Archive for the '[lyg10]' Category

[lyg10] feeling twenty-two, acting seventeen (or similar);

Published on December 11, 2009 in [lyg10] and a little more personal. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

September this year marks ten years since I made my first, tentative and over-sharey, foray into blogging. I hope you’ll forgive a little self-indulgence on my part, but I’d like to do something to celebrate a pretty significant milestone. I’ve hit upon the idea of publishing some selected takes from my archives – there’s a little bit of poetic license required here, as some of the proper cringeworthy teenage stuff is (thankfully) lost in the mists and pixels of cyberspace, but what I’ll publish every Friday from here until the end of the year is culled from the LiveJournal years, 2003-2006.

I’ve picked this post with Lola sitting on the other sofa :)

7th April 2004
I’m pretty sure the first time we saw Legally Blonde was on my sister’s last birthday. She and her best friend slept in the living room and I stayed up until two to watch a video with them because, let’s face it, I was probably online. And they had sweets. You can tell she has missed having her big sister around – she hasn’t told me to fuck off once when I’ve come whimpering for chocolate bars.

At the time I was struggling my way though Finals (as you’ll no doubt remember – it was all I talked about for six months, that and my dissertation) armed only with Nescafe, gummy bears and a succession of £5 photocopying cards. That would explain why I found the ease with which Elle Woods passed though Harvard Law School incredibly offensive.

We’ve since seen the sequel at the cinema and I bought her the video as part of her birthday present. She’s watching it right now – she’s watched it every night, as far as I can tell – and is trying to tempt me with all that is pink and preppy, but I feel as if I have writing to do.

* * *

My eighteenth birthday fell on a Friday. It was the beginning of June, the weather was starting to get warmer and, although the results wouldn’t be in for some time yet, we had just finished our exams and were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves for having made it through our first year of law school.

My best friend and I were huge X-Files fans at the time (we still are, but sanity creeps in when the show you base your life around is no longer in production or in every magazine, no matter what they’ve been saying in the last ten days or so…) and so it was perfect that David Duchovny was starring in a movie released that very day. I met Lola in Central Station, in the traditional under-the-clock meeting spot I’ve used since high school (this was before they put the bloody Tie Rack right there, obviously) and we saw Return To Me at the soon-to-be-demolished Odeon* on Renfield Street.

[*NB Five years later, it's still there.]

I’ve never been one for great big parties. We called them ‘tays in high school and there were a good few of them that year – soulless affairs, the sort of night where everybody has too much to drink and dances like a tit, you let your best friend pull the boy you like to get back at her fuckwad ex and the DJ refuses to play “Walk Unafraid” for you and your mate even when she’s got Up in her bag. Sheryll’s birthday was a few months before mine and she’d invited our little group from university through to her hometown for the weekend. We made punch from whatever we could find in the kitchen and we all passed out in armchairs and danced to Fleetwood Mac on Sunday morning.

That was what I wanted. A nice night with my closest friends, not having to invite people to make up the numbers and yell small talk before shuffling off for another drink. I decided on a meal out – everybody pays for themselves and there’s no cleaning up in the morning – and it’s since become something of a tradition.

Lola had a new dress she wanted to wear, so we got ready in the cinema toilets. I discovered I’d forgotten the earrings I wanted to wear and had to buy some in Claires in the station while we waited for the others.

We went to TGI Fridays and it was lovely. I had a bacon cheeseburger and my first strawberry daiquiri. The people I loved gave me such lovely presents and we took pictures of my Pikachu getting drunk on Smirnoff Ice.

It was raining as we left, just a little, but we took a group picture anyway. Somebody tied a balloon to my backpack. Neil-bear carried my bags of presents, although they were pink and fluffy.

He got knocked back from the Garage that night, whether for being drunk or being seventeen first and foremost I can’t remember. I was a cheeky little thing and almost did myself, back-chatting the bouncer who tried to wish me a happy birthday when it was already twenty minutes into the 10th.

But you know what? It’s like 2 months and 2 days until I’m 22 and we can do it all over again.

[lyg10] all the little babies go uh-uh i want to;

Published on December 4, 2009 in [lyg10] and work & writing. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

September this year marks ten years since I made my first, tentative and over-sharey, foray into blogging. I hope you’ll forgive a little self-indulgence on my part, but I’d like to do something to celebrate a pretty significant milestone. I’ve hit upon the idea of publishing some selected takes from my archives – there’s a little bit of poetic license required here, as some of the proper cringeworthy teenage stuff is (thankfully) lost in the mists and pixels of cyberspace, but what I’ll publish every Friday from here until the end of the year is culled from the LiveJournal years, 2003-2006.

On my Easter break during my Masters degree, I had to find myself a placement at a magazine or newspaper. This post was about my first day.

5th April 2004
I’ve been here a couple of hours and already I’m starting to wonder whether a certain local newspaper reports the news, or is it. There must be some kind of conspiracy going down. I’m sorting through the mail and not two, not five but at least twenty white envelopes bursting with votes for the “Bonnie Babies” competition are mixed up with the tonnes of irrelevant press releases. Each envelope is addressed in the same shaky handwriting. Could it be the contest is rigged?

“The entire thing is just a way to encourage families to buy fifty copies of the paper and send off the voting slips,” the sub-editor, laughing, explains. No conspiracy here then, just the shameless exploitation of dozens of plump, pink cherubs with names like Caiden and Antonnio (yes, that’s with two “n”s, we checked it. Twice) in pursuit of circulation figures. My natural cynicism is obviously still out-of-touch from the weekend.

I am shown to somebody else’s computer, logged into the system and basically left to my own devices. I am given the occasional task, but I could churn out whatever copy I wanted to all day if I had it in me, although that’s not to say it would make it into the paper. “All you need to work here is to be mad, and to love chocolate,” I am told but as the workday progresses and my natural curiosity breeds more and more questions it becomes clear that shorthand is also pretty essential. Bugger.

Ever wonder what comes into the mailbox of a local paper? Crap, for the most part. Press offices and random cranks up and down the country send the most irrelevant nonsense to anybody who might, just might feel inclined to give it some coverage on a slow news day. In the course of half an hour of tearing through envelopes I find a recipe for Easter nutloaf, discover that peppermint oil is an excellent cure for flatulence (perhaps to be borne in mind should you sample the nutloaf), giggle over a militant anti-European movement who think we should set our MPs on fire until they agree to vote against the EU constitution and boycott French cooking, or something, and find out that although 79% of people surveyed in the Scottish TV region are aware that dental hygiene is as important for dogs as it is for humans very few pet owners actually care enough to do anything about it.

I decide I would be more endeared towards Max Factor if they sent out samples of their revolutionary new mascara instead of just writing about it. All that’s on offer are a couple of sachets of SoLo Salt.

The wee man from the Hospice is very, very helpful. A local MP’s press officer takes time out from her holiday to call me back. The friends who promised me news stories had their phones switched off all day.

I do a lot of sitting about. I am still the girl who can go from press release to six pars of news story in under fifteen minutes, but I am wary of appearing too keen.

I had high hopes of maintaining my pseudo-broadsheet (read: boring) style-integrity, swatting up on a week’s worth of butchered English and tabloidized phrases the night before. Yet, minutes into my first major assignment (a photo spread on a primary school’s Easter Bonnet Parade), I realise that my tutor’s sacred Checklist has little place in the reality of a community newspaper. “I’ve used every cliche I can think of about cute children!” I wail.

“Excellent,” says my mentor (looking-after-workplacementgirls, getting-messed-about-by-local-councillors, chocolate biscuits), “you’ll get on just fine.”

Eight hours later (post-purchase of some necessary Grown-Up Office Type Wear), I am utterly exhausted. A university career of the odd lecture, all-nighters and mid-afternoon naps has left me spoiled and unprepared for the realities of the workplace. And I’m supposed to do this for the rest of my life? Even the rest of the week seems impossible.

But at least I didn’t have to make the tea.

[lyg10] between euphoria and the afterglow;

Published on November 27, 2009 in [lyg10] and a little more personal. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

September this year marks ten years since I made my first, tentative and over-sharey, foray into blogging. I hope you’ll forgive a little self-indulgence on my part, but I’d like to do something to celebrate a pretty significant milestone. I’ve hit upon the idea of publishing some selected takes from my archives – there’s a little bit of poetic license required here, as some of the proper cringeworthy teenage stuff is (thankfully) lost in the mists and pixels of cyberspace, but what I’ll publish every Friday from here until the end of the year is culled from the LiveJournal years, 2003-2006.

Don’t laugh. When Tommy Sheridan was a proper, honest-to-God politician he was a good sort, the only one who’d make time for student journalists after parliamentary debates and give them quotes for their assignments. Which they would then fail for giving too much of a socialist slant rather than a balanced viewpoint!

26th March 2004
Expediency demands that my creativity be sucked out of me and ploughed into ever-more-worthy pursuits than this record of my thoughts. While the thrill of speaking to Tommy Sheridan – a real-live-honest-to-God-politician! – in my capacity as a student journalist the other day reminded me of what I am in this for, the reality is hours spent hunched over a laptop. I fruitlessly search the Internet for a gem of worthwhile information, try to pull an argument from thin air and make up cups of coffee so strong I describe them to my flatmate Pam, with a wry smile, as “poisonous”.

That bloody Microsoft paperclip mocks my discomfort at every turn. It occurs to me now that I don’t actually remember ever being discharged from physiotherapy – I can’t just have stopped going, can I? A combination of childhood bad posture, years of heavy backpacks, a life spent latterly almost entirely in front of a computer screen and a hell of a lot of stress has fucked my back up, given me the most incredibly tense neck muscles you could possibly imagine and the delightful aftereffect of hellish migraines every couple of days if I don’t get enough sleep. The thing is, whether it’s what Ian jokingly calls ‘the Edinburgh time difference’ or something else entirely, my body’s notion of what constitutes enough sleep has changed dramaticaly since last year. I remember when I was writing my first dissertation, chatting to friends on other continents until two in the morning and then getting up at eight to catch them before they went to bed and get started on my work before the day was too old. I feel so out of my own personal loop here, and perhaps my exhaustion is a direct result of that displacement.

I don’t know. I’m trying to combat the discomfort by taking regular breaks, talking to my mum on the phone or watching the news lying on the floor and trying to keep my back straight. Fairy lights, believe it or not, are an excellent relaxation tool. Sometimes I just stare at the ceiling until my mind brings itself back into focus. I have scented candles which help too. I was using lavender incense, but I had to leave my bedroom window open for a full day afterwards before it stopped smelling like a brothel in here.

The Legacy Edition of Jeff Buckley’s Live at Sin-e is absolute genius, and has been keeping me company during some of those breaks. I turn it up loud enough to drown out Edinburgh: the roadworks, the drunken teenagers spilling out of dirty nightclubs at three o’clock in the morning and the zoo that is Block 123. With the reality of this plane of something resembling but not-quite existence all but melted away, I could almost be there and then in New York with him.

I was back home on Mothers’ Day and we sat and played some old cassette tapes; the songs of people long gone – or long grown from four-year-old me and my two-year-old brother in a tuneless rendition of “There’s No-One Quite Like Grandma”. My mother and I both welled up as we heard Grandma and Grandad duetting on an old lovesong through the static of my first-ever tape recorder, the one that ended up in the kitchen when I got the threeCDautochangerfivespeaker monstrosity my sister was relieved to discover I’d be leaving at home.

There’s something sacred about those voices kept for posterity on tape. The people behind them are gone, or changed – one a sweet-scented, curly-haired memory of mini Mars Bars, Lego and little dolls in the bathroom named after the grandchildren. The other is so much older now, but he can still hold a tune – not so long ago on a Sunday visit I asked him to sing for me, and he did.

I think that’s how you know the people you love are never really gone – their afterimages remain, a smile permanently burned on your retina or a song on the tip of your tongue. It’s Ross in the picture on my wardrobe, the one I showed Seymour when he saw me in Edinburgh and he couldn’t get over how young we looked. It’s my grandparents, still in love and harmonising on tape. And it’s Jeff Buckley, and the art that was his legacy to a world he spent so little time in.

And with that – tangential even for me – I’d better get this essay printed out and head up the hill. I have birthday presents to buy today for Very Special People, I do.

[lyg10] hello, i’m sorry, i lost myself;

Published on November 20, 2009 in [lyg10] and a little more personal. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , .

September this year marks ten years since I made my first, tentative and over-sharey, foray into blogging. I hope you’ll forgive a little self-indulgence on my part, but I’d like to do something to celebrate a pretty significant milestone. I’ve hit upon the idea of publishing some selected takes from my archives – there’s a little bit of poetic license required here, as some of the proper cringeworthy teenage stuff is (thankfully) lost in the mists and pixels of cyberspace, but what I’ll publish every Friday from here until the end of the year is culled from the LiveJournal years, 2003-2006.

We’re coming to the end of my Napier years now, and my fluttering wings and urge to get out into the world can’t help but make me smile, with the benefit of hindsight.

15th March 2004
It’s a natural response of the human condition, once things get pressured, just to want everything to be over. As the work piles up – stupid assignments we can’t possibly do if we’re expected to attend classes as well, so we don’t attend classes because you can’t fail outright that way – we’re all beginning to lose our enthusiasm. And our patience.

I’ve always said I’d happily be a student forever, so experiencing the change within myself is as interesting when I’m playing casual observer as it is irritating living it. There’s a little bird trapped inside a nervous wreck of a body, squeaking mummy, mummy, I’m ready to go out into the world now!. Fuck this, I want an income, I want a weekend, I want an excuse to wear pinstripes, I want to be twenty-four.

And I want to stop feeling guilty that I’m wasting precious hours sleeping or cooking that could be spend on essays and shorthand practice. The voices in my head are back again, and less amusing than they’ve ever been. Even God got a lie-in on Sunday.

I had a notebook I passed around high school in the week before I left where people wrote me scrawled messages and memories and phone numbers I never used because they never really wanted me to. My old physics teacher, he who used me scoring best in both Standard Grade and Higher prelims as an excuse not to give out a prize the second year because “it wouldn’t be fair”, scribbled that he always knew I’d end up in court or jail. Today was, however, my first day in a proper courtroom, witnessing at first hand the legal system I studied for four years.

I can’t say that I didn’t feel a pang of loss as the solicitors scurried from courtroom to courtroom in their gowns with books and notes tucked under their arms, or while explaining art and part liability in hushed whispers to Susan and Lindsey at the back of the public gallery. This was the world I gave up, the forced formality of the lower workings of the mechanisms of justice, and it’s still my area of expertise when compared to the Man On The Clapham Omnibus. It’s still my thing, whether it’s Cheryl’s assignment or Seymour setting off my loud and obnoxious ringtone in the middle of an art gallery.

And I’m sure I could have been mistaken for a part of that world as I strutted the corridors in my blouse and best trousers (yes, strutted, even my own limited form of power dressing has the desired effect), had I not been wearing my Miffy backpack with its band logos and anti-war badges. Because nobody noticed the messages Susan and I were scrawling in each other’s shorthand notebooks: if all else fails we can flirt with the clerk of court for info.

A law student planning to become a journalist and a journalist with legal expertise are equally as interesting, and equally as fun, to be, and perhaps what is especially interesting is that I’ve always sided with the law where a conflict of interest has arisen and yet I’ve never seriously wanted to be anything other than a writer. I think the two professions feed off each other to a certain extent, along with politics, and certainly none of the three can exist in vacuum or be the same without the others. These same themes tend to arise in the protracted debates I have with my mother when the mood strikes us, and I was telling Susan this morning that I believe law, journalism and politics to be the three most important professions of the 21st century. I have an enormous level of contempt for the mass media, a healthy amount of cynicism for the legal system and a complete and utter distrust of all politics, but it’s a world I’m hugely proud to be a part of.

In whatever capacity. Sure, I came away from court wanting to be a lawyer again but it’ll have worn off by morning – after all, when Mari and I went to see Honey on Saturday night (fuck off, Mona Lisa Smile was sold out and we had to get out of the flat…) I could’ve sworn I wanted to be a hiphop dancer… but we’ll never speak of that again, obviously. And, following on from a discussion over lunch to the effect that we were going to chuck this all in and find rich husbands (he would adore me, because I would be like this volatile artist type and nothing he had ever known) I had all but resigned myself to baking cakes all day and babies with big, beautiful eyes and writing in the evenings. But then I realised I’d die of boredom, and remembered that small children make me almost as nervous as men who adore me do.

The best thing about court is that, whatever I end up doing (and I may be somebody’s legal secretary yet, fucked if I’m getting two degrees to earn £8,000 a year on some shitty local paper), it’ll always be there and open to the public. So, next time I have a free Monday morning and fancy seeing some guy getting sent down for contempt for showing up drunk for trial (“”Ahm huvvin’ a seizure, yer Honour!”") I can.

I doubt I’ll make it as a hiphop dancer though. I ain’t got no flow for one thing, and the music makes my ears bleed.

[lyg10] don’t you dare disturb me while i’m balancing my past;

Published on November 13, 2009 in [lyg10]. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

September this year marks ten years since I made my first, tentative and over-sharey, foray into blogging. I hope you’ll forgive a little self-indulgence on my part, but I’d like to do something to celebrate a pretty significant milestone. I’ve hit upon the idea of publishing some selected takes from my archives – there’s a little bit of poetic license required here, as some of the proper cringeworthy teenage stuff is (thankfully) lost in the mists and pixels of cyberspace, but what I’ll publish every Friday from here until the end of the year is culled from the LiveJournal years, 2003-2006.

12th March 2004
An unspoken, uncivil war has been declared in Flat 9; two camps armed with doorslams and barbed comments, divided on lines based on who goes out with who at night and who doesn’t do their dishes. My room has become a veritable sanctuary of fairylights, rock music and the whirr of my laptop where the opposing parties retreat to complain and for tactical advice. They fight for a space to sit on my bed with biscuit packets, discarded clothing and Get Me A Murder A Day!

I feel more and more like a mother as I tell them I’m not taking sides and I love them all equally, nor am I going to pass on what the others have said about them. They all have their faults, and I agree with what everybody has to say (a policy that will surely come back to haunt me at a later date but I honestly couldn’t care less). It’s just that on the rare occasions I’m bothered by any of it I’ll tell the person concerned to cut it the fuck out, rather than letting them believe everything is fine for days before going into a massive sulk.

The dynamics here have traditionally been two groups of two and then me, either out having my own life or shut in my room. It hasn’t become unliveable yet but it’s getting there rapidly, just as my own partner in crime disappears home for a month. Although that’s probably for the best as, apart from what’s in my purse, I have no disposeable funds until next Thursday. I have a pre-paid cinema pass, four packets of pasta (anti-Atkins in the extreme from now on, I fear) and – with five major assignments due before my own Easter break – plenty to be getting on with.

My Easter break is, of course, not a real break at all – I have a work placement organised for some of it, and the rest I’ll spend catching up on everything I don’t have time for in termtime. After that there’ll be a month of classes and exams and overtime, since I’m planning to quit my part-time job to save complex negotiations for time off for my cousin’s wedding the last weekend in May. I’d have to quit pretty much as soon as I get back from England anyway, for then begins the complex process of shifting my life back where it started.

I’ve nearly finished with Edinburgh. As she’s away for the rest of March and myself for most of April I told Kaite on Monday night we only have a month left of our reign as Edinburgh’s cocktail-and-lipgloss fuelled fairy-winged princesses. “Fuck YOU,” she yelled into the wind, storming off to a few feet in front of me. “You can only refer to it if I let you,” she told me, but it doesn’t make it any less true.

I never thought I would settle into a routine here, but I have done. And I think that’s what I’m going to miss – not the city itself, although there will be aspects of it that will catch me off-guard. Not my horrible accommodation with the constant noise and moronic neighbours and stairwells crawling with filth, although I love my flatmates to death on their good days. I’ll be glad to see the back of the kamikaze buses, and hopefully the crushing, demoralising poverty.

I’m just not really one for change and taking risks – in theory yes, but in practice I’d prefer two paracetamol and a couple of extra hours in bed. I could name any number of Fairly Scary Things over the past year it took me forever to do.

My latest fear is that Glasgow won’t have me back… I don’t know if I can explain this properly, but when my sister was through here the other week she was talking about her plans to redecorate our bedroom at home and I remember this feeling of utter helplessness. It’s as if the world as I once knew it has moved on completely in my absence, and I’ll never be able to fit back in with the people who have grown accustomed to not having me around.

Perhaps new starts really aren’t the scary thing. Perhaps that’s when you try to go back, and find that it’s become impossible.

[lyg10] like an age-old contradiction//with alcohol and lust;

Published on November 6, 2009 in [lyg10] and music. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , .

September this year marks ten years since I made my first, tentative and over-sharey, foray into blogging. I hope you’ll forgive a little self-indulgence on my part, but I’d like to do something to celebrate a pretty significant milestone. I’ve hit upon the idea of publishing some selected takes from my archives – there’s a little bit of poetic license required here, as some of the proper cringeworthy teenage stuff is (thankfully) lost in the mists and pixels of cyberspace, but what I’ll publish every Friday from here until the end of the year is culled from the LiveJournal years, 2003-2006.

Milo and others have posted about the future of Edinburgh venue The Bowery recently. It’s not a place I’ve ever visited, as I don’t get the opportunity to go through to Edinburgh much these days, but comparing the dearth of decent venues in the capital when I lived there to the thriving local scene at the moment I wouldn’t like to see anything jeopardise that. This week’s post tells of a particularly great night at The Venue, which was one of my favourite places in Edinburgh at the time and which closed soon after.

9th March 2004
“”Well be groupie whores,” said Kaite, as we shivered along a freezing Princes Street in thin t-shirts and badge-covered denim jackets. “Well… you’re the groupie. I’m just a whore.”

* * *

What? Could it be three entries in a row about music, something decidedly more important than pretentious turns of phrase about angst and misery, held together by the fragile thread of poor sentence structure in entries that start out heading nowhere and rarely disappoint? In last Friday’s Alternative and Radical Media lecture we had a couple of guest speakers in from IndyMedia, and I’m proud to admit I felt significantly shamed that I tend to waste my webspace on the sort of shite that has lost all relevance by the time I wake up in the morning.

Not that I didn’t spend all morning in bed recovering from a weekend of ragged, broken sleep and fits of uncontrollable tears but hey, who cares? Jesse Malin and tequila to cure all woes I say, and a few extra illicit hours in bed doesn’t hurt either.

The thing is, under pressure of deadlines or in the middle of the grey space of everyday routine, it’s easy to pretend I have a boring life. But every so often – not always where gigs are concerned, but they seem to be the ones I really write about – I have to pinch myself to double-check this really is my reality. I spent last night curled up at the foot of the stage where Jesse Malin, the Jesse Malin, the mysecondfavouritebandorartistintheworld Jesse Malin was performing, my back against a monitor and feet on a pillar, swaying and singing along to most of the words.

And that’s not even the best bit.

I’m well aware that I have a tendency to refer to every Jesse Malin show as the best one I’ve ever been to, but I’m going to do it again. Edinburgh’s Venue is intimate and cosy – as evidenced by the fact I was sitting onstage for most of the show and nobody said a thing – despite shocking bar prices, and was well suited to a low-key acoustic performance that felt more like a crowd of friends hanging out for a jamming session in somebody’s front room than a Concert. “It’s the last night of the tour,” Jesse said, “just me and my friends from Glas-gow and Edinbur-row.” He was smiling mischievously as he made the usual mispronunciations.

Support came from former Cosmic Rough Riders frontman Daniel Wylie and his band in their first ever acoustic show, the drummer trying his best to look hard with a tambourine and a grouchy bass player at the back wondering what the fuck was going on. The songs were pretty enough but instantly forgettable, and didn’t really seem to work unplugged.

Jesse, accompanied by keyboardist Christine Smith, was in his element. He opened with my two favourites from The Fine Art of Self-Destruction, “Downliner” and “Wendy”; then the song I’ve always complained about never getting to hear live and my favourite Jesse song ever, “Cigarettes and Violets”.

Kaite and I competed to see who was most dead of happiness.

The setlist was the perfect blend of oldies (all my favourites bar “TKO”, the song that inspired me to change journals after my last Jesse gig, which would never have worked acoustic anyway); newies (“Mona Lisa”, “Columbia”, “New World Order”, “Silver Manhattan” and “About You” are just five reasons I CANNOT WAIT UNTIL MAY FOR THE NEW ALBUM I NEED IT NAAAAOW!!!); live favourites like “Basement” and the cover of “Hungry Heart” that always makes me giggle; tequila, and good stuff at that, a bottle of which Jesse passed around the crowd for us all to take a shot; and Jesse’s own unique brand of storytelling.

And about five songs in I won the “who was most dead of happiness” contest unequivocally when Jesse came over to where I was sitting. “You doin’ alright?” he asked me.

“Ye-yes,” I must have managed, because he said, “Good,” and then, “What’s your name?”

It is Lisa-Marie, isn’t it?

Gig detritus to add to my collection – a plectrum I didn’t even have to fight for because it was lying on stage right next to my hand, and a signed ticket. With kisses. The boys I was next to – friends of a friend of Kaite’s we’d met I’d been making jealous with the pieces of Ryan Adams I carry with me everywhere and impressing with my taste in REM songs – got plectrums too.

“You know how you get these first impressions of people, and they usually turn out to be wrong?” Kaite said to me earlier in the evening. “It was different with you – the first time we met I had a feeling our future would involve scribbling in journals, and vodka.” Since I moved to Edinburgh Kaite has instructed me in the ways of cocktails, tiny cinemas and spending money. Now she’s seen a bit of my world, and from what she was squealing into her friend’s answering machine on the way home after Jesse had complemented her on her t-shirt – “I’ve just had a religious experience, I don’t want to be a lesbian anymore” – I think she enjoyed it.

And the best thing is he’s back at King Tut’s on May 20th – the usual suspects are being rounded up as I write and I don’t care what exams it clashes with. “We’ll be back electric, with the band,” Jesse promised, “we’re not altcountryhardcore, I hate to disappoint you.” But anybody who thinks Jesse Malin is riding on the coat-tails of that guy who produced his first album should be shot.

[lyg10] the trick is to keep breathing;

Published on October 30, 2009 in [lyg10] and a little more personal. 4 Comments Tags: , .

September this year marks ten years since I made my first, tentative and over-sharey, foray into blogging. I hope you’ll forgive a little self-indulgence on my part, but I’d like to do something to celebrate a pretty significant milestone. I’ve hit upon the idea of publishing some selected takes from my archives – there’s a little bit of poetic license required here, as some of the proper cringeworthy teenage stuff is (thankfully) lost in the mists and pixels of cyberspace, but what I’ll publish every Friday from here until the end of the year is culled from the LiveJournal years, 2003-2006.

24th February 2004
No matter how well-adjusted I eventually become I’m pretty certain there’s a part of me that will always be seeking time alone like this; with my pretty lights and candles, a mug of hot chocolate, and Norah Jones’ rich and sensual voice. I’m wrapped up in my pink fluffy dressing gown and have that fresh, just-out-the-shower feeling. My skin smells faintly of something citrus.

I always thought it was the worst thing in the world to be selfish and I spent years making all sorts of sacrifices – everything from the nicest colour of toothbrush to journalism work experience in high school. I don’t think I’m particularly selfish, but the things and dates that are important to my friends and family that I’ve forgotten have been getting more and more frequent. I’ll do anything for anyone – you just have to remind me I promised I would. It’s not that I don’t care… I’m just not getting enough sleep.

As I’ve gotten older, though, I’ve learned that a little bit of selfishness is no bad thing – indeed, it’s pretty vital. While there’s never any excuse for meanness or betraying somebody – not for money, or career, and certainly not for the nicest colour of toothbrush – you do have to learn to stand up for yourself. You shouldn’t hold yourself back from things you’re just as entitled to as anybody else just because you’re trying to be a nice person. Eventually you’ll realise nobody ever does the same for you, but being such a nice person you’ll internalise it and internalise it until the day you finally crack and start shooting postal workers.

And so I’ve stopped feeling guilty for my periods of seclusion, despite my flatmates not even realising I’d got back (admittedly it was later than I’d planned on Sunday – it’s far too easy to find reasons to want to stay in Glasgow a little bit longer). I’ve come to realise that this is how I recharge my metaphysical batteries, or whatever, and the only way I can save the patience and energy to be a genuinely nice person almost all of the time.

I sold out a friend of mine once, for a story that didn’t even work out – at least, that’s what I’m convinced happened; it may just have been coincidence that it was the last time we spoke but it has to be more than that. I pin the mistake on my twin vices of vodka and obscenely beautiful boys, but it’s not something I’ll ever forgive myself for. It makes me a little wary of interviewing Kaite; and of scrawling illegible notes in my shorthand notebook, freezing cold and perched on a barrel that forms part of a sculpture by my work while Tyrone chain-smokes his way through half a packet of Royals.

I suffer from a chronic lack of ideas and I’m terrible on the phone, two weaknesses that are threatening my career as a journalist before it’s even begun. And what makes it all the more frustrating is that I am a good writer. Honestly. It’s not bravado that has me making these claims, or snorting in derision at poorly-constructed paragraphs in newspapers and magazine articles. In features class yesterday I was starting to turn the leader article in the Herald into a colour piece, and my tutor’s jaw literally dropped at my opening paragraph.

It wasn’t always that way either; I remember back in the good old days (heh) when I was a daily writer at Diaryland – not only did I manage a full entry every day but I often had five or six ideas on the go at once. I would creep out of bed in the middle of the night to scrawl two or three words on a block of paper on my desk, not even bothering to turn the lights on but just so I could work with the idea in the morning. Now I sometimes save a pretty sentence as a notepad file on my laptop but it’s a rare occurrence and they are just that; pretty sentences I like the sound of, but can hardly relate to enough to turn into pieces of me.

[lyg10] i didn’t hear cheerleading for creative writers;

Published on October 23, 2009 in [lyg10] and a little more personal. 11 Comments Tags: , .

ADMIN NOTE: Guys, I’m trialling a new comment system. Let me know if you loathe it.

ETA: I decided to remove the new system because, er, I loathed it (incompatibility with other plugins etc). Unfortunately, it has meant that I have lost all the great comments on this post and others and had to manually restore them. Believe me when I say it was nothing personal xxx

September this year marks ten years since I made my first, tentative and over-sharey, foray into blogging. I hope you’ll forgive a little self-indulgence on my part, but I’d like to do something to celebrate a pretty significant milestone. I’ve hit upon the idea of publishing some selected takes from my archives – there’s a little bit of poetic license required here, as some of the proper cringeworthy teenage stuff is (thankfully) lost in the mists and pixels of cyberspace, but what I’ll publish every Friday from here until the end of the year is culled from the LiveJournal years, 2003-2006.

I had this conversation with a friend of mine. She laughed, and told me to stop being so fucking pretentious.

5th January 2004
I read a lot of books when I was younger, and then I began to get to know so many people, both fictional characters and flesh and blood (although mostly through the Internet, so you could all be really creative and talented fakers for all I know) who seemed to be a lot more… worthwhile, is the word I think I’m looking for in meaning if not in context, than I did. These people all thought really deep thoughts and did really cool things and wrote and made really beautiful things.

And I started to listen to songs that told stories of beautiful people who felt and thought incredible and noble and tragic things. I guess I started to think that perhaps I could be more than some predetermined monotonous existence myself. That just because I was capable of an elegant turn of phrase or two and had a tendency to cry with only the slightest provocation I could set myself apart somehow from the rest of humanity.

You know something? I spent two hours yesterday evening just staring at a blank Microsoft Word document and came to the realisation that I could just go and get a job in an office somewhere, make enough money for concert tickets and pasta and lipgloss and going to the pub on a Saturday night and it wouldn’t be so bad. Indeed, it would be quite nice to have a structured week and a weekend off and none of this imaginary pressure to make a difference in the world. I could do that, and it wouldn’t kill me. Because, despite the song lyrics scrawled on my arm and the hairslides with the flowers on them and the friend who once said to me don’t ever change, Pixie, because you are the most alive person I know I am just a human being. I am solid and real and not more soul than body, more Air than Earth, despite what I’ve led myself to believe.

I could settle for a mundane life, and the only person I would be disappointing would be myself. And I can deal with that, because I’ve been disappointing myself since I emerged from the womb, Wednesday’s Child Full of Woe and my grandmother tried to rebel me against convention and told me I was full of glow. At least this way I wouldn’t be bawling my eyes out a million miles away from anyone who’d want to hug it out with me.

I’m learning that you can’t take creativity and turn it into a way of making a living. You can try, but then it destroys itself and becomes as soulless and boring as everything else on this poisonous little planet. I was never really as good at this as I liked to believe and you all told me I was. I was Little Miss Pretentious, telling people I had to be a Writer because I didn’t have a choice, there was nothing else and if I didn’t I would explode, but the last thing I Wrote was a short story for and about my classmates in high school as a leaving present (it was good, right enough, but you’d have to get the jokes).

This may be what I want to do more than anything else but I worry now that just because it’s more by comparison doesn’t necessarily mean I want it enough and it sure as hell doesn’t mean I need it. And if you don’t need something, or want it so badly that it makes your teeth hurt, then just what my dears is the fucking point?

There are moments I idly wish I didn’t believe myself to be so intense that I can’t get out of bed in the morning. In my quest to turn myself into something more than I am I forget that not everybody has to be special.

(I am secretly fascinated by my stomach, and how it is always so warm even when my hands and feet are freezing like I have an internal boiler under there, and how the panic stops when I lie flat on my back with my hands on either side of my navel, and how it presents such a smooth and comfortable surface for writing on… like that car advert that ran in my Sunday paper for months that talked about writing on a banana.

And I am secretly worried that fuck it, I’m gonna try to get some sleep is fast becoming my answer for everything.)

[lyg10] taking bullets for a team of bad poets;

Published on October 16, 2009 in [lyg10] and a little more personal. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

September this year marks ten years since I made my first, tentative and over-sharey, foray into blogging. I hope you’ll forgive a little self-indulgence on my part, but I’d like to do something to celebrate a pretty significant milestone. I’ve hit upon the idea of publishing some selected takes from my archives – there’s a little bit of poetic license required here, as some of the proper cringeworthy teenage stuff is (thankfully) lost in the mists and pixels of cyberspace, but what I’ll publish every Friday from here until the end of the year is culled from the LiveJournal years, 2003-2006.

Today’s snippet is a day in the life of a postgraduate Journalism student.

12th December 2003
One of the stories we had to sub-edit in class today concerned the declining standards of education. “That reminds me, back when I was a teacher,” Paul said, “we used to have to park next to this wall on which was painted FUCK ALL TECHERS.”

The class is fast becoming the highlight of my week. In fact, I’ve just changed my options for next semester to the second module along with Alternative and Radical Media at the expense of Gender and Journalism. All of that academia would have been too much like hard work and it would be nice to leave here with an employable, practical skill after all.

Last week’s assignment for Periodical was simple, at least on the face of it: we were to write a 400-word review of anything of our choice, and then cut it back to 200 words.

“No bother,” I thought to myself. “I’ll just review the Ryan Adams show… I’ve got all the stuff I’ll need kicking about on my journal anyway. I’ll have it done in an hour.”

That was due last Tuesday, and I still haven’t done it. Cue lots of staring at the laptop screen and a little desperate soul-searching, before I remind myself that I don’t pull that sort of shit anymore and mentally kick myself in the gut. It’s just that anything I try to write comes out like Desperate Fangirl.

Actually, I’ll rephrase that since not being able to write about the show objectively has nothing to do with the fact I can still feel his stubble pressed against my cheek or whatever. I’ve tried brainstorming other ideas when I’ve been lying awake waiting for sleepiness to hit (behaviour my doctor would give me a severe telling-off for I’m sure, but fuck it) but I keep coming across the same mental brick wall, selective writer’s block, whatever. I’ve come to the conclusion that I simply cannot write objectively about albums, or books, or movies, or shows. I tend to devour experience and turn it into a part of me, in the same way I put too much of myself into my writing because… well, because myself is all I have.

On second thoughts, it really wasn’t a surprise my tutor called me pretentious when I handed in my first assignment.

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing – well, I suppose I am in a way, because when somebody’s reading reviews trying to decide whether or not to buy a CD they’re not looking for an insight into the reviewer’s soul, or lack of. I think it makes for more interesting reading, but despite my best efforts my word is not law. And it’s a damn shame, because according to The Magazines Handbook if you have a talent for knocking out a couple of reviews a week you could actually stand to make some money in this stupid non-industry of ours.

It’s funny really, because when I’m writing news articles from fake press releases I don’t put any of myself into them (you don’t want to get me started on how news stories should be just that – pure news, none of this having-an-angle nonsense) and I’m damn good at it. To the extent that, in workshop earlier this week, I got a piece handed back to me and was told, “I’ve got no comments, there’s nothing I can add to that.”

I’m trying not to dwell on the review piece because I can see myself developing a complete mental block over it like I did over that one six weeks back (which, come to think of it, was another review piece ohshit… stoppitstoppitstoppit). I’m just going to grit my teeth and get on with it on Sunday, when I tackle this week’s assignment (I’m quite excited about it: I’m planning on trying something I haven’t in ages, I don’t even want to say what in case I jinx it), and if I churn out something substandard, well, I only need five pieces for the portfolio after all.

(Christmas holidays? What Christmas holidays? I’ve got two portfolios to get started on, a major study of a magazine of my choice and two exams in January. And I’ll need to come back into Edinburgh the weekend between Christmas and New Year for my stupid job, which I’m not annoyed about, oh no…)

Until then, there’s the small matter of starting work at quarter to eight tomorrow morning to contend with. I’ve told Mags I’ll be in a vile mood all day. She says she’ll just put a bag over my head.

[lyg10] the room is on fire as she’s fixin’ her hair;

Published on October 9, 2009 in [lyg10] and music. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

September this year marks ten years since I made my first, tentative and over-sharey, foray into blogging. I hope you’ll forgive a little self-indulgence on my part, but I’d like to do something to celebrate a pretty significant milestone. I’ve hit upon the idea of publishing some selected takes from my archives – there’s a little bit of poetic license required here, as some of the proper cringeworthy teenage stuff is (thankfully) lost in the mists and pixels of cyberspace, but what I’ll publish every Friday from here until the end of the year is culled from the LiveJournal years, 2003-2006.

This was a good week. Last week, you got to read about my first Ryan Adams gig experience, but then a few days later I got to see The Strokes along with one of my all-time favourite people. And I apologise to Bobby for the use of the old nickname (and, indeed, for all the bits of this post we can’t help but smirk at now) but it wouldn’t seem right to change it.

2nd December 2003
I should have been in Edinburgh at nine o’clock this morning. Instead, I wrote this curled up in my favourite armchair, in my messy living room, still wearing my pyjamas.

You don’t realise how much you miss the little things until you’re forced to go without them – like armchairs, and sofas, and toilets that flush properly, and hot showers, and fifteen tog duvets. Not that that’s any excuse for laziness – that I blame entirely on Mr Julian Casablancas and company making me wanna dance until late when I had to be up at six in the morning.

You can’t fault a Monday morning when you get to spend it in your favourite city with some of your favourite people. Roberta is as lovely as ever, in fact even more so with that little bit of confidence she’s gained since I first met her all those months ago. Besides, there’s nobody else in the world who gets quite as giggly as I do after one strawberry daiquiri, buys me the sparkly red Rimmel lipgloss I’ve been coveting for a month and makes me want to squeal “STROKES!!” every twopointfive seconds. That I can’t quite get my patented Impression of a Teenage Avril Lavigne Fan right anymore is a testament to the fact I should see her more often.

I had been quite confused as to how a gig at Braehead would work – would the Strokes glide elegantly onto the ice rink, Fab pulling his drumkit on a little sled behind him, while we all watched from McDonalds? – but, silly woman, the arena is behind the shopping centre and can only be described as the SECC’s little brother (same cavernous, school theatre-esque feel, same ridiculous impression of a bar – Smirnoff Ice in plastic bottles? I do not approve). Rob and I were there early enough to get some dinner, see if we could find LiveJournal’s very own Braedolph (we couldn’t) and see if my friend Andi was working in Gap (he wasn’t).

We were also early enough to stand in the freezing cold for about an hour after the time shown on our tickets (which Roberta had been nervously checking at rough half-hour intervals since I met her in the early afternoon). The fairground rides in the background lent a carnival air to the proceedings, and for some reason Rob and I sang Rod Stewart and Tori Amos as we waited (and Rob’s descriptions of exactly what she would do to Julian if she got backstage became increasingly lurid).

Finally we were in, discovering to our delight that our seated tickets weren’t quite as bad as we had been worried they would be (we were five rows from the front, right at the side of the stage and for some reason going down the narrow steps to our places made me think of the terraces at Celtic Park, despite our seats being blue). One of the girls who had been standing in front of us in the queue came running up to us. “I know I don’t know you, but look what I bought!” she squealed, waving a pair of official Strokes knickers from the merchandise stall. I’m pleased to report our purchases were a little more sensible. “I think those would turn off everyone I know,” Rob said to me later.

Support British Sea Power were decidedly more rawk than their name suggested, putting in a great performance aided by a forest’s worth of shrubbery onstage, a man with a silly hat and a big drum, and someone in a bear suit. Which reminds me, I fully intended to Google the lead singer and see if he is as hot as the impression I was getting from five rows back. “Hmm, if you squint,” said Rob, “you could almost believe he was Jeff Buckley.”

“Maybe if I took a contact lens out,” I replied.

Finding a bar was a feat in itself (“If you get me to the bar I’ll buy you a drink,” said the guy in the Kings of Leon t-shirt following me, “aye, and yer pal an’ all” – sadly I managed to lose him in the scrum for service, and to be honest would I have wanted a guy in a Kings of Leon t-shirt buying me a drink?), getting the near-to-last two Smirnoff Ices was nothing short of heroic. They’d ran out of drink. It was hysterical.

I was getting a little worried that I’m the only person in the world who thinks Room on Fire is a better album than Is This It. Much as I love the Strokes’ debut the new one is, quite simply, sex if there were guitars involved. I was relieved to find Roberta agrees with me, not least because of the rather embarassing habit of half the lyrics on the album being so perfectly fitting with regards to certain personal situations. Perhaps it’s a good thing the band no longer play “Meet Me In The Bathroom” live or we would have become two ticking timebombs of inappropriate boylust.

Why I love the Strokes – they couldn’t care less about gimmicks, or putting on a show. They just get up there and rock like… like something with a lot of rocks in it. And they sound damn good. Opener “Reptillia” was a million times sexier than on the album (what with those hips being right there… in fact, so was everything else.

About three songs in, the band were ordered to stop playing and the house lights put up until the barrier could be moved back a couple of feet. “Health and safety or some shit, I dunno,” Julian drawled, and it almost made you glad you were a few feet removed from the proceedings. When Fab dived into the crowd at the end, we were so afraid he wouldn’t come back out again.

Lest there was ever any doubt as to the identity of me favourite New Yorker (adopted), I called Roberta’s attention to the fact one crowdsurfer wore a Ryan Adams t-shirt. Her response? “Pay attention girl, Julian’s up there!!”

And we danced; we danced when they played “Someday”, and after “New York City Cops” we never sat down again. Fuck seating tickets, fuck getting crushed… and I could say something really obvious about Julian Casablancas but I’m too classy for that, surely ;)