Bodies

Kick it
Cut it
Stab it
Bruise it
Lick it
Penetrate it
Hurt it
Bleed it
Discharge it
Hate it
Hide it

My body reacts so violently against yours. I don't understand why.

Ye Olde Arse

All of a sudden people want to take photos of us. By us I mean Blue On Blue. I'm thoroughly appreciative but one of my pet hates is having my photograph taken. I hate posing and being arrogant and so I look at posed photographs epitomising everything I hate. However, I love taking photos of everything around me so that makes me well and truly some sort of hypocrite. Possibly.

Anyway, our shoot with David last week was great - I absolutely adore the photos as they really document the band, our music and also our individual characters. Also I really wanted the shoot to be at one of my most favourite places - Shoreditch Church. We played two of our best Bird gigs there (one of those times being a massive stage invasion which was my most favourite moment on stage ever) and I spend a lot of time there when I am in one of my contemplative moods.

We've been asked to do another shoot this week and this time the photographer has chosen another reputable east end establishment - the infamous strip joint Ye Olde Axe on Hackney Road. I actually paid the rather low entrance fee of £3 and went there with two friends when I first moved to the area a few years ago. Now I've been to two strip joints in my time here on earth (the second being Sunset Strip in Soho which was £10 to get in), and both times I've initially been turned away for being a woman and then once in there, have been continually harassed to get my tits out by the punters. Also it kind of gets annoying when the strippers come swinging by for change all the time. I mean, even the ugly ones.

Anyway, Ye Olde Axe is not only full of eastern European and east end loverlees but also ghosts. Lots of them. Yep, it is well and truly haunted and therefore I'm going to have to take some lucky charms with me on the shoot. I don't own any but may buy a charm bracelet from Argos in advance.

Info about the hauntings:
Ye Olde Axe, 69 Hackney Road
Undergoing major rebuilding work in the 1970's, the remains of two bodies were recovered from beneath it - the sounds that followed, coming from the building late at night convinced many the dead didn't appreciate being disturbed.

I really hope our experience won't be like that of the Happy Mondays on Most Haunted. I watched it over Christmas, haven't laughed that hard in YEARS.

Look Out It's In The Trees! It's Coming!

One of my favourites from our shoot with David.

Deleting the past and erasing the future

Sometimes I look back on this blog and shudder with regret and embarassment. Did I really think and feel those things and why did I decide to share them?

Originally, it was just me, my thoughts, a dark night, cyberspace and the random fear/excitement that an unknown stranger may stumble across these confused words. It was my ethereal Dear Diary.

I am often torn between trying not to express myself and over-expressing myself. I am openly obsessed with confessional writers but did they too share these aching pangs of regret? I will never know.

The only year I decided to keep an actual diary ended up being the worst year of my life. Everything that could have gone wrong mentally, physically and with all my relationships did so in the most catastrophic way. I have never really ever gotten over that year. Every time I feel I have forgotten it, some vague wisp of memory floors me with the weight of solid unhappiness. When I go home to visit my parents, I know the diary lurks in my old bedroom, taunting me to open it up and relive those awful memories once again. Perhaps I should throw it away and hopefully I will feel cleansed.

As much as my own diary-writing experience was so horrendous, I do still believe that there is a beauty in confiding and enscribing your thoughts pen to paper and in your own keepsake. As much as I can write openly about my feelings, there are some thoughts, longings and fears that will always remain stashed away in my mind and never revealed. I suppose that gives me some solace.

I attempted to deal with my diary experience a few years ago relating to an exhibition I curated in July 2008 at Whitechapel Art Gallery about modern nostalgia. I interviewed some friends about why they chose to keep a diary. The only person whose answer I can find is Faris Badwan's below.

How long have you kept a diary for?
Since I was three, unwillingly at first.

What first made you decide to keep one?
I was forced to by my schoolteachers. Gradually began enjoying it.

Are these wholly private or have you shared these with others?
Some pages have been published.

Is your diary - a typical diary e.g. about your day, a log book of thoughts, lyrics, drawings or all of the above?
All, and I have different diaries with different content, themes, pen sizes etc usually being filled in tandem.

If it’s an amalgamation of all of them, have you thought about separating these out - a book of thoughts, a book of drawings, a book of lyrics?
Would it affect your personal thought process
reaching for a different book each time?
I carry three different books with me usually.


Is a diary merely another thought compartment, does it really help to express yourself or is it just a physical store of personal confusion?
I spend so much time waiting, in queues, on the tube...inevitably end up thinking a lot - writing down some of these thoughts helps me to focus and concentrate more and in turn generate more ideas.

Recently, a collection of drawings from your notebooks were exhibited in London. How did it feel to see the public react to drawings that came from a very private source?
With the kind of work I do - very little negative space - I feel people get overwhelmed and just say it’s good as a knee-jerk reaction. Basically no one said anything particularly insightful and therefore I didn’t feel that self conscious. If they had been more analytical maybe I would have felt more uncomfortable.

Would you publicly display any other creative work e.g. poems/lyrics etc?
Maybe.

Would you ever keep an electronic diary? Would it affect your ability to express yourself if you typed out your thoughts instead of wrote them?
Typing can be useful editing-wisebut it can never have the same character as hand-written notes or the same level of expression. It depends where the focus is, on the actual words or their meaning.

For me, Wilde’s ‘De Profundis’ is a massive inspirational piece of personal contemplation. Have you read published diaries of others? Have any particularly interested you and why?
A lot of the art I like has an obsessive quality to it, the desire to document everything, found objects etc. Raymond Pettibon, Egon Schiele, Marcel Dzama.

The Beauty of Maps

Yes! Finally, an interesting TV programme made for the likes of me:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00s3v0t/The_Beauty_of_Maps_Medieval_Maps_Mapping_the_Medieval_Mind/

Keep it LOCAL

New favourite (and slighty granny) website:

http://www.parishregister.com/areamaps.html

I have a growing fascination with churches, particularly in my local area. This has made me slightly intrigued by people who run local archive websites. Gone are the days where you spot brown corduroy-loving, damp and slightly smelly people hanging about in libraries spending hours going through microfiche working out if they are related to Hattie Smythe or Florence Booth; you know, the type of people who lose sleep when they can't remember what The Hebridean Times headline was on May 13th 1856. Are these people hiding behind screens in their loft feeding curiously interested people like me strange and delightful facts and statistics over the internet? Do they check how many hits they have got every 15 minutes while dunking their hobnobs in their tea? I do hope so!

The creepiest thing about all of this is that I'm turning into one of those people.

As the days go by, I have less and less time for other people and therefore reluctantly have to put up with more and more time with myself. Ugh. I hate clubs as the few times I go to them, I come home feeling really empty wondering why I've wasted yet another evening feeling awkward and confused about who I am and who I am hanging round with. Challenging and stimulating conversations are getting less frequent and that deeply worries me. Who am I and how did I end up here? And more importantly, why am I feeling the need to google the etymology of Bethnal Green at 4am on a Saturday?

I have become rather too attached to London (despite threatening and considering a move far, far away on a weekly basis) and I want to keep it local. I get perturbed when I see new flats being built where a park used to be or seeing yet another 19th century church being converted into flats for the city boys.

However my thoughts and explorations are for me and for those who are equally interested in local history. I mean, there is going the other extreme and declaring everything shit, crap and useless to a bunch of imbeciles. For example, there is a massively annoying Facebook group called Secret London which has a whopping 5,757 fans. Do I really want to 'discover the hidden gems of London, join Secret London. Post great places to see in London, giving details of locating it.' No. FUCK OFF.

What are these 6,000 idiots discussing and revealing to each other? Are they arranging to go rambling in Richmond Park or talking about fresh new galleries on Redchurch street?

Here is a recent post:

'CALLNIG ALL SINGLE GIRLS AND GUYS - new Justin Lee Collins chatshow filmed in SE London, looking for people to take part in fun dating game next week. Get in touch asap jlcaudience@tigeraspect.co.uk' posted by Toby Brack.

Jesus fucking christ!!

Yes.

I know.

I need to move to Royston Valley...

Path to Plath

I am back in my own bed tonight...the first time in over a month. I have missed my room but have felt so apprehensive to return to it. I don't know why, perhaps I have enjoyed flat-sitting much more than I expected. On a completely different note, I am beginning to worry about my (mis)use of prepositions. Being out of education and work for a couple of years has made me feel the need to dumb myself down. It is very bizarre. All those years of education wasted merely because I choose to keep company and activities in the evenings and not during the day. Tell that to the student loans company...

Anyway, old habits die hard and not having a TV (I've been watching it like a maniac over the last month; a decade of TV abstinence well and truly broken), has made me read again. That's why I like this messy, filled with musical equipment and nothing practical room! It makes me read, create and make music! It's good to be back...

I have been reacquainting myself with Sylvia Plath this evening and in particular, her poetry. It sounds like a truly cliched thing to be doing but my love for confessional poets like Plath and Anne Sexton are equal to my love for music. I identify with their words greatly but I feel uneasy at feeling easy with their volatile and uncomfortable subject matter. After reading the thesis on female poets and mental health, 'I Bask In Dreams Of Suicide', I unwillingly have in the back of my mind that I fit this female poets suffer from gloom and doom stereotype. I usually only write and create when I am down and I am unsure why I don't feel the urge to put pen to paper when I am happy. Those thoughts are no less worthy from sad ones. Perhaps I find them harder to express.

However confessional writing is not for everyone and most people find it very hard to interact with. A friend recently sent me a message in regards to a photograph I had posted up on a blog: http://thequietriots.blogspot.com/2009/06/53-rhydypenau-road.html and said how he found it inconceivable that I could write so openly about such things. However for me, writing is the only way I can share a lot about myself whether it be imaginative, humorous, trivial or extremely personal. I find it very hard to do it through any other medium.

Anyway, I enjoyed the poem below this evening. 100% of the women I know think like this so that gives us a massive unity bond of MADNESS. Grrrl power and all that....

Mad Girl's Love Song
Sylvia Plath

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

The highs and the lows and the I don't knows.....

I'M SICK OF THEM