Monday 18 November 2013

secret: creative brain fry, or, the fine art of pottering

i don't know about you folks, but when i have a lot of things on my plate (not literally, although i do love a good full plate of thanksgiving dinner) my creative will to live just disappears out the window.

when i finally do have a night off, and i have to say i haven't had one in a while, i need some decompression time, in the form of pottering. i thought i'd share the sorts of things that happen during a pottering session in my lovely (chaotic) space.

music debrief:

i've had a few "must listens" floating about lately on my ever-expanding list of things to listen to. thanks to a music-loving friend with whom i share many great favourites, i was reminded that a certain amount of time has passed since i'd listened to some of my all-time bestest favourites, namely Radiohead and Elliott Smith. I'm really digging this particular track from Elliott:



and OK Computer reminiscence (let's face it: Radiohead in general) lead me right to this beautiful thing that i once was able to play on piano, harder than you'd imagine.



i also have quite a lot of live footage to watch from my all time favourite thing i've found on YouTube so far, tiny desk concerts via NPR. crazy into The National at the moment, and so this show has pretty much given me the feeling where the world opens up and you fall in love, right down to your little toe.



apologies for the music-heavy sharing, but i just can't get enough of this at the moment. so of course, it's time to make my november Maude the Mazda Mix (they are famous, but only in very tight circles of maybe 2 people, one of which is me... the other is one of my brothers, whichever one is handy).



YouTube giggles

my YouTube dirty pleasure is interviews on ellen, mostly when it's ryan gosling. i recommend you look that up, the one in onesies in particular.

besides this, i also like to watch standup comedy from such greats as dylan moran and louis ck.





Pretty things

i am a bowerbird when it comes to pretty things. sometimes, when i'm pottering, i like to arrange my pretty stuff that i own into aesthetically pleasing combinations.

all of the favourites, but of particular note is the sweet 'hello' necklace from the awesome anna at The Eclective, the sweet and special 'imaginary lovers' zine from deerface, and my granny's old copy of Alice in Wonderland

sometimes, i like to just sit in my chair and rifle through books i haven't actually read yet, looking forward to having time to read them

this weekend just passed i had a great score from a book stall at the local steiner school's spring fair, and the illustrations are so much lovelier than disney characters. don't get me wrong, i love the disney classics, i'm just a bit bored of what disney thinks people look like.



Writing notes and letters, and finding old things I wrote once

i found this recently. a thing i scrawled into the back of a notebook long ago, when i still lived in melbourne and longed to escape whatever it was at that point that held me there:

i have a fantasy about swimming in an open air pool at night time in summer. this fantasy is so tangible to me that i wonder if it may in fact have happened once, a dormant memory of sliding into a pool the temperature of my warm arms, the weightlessness of my previously cumbersome body, sounds echoing off the water.
surely it has happened, at one time, to somebody; how else could we know how it feels to swim at night? the cocoon of water closing over and into my ears, the smell, or imagined smell, of warm jasmine blowing overhead all through Brunswick.
i can hear my own gasping breath as i pull to the surface each 4th stroke, and i feel my heart hammering. why must my words end here? for suddenly, the warm summer night is lost to the absence that is you my dear, and all i remember is floating, face down, with night city noises filtering through the pool water.

i write postcards and letters to the friends of far away that i am missing lots lately, perhaps because i get to see them again soon.


these are the things i do o a quiet quiet Monday night. and find new artists to fall in love with, again on YouTube (such a magical place).

i leave you with a beautiful tattooed man whom i shall perhaps one day meet and marry.


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