Zombies, OhMyGod

I got this in my Inbox today, & had completely forgotten about writing it.

2010-02-12T13:14:00.002+11:00

The following is an e-mail from the past, composed on Monday, February 11, 2008, and sent via FutureMe.org
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Dear FutureMe,
I am 21 years old, soon to be 22. You're probably old now. I hope that you are happy!
Remember when you had no idea what you were going to do in your life... well, that's me right now. I know I wanna do SO many things and I don't wanna be stuck in an office environment somewhere, any longer.
So if you still are, GET OUT. NOW. No excuses anymore. That's it! Terrible! Save yourself. Get out. Do what you love. Please.

Stay youthful. Don't grow up too fast, we've made that mistake too many times. Have fun. Jump in bushes when you've had too much tequila. Drink wine straight out of the bottle. Hit on ridiculous looking people just for fun.

Love your friends, stay true to your family. Spread peace, love and tranquility.
Just Be.
xx (love, the You 'of Christmas Past')

-----------------------------------------------------

SoOo glad I don't work in a stuffy office anymore.

DJ SuperMum

2010-02-03T13:58:00.005+11:00

Hanna.

One of my most loyal, long-term friends.

& she mixes friggin' awesome music.

Hanna is also full-time mother to gorgeous Kaita, whom we took to the beach & absolutely loves the water.

Fever Ray

2009-05-24T13:35:00.013+10:00

(Publicity shot, credit unknown)

Anyone who has heard Swedish electronic duo The Knife has heard Karin Dreijer Andersson's eccentric voice billow like clouds or pierce like lightning.

With the other half of The Knife, brother Olof Dreijer, The Knife are known for shying away from media attention, posing for publicity shots mainly in masks and refusal to perform live for over 5 years.
At 34 years old, Karin is a mother of two and surely one of music's awesomest offbeat Mamas!

(i love the colour of that hoodie)

Taking a break from the duo, Fever Ray is Karin's debut solo album, more sombre & soul-mashing than The Knife's sound.

album cover artwork by Martin Ander - www.mander.nu

Fever Ray retains elements of electronica and dance but (with some thanks to voice transformer manipulation) seems more daring & eclectic with deep booming vocals, shrieking sounds like birds in forest treetops, and somewhat simple yet beautiful lyrics that inspire a feeling of wonder in life & love:

"Never leave me
Walk close beside me
Your hand my hand
Fits so easy"

The second single, 'When I Grow Up' was released in 2009, and is one of my personal favourites (though it's so hard to pick!) for both its imagery & sound.
It evokes feelings of living in a tent, smelling the fresh mountain air each morning and singing to the sound of waves rushing onto the shore.

"When I grow up
I want to live near the sea
Crab claws and bottles of rum
That's what I'll have
Staring at a seashell
Waiting for it to embrace me."

Hypnotic & charming whilst amazingly creative and spooky, I find myself being randomly revisited by the songs in my head even when I haven't listened to the album in a while.

When I Grow Up from Fever Ray on Vimeo.

www.feverray.com
Fever Ray was recorded on www.rabidrecords.com

Remember as a kid when you used to hold a seashell to your ear and magically hear the sea?

x

ask yourself...

2009-02-16T20:52:00.002+11:00

If money was no object, if time was no issue, if physical body was not involved in the equation & if the Universe/God/Fate/Life would put into place anything you needed to fulfil your dreams...

What would you most want to do with your life?

Now, if you can, put in place at least one step towards that dream.
Even if that's just researching, writing, meditating, thinking, running or crying.

holy guacamole

2008-12-06T21:21:00.003+11:00

sorry it has been SO long since I wrote on here, my just-born blog has gone all ashes-to-ashes on me!
I have had VERY limited internet access until recently, so I promise that at least semi-regular posts will soon be made.

love to all (5) of you who have commented or any others that have stopped by in cyberspace...

x Tasj

the ultimate house

2008-04-20T12:32:00.004+10:00

iCiNG mission this week was to write about our dream house...but i've had plenty of time to think about this one!

my DREAM house would be big, surrounded by trees & plants and have lots of room for friends & family to stay.
the kitchen would be HUGE with a bench in the middle, clever storage for everything, a water-recycling dishwasher!! great knives & useful contraptions so everyone could cook at once!
the kitchen sink would be those gorgeous HUGE chef sinks, & overlooking (& draining onto) my vege/herb garden; and a chicken coop.

i would have stereo’s in every room, including the toilet! & the whole place would be as eco-friendly as possible. I would capture my own water, & have tonnes of solar panels to get power.
not sure how viable this is though, due to having like a billion steros in each room?!Hmm...

every room would have a sunroof thingy, & lots of light can be let into every part of the house whenever we like. all the rooms would be soundproofed.

i would have a loft/attic room with a stained glass window (that I made!), a spare bed, full of fun toys & safe craft materials for my future children :)
the Lounge would be full of comfy old but refurnished armchairs & have no television, & a huge collection of books published by amazing people like Deepak Chopra, Sark, myself, and art by my current & future friends.
The house would be open plan with the kitchen/dining area (lots of table/chair space!) & there’d be a drumset & guitars & violins & tambourines – all sorts of instruments so friends can play along.

i would have a spare room for watching dvd’s/VHS on a white wall where pictures are projected. this room is FULL of mattresses, cushions, blankets, duvets, anything comfy to prop up on for viewing pleasure.

the toilet would be a gorgeous blue colour instead of boring white, have a claw-foot bath, i would paint murals on the walls & have tonnes of fluffy towels & Lush products stashed in the cupboards. There is frosted glass in the window next to the bath, so when you bathe you can hear the sounds of the birds & see the outlines of trees.

for some reason i really like doing laundry …in big laundry rooms… i think every female secretly has a chore she quite likes (my friend at work loves dishes!) so the laundry would be LARGE with a laundry chute pointing down from upstairs & be next to the sunroom so we can sun-dry our clothes. it’d have a lovely old washing machine & lots of wicker basket drawers beneath the bench for sorting.
the stairs would have a slide next to them, & a treehouse out in the backyard's biggest tree.

outside, (past the deck with a wooden love-seat & barbeque area) past the trampoline IN the ground & along a small secret winding path through the trees is a clearing.
A bath sits propped up in the clearing & we can light a fire underneath to heat the water, & bathe beneath the stars.

my kid’s rooms would be created by me, we would build them bunkbeds that look like castles or pirate ships & I would paint dinosaurs, butterflies & birds on the walls.

the master bedroom would be large but cosy, with an ensuite & a triple-king sized bed for ample cuddling space. It would be filled with things we love, art & crafts by friends & family and have a large mirrored wardrobe for storing stuff out of sight.
i think it was in that movie about greek God Odysseus? where his bed has a tree right next to it, upstairs like some crazy real awesome castle treehouse!
now that would be ideal, but I can imagine Autumn. Maybe get kind of annoying don't you think!?

i remember years ago in school I drew & planned out my Ultimate House while I was meant to be studying Social Studies & Classics... that's probably why I don't have my Greek-God-Facts quite straight!
have you guys ever thought about this?!

x Tasj

livejournal post #1

2008-02-13T15:43:00.001+11:00

For a while now, I have been feeling like drawing is very limiting to me. Days go by when I feel extremely inspired, and want to create something. But every time I pick up a pencil I have a sort of 'block', I don't have any ideas and I don't know what to draw.
Sometimes I will force my hand to move, but nothing but crap appears on the paper. Usually squiggles or arrows or a bunch of curvy lines which I will then fill-in with the pencil or pen.

So I have resorted to baking, which is something where you can follow the directions, but you have complete creative freedom and if it turns out terrible you might be lucky enough to lick the batter and still, it won't taste too bad.
And sewing. But I have run out of ideas of things to make from material, now. I am kind of limited here, too, because since my machine broke down (and I have no way of getting it to a fixing-majiggy-shop) I am sewing everything by hand.

So far I have sewn a pair of lobster-claw gloves (for my friend obsessed with Dr.Zoidberg from Futurama), two teeth with big eyes and gold teeth (don't ask) and an octopus complete with 'ink' which my flatmate says looks like pubic hair.
Oh, and a zombie. But he turned out really terribly so he doesn't count.

My love is painting. I love the colours, I love mixing the paint and filling in gaps and layering colour upon colour and creating texture with the paint.
In painting studies at Tech, I could never get anything done with people around, I preferred to paint in the solace of my bedroom.
Instead, my classmates would ask me to mix their colours. I loved it. I would try to get a close-enough skin tone with the cheap paints that we had, to get a deep forest green to match the one that had already dried on the canvas, or to give the red a shimmery sheen.

I miss painting so much, but I don't have any ideas of what to paint. I have tried everything from keeping a dream diary to sketching something every day.

I am resorting to schooling *arrrrgghhh!*.

This Saturday begins one of my regular (for 6 weeks anyway) classes, for two hours each Saturday at the local University I will be going to a 'drawing fundamentals' class. Yes, drawing for da mentals. You got me.
It's actually called something like "express yourself through drawing".
I've done all this stuff before, but I really need someone to give me a kick in the guts and send me forth into the World Of Drawing again. I have been retreating for too long and it's time I grew some nads and did something about it.

x

blog blog blog

2008-02-13T15:40:00.002+11:00

so I decided I hate livejournal, mostly because it is really slow on every computer I use, and also because it seems impossible for me to upload pictures somehow.
I'm moving my posts to blogger instead.

2008-01-19T08:19:00.000+11:00

So yesterday I went to the hairdresser and just told my stylist to go crazy.
I now have asymmetrical hair, which suits me just fine.

Then I went home and proceeded to create what I like to call 'Crab-Hands' for our friend Joss' flatwarming gift. You see, Joss has an obsession with Dr. Zoidberg from the television show Futurama.

I mean, who doesn't?!

And she is having somewhat of a party tonight.
Which means I will be getting drunk. Which means I will probably end up stealing the Crab-Hands back like a spoilt child and running around Crabbing people's noses.
I still need to make the right-hand claw, and finish them off a little, but once finished I think I should probably make a pair for myself.

[ crabbin' crabbin' crabbin'! ]

Faces in the Rocks

2007-12-19T20:35:00.000+11:00

I don't even believe that I will have enough, or the right, words to describe this sound.
You might just have to trust me and have a listen yourself. Check out the myspace for a delicious taste tester - www.myspace.com/marieesioux

If you only have time left to sit and listen to one beautiful album this year, I recommend that "Faces in the Rocks" by Mariee Sioux should be that One.

I stumbled across Mariee's Myspace webpage after reading about Alela Diane, and following links through to discover that the two were actually childhood friends.
It seems Nevada City's an amazing place for soul-wrenching music, I am starting to seriously consider moving there!

'Buried In Teeth' is a melodic finger-picking guitar song, Mariee's cooing voice double-tracked over top. One of my favourites.

"down past the stomachs filled with berries, swallowed down into the gut of centuries"

Her songs make me feel as though I should be living in a commune somewhere in the '70s, surrounded only by guitars and trees... they truly bring a sense of peace to my heart.
Mariee weaves soft threads of words into a strong tapestry of imagery, and the lyrics give a sense that she is an amazingly spiritual person, deeply in touch with the Universe and focused in her personal creative expression of this.

If Mariee isn't quite your cup of tea, consider checking out Alela Diane.

www.myspace.com/alelamusic

Her song "The Rifle" on her myspace is absolutely beautiful and so sad, I have listened to it three times in a row thus far.

I read somewhere that her most recent album was named Album of 2007 by a few blogs.
Sorry, I really can't find where I read that!

If there's any artists you're going mad for at the moment, let us know!

Iron & Wine

2007-11-09T10:10:00.000+11:00

my new favourite band

According to Wikipedia, Iron & Wine is the 'stage and recording name of folk rock singer-songwriter Sam Beam'.

Personally, I don't like labelling music as much as I do describing it... I find labels can be inhibiting to your open, honest listening experience, especially when hearing certain music for the first time.

Sam is a full-bearded, kind-eyed Jesus lookalike, whose soft voice is a soothing caress to your soul.

I was first exposed to the music of Iron & Wine while holidaying back home in New Zealand, sitting on the balcony of my good friend's room overlooking Brooklyn, Wellington.

Drinking gin with kiwifruit nectar, my friend played their most recent album 'The Shepherd's Dog', and I was sceptical at first.

As I listened to the whole album, songs like "Lovesong of the Buzzard" and "House by the Sea" became a soundtrack to the day instead of space/time/silence filler.

I love an album that can become background music which fills your heart with joy, and fits the day so beautifully no matter where you are.

Then I discovered that Sam Beam performed a song for a movie that I really enjoyed quite a while ago, called 'Garden State'. If you haven't seen this yet, give it a try - Zach Braff from Scrubs plays the main character.

The song is a cover of 'Such Great Heights' by The Postal Cover.

When I returned home, one of the first things I did was buy the album - and now I am well and truly hooked! Sam Beam is not only a very talented musician, playing rhythms that undulate beneath your skin; arrangements that pull at the hairs on the back of your neck, his voice is so beautiful and soft yet strong, but he is an amazing poet.

His lyrics are rich and strategic, deep and soulful -

"And we’ll undress beside the ashes of the fire, Both our tender bellies wound in baling wire"

"In our days we will live, like our ghosts will live, pitching glass at the cornfield crows and folding clothes" ~ (Resurrection Fern)

"A beautiful feather floating down, To where the birds had shit on empty chapel pews" ~ (Pagan Angel & A Borrowed Car)

'Carousel' has got to be my absolute favourite song from 'The Shepherd's Dog', it's just absolutely soul-wrenching.

Every part of the compositon is beautiful from the guitar picking to the resonant drums, the vibe-echo sound of Sam's voice, and the lyrics:

"...almost home with an olive branch and a dove, you were beatin' on a Persian rug, with your bible and your wedding band both hidden on a T.V stand"

"...while your grieving girls all died in their sleep, so the dogs all went unfed, a great dream of bones all piled on a bed"

Something about this song brings to mind visions of when I was so young that I can hardly remember ~ vague memories of tall trees & driving in an old car that smelt of leather and wet dogs from a time we let them swim in the river, and sitting amongst the birds my mother kept in an aviary in our backyard.

I thoroughly recommend you all give this album a listen, at least a few times to let the joy settle in... it really is hard to put into words the way some of these songs make you feel, so you might as well attempt to experience it yourself!

I apologise, I am not so good with HTML and all that fancy jazz, so here's a couple of links for you to delve into:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quVQ6llbDBM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-qxfeuOgQk

thanks for reading :) keep smiling!

journey to myself

2007-10-04T15:57:00.000+10:00

"I said, "Honey, I don't feel so good, don't feel justified
Come on put a little love here in my void,"
- he said "It's all in your head," and I said,
"So's everything" - But he didn't get it -
I thought he was a man but he was just a little boy"
~ Fiona Apple

Those of you who haven't experienced the amazing contralto voice of Fiona Apple, causing both pleasure and pain to embrace your soul at once - should!

Fiona's strong, versatile voice expresses feelings we can all relate to - relationships, pain, emotion, loss, confusion and love - but every song has such amazing beauty & originality that it weaves you into it's own little web.

I love listening to "Paper Bag" , "Love Ridden" , "Slow Like Honey" when feeling mushy

"Tymps(the sick in the head song)" is the best 'i'm-so-messed-up-now-and-nothing-seems-right' song, or for a good cry after a bad day or a breakup, I also recommend "Get Gone", "Window" and "Better Version of Me"

'Love Ridden' s lyrics are simply delicious: (another good one for breakups! I'm seeing a pattern here...)

~ "nobody sees when you are lying in your bed and I wanna... crawl in with you, but I cry instead. I want your warm but it will only make me colder, when it's over so I can't tonight, baby"

along with 'O'Sailor':

~ "everything good I deem to good to be true, everything else is just a bore; everything I have to look forward to, has a pretty painful and very imposing before" .

Fiona began her career in '95 with 'Tidal', followed by 'When the Pawn...', the album which earned a spot in the Guinness Book of Records due to it's title length. It's full title is
When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He'll Win the Whole Thing Fore He Enters the Ring There's No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights and If You Know Where You Stand, Then You'll Know Where to Land and If You Fall It Won't Matter, Cuz You Know That You're Right.

Her latest album 'Extraordinary Machine' became the highest-charting album of her career on release even though some early tracks were leaked onto the internet without consent.

Fiona is a fantastic role model for strong, intelligent individuals. She is a great poet & personally, is one of my key musical inspirations along with Stevie Nicks, Patti Smith, Velvet Underground, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.

* Who inspires you? Who do you look up to, and why?*

Haiku

2007-09-25T09:00:00.000+10:00

haha!