a hell.

I'm in Kent with my family. I came down for my birthday. I've been here...not long over a week, I suppose. I'm not sure how many days. I could have been here any amount of time (time tends to be like that with me). It's weird because my family live with my mum's new partner and I've only been to this house once. In Summer. I slept in the conservatory on the couch in my jeans every night for nearly 3 weeks. This time because it's winter and my mum doesn't want me to freeze, I have been sleeping on my 7 year old brother's bedroom floor on an inflatable mattress.
My laptop broke. The whole 'blue screen of death' thing happened so I called Johnny and asked him what I could do and he told me to do somethings and I did them and it worked again...for about 2 minutes. Now it won't switch on at all. For my birthday, my mum bought me another laptop that turned out to be more of a netbook, which is a really long story that I don't feel like writing down. It works fine though. Right now I am waiting for my brothers to finish watching Misfits so that I can watch Ace of Cakes. My food obsession seems to be rearing it's ugly head again. I just watch cooking shows all the time. My favourites are the cake ones. I may as well be a 40 year old woman with lots of cats.
What else I am doing:
-Working on the whole Maisy Peters thing:
        ^A collection of writing about mental health
-Illustrations for a graphic novel about sexual abuse, anorexia and the connections that can exist between them (still in planning stages so don't expect to hear about that one any time soon).
-Illustrations for a writing magazine called 'Beautiful Scruffiness' (which is the most exciting thing on my list)
-Commissioned portrait.

I was meaning to go see some friends in London this week but I suck at planning and I don't care enough. I don't want to go out. I just want someone to talk to who can vaguely understand what is going on. Last night it got to the point where it seemed like emailing Samaritans was a fantastic option. Then I slept. I felt a little better but not by much...I recieved a response. I'll never be doing that again, let me tell you.
I don't know! I feel like a ball of messed up right now and maybe talking to someone wouldn't really help but I still wish I could because maybe it would get rid of the feeling that I have. It feels like I've been screwed into a paper ball really tightly and it's also noisy on the inside. That doesn't make sense!!!!

Sunday Superlist.

 Also known as 'crap I found in my notebook and in my twitter feed'.

1.  By the time a person feels thirsty, his or her body has lost over 1 percent of its total water amount.
2. My mum can turn both her feet backwards.
3. According to twitter, Jeremy Kyle got hit on the head with an envelope and people have decided that it is newsworthy. That's just special.
4. Taylor Momsen like, JUST tweeted this: 'Get the new issue of Revolver Magazine, there's a free centerfold...I mean poster of me inside...' ....Interesting. Taylor Momsen is a 17 year old in a band called The Pretty Reckless who dresses in...well...not very much. She seems to say a lot of provocative things and this seems to get a lot of people talking. I don't think she's really doing anything different to what other 17 year olds are doing. Maybe just different to what other popular 17 year old singers are doing.
5. This could be useful. http://www.angelfire.com/me/marmalade/mathtips.html
6. I believe this to be interesting: http://www.huffingtonpost.com....prostitution-experts-vers_b_756845.html
7. I had a discussion with my friend Sophia about the idea that it's okay to judge someone for saying they're straight and later dating someone of the same gender or saying that they're gay and later dating someone of the opposite. It's not. You don't get to choose who you want and neither does anyone else.
8. I am pretty sure we've managed to skip Autumn. Apparently the weather is going to be in the single digits this week. What is going on with you, earth?!
9. Always a good idea to figure out how to take the ideas of others into consideration without getting into a huff. Something I am trying to figure out now (so far to no prevail).
10. Is twitter brutally murdering my braincells? All I know is that I couldn't think of anything else to type here for a minute until I got distracted by EchoFon (the twitter app I use on firefox).
11. No matter how many things I say about twitter murdering my brain cells, I do love it. All my friends have email addresses. If I feel like climbing into the bin and staying there forever or whatever, all I have to do is send an email and suddenly someone else knows exactly how I feel.
12. I am so happy to be able to try to draw and paint and put my feelings into something visual. If you can make someone feel something or know how you feel from looking at a picture, that's special and that is my goal.
13. Kanye West tweeted this picture: http://twitpic.com/2ykw3f Apparently it's a rejected album cover or something. Johnny described it as 'shocking and crap'. I laughed.
14. This site has some really gorgeous and occasionally inspiring images. http://dreamwalking.tumblr.com/
15. The kitten is sitting on my lap. He has been crying almost non-stop since Johnny went away on Friday but he has finally stopped freaking out and is now purring happily.
16. The less you argue about small things, the more likely you are to get what you want. If what you want is peace and quiet. Which it should be, if it's a small thing.
17. This joke has been going around and I love it:
    Q: How many hipsters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
    A: It's a really obscure number, you wouldn't have heard of it.
18. If you're in the UK and have to do shopping sometimes, this might actually save you some money. It was a good thing to come across: http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/
19. There are too many below-par fashion bloggers. I will never be a fashion blogger. I don't care enough about forcing my terrible dress sense on to others (that's not to say that all fashion bloggers suck. My favourite blogs are fashion blogs).
20. This is a really wonderful blog: http://fuckyeahillustration.tumblr.com  Through it I discovered how awesome James Jean is.
21. The more people see this, the better.'Being A Dickhead's Cool'

Aaaaand that is all I currently have to say to anyone about anything. I'm going to go to bed now. 

Quick rush post.

This week:
Johnny and I went to see 'The Social Network' on Wednesday. I have been listening to Birdeatsbaby's new EP 'Bigger Teeth' and Chapter Three of Kim Boekbinder's album in 4 parts which is titled 'The Impossible Girl'. I have been obsessively staring at James Jean's website.
I read 'The Accidental' by Ali Smith and 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' by Jonathan Safran Foer

The Social Network is fantastic. I was, I admit, rather surprised. It is, of course, a movie about a website. But still, it was very interesting. Also, Justin Timberlake was in it and his acting was passable enough to make me not feel like hurting him for inflicting 'Sexy Back' on the world every time he opened his mouth. Well done, Mr. Timberlake. Well done. Jesse Eisenberg who played Mark Zuckerberg (the creator of facebook) was pretty good. I feel that the real stand out, though, was Andrew Garfield as facebook co-creator Eduardo Saverin. You should go see it. Apparently the movie isn't very accurate, though. I don't care.

Bigger Teeth by Birdeatsbaby is something I looked forward to for a very, very long time. I pity the fool who doesn't go right to the link at the top of the post to listen to them. As usual, it's perfectly reasonable to say 'if you like The Dresden Dolls, you'll probably like Birdeatsbaby', but that's not to suggest that they don't have a completely different sound belonging entirely to them Go listen to it. Go listen to it. Go listen to it. Also listen to their album 'Here She Comes a-Tumblin''. Last year, Birdeatsbaby came to stay with us on their way to Glasgow. It was very exciting. I was very shy. Johnny played one of their songs (which is also one of my favourite songs ever, called 'I Always Hang Myself With The Same Rope') with them in our living room. Amazing.

The Impossible Girl: Chapter Three by Kim Boekbinder contains large amounts of super-goddamn-awesome. Kim has released her album in parts on the August 15th, September 15th, today and the next part is due out on November 15th. The latest part includes one of my favourite songs, of which a live version was released some time ago, 'Rainbows and Unicorns'. It's so good. Go listen to that as well.

I don't really feel like writing about the books aside from to say that they're great and both well worth a read.

I leave you with this quote from 'The Accidental' which is also currently on the whiteboard in our kitchen:
'Eggs are beautiful', said Astrid. 'When you eat an egg, you are eating beautifulness itself.'

Uhhh.

I am not cut out for blogging. So I'm going to stop blogging here. Mostly. I might occasionally post something, but I wouldn't count on it.
However, I have a new blog. I don't intend on updating it much. It's mostly my own notes and things I've written and things people have said. Just a place to keep stuff. Feel free to follow it, but don't expect ALL THE WORDS EVER.
http://dastardlyloop.blogspot.com

Monster Girl's Interview with Yours Truly (June 2010)

Monsters, today I thought I'd fill you all in on a project my lovely talented friend Audrey is doing at the moment, called the 200 Portraits project. I've had queries about the portrait she did of me (it's my new facebook profile photo) and thought I'd fill you all in about how to score one yourself! Instead of me waffling at you about it, though, I thought I'd get Audrey herself to tell you all about it! She's pretty rad. So follows the first ever interview here at Monster Girl Writes!

MG: Explain the project in a nutshell!

AB: People (mostly people I do not know) send me pictures of themselves and I paint or draw them. I mostly use ink, but I also use some fancy markers (ProMarkers) that my boyfriend bought a while ago when we decided to make a webcomic (this did not make it past the ideas stage, by the way).

MG: What gave you the idea for 200 Portraits?

AB: I'm doing it for a few reasons...Firstly, I just found out that for a few fun and exciting reasons that I shan't go into here, I cannot get a job for a few months, so that means a fair bit of sitting around the house wanting to eat my own legs due to boredom. Secondly, I am going to be working at a festival for home educated families in July, so I figured it would be a good chance to go and do some art with/of/for some other people and faces are the thing I'm best at, so I thought it might be nice to do a bunch of portraits of the people I meet. THIRDLY, last year I did another project where I had to do paintings every day for a month, so I figured that if I was going to get something going, I might as well get something going where I do a certain number of things again. 200 seemed about right.

MG: What are you hoping to get out of the project?

AB: I think it will be pretty awesome when it's over and I have sketchbooks and things full of other people's faces. 200. More people than I can probably fit comfortably in the house I live in. I've had so many different people send me pictures too. One woman sent me a picture of her horse. I'm not amazing at drawing animals, but I fully intend on giving it a go.
Another thing that may or may not happen once I've passed the finish line is an exhibition. 31 Paintings had an exhibition in spite of the fact that it was far less ambitious than this, so that's the aim.

MG: How can Monster Readers get involved?

AB: By going to the website (http://200portraits.info) and sending me a photo! A question I've been asked a lot is 'what kind of photo?' and I have to say...it really doesn't matter (though if you have any other questions, my twitter username is audreyisanidiot). I can make something of most of the things I've been sent and I won't be leaving any out for difficulty reasons. OR, if you're not into that, you can tweet about the project to get people you know involved or donate to the project and I'll send you a pretty picture in the mail (the details for that are also on the site).

MG: Favourite scene in a Star Wars movie?

AB: I have a new love for the scene in the Cantina, with Han Solo being a cool motherf***er and whatnot, mostly because I am going to be production manager on a Star Wars fan film type thing sometime soon and part of it takes place in there so I've been thinking about that one thing more often than I usually would. I also enjoy Han responding to Leia's 'I love you' with 'I know'. My boyfriend does that to me though and it makes me want to murder him...
When I was about 8 or 9, I used to watch 'Return of the Jedi' every day after school and I always just loved that movie as a whole. I can't remember why I loved that one in particular now, though.

As well as the 200 portraits website, Audrey has a blog which you can check out here and you can follow her on twitter here and if you'd like an example of the photo to portrait process, here's the awesome portrait she did for me! It's so cute! Probably could have found a better photo for her to work with though :P

(pictures included at source)

Original version here:
http://monstergirlwrites.blogspot.com/2010/06/interviewing-audrey-bishop-of-200.html

Personal Update #1.

This is a new blog. I already have a blog! What am I doing?!
This blog was meant to be more for articles and new art more than personal updates, but now that is all I feel like posting here. So. Fresh start. I will keep it updated with articles and new art, but I will also throw in personal updates. Such as this one.
Once again, it is a Friday night and I am at home with my boyfriend instead of out being odd with the other crazy kids in my age group. This is good. Going out is not on my 'things that I do like' list. We live in North West England and we have a kitten named Shadow. He works in IT and I am an artist who is also looking for a normal people job. I also write articles! Usually unpaid ones! Thrilling stuff.

Today has been particulatrly good. I got a copy of Zoe Boekbinder's new EP 'Over The Top'. It has 5 songs on it:
Crush, which I have loved since I heard it in a YouTube video of her and her sister (Zoe and her sister Kim used to be a band called Vermillion Lies) playing it live. I bought the EP for this song, in all honesty. The version on 'Over The Top' is different but really, reeeeally good. Single Ladies, which is, as you can probably guess, a cover of the Beyonce song. But made cool. Poker Face, Lady Gaga cover, clearly. Also made cool.
Break You Nice is a song by Electrosexual, Scream club, Mz Sunday Luv and, of course, Zoe. It wasn't what I expected to hear at all, but after a few listens, I fell in love. Lastly Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey, according to the notes on the CD, is performed by Zoe's grandfather Bobbie Boekbinder (circa 1954) and is terrific.

Anyway, clearly Zoe is awesome. I hope you already knew that from her fine work with Kim Boekbinder as 'Vermillion Lies' and her solo album 'Artichoke Perfume' (which is utterly sublime...also I don't think I've ever used the word 'sublime' before).
On a related note, Kim Boekbinder is releasing her album 'The Impossible Girl' in 4 parts (1 a month). The first two are out now and amazing. Particularly the song 'Stalker' which you can listen to (along with the rest of part 2 and if you follow the links, part 1) HERE. You should also click where it says 'video'. The videos for 'Open/Avocado' and 'Impossible Girl #2' are amazing and I admit that I didn't know the one for 'Sex, Drugs & Nuclear Physics' didn't exist, but that is an excellent song, so the video probably is too. Watch, watch, watch.

What else?
This will probably mark me out as a loser, but I don't care. If you like something, you should own it, so here we go. My Chemical Romance's new song can now be listened to on the internet. My 13 year old self is ABSOLUTELY DYING, YOU GUYS. The song is called 'Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)'.
Seriously. In real life. On the bright side, I think that the song (also the trailer for the album which exists but I can't be bothered to look for and post it) show that they're not taking themselves seriously and fuck it, neither should you. It's catchy! The I like about this band is that they're a bunch of geeky guys who aren't cool! They're a group of freaks who made some decent music, got famous, got their hands on some money and did something with costumes and stuff that most of their fans didn't even like (The Black Parade) because it was what they wanted to do. I don't like them as much as I used to, but I do like that aspect of them. So much.

Now I'm going to go do other stuff. You should absolutely look at my flickr.
Over the next few days I am going to be posting a few other things, such as Monster Girl's interview with me and a review of the project I did last year. They shall be placed here for safekeeping. Why would I want to lose stuff like that?

Audrey.

An article I wrote for RawMg.

I avoided showing this to friends after it was posted as I know too many people who are furiously anti-record labels. However, in the comfort of my own blog, I do not care. So here it is. Little things I have gathered from stories about social networking sites, musicians and record labels. This was posted up on RawMg (link to article at the bottom of the post) and is my second piece of actually-published-in-real-life writing.

'Unless you have been in hiding on Mars, you will probably have heard someone talk about 'the death of the record industry'. People aren't buying CDs as much as they used to,

practically anything you could possibly want can be found on some dark corner of the Internet for free and plenty of people have taken the path of rising through the ranks of social networking sites such as MySpace using only their computers in lieu of 'proper' recording equipment. So are record labels necessary?
Once upon a time, yes. Without one, you were unlikely to gain the success or promotion required to hit the big time and make real money (though there is the large chance that you wouldn't make a great deal of money anyway). Nowadays...it depends on who you ask. Bands like 'Millionaires', 3 American girls who accidentally started their band by posting a song created on Garageband on their MySpace page have earned a lot of success in the US and overseas gained a fanbase without a record label have had their songs used in various TV shows, they have released EPs with Decaydance and the label they are now signed to, B-Unique Records (which itself is a division of Atlantic records) along with their self released first EP, 'Bling Bling Bling!', so it would seem that they have seen success with and without.
Lily Allen is another example of a MySpace musician who gained a following through the site, got signed to a record label and is now a very popular artist with 2 hit albums under her belt. Kate Nash was discovered and signed when Lily Allen put one of her songs in her MySpace 'Top 8', and so it goes on.
However, some have seen a very dark side to the record industry. Just ask Amanda Palmer who literally (and very publicly, at that) begged Roadrunner Records to drop her. Palmer's band 'The Dresden Dolls' released two albums with Roadrunner and had seen plenty of underground and some mainstream popularity when they went 'on hiatus' in 2008. Still tied to a contract, she released her first solo album 'Who Killed Amanda Palmer' with them. It was promoted by the label very little and Amanda claims to barely have seen a cent from the album itself, instead making most of her money from various pre-order packages and different merchandise, most notably a book featuring pictures of her 'dead' in various places with stories by author Neil Gaiman to go along with them. Once liberated from her label and after posting a celebratory blog, Amanda has released an EP of Radiohead covers played on the ukulele, which is available from 52p but can be purchased at any amount above that -depending on how generous the buyer is feeling- and more merchandise packages to go with it.
Similarly, Radiohead released their 2007 album 'In Rainbows' after ending their contract with EMI. A digital version of the album could be bought for any amount at all, though a physical copy could be bought for a set price and was found to be very profitable.
With the downfall of MySpace and the uprise of websites like Bandcamp, which allows users to upload their music and give it away for free or sell downloads, it is little wonder that more and more musicians are coming out and making money on their own terms. Other social networks like Twitter and Facebook allow people to connect with friends and strangers alike to spread the word about their latest creation. The Internet is a place for artists to thrive alone and getting signed has become less of a concern for many of them and many of them are happy with their growing fanbases.
All that said, record labels aren't quite dead. Lots of talented people are still getting signed and making the money and the music required to stay on top in spite of the fact that the sales of CDs have gone down and digital sales have gone up and people are downloading like crazy and fame may be a harder goal to reach without publicists, managers, producers and everyone else working for a label backing them.
Are record labels necessary? It depends on your goals. But 'the death of the record industry' hasn't quite occurred yet.'

By Audrey Bishop

At the moment, the article as it is meant to be seen can be seen here.

And Gone.

Listening to Amanda Palmer's ukulele Radiohead covers EP.
Working on the 200 portraits project.
There's a competition at the moment. If you retweet about http://200portraits.info or post about it somewhere and link me to it or make sure I see it, you go in the running to win a print of an older picture (not old old. I did it in the past year. But it's not new). So far, response is good. Might keep it going until I go home.
I had tacos in the backyard with my brothers today. I wore pajamas all day. I downloaded 'Everybody's Gotta Live' by Love and remembered making plans with Rachael based around going to South Bank and singing that particular song loudly. Then I remembered her buying a poem for £1 from a guy there and local authorities shuffling him along.

I also remembered this girl, Emily, who I used to kind of know who was one of the most interesting people I've ever met and also one of the most approachable. I was kind of fixated on her for a while. I was interested in hearing about her life (not to a stalker degree. Just in a way where we were friends on MySpace and I actually bothered to check what she was up to now and then). She was very sick, though. On and off. Like everyone who was in my life around 4 years ago, she disappeared into the void. I genuinely thought she had died because she was so sick and disappeared so abruptly and took all her friends with her. I never heard anything about her again and was too scared to ask. A while ago...Probably a couple of years ago at this stage, come to think about it...There was this thing in Covent Garden. It was like a funny shaped room. Inside there were coloured squares and you texted your wishes to a number and they appeared on the coloured squares inside. (I actually found what it is. Click here for a little explanation.) Anyway, me and my friend Sophia walked in and stood staring at the things that appeared on the walls for a few minutes. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw dark red hair and I spun around quickly to see Emily standing there, staring at the walls with the rest of us. I must have been gawking because she shot me a quick worried glance, laughed, grabbed her friend by the arm and ran off. I stepped out of the 'wishing well' and looked around for her, but she was no where in sight. But she wasn't dead, so that's nice.

Anyway. Today I've been wearing pajamas, drawing and remembering.

'Mystery Project #3'

A few days ago, I tweeted something like this:
'If you're creative and can record yourself talking (maybe even if you can't) and may want to do a thing, email me. audreybishop@live.co.uk'
Then I gathered up the replies (I can't remember how many there were, but I am happy to saythat it was a number above 10. That's when I stopped counting. Not everyone has responded to that email, though, so it might be down to something more like 6 or 7) and sent out an email explaining what I was doing and why. I won't go far into the 'why?' because it was inspired by a conversation I had with someone who doesn't realise I'm using the conversation for my new project, but the 'what?' is a a podcast type thing about what people do in terms of art or creativity or whatever they want to talk about and how they do whatever they do. And why. And what they're doing.
So far, on my side, I seem to have someone who sings and acts and someone who cooks and maybe a writer and maybe a photographer and a couple of others that I can't exactly recall at this very moment. A few of the people, I think, know me mostly from the 200 Portraits project and Beth Hommel's tweet about it. So I'm glad that that has helped me get people interested.

Anyway, today I'm getting on a bus for like 7 hours or something to go to London to meet my mum. Then we're going to Kent. On Friday I'm going to HESFES to do some volunteer work type stuff. I'll get to see Keira, who I've known since I was 9 and have barely seen since I moved to Carlisle...along with a few other people but I don't think many of my friends are actually going.
Going to take a lot of photos and draw and not use my computer for a whole week. Special.

I also won't be updating the 200 Portraits site during my trip. If you need any info or anything like that, though, you can contact my assistant: twitter: assistantchump ...I'll post her email address here later.

It's been a thing, you guys.

In my email account, I have a folder reserved for emails relating to 200 Portraits. Specifically the ones that actually came with photos (questions and responses to the update emails remain in the inbox). So far there is about 120. I've recieved photos in other places so soon I'll need to really count them up and figure out how many I have and if I should stop asking for submissions.
My best friend Bekki recently offered to be my assistant. So far the main thing she has had to do is gather email addresses to add to a list...Partly so if I decide I want to send an update to everyone who has sent a photo, I don't need to go too far to find their addresses and partly just because it's good to have a list of everyone who is involved. After I gave her full access to my (personal, might I add. This is how lazy I am. All your emails regarding the project go to my personal email address even though I have one specifically for 200 Portraits that I don't use) email account, she sorted through all of them and put them into the correct folder.
My hero.
I asked her if she'd read any of the emails that had come with the photos and she said no. I am grateful that she was thoughtful enough to not just read my stuff, but I kind of wish she had. Some of the stories that have been sent with the photos have really been something.
I've had emails from people who are sick and in hospital, parents who are worried about their children, people who believe that they aren't beautiful and want to see what I can do with their pictures.
People who didn't say anything about their pictures even though they looked like they had really interesting stories. That was nice as well. It's nice that there are interesting people with interesting pictures and interesting stories who don't feel the need to explain themselves. Because maybe what I am looking at and thinking 'wow. That's so strange/cool/funny!' about isn't really anything to them.
People in crazy costumes. A horse.
It's been really interesting so far and I look forward to seeing what else appears in my inbox.
The response to the cards I've been sending out to people who donate has been positive. That is very pleasing because it's not the easiest aspect of this. I am trying to complete a lot of suitable portraits of absolute strangers and the cards are really only another thing on the list. But knowing people are getting them and enjoying them makes it 10 times easier to pick up a pencil again and again and again for things that won't even be a part of the one large goal towards which I am trying to head.

Anyway, here is an interview that a friend of mine posted on her blog. Also it's a good blog, so maybe you should become a reader of it too.
http://monstergirlwrites.blogspot.com/2010/06/interviewing-audrey-bishop-of-200.html

http://200portraits.info

A.

200 Portraits and a Carrot Cake.

I have blue hair.


























I dyed it last night. I used some really good dye. I used Fudge Paintbox dye which is the best coloured dye I've ever used. My mum used it to put pink in my hair when I was a lot younger and I used to wear a red bandanna over it. A couple of years ago I dyed all my hair bright pink and it looked amazing. A lady on the bus asked me if I was a rockstar and countless little girls walked past me with their parents pointing at me and saying they wanted hair like mine. SO. I went online and found a person on amazon who sold that particular kind of dye in the UK and I got a colour called 'blue hawaii'.
But yeah! This is a terrrrible picture because it's just a phone one I took to post on twitter. You can also see what a mess my desk is. Whoops.

Today I'm going to watch Sleeping Beauty. In my hunt for interesting facts and things, I discovered this, which is supposedly an early version of the story: Sun, Moon and Talia (click)
I thought it was interesting (also if you don't understand the story, while slightly different, the plot on the wikipedia page makes way more sense).

Aaaanyway, I've been doing this project...I'm doing 200 portraits of all different people who send me their photos. Someone even sent me a picture of their horse. You can do it too: CLICK!
You can see some of the pictures there, but here are a couple of my favourites:




Paloma(13/200) and Sarah (1/200)


So yeah. That's what's going on.
I also did a brief interview for Monster Girl Writes (which is a brilliant blog, by the way) and if that goes up, I'll post a link here.

Later, dudes.
A.

-24th April 2010, Shepherds Bush.
Partly at Paloma's house, partly to combat boredom during quieter moments at the merch table.

I uploaded a bunch of stuff to facebook, if we're friends on there.
My mum kindly uploaded this photo she took of me at the bus station just before I left London, also:





































I can't say I'd thank her for it.

Loss.

As far as I know, I have to go home. Or I get to go home. I haven't decided.
Going home means getting to go swimming.
Going home also means I lose most of my possessions and someone I care about.
The longest I remember living in one house=3 years.
The shortest I remember living in one house=6 months.
I'd say on average I usually spend around a year and a half living in a house.
There was the one with the garage on the hill that I pointed out saying 'we lived there!' each time we went past it for years, even though I don't remember living there.
There was a two storey house in a weird sort of court where all the houses matched and my dad had 2 mokes and I liked to dress up as Pocahontas and steal pea pods from the plants that grew from our neighbours yard into ours.
There was the house in a court in Mill Park where I made enemies of the girls who lived on the other end, out of which we eventually moved because of earwigs. They were everywhere. We were plagued by the things.
There was the beautiful but small house in Ocean Grove. A 10 minute walk from the beach, a lovely backyard...My nanna owned it and now she lives in it.
There were others but when I try to remember them my mind just goes blank.
I've lived in different houses in different countries and states so that means that when I build up a collection of things...things that I'm used to being able to see and touch and use...I often have to lose them. And friends...I have lost so many friends. Sometimes I've left town and not bothered to tell the friends or I never bother to keep in contact (the internet has changed this ever so slightly, which is wonderful). Once I came out of school and met my dad and he said that we were moving to Sydney and I didn't have any say and I didn't get to tell my best friend until we'd driven all the way to Sydney and I got to call her when I got there.
I used to have so many books. As a child, I read all the time. I read and I drew. All I did. I lived in the library.
I had so many books that they filled boxes and bookshelves and every time I moved I had to get rid of most of them. But my collection would always build back up, as if by magic.
It's slowed over the years.
I spend less time reading but I still have more books than I could carry to another continent. I also have more CDs and DVDs and I have all these random bits of life that it would absolutely kill to lose.
I get jealous of the people I meet who live in the same house they lived in when they were 3 or whose parents (or one of their parents) still live in the house in which they were concieved because that means the possibility of going through boxes and finding things you haven't seen since you were 6 and old photos and not building up your life, wary of the fact that one day you might have to give it all away or just lose it. Once when I was younger one of my mother's friends lived with us and she came home to find that she'd stolen everything we owned except for the TV and a box of photos.
If you're one of those lucky people who has barely moved their entire life, I'm jealous. You should take advantage of that and go through all the cupboards in the house right now.

All that said, I'm not disappointed with how things are. I've travelled so much and seen so many places.
I just want to stop for a little while.

Like a satellite, I’m in an orbit all the way around you...

I cannot stop listening to Satellite by Lena Meyer-Landrut.
The song that won the Eurovision Song Contest.
Therefore making me an incredibly sad, sad creature...It's still a really good song though. For some reason it reminded me of 'I'll Kill Her' by SoKo and now I keep listening to that as well. I don't think I really like SoKo that much. I like maybe 2 of her songs.
Not that she has that many out anyway...

After (the day after, I think) I hurt my neck in London, I met Paloma at Waterloo station and then we wandered around and I stayed at her house. We watched 'Secretary', which I'd previously only seen part of but enjoyed. It's a good movie.
I went to see Laura, who I hadn't seen in ages but met when I was 9 and this other girl -Amy- I was friends with when I was 9 was there too. We made cupcakes and Laura unearthed a bottle of wine and there was popcorn and we watched some movie that I can't really remember too well but it bored me.

I came back up to Carlisle. Not a lot has happened since I got back. I was meaning to go to Lancaster to see Sarah but I'm broke, so I didn't. It's too expensive a trip. Johnny and I went for a walk the other day and there was some steam fair thing going on and we walked through where all the caravans and things were and there were lots of odd, odd things going on.
And swarms of bugs.
No more walking through parks until the weather is different, I suppose.

Talked to Keira, am working at hes fes in July. No idea what I'm doing. Was meant to last year but couldn't afford to get there.
That was bad.
It should be good this year.
I hope some friends I haven't seen in a long time are there. My old tutor will probably be there (another person I have known since I was 9. Except a proper real life grown up who can be like 'oh god, you've grown up into a failure, haven't you?' or something...Not that I've actually grown up into a failure...But if anyone could tell, she probably could. ANYWAY, moving on...).

I got a copy of 'Crazy Taxi 3', which my brothers and I used to take turns at playing, even though it's one of the worst games ever to hit the world. Basically, you drive around in a speeding, jumping taxi and smash into things and try and get your passenger to their destination in about a minute.

So I'm gonna go play that.

Dear ___________,

As civil as I try to be with you, I cannot imagine a world in which I do not want to punch you in the jaw.
Audrey.

Proper and less angry update later.

Also read my review of Jessica Allyn's f***ing brilliant album 'Delusions of Grandeur' here: http://indiemusic.suite101.com/article.cfm/jessica-allyn-delusions-of-grandeur-review ...shut up, you have to start somewhere.

Nothing.

In the end, all I did was go to Sainsbury's with mum, make dinner and lie in bed.
Shortly after my last blog post, I decided to 'get on with my day' by taking a shower.
I injured my neck whilst washing my hair.
I have been in awful pain all day.
I am hoping it will feel slightly better tomorrow as I plan on actually doing things tomorrow.

'I'll make you wings out of paper and glue...'

'...and you can fly wherever you are thinking, as long as you fly on back to me.' -'CRUSH', VERMILLION LIES (may have gotten something wrong. This is what I hear on the crappy recording I have on my iPod.)

Still in London. Have decided that I will stay until Saturday and meet up with Johnny in Leicester.
Today I'm meant to go on a picnic with Paloma and possibly Charley but we didn't really come to a decision in regards to when/where this picnic would take place. So maybe it will be today, maybe it will be...Not today!
Was also invited to some thing in Hyde Park but decided not to go to that as I'm fairly certain it involved people who I don't like and some people who absolutely disgust me.
Unfortunately, this also means not seeing two friends that I haven't seen in ages and ages. But I might see one of them on Tuesday, so it's not terribly tragic.

Yesterday, Riley and I went to the William Morris Gallery. It used to be the home of William Morris and it is in Lloyd Park, which is behind my family's house. Even when I lived with my family, I never ever went to it.
But yesterday, we were walking past and I saw that the door was open (I've never seen it open and it just looked so much more inviting, as it didn't feel like I was just barging into this big, pretty house) and I knew that entry is free and it just seemed like a good idea.
It's beautiful old house, filled with beautiful old things.
I bought some postcards. One for myself and one for Johnny. But I'm yet to decide if I'd rather mail it to him or just give it to him on the weekend. Probably the latter, as I'm so lazy.
The upstairs of the gallery scared me. When I got up there, I realised that even though I'd never been there, it was mostly the same as a building in a dream I had once, where someone was selling books and then suddenly it started to collapse and the floor kept falling away from under one of my feet.
In reality, the floor of the upper storey in the gallery is so creaky that it really did feel like I was going to fall through it.
One of the rooms made me feel a bit weird. I can't remember what was on the walls, but I know there was something. I remember that there was a fireplace and I remember Riley pointing out a power socket and joking that 'I bet that's where William Morris plugged in his electric heater.'
All I can really remember from that room is feeling disoriented and wanting to get out. As soon as I walked out, it went away.
That's exactly how I imagine it feels to be somewhere that is 'haunted' (which I never really believed in exactly).
Not that I thought it was haunted at the time.

We went home and I switched on my laptop to find an email from Amanda, thanking me and Kaitlin for doing all the merch stuff. It was really lovely. I hadn't expected it and it was a nice little thing to have happen.

While watching 'Total Wipeout', I struck up a conversation on twitter with a guy I met while doing merch. This guy was so funny and friendly and kept talking to us, so we got his twitter username. He is a part of this amusing online game... http://www.kill5.com/game.php?id=scene_and_not_heard
I didn't do very well at it, but I enjoyed it anyway.

I watched Doctor Who with my brothers and asked Johnny to call me to talk about it. He didn't seem to want to, because he had things to do, but he did. And we had a nice talk. And he opened and read my mail to me.

I played Jenga with Will for a while. He doesn't actually have proper Jenga, he has...a sort of rip-off game, I guess...Called Tumble Down. It had the name of the game over and over in different languages down the side, and one of them was 'wackelturm'. So instead of shouting 'jenga!' when the tower collapsed, we started shouting 'wackelturm!!!!'
Will then had to go to bed (oh the joys of being 7!!!) so I got my laptop back out and watched the movie 'Hideous Kinky'. Mostly because I read the book a long time ago and have been meaning to ever since.
I've heard that it's awful, but I rather enjoyed it. Not in a way where I now consider it to be the greatest movie ever, but I did enjoy it.
Kate Winslet is beautiful in it and I could relate to some of the things that happened to the characters.

Now to try and get on with my day.
Hmmmmmm.

Strangetime.

Kept waking up and falling asleep this morning, in and out of a dream where I was on a bus and there was this...weird talking baby-like creature who was loud and angry and wanted me to do the things that it couldn't do due to a lack of mobility.
Other parts of the dream also seemed to take place in Maida Vale tube station (the closest station to the tiny 2 bedroom house my family -with 5 members- used to have to pack into when I was 9-10) but with strange things. The ticket office was more of an old fashioned looking vending machine and the escalators were gone.
Maida Vale tube station has been in a lot of my dreams and I don't know why.

Today I decided that I'll probably stay in London an extra 5 days.
1. I don't see my family enough.
2. If I do that, I can get a bus to Leicester and meet Johnny there and get a train back with him the next day. It beats shelling out for the train journey back to Carlisle OR doing the less expensive 8 hour bus trip.
3. Gives me more time to go to shops I haven't been to in ages. Like Muji. And also art shops, because there aren't really any in Carlisle that I can go to. And galleries. Apparently one of my dad's friends has an exhibition on now or sometime soon, so I suppose if I'm around, I can swing by that too.
4. Gives me more time to sort out when Paloma and I are having a picnic. Because we've been discussing it since I got here, and while I have seen her, it wasn't for a picnic.
5. Maybe catch up with more Brigade types that I usually only see during an Amanda Palmer thing (and seeing as I was working at the last few, I barely saw them even then).
6. Mostly it would be nice to spend some more time with Will.
I'm proud of Will. My monster of a 7 year old brother.
It was Mothers Day, the other day, in other countries such as Australia, where I was born and have spent most of my existance so far, so I bought a copy of 'The Science of Sleep' for my Mum. Will doesn't understand most of it, seeing as most of it is in French, but has decided he loves it anyway, because of all of Stephane's dreams.
The other day, I found him pulling colorful crepe paper out of a box and I asked what he was doing and he told me that he wanted to make a picture of himself. So I helped him a bit and I made one of myself, too.
He plays a lot of video games, as do my other two brothers, and he is incredible at them. The things that I struggle with, the things my other brothers struggle with...he breezes through. And he's 7. He never ceases to amaze me.
ANYWAY, with the crepe paper self portraits and his enjoyment of 'The Science of Sleep' dream sequences, I've come to realise that despite how much time he spends playing video games, he's not a little zombie child.
He's a pretty creative kid -not that it's shocking. I know children generally are.- but I didn't realise just how capable of these things he is. I think that I forgot, because I've not been able to spend so much time with him, what with living on the other end of the country.

22.22

Why Not Blog Today?!

I haven't blogged in some time (who cares? Who even reads this shit?) but I've just had so much going on that I haven't had time to or felt like it.

According to Twitter, only twenty (CAN'T BE?!) days ago, I was in London (as I am now, but I have been back to Carlisle since) at KOKO in Camden, getting shit together to do merch for Amanda Palmer.
Here is a link to a picture she posted of me and fellow merch girl Kaitlin: http://twitpic.com/1hj53l
I happen to look like some kind of evil troll in half of the pictures I am in from that night.
Here is a nicer one from the next night at Bush Hall:
Anyway, Amanda's crew got trapped in the US due to the ASHCLOUD from the Iceland volcano (which she luckily escaped, which prompted me to do this drawing, which Amanda also tweeted: http://twitpic.com/1iwjip (you'll notice that I am opting to post links to Facebook and Amanda's twitpic. This is from laziness. If you can't see the above pictures of Kaitlin and myself, either Amanda's deleted them from twitpic or facebook's not letting you see) and she was short a merch girl. Also they needed someone who could drive. Which I can't.
Beth emailed me asking if I could do merch in Glasgow, Dublin and London, as I had already done it at a couple of shows last year. I said no to Dublin because I didn't have my passport on me (in London with my mother) but yes to Glasgow and London. So the next day I got on a train with Johnny (to whom I had given my guest list space as a sort of crap birthday present -my plan had been to use a ticket, but these both turned out unnecessary as we were both given AAA passes).
Highlight of the night #1: Amanda saying thank you to me, 'Audrey my friend from London who came here to do merch!' onstage. I punched my fists in the air and yelled 'yeah!' along with the crowd, still cheering at her thanks speech, which was aimed at the last minute support bands, her emergency tour manager Sven and myself, attracting much attention from the people at the bar to my right.
After the show we were being kicked out so a few of us piled into a shockingly slow elevator to find the dressing room, where everyone else had apparently congregated and Amanda was passing beer and tea cakes out (I guess she needed to get rid of them to make space?) before we all went downstairs to see if there was any space in the bar. There was not.
We went to the resturant and took over a booth in a corner.
Some stuff happened. Lots of yelling and stuff.
Amanda made a toast and somewhere in there I yelled 'I RULE', perhaps slightly louder than I'd meant to.
(note to self: just don't drink.)
Basically this is a post about my ego being fed with gratitude and how I respond loudly to things, I suppose.
ANYWAY, after a trek to their far-away parked tour van and some goodbyes, we walked back to the hotel and got sleep. Then we wandered around Glasgow, I contemplated buying 'Kneller's Happy Campers' (book upon which a movie I love is based) and we got on a train back to Carlisle, where I made arrangements (travel tickets, etc.) for London.
I stayed in my family's house for the first night. I got to their house and opened my laptop to find 9 emails from Amanda, her tour manager, Holly (who was thought to be doing merch but ended up not doing merch at the UK shows) and Kaitlin. Including excel spreadsheets and a PDF file. Christ on a bike.
Read all of them, made battle plan.
Arrived in Camden and called Kaitlin, who told me how to get into the venue (after a brief struggle. Eventually Bitter Ruin -support band, amazing, google them- showed up and I just went in with them) and told me to meet her upstairs in the production office.
We spent a lot of time running around and having little idea as to what we should do and running minor un-merch-related errands before finally getting our shit together and sorting out the mess of merch. It was a busy night indeed.
I stayed with Kaitlin and the woman she was staying with, whose name is Liz.
The next day we went to Bush Hall for the first of 3 shows there. The first two days, while eventful, I cannot be arsed with describing.
On Sunday, the final day, there were two shows.
One during the afternoon at Underworld in Camden, followed by the 3rd and final Bush Hall show.
We were meant to be preparing to leave Camden at 5pm.
Amanda and Jason realised onstage that it was 5pm.
We all packed into the tour van and went to Bush Hall slightly late.
Jason, Kaitlin and I were in the back of the van and my phone rang. My ringtone has been a Jason Webley song for over a year and I thought nothing of it when it rang. For 10 minutes. Then it hit me.
As we neared the venue, I saw a familiar head of curly red hair and freaked the fuck out.
'RACHAEL'S HERE. OH SHIT NO.', said I.
'What's wrong?', asked Jason, Captain of Greatness.
'A friend of mine who I haven't seen in ages is here and I won't have any time to see her!!!'
'Ask her to help us unload the van and then she can hang out inside!', he suggested (thus earning his title as Captain of Greatness).
So I did.
I ran over there and went 'Rach! I need your help!'
And I got to take her in early.
It was brilliant. The table was pretty much set up already so I just had to eat and we sat down and had a chat and it was wonderful to see her again.
Highlights of the last night: Amanda thanking Kaitlin and I onstage while we stood at the door to the hall towards the end of the show, Holly handing us glasses of champagne as it was the last night after the show while we were still working.

I've left so many details out of this.
But it was great.

Some pictures from the last night:
AFP: Let's lie down in the boxes, it will be an accurate representation of your week. (something to that effect but I can't remember what it was exactly)
Me: You can do that. I'm gonna sit here.

L-R: Alex, Me, Drew, Ben.

Georgia, Me, Amanda, Kaitlin, Drew, Jason.

This was the night most of the photos were taken and as it was the final and busiest night, the day I'd put the least effort into my outfit/hair/errr...face.
Hah.

Other stuff:
Started a project called Hungry Ghosts last month, here's the website: www.hungryghosts.info
Nothing up there aside from who the artists are and stuff.
Was very busy.
But soon there will be stuff.

Will turned 7 on Monday, so I came to visit for his birthday and have made him 2 cakes (cheesecake with a lovely raspberry syrup & a white chocolate mud cake).

Now I'm sitting in my mums room watching her play uno with will. :)

London (Will is the ultimate hero.)

I'm in London. I caught the bus down from Carlisle on Thursday to spend Mother's Day with my mum. The bus trip was meant to take 8 hours or something but it ended up taking closer to 9.
I don't mind long bus trips. I can handle them better than the 3 hour train trips. I can read or I can stare out the window...I don't know why that is, I guess trains just aren't as comfortable to me.
Also when we were at a rest stop place some guy stopped me and went 'I saw your drawings! You are a good drawer!' (yes, a drawer. It was still nice!) because I had been sketching a bit on the bus.
I finally got to Victoria station and met my mum and after a quick and unhealthy fast food dinner, we went home. Will was asleep but he woke up and gave me some tired hugs and was generally adorable. He's 7 in May but he still looks like a squishy little baby to me. Also apparently at school, a teacher was asking them to come up with animals starting with D and his answe was 'demon' and once he asked for a drink of water and the teacher said no and he said 'I'm not long for this world!' and asked how she would explain it to his mum when he died.
I'm pretty proud of him.
Yesterday I met up wit Lucy at Angel tube station and this girl I knew when I was 9 showed up. She was on her way to college, but it was still odd to be at that station waiting for Lucy and then to have someone I haven't actually seen in a couple of years (I think the last time I did was just after I moved back to England and I think that was about 3 years ago) just like...appear. So odd.
Lucy was going to an Emilie Autumn concert that I had missed out on getting a ticket for but I still wanted to hang out with her. So I spent most of the day in the line for it. It was still good, however. I got a free muffin and a cookie and a lollipop and a tiny little brownie. It was a nice queue.
THEN I went over to Shepherds Bush to hang out with Paloma. We were waiting for a couple of her friends to show up and I had a look at some of her art and she looked at my pathetic sketchbook that I've only been using for about a week so it pretty much has the same two things that I've been experimenting with over and over and we had tea and meringues and lemon tart. Her friends showed up and we all chatted a bit and had some lasagna and then I went back to my family's house, to sleep. I walked there in the dark, it was past 10pm and the area my family lives in makes doing such a thing feels uncomfortable and scary. But I survived!
Today, my mum isn't home, but when she is, we're going to watch 'Black Books'.
I'm going home on Thursday which is also my brother Erik's 15th birthday.

DNA, baby, that spells DNA.

My best friend Bekki and I sometimes make each other folders of funny/pretty pictures to send to each other and sometimes we make folders of our favourite songs and swap them. Bekki has really wonderful taste in music. I'm not going to bother listing everything she sent me, but here are my 3 favourites:

That Spells DNA- Jonathan Coulton
I only know who Jonathan Coulton is because of the song 'Still Alive' at the end of the game 'Portal' (first video game I ever completed fully. Because it fucking rocks). This song is great. 'DNA, baby, that spells DNA'....I think that line just makes it awesome alone.

Rabbit Fur Coat- Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins
This is the prettiest damn song I have heard in the longest time. It's beautiful.

Chick Habit- April March
I already knew this song (who doesn't know this song? Seriously?) but I didn't have it and now I'm glad I do.

As I said, I also sent her a few songs. I sent her 12 of my favourite songs. Here are my 3 favourite songs. Because...why not?

Elephant Gun- Beirut
This is one of those things where I forget I had a song and then someone mentioned it to me the other day and I've barely been able to stop listening to it since. It's a beautiful song and I love the video so much.

Through The Roof 'n' Underground- Gogol Bordello
This song is BRILLIANT. I first heard it watching 'Wristcutters: A Love Story'. It's only played like...a billion fucking times over the course of the film.
(also 'Wristcutters' is a beautiful film. Please see it. At least look up the trailer.)

I also uploaded a bunch of pictures I've done recently earlier. So I'll probably post them tomorrow. One of them is my header at the moment though, so there you go.
Also if we're friends on Facebook, you can go see them now anyway.
And if we're not friends on facebook...Why not? My feelings are so hurt.

x

Cold.

Went to Derry in Northern Ireland on Thursday, came back yesterday.
Got to go on a ferry. Twice, even.
It was pretty good.
Then there was a long bus ride which was rescued by Johnny playing some songs I didn't know from his mp3 player to me and mouthing the words along and being silly.
The trip itself was pretty good. Got a piggyback across some water because the other way across was stepping stones and I was scared that if I tried to cross them, I'd fall in...and so would my bag, containing my phone, iPod, moleskine, camera...General things that you don't want to give a bath to. Amusingly, the first attempt at the aforementioned piggyback ended in me falling off, which seemed like a bad omen but it worked out fine.
Managed to get two cups of tea, a pastry and a bowl of chips for about a fiver. Something I've never accomplished in England...
I took some photos but I don't have a digital camera and still use film blah blah blah...I need to get with the times, etc....so once that roll is full, I'll get it developed and upload some pictures.

Had an appointment early this morning and nearly froze to death. Got to sit across from a woman and mumble and get confused and things like that.
Then found out that the details associated with my library card were WRONG. Got them fixed.
It's been an exciting day. Not.
But I did get a fair bit done and it's only midday in 10 minutes so I'm not displeased with how it's going.

Must I dream and always see your face?

When I was younger, my mum REALLY liked Jeff Buckley. She'd play his album all the time in the house. Occasionally I'll decide to listen to him and I'll usually listen to the whole album 'Grace' a few times and then not be able to anymore. My mum used to take me and my brothers to pubs and things and I remember one of them having a jukebox and sometimes I got to put money in it and pick a song. I remember my mum asking me to get it to play either 'Lilac Wine' or 'Grace'.
I knew the song 'Hallelujah' but I didn't know that it was such a sad song until one of the times when I decided to listen to the album when I was 14. It's one of my favourite songs. Jeff Buckley's version is my favourite.
Another version was playing in a bookshop the other day (not sure what one, as there are so many and I wasn't paying attention) and since then, I've been wanting to listen to the album like crazy.

I found a song on my external drive that my mum used to play in the car when I was younger that I can remember going on an epic search through the internet for last year. Never, ever knew what the song was about, but when I listened to it, I remembered nearly all the words...Anyway, I found it on my external drive earlier...I've been having a weird night of songs-my-mum-played-when-I-was-a-fair-bit-smaller...
When I listen to Jeff Buckley, I can smell a house we lived in when I was younger. It's not a nice smell. And it reminds me of watching 'Anastasia' on a videotape that someone got for us before it was released. And peanut butter on toast. And one night, my mum wanted to go to the beach with her friends and we ended up there all night, sleeping on the beach, even though I wanted to go home and kept asking mum when we were going to and we got McDonalds for breakfast on the way home.

Around the same time, my mum liked to play The Cure and my brother Erik loved the song 'The Lovecats' and I remember my mum and tiny Erik dancing to it, so when I hear that song, I think of that and I feel happy.

I can't remember the point of this blog anymore, now!
Today was pretty boring. Had to get out of the house. Went and saw 'Valentine's Day' as it was the one movie starting within an hour of my getting there that didn't have the words 'post-apocalyptic America' in the summary thing.
I'm tired of post-apocalyptic America.

In other news, my moleskine is beginning to fall apart. Usually I'd just say notebook, but this time I mean fucking-expensive-notebook-which-everyone-said-would-be-sturdy-and-not-fall-apart.
Kind of irked by this.

I just love you, that is all, so I hope you come to my funeral.

I have downloaded two gorgeous but horrifyingly addictive things: Kayla Oberlin's EP and Zoe Boekbinder's album 'Artichoke Perfume'. I've been listening to the latter since I got home.

Today I went into town with plans to get a new pair of pyjamas and some ingredients for cookies. Instead, I came home with three new books ('The Fellowship of the Ring' -JRR Tolkien, obviously, and 'The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul' by Douglas Adams. And I felt like such a geek, carrying those two books to the checkout. And not even a good geek. A terrible geek...and I also got a copy of Fantastic Mr. Fox for about 79p), a copy of the newer Mighty Boosh live DVD (which is good but I don't think you should watch it in one go as it gets boring.)...we wandered around a bit and had some coffee and I had some of the surprisingly good bruschetta they sell at Costa (it's almost a guilty pleasure...but not really.) and got a roll of film developed (some really great pictures. And some blurry and discoloured ones, which I love equally. And for some reason, one day I thought a fruity drink was important enough to document...some of the pictures are random.)...and we got the most ridiculous photobooth picture taken to add to what is slowly becoming a collection that I keep in my wallet with my fancy pass that I got from helping at an Amanda Palmer concert last year, a tiny little picture of me that Johnny did on a little piece of cardboard the first time I came up here and...Hannah Montana stickers. Indeedy.

I've been reading break up blogs. Partly to counteract the sappiness I've been seeing as a side effect of people celebrating Valentines Day (lots of them claiming to hate it but clearly secretly loving the shit out of it...As long as they're with someone and get something). Most of them are by guys. Which is simultaneously surprising and completely and utterly unsurprising.
Always hearing about how guys 'don't care' but at the same time, I've watched more guy friends fall apart over their break ups than female friends. And I don't have that many guy friends.

Not much else to type.
Haven't been doing a lot. Was trying to put together something on the list of things I should do above my desk but haven't had much luck.
#4 on my list is 'Illustrate a song.', so I wrote out a plan of what I could do for 'Centre of the World' by Bright Eyes and stuck out a copy of the lyrics behind my desk...but I'm having no luck at all.

Laaaaame.

They can't take- they can't take you from me.

Got a photo done in a photobooth. This is my current facebook profile image. I had it done in the train station and there were some men doing some maintainence work or something just outside it so I got scared that I couldn't go in and because I'm the most nervous and jumpy person you're likely to come across at times, that was bad. But Johnny went into it and said it was fine, so I did the 3 photos thing and found that the first two were shite and after adjusting the seat, I came up with this one. Not amazing but believe me, a vast improvement on the other two.
I've been drawing mice and watching QI all evening.
And doing 30 second drawings. Drawing quickly but still getting my point across is one of my strong points...however...poses I've never had reason to draw in a mere 30 seconds? Very difficult. Very. Still, I think I did okay.
Um...I drew a really great mouse?
I finally got an inexpensive coat that isn't completely ugly. I got 3 books as well. 2 of them are favourites of mine... 'Lolita' by Vladimir Nabokov -except who doesn't love that book? Everyone I've met has either loved it or been fucking creeped out by the whole thing.-, 'Before I Die' by Jenny Downham -I have never cried so much over a book in my entire life.- and I also got 'The God of Small Things' by Arundhati Roy, which I have never read. The charity shop from which I bought that and 'Before I Die' were doing a 2 for 1 thing on the books so I just grabbed the first book I saw that I hadn't read already but had heard of. Not sure how interested I really am in 'The God of Small Things'. I've heard good things but...I don't know. It just doesn't interest me terribly.
I've also been listening to Astronautalis. The only rapper I've ever liked. I saw him open for Tegan & Sara when Johnny and Lucy and I went to see them for my birthday (well, Johnny and I went to see them for my birthday but we also met up with Lucy because Lucy fucking rules). The title of my blog comes from one of his songs. I can't remember what song though because I've listened to it once. I just liked the line...

I've been messing around with inks and pastels and when I feel proud enough of something (I've done a few okay things but...still just messing around.) I might put it here.
If we're friends on facebook, you can probably go see stuff I've done recently anyway.


Note: If I sound like I am under the impression that someone is actually going to read this, it's just because I figure that if I'm going to put something out on the internet, I may as well not seem like I'm talking to myself. I understand that the void is just eating my words, as it has eaten many of my possessions in recent times.

Misguided ghosts.

Last year in March I had my exhibition for the 31 paintings in March project. It was my first (and last, at the moment) exhibition. And it was aaaalll mine. I had the whole gallery to myself.
The paintings weren't amazing but they went through a month of my life and each one had a story and I think that's what made it interesting. I made a lot of money and sold quite a few of them (which surprised me, personally).
It was good. I think the first picture, which is my friend Keira and I sitting on the floor of the gallery says pleeenty about how the day went.
I had a group of people who were there with me all day and we spent a lot of it on the ground in a circle. It wasn't lots of people who didn't know anything about what I had spent the month doing. It was a group of people who I had been in contact with all through the month who were interested in what was going on. Rachael, who was there, got to watch me frantically try to paint a picture on one of the last days before The Clock Struck Twelve and I was DOOMED. It turned into an odd self portrait which I did in 15 minutes. It's my favourite of the whole month. It is exactly how the whole month made me feel. Keira is someone I met when I was about 8 or 9 who didn't seem to realise that I liked art until I told her I was doing this (she also offered to pay me for a specific picture of a character she likes but it never happened).
The people who couldn't be there were the worst part for me. Some wonderful friends who had donated to my project and talked to and inspired me over the month but lived in other countries obviously couldn't make it. The girl I was sort of seeing and ended things with as a result of being busy with this and her being busy with her exams couldn't make it (partly because she was busy and obviously partly because she didn't want to), even though we'd spent lots of time in our favourite cafe discussing and her watching me draw on the little postcards I gave to whoever donated. My mum couldn't make it because she had work, my two best friends couldn't make it because they live in Australia.
But anyway, we sat on the floor in a circle and talked. It was more of a really nice and relaxing little party.
The way the gallery (The Papered Parlour...I think it's mostly used for craft classes and hen nights though.) is set up is: when you open the door and walk in, there is a wonderfully decorated little room with a table and chairs and some cute stuff. There's a door at the end, behind which is the actual gallery space. Through another door is their studio and then their office and a small kitchen.
Most of the day leading up to when I was starting to let people in was spent in the studio, making sure all the tags and numbered cards were with the correct paintings. When we let them in, we started in the area with the table and chairs, waiting for everyone to arrive. When everyone did, we read a speech and a poem written by a friend for a woman some of us knew who had died recently and for whom one of the paintings was done in tribute. Then we let everyone into the gallery area and started putting party food on the table (despite my friends all telling me that I should be all fancy and have wine and cheese because apparently that is what you do, I had party rings, cheese and crackers and fruity mineral water. And someone brought along two bottles of wine anyway). After everyone had stared at the paintings a bunch, after we all did our weird sitting on the floor and chatting thing, we went into the other room and ate lots of biscuits and things. When it got a bit dark, I closed everything and we went to a place for a break and some drinks other than fruity mineral water and (for those who actually drank it) wine. Then a few people went home and a few people came with me to pack up...and Rachael and I snuck off to have McDonalds and when we got back, everyone still there was lying on the floor. It was weird.

I don't know. I haven't really had a chance to recount the whole thing to anyone and I just saw the pictures, so why not?
Now you know about the weird thing I did last month that you didn't go to or (probably) know about, let alone care about. Thank you and good night to ye.

When you are not too sturdy, I haunt you, oh, you hurt me.

I keep listening to Cake Bake Betty. My favourite song is...Something. My iPod tells me it's called 'The Charge' but Google tells me it's called 'The Charger' or just 'Charger'. I think I'll go with the google one. Anyway, it is a good song. It's really really long and for some reason it reminds me of long car trips where everyone is quiet or asleep. I can't sleep in the car so I always end up sitting there awake and bored, having read everything I brought to entertain myself and with nothing else to do.
I have been having weird dreams, lately.
The other night was about going to the cinema with my brother (who lives in London) Riley. He bought me bottle of Pepsi which I dropped by accident into someone's backyard and then it broke and filled their entire garden. Then I saw my mother and I asked if I could use my money to play on one of the claw machines and try and win something but she said I couldn't because it was a waste and I argued with her until I cried and I woke up and for the rest of the day I believed I had to ask my mum for permission to do simple things that I usually wouldn't think of asking anyone about even though she lives in London as well. I don't know if I can quite put across how bizarre that was for me. I don't think I asked permission for a lot of the things that were making me feel like that when I was younger anyway.
A few nights ago, it was a dream that a rich woman wanted to buy me to use as a doll to dress up and be friends with. I convinced her to buy Jennifer Aniston instead.
Somehow we were friends anyway and we went to hes fes (home education festival I've gone to a few times.) in a taxi and for some reason the campsite had been updated with fairground rides, including a 'Tunnel of Love' type thing (you get in the boat, the boat goes through the tunnel...whatever...) I haven't actually been on one of those rides so I don't even know what happens inside but in this one, our boats went under giant electric whisks/beaters.
My most favourite one was a while ago. I can't remember how long ago because despite it being in my notebook, I didn't put a date on it. But I think it was probably a couple of weeks ago and it's still incredibly vivid in my mind.
I walked into this place made all of grey concrete. There was an old woman drawing pictures on the floor. I remember her looking like the Wicked Witch from Disney's 'Sleeping Beauty'. No one else was around except for a few of her henchmen, standing in a cluster around her and it was all just grey concrete for miles.
I walked around until I found a cave with a little girl in it. She was drawing animals and children all over the walls with chalk of her own. I asked what she was doing and she said that the old woman was really a witch who killed animals and children and used their bodies to make her chalk. The little girl stole the chalk when she could and used it to draw pictures of whoever the chalk was made of (no idea how she knew what chalk was who). If she got caught, the witch would kill her. She was the last and only thing the witch could turn into chalk (I don't know why the witch needed the chalk either). I watched her get caught and try to run away. We moved really far until we got to the end of the concrete land and found a wall with a big happy colourful mural of the 'real world' on it. The little girl couldn't run anymore because there was nowhere to run. I couldn't look and tried to focus on getting out and back into reality via the mural, but I couldn't. When I turned around, everyone was gone. The witch, her henchmen, the little girl. I walked for a little while and found a stone table with a knight seated at it. I sat down and asked him who he was. He said he had worked for the witch, but he had killed her. I asked if he knew what had happened to the little girl. He told me that he had caught her. And that he had reversed her life cycle so that she could start again as a baby who had never seen all her friends and all the animals being killed and she wouldn't have to remember being chased by the witch. He handed me a box with a wrapped up newborn baby inside along with a few shiny jewels which he told me he had stolen from the witch and given to the little girl as a gift and he intended on raising her.

It was all very weird. I was thinking of writing a longer story about it...Bekki said she wanted to after I told her about it but I don't know if she still will. I can't really be bothered. I can't write. I tried to do NaNoWriMo in November but it was a disaster.

(terrible picture of the little girl drawing swirls instead of animals and children because all I could remember of her chalk drawings was circles.)

I bought a book titled 'The Pocket Guide To Wild Flowers' a few days ago, to destroy. It had all these gorgeous coloured pages with pictures of flowers on them, so I rescued those before attempting to make any future use of the rest of the book completely and utterly impossible by digging a hole in it.
Sort of like making a hollow book, but it's only a small rectangle on the bottom right of the book. And the hole is in the cover, too.
On the inside of the back cover there is a map, so through the hole, you can see a tag that says 'Southampton', making way for my own lame jokes about how I dug through to Southampton.
I'd post a picture, but I'm not going to.

Anyway, that is all. Unless you want to hear about how I am not sure what I'm doing and I'm upset because someone I miss spending time with is no longer returning my texts and I don't feel well...and I'm sure that if you're interested in that kind of thing, you are someone who can just talk to me on facebook or msn.
Fin.

Longing.

I've finally managed to please my mother on some level. I told her that I'm going to take a course in illustrating children's books. A distance learning one that I can complete at my own pace.
I'd like to get a job and quite possibly a life, so it's necessary. I've also emailed a few places asking for volunteers for various things that I've decided won't look too bad on my CV...but then my email address died (I can now be reached at audreybishop@live.co.uk, which is better than my old address by miles). I don't recieve emails to it anymore. It's very odd.

It's been snowing like mad.
Today I went for a walk into town to meet Johnny after his doctor's appointment to go see 'Daybreakers'. He is a good person to go see movies with because he actually has opinions on them. Even if sometimes I liked a movie and he didn't and he tells me why it was bad and then I feel unsure as to whether or not I should have liked it and my head explodes with uncertainty. Aside from that, excellent person to see movies with.
Anyway, on my way there, I walked over the bridge and looked down to see massive pieces of ice floating down the river. I was pretty surprised as I didn't think moving water would freeze into such large pieces like that.
I've been having some real blonde moments.
A coffee shop was closed and had a sign out the front about frozen pipes, but it had weird capitalisation going on and was about 'FROZEN PiPES', so I ended up saying 'oh, it's closed because they have frozen pi-pes' (as in...I said it like 'pee-pez').
I really should not be admitting my stupidity on the internet, should I?
Anyway, I took some photos the other day. Here are a couple (made rather small. I should do that flickr thing again. Flickr does Good Things to photos.):




Aaaaanyway. I am trying to do more art.
When I did my first 'big thing' in March (I did a painting, whether it was large or small, well thought out and...er..good, or barely thought out and frankly rather terrible...as long as I got one done each day) I got a lot of support from friends and family all around the world. I got donations from people i didn't know. I sold paintings to people in other countries too, which was exciting. I had my first exhibition (at the Papered Parlour in London on it's first day as The Papered Parlour following some renovations, actually. I forget what it was called before that) . All by myself. It was an exciting and busy month.
It fucked up my relationship with an amazing girl I was seeing (I didn't have the time or energy to give it a real go. I feel horrible about it. In my defence, she also had exams and things that she needed to get on with.) and it was the month I stopped being able to tell my at-the-time best friend everything because he just didn't care anymore. And yet I never think of it as a particularly bad month.
I think I'm going to be doing something a bit better soon. I've been avoiding doing anything real. Aside from my card for the Amanda Palmer tarot deck (which I got to do because Beth Hommel had seen/liked my work and sent me an email asking me to do it! So ANOTHER great thing came out of my whole...weird...effort...thing.) everything I've done since then has been limited to sketches.
I want to work on something with someone else but all the people I really, really want to work with are in other countries (though I always consider Bekki L a teammate/partner in crime and Beth described us as an 'art making power team' a while ago which was lovely and made me realise that nothing would be the same without the Bek.) and...well...I don't really know anyone here who I'd be able to work with in a way where I could really throw myself into it.
Blah blah blah blah.

Christmas was interesting. I spent it with my family, of course, in London.
My dad called me on Christmas and gave me another one of his art history lectures, which is an odd thing to get for Christmas indeed. He too was pleased to hear that I'm trying to work more at...well...whatever it is I've been working at.
He said he was excited that one of his kids is getting into art and he sounded proud. Which is interesting. I guess it's the kind of validation I've been after for a long time...and he gave me that after I stopped needing it. I've been drawing and painting and considering those two things to be my favourite things since I was a little kid and I think it always was partly a 'let me be like yoooou' thing because he was always making things out of metal or painting or drawing and I loved going through all his work and seeing it up on the walls or sitting on the shelves.
Now it's not like that. Now it's just something I enjoy. It's something that's there when I feel like I'm stuck by myself, it's something my friends can enjoy, it's something that makes people I love proud of me even when I'm not great at it. It's special and I'm glad I stuck with it.
I'm not amazing at it but I will keep trying and getting better because it makes me happy.

End of long ramble about nonsense.

Audrey.