give a shit about what they look like. So there's all this anxiety about going to a gathering of teenagers getting drunk and letting out their pent-up sexual urges.
I spent most of the night having a long, meaningful, in-depth, drunken conversation with the school drug dealer. I said "I want to be a psychoanalyst," and he said "I feel it's my duty in life to help people." I realized then that I don't give a flying fuck about helping people and probably never will. That's not why I want to do psychoanalysis at all. I just find it fascinating and I suppose I see "the patient" as more a combination of oedipal desires, childhood traumas and re-enactments, etc, rather than a real person. Nightmare doctor, I know. I'm turning into Bennett from Fear of Flying. To tell you the truth I always had a soft spot for Bennett. I know he was the Wooden Man and all, and he can be a cunt at times, but I didn't want Isadora to leave him for "that English asshole". And a lot of his theories made sense. Maybe it's because he's a Freudian and so am I. In the book I'm writing now, my heroine describes Freud as "my one great love growing up." If it weren't for the fact that I need, like, affection [and don't particularly want to be with someone who screws in his socks and pajama top] I think Bennett and I could have made a go of it.
Anyway, back to the party. I put my finger on what it feels like to be drunk - well, not really drunk, just light and uninhibited. Like chewing with your mouth open. Sort of not quite right, but it feels good anyway. And you don't care. The incredible lightness of being. Then again, I made up that theory while drunk, so you never know.
There were two great joys of the evening. One was seeing Sian drunk. Now Sian is 17 and has never been drunk. She's thin, and hadn't eaten much that day, and she had orange juice mixed with wine. And she was falling about all over the place. It was lovely.
The second joy was being told I was really pretty by a complete stranger. Lavelle and I met towards the end of the evening. Granted, she was drunk like the rest of us, but she said "I'm Lavelle. I reckon you're really pretty," and I smiled.

Well I've been dragged all over the place
I've taken hits time just don't erase
And baby I can see you've been fucked with too
But that don't mean your loving days are through

Yeah Yeah Yeahs are my new favorite band. I especially love Modern Romance [see above] and Maps. Wait ... they don't love you like I do.
Moving right along, I wrote a new poem last night that I want to recount. Of late I've been getting over the structure of one word/one line and I think the result is an improvement. I read a wonderful poem 'In The Park' by an Australian woman poet the other day. To the wind she says, they have eaten me alive. Beautiful figurative language and a very satisfying poem. Reading it I understood what Erica Jong meant when she said 'Eat this poem'.

Her face was hard. Rock & stone. Ancient
carvings into clay tablet.
Among the lights of smiles, of
fires lit behind the eyes. In her third eye she
saw his face. Reflected into hers.
They looked at each other
in the brassy glow of a streetlamp. Charmed
but for how long? He asked her & she
shook her head, not knowing.
Their features melted together, under the lamp.
He said nothing, and she cried.
"What will I do without you?"
The great black mother of the sky looked
down upon them, enveloping them
in her soft, bottomless gaze.

Gah. Gah. Fuck ...

just got home to find the three chapters of my novel i'd sent off to the publishers in the letterbox, along with a rejection letter. a crushing blow. i hadn't really thought about what i expected to happen. i kind of switched off when i gave the envelope to my dad to post. if i'd posted it myself would things have turned out differently? no, musn't think like that. i guess i always had this knowledge that one day, through some publisher or the other, i would become a famous young author. that's the problem with being a novelist, or perhaps simply a human being. one is too idealistic. one "knows" that something exciting will happen sooner or later. maybe one then stagnates and waits for life to arrive rather than seeking it. that was a bad choice of words. i remember a stupid tv ad with the slogan "destination: life". that's as silly as saying that life is tangible. a destination. if life is the destination what is the journey? what are we doing if we aren't journeying towards life? merely existing. perhaps if we don't own the product the ad was selling we aren't living.
back to the novel. i saw my own handwriting on the self-addressed envelope i had to send with it. isn't that ironic. author writes rejection letter to herself, reads it and sits on the front steps of the house with tears in her eyes. masturbation in a dark room and all of that. that's not me. not me not me not me. i want to masturbate on stage. don't we all.

The silence isn't breaking

So my dad and I had the biggest fight ever, over driving. I want to get my learner's license when I turn 16, like most people. But my dad, being anal and compulsive, refuses to believe that in fact the majority of 16 year olds in Australia are driving. No. So I have to wait til I'm 18. I mean, for Christ's sake, I won't even be living at home when I'm 18. What the fuck is the point? Apparently when he's driving the car it's a car. When I'm driving it it's a tonne of death. Impeccable logic.
After that I felt fractious the whole day. Nothing helped it. Nothing. So when Dad went out I moved - like a ghost - to the table and cut my wrists. And of course THAT worked. It always does. I know Frank is right when he says you become addicted, and it sucks all your emotions and you become a void. "You're not supposed to feel nothing," he says to me. I know. I know I know I know. And normally I don't feel nothing, I feel everything. But as soon as the blood sprang I started to cry. Huge racking sobs. I sat with my legs draped over the edge of my bed and cried for a long time. Put my thumb into my mouth. I sat there staring into space, seeing the spines of my books all lined up on my bookshelf but not really seeing them. In the front part of my mind was complete blankness, which was what I'd been aiming for. And you know what? IT FELT GOOD. The back part of my mind acknowledged this. Joanna, the precocious child, always so bursting at the seams with emotion, unable to sleep at night for the weight of it, was enjoying feeling nothing. Calm. I never feel calm unless I cut. Feel everything else to the extreme, but never calm.
So I put my wristband on straight away, and when I looked at my arm I could convince myself that nothing was wrong because I usually wear the wristband anyway. To see is to believe. The image is everything. Anatomy is destiny, said Freud. I say, the image of anatomy is destiny.
The neighbours must be getting thoroughly annoyed with me. Whenever Dad and I fight we yell - the whole neighbourhood must be able to hear us. And then I slam doors and play music loudly. All I can say is that 'Right Where It Belongs' is the best song in the world, for me. I know every part of it - every note, every intonation - so well that it's like a friend, so familiar, never changing. 'You keep looking but you can't find the words. Are they hiding in the trees...?'

NIN

So if ANYONE knows where I can buy Nine Inch Nails tickets for the May 7th show in Brisbane, and how much they are, please tell me??? The link on the official website is fucked, and they go on sale on the 23rd. Today is the 17th. If all works out, this show may very well be the highlight of my life. But I can't go unless I have tickets.
So I discovered a new phenomenom - MySpace. Yes, the days of Bebo are over and it's time to roll onto something new, as the Killers would say. http://www.myspace.com/157281848
I see it as sort of moving away a bit more from Dunedin [hardly any of my friends from there have MySpace - they're all still drowning in the quicksand that is Bebo] and moving towards Brisbane [almost every single person I know from here seems to have a MySpace]. When I think about WHERE I AM [where? where? the geographer's daughter] I see myself as stuck between these two cities, emotionally at least. Every day something happens to make me take a step one way, or the other. Who knows where I'll end up. I mean, I remember when I was five, and there was a big house at the bottom of the hill that I lived on. Looking back now it was a rather ugly creation - brown and white, fussy swirls everywhere, not the sort of place I usually like. But when I was five, it was the BIG HOUSE. And I knew I was going to live there when I grew up. And my best friend was going to live in the little white cottage a few houses down. And we'd have children and horses to keep in the paddock next door. I never even considered there might be other BIG HOUSES where I might be happy. No. No no no. This was the only BIG HOUSE I knew and the only one I wanted. And now look where I am. As you grow, the world grows with you.
On the music front, I've got a new band. They are called Alkaline Trio. Their song 'Blue In The Face' is beautiful. I haven't dreamed/since I quit sleeping/and I haven't slept/since I met you. The story of a flawed love. The story of a heartsick love. At least that's how I see it, I'm sure it means different things to different people. At any rate, every time I listen to the first few lines of Belle & Sebastian's 'If She Wants Me' I want to change the lyrics. It goes 'And it was hard/like coming off the pills that you take/to stay happy' and I want to replace 'happy' with 'miserable'. I know it doesn't fit but ... that's my situation.
Spenser and I saw each other on Thursday. We bought $2 bunny ears from some discount store and walked all around the city wearing them. We considered it a victory every time someone saw us and smiled. And we went into Borders and finished reading the book we started when we were in there last time: PostSecret by Frank Warren. Incredible idea - getting people from all around the world to send in annonymous postcards with confessions on them. My favorite is: I had gay sex at church camp. Three times.'
We've become Borders nerds of late, one could say that after Hungry Jacks, Off Ya Tree and [of course] Koz-Mart, it's our main hangout. We read books without buying them, obviously. Art books are our favorite because they're concise and you don't have to actually read too much. We flipped through the whole of Hotel LaChapelle the other day and it was great. Really incredibly pictures. The chrome colors and the exaggerated poses.

Pianos and Vodka

We went to the city after school. Marisa and Andrew and I. We met Sarah and Spenser at Hungry Jack's. I met Chelsea's boyfriend Harris, and Pyro, and Tom. I was hyperactive, laughing and screaming at nothing. Stoned on freedom. I often think that Friday afternoons in the city are the best part of life, week-to-week. The waiting. Ancient History. It's hot. I watch the minutes tick past, lethargic, not taking notes, staring out the window, counting down. Then finally ... I meet Marisa and we go to the tuckshop to meet Anderew. Walking fast to get the 807. The bus trip, standing up on the packed bus. Then ... we're there. Running. Laughing. Throwing insults back and forth. The prospect of a whole afternoon to do whatever we like looms ahead.
We were stupid all afternoon. Marisa and I went into a shop, walked into the front window display area and posed there, like the mannequins. Spenser filmed us. We were only there for about thirty seconds, before the lady behind the counter started yelling at us. I was incredibly scared that she was going to call the cops but also laughing hysterically. I picked up my bag and we hotfooted it out of there.
Anyway, Pyro was 18 today, so he bought us a bottle of vodka. God bless him. Laughing, unable to believe our luck, we went back to Marisa's apartment. We passed the bottle around. Sitting cross legged on her mattress, my shoes off, my heavy bag on the ground, I felt content. I played Marisa's piano in my stocking feet. Pedal, pedal, pedal as I hit the keys. She showed me how to play the opening chords of 'Coin-Operated Boy'. I danced my fingers over the keys, finding notes that sounded right. I had bought new headphones, so I played Half Jack on my iPod and played the piano along to it. The noise was probably terrible, as Marisa was playing Regina Spektor, but no one complained so I kept going. Music and alcohol, I thought. Where would we be without it? We ate the strawberry Pocky sticks I had bought from the Asian grocery. I left the packet on the piano, with one stick left in it. Present to Marisa and her piano.
My goodness, Nine Inch Nails are quite fantastic. For some reason I just started to love the song 'Ringfinger.' I like the end part ... 'Devil's flesh and bone ... Do something for me.'

Music, dreams, parents, poems ...

I was listening to 'On The Radio' by Regina Spektor [great artist she is, lots of power vocally and emotionally, full of everything] and miming playing the piano as usual [or what I imagine to be playing the piano, as I've never played one seriously] but as there actually were keys of some sort in front of me I found myself tapping out a nonsense sentence, the words of piano, if I actually could play the piano and had been hitting the right keys rather than hitting the keyboard to the beat it would have been beautiful and artistic.
Thinking about it in more detail, it was kind of symbolic. Here I am trying to put everything into words, even music, which can never be put into words. Since I have no musical talent I turn instead to writing, which I do have [some kind of] talent for. Scribe for a a generation. And thinking about in even MORE detail, it was definitely symbolic. Whenever I'm upset or disappointed over something, writing fills the void. Even vacant blogging like this, that no one will ever read, is something.
Also listening to Death Cab for Cutie and Neutral Milk Hotel. And I've started listening to a Belle & Sebastian CD that someone gave me years ago, and that I never listened to because I was a mainstream-music listener. [I'm ashamed to admit it even though I was about 13.] It is really good, and gives the kind of thrill that comes with discovering something wonderful which has been in your CD stack or bookshelf for a long time. Exactly how I felt when I read Fear of Flying [my favorite book. Read it. Read it. Read it] and discovered all that world of irreverency, a word which I didn't think applied in any way, shape or form to my parents' bookshelf, where that particular masterpiece had resided for the years before I found and adopted it. It is now officially mine, and the bright yellow cover is something which makes me happy.
I realized that although it is my favorite book, I haven't read it for months and months. I haven't listened to my favorite band, The Dresden Dolls, for days now. Maybe almost a week. I haven't spoken to my best friend in weeks either. There was a time when I would read Fear of Flying for comfort. I remember my dad being out with his girlfriend [whom I hated] one night, and I stayed at home and read the book. Amanda Palmer's voice is like a friend to me ... I hear Dresden Dolls songs in my dreams sometimes. I've heard 'Half Jack' in a beautiful dream about taking my family to a forest on Christmas and weaving for them a kind of gossamer castle out of dewy spider's webs. And I heard 'Sex Changes' in a dream where I was actually playing the piano [my unconscious screaming that I should learn how to do it instead of pretending in dreams and mimes] in my grandparents' house and considering opening a music school for children. I forget exactly what the school was to be called, but it had the word 'Tree' in its name. Anyway, back to the point. I used to also talk to Emily every day and she was [and still is] my first port of call in troubled times ... I guess what I'm trying to say is that your favorite things or people are the ones who are there for you when you NEED them, when you're upset. Affection only as need ... it's an interesting concept, albeit one that has been explored before. A friend in need is a friend indeed, and all that.
Mick is writing new songs. He sent me one, 'Hope And Despair' and although it's only forty-six seconds long, it's beautiful. Absolutely floating ... and yet heavy at the same time, hence the name I suppose. Anyway, it only enforces my conviction that there is nothing Mick can't do. He is afraid to read my poems, however, because he "would rather continue to be under the illusion that you are perfect." It made me think - does writing make one appear flawed? I suppose so. Especially poetry - poetry exposes all the poet's flaws for anyone to see. I understand Mick's unwillingness, and I remember what an uncomfortable feeling it is to read my father's poems, to see his flaws, in love with the illusion of the father, illusion of the image of perfection.
Speaking of poems, and parents, here is a beautiful, still, peaceful poem that my mother wrote when she was in Year 9 or something ludicrous like that ... how can anyone write like that? why can't I write like that? all the usual ...

Spider

Small spider, curled, eight legs brown,
And hung in clear air.
Held like a drop of water vapour
Unsupported, unattached.

But how does he stay?
Why is he not blown
By the fierce gale of my hot breath?
And how does he climb
With all legs whirring,
Up a ladder which no one can see?

He climbs the web of air
He walks on the atoms
And journeys over vast uncharted regions.

If we could, but would break out,
Crack open this heavy shell,
Leave our touching, grabbing selves.
We’d climb the wind
Run on air
And sleep in the net of the stars.