Playlist

I never want to forget this playlist, so I'm putting it here.

Dear Mother- Cake Bake Betty
Baobabs- Regina Spektor
Grow Grow Grow- PJ Harvey
'81- Joanna Newsom
Today, Tuesday- Frida Hyvonen
Film III- Jorane
A Coral Room- Kate Bush
I Speak Because I Can- Laura Marling
Now At Last- Feist
Your Armor- Charlotte Martin
Metal Heart (Jukebox version)- Cat Power
Down The Road And Up The Hill- Regina Spektor
Graveyard- Tori Amos
The Apocalypse Song- St. Vincent
December- Regina Spektor
A Cannon- Regina Spektor


I didn't realise I had so much Regina on there, actually. Especially as I was trying to only have one song by each artist, but her stories are perfect in bad weather. Begin To Hope is summer for me, albeit an odd one, but songs like A Cannon followed by Just Like The Movies remind me of a rainy Sunday when I lived in Pontefract. I love music's power to transport us to the place we first truly clicked with it. Father Lucifer is the purple bedroom, Cornflake Girl is Anstruther street at six years old, Lifeblood by the Manics is a cold winter, Know Your Enemy is new year, We Walk is being scared on Thursdays when I was little in Scotland. There's so much. Leonard Cohen is sleeping and thinking he was telling us a story, Midwinter Graces is feeling giddy, Bad Religion is candy sticks. I love that all of these memories are so vivid that I can taste and smell and feel them, but almost nobody will ever have a clue what I mean. And I like that.

The Slap

I want to write about The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas. There has been a lot of controversy about this book which was longlisted for the Man Booker this year. I was drawn to this novel because of the discussion it triggered on BBC’s Review Show which I both enjoy and dislike in almost equal measures depending on who is making up the panel that week. Anyway, as I remember, everyone moaned about The Slap. They didn’t like the swearing, they didn’t like the characters, there were too many characters, it was too crudely written, blah blah blah. Tsiolkas is Australian, and what really irritates me is that this novel has been both praised and criticised for its representation and portrayal of contemporary Australia. Who says? I really hate the notion that any given novel has to be seen to be making an important social statement, or acting as a fictional documentation of what is actually going on. Why can’t a novel just be a product of the imagination of its author? Anyway, I think there’s a problem with how people have approached the book. I think it’s brilliantly written because it includes the actions by its characters that other writers would undoubtedly omit.

The novel’s chapters focus primarily on one character at a time, but their lives bleed into one another, as does the impact of the one episode which ricochets through the entire novel- when one character slaps a three year old child at a barbecue. ‘The boy is not his son’. Anyway, I think the novel is brave in its style as it reflects real people and real thought, which is hard for some people, notably the book’s critics, to admit. Human beings aren’t nice. Human beings don’t think nice or pure or politically correct or positive thoughts all the time, and this, for me, is exactly what this book is about. Halfway down the first page reads ‘[Hector] himself would have no problem falling asleep in a girl’s locker room surrounded by the moist, heady fragrance of sweet young cunt’, and is probably where the critics and prudes decided they were NOT going to enjoy this novel. And actually, when I was reading this myself I smiled and imaged the scrunched up faces of the people who still think that cunt is a dirty and negative word.

There is definitely something about being as silent as a person can be. Breathing is admired when nobody is talking; breathing becomes rhythmic and musical and is noticed. Heartbeats are ignored when it’s loud. We expect our hearts to beat and if someone’s decides to suddenly stop we are shocked and saddened. How could that just happen? I find breathing irritating and heartbeats make me cringe. At night, I wish I could be completely silent. I wish the world could be completely silent. I want sleep to mimic death every single night. Last night I took some strong painkillers for a horrible headache and I slept for 11 hours. It was very quiet and cosy in my codeine blanket eventually, but before I slept I was restless and my thoughts in my head which always form a sort of narration were being spoken aloud in slow motion. None of the words made sense, which reminded me of what happens when you’re little and you say the same word over and over until it means nothing and sounds completely alien. Wonder wonder wonder wonder wonder wonder wonder wonder. Wonder? If you say so.

I feel like I should update this blog, but I don't really have a great deal to say. I think that's the problem with me lately. Passion. I am lacking. Not for everything, of course, because my favourite girl in the world still makes me happy every day. I still feel happy speaking to my parents, and I very recently attended one of the most mindblowing concerts of my whole life. Friends are a touchy subject, really. I probably have one person in this city that I could go to if I really really needed someone. I just feel very unsatisfied with myself and I need to fix it. The sentence 'I thought you would [insert expectation] by now', which has been said to me twice this week by two different people about two very important things, has really got to me. My expectations of myself are unrealistically high, which I can't understand when my self-belief is relatively low at times, but it is nice to know that other people are disappointed in me too.