Grace Notes @ Snarkattack

After a wonderful yum cha session with a friend of mine who was down in Melbourne for the last few days, I wandered up to a CD store and bought myself a few albums of some of my favourite artists. I couldn’t actually find the ones I was looking. I ended up with Jan Jelinek’s Tierbeobachtungen although I was actually looking for Kosmischer Pitch, then Luomo’s Paper Tigers though I was looking for Vladislav Delay’s Demo(n) Tracks - they are the same artist but he operates under quite a few different names, the former also being a pseudonym. Lastly, I might have preferred Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief but found Thom Yorke’s solo album The Eraser (not a bad deal, really). Can’t complain too much.

Here’s my excuse for wanting to buy a whole bunch of CDs in the one hit - naughty me. Admittedly, it’s been ages since I bought any. I used to buy heaps all the time.

“I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.”

(from http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/1590.html)

Isn’t that a glorious quote? Sums up the way I feel when playing in groups for things…I dunno, perhaps just a very fancy way of saying that music makes me very, very happy indeed. George Eliot was onto something.

It’s Saturday afternoon, quarter to four, and I’m already in my pyjamas. My family is away with their respective significant others and I’m at home, all alone.

It was time for a big fat soak.

I used some lavender bath hearts a dear friend gave me. Then a big blue bath fizzie that smelled very fresh and aquatic. Then some Cake Beauty Dream Puff (lavender and marzipan scented) bubble bath. Then a nice scrubby sugar scrub to make me soft all over. Ahh, bliss. Half an hour later, I’m sitting in front of the computer in my night clothes wearing a face mask. It seems someone threw out the one I had in my freezer, and I’m not impressed: it was made of blueberries, which are supposed to be very good for the skin.

It’s been ages since I had a soak despite being something of a bath maven once upon a time. The bathroom is always too busy, and it’s simply too noisy in the house. I was just about shoving my parents out the door for their weekend away - only wish they did it more often.

I was supposed to be reviewing a burlesque act tonight, but I cancelled as my energy levels have been down somewhat of late…might have had something to do with the fact that I seem to be going out an awful lot and drinking. Given the amount of medication I’m on, this isn’t such a good idea as I found out the day before yesterday when dining at a friend’s place. I still seem to have a touch of a headache - can’t quite figure out if this is from the drinking or what. When you’re five foot nothing, about 40kg and on a ton of meds, I don’t recommend drinking a bottle of red wine by oneself - or mixing that with sparkling. Yeah, smart me.

I was also supposed to have a guest over who ditched me…for the cricket. Granted it’s the world cup finals…but still. I’m sure I’ll find it amusing when I stop being so damn exasperated over it. Stupid cricket! It also means I’ll be dining by myself…on prawn and pork dumplings, yum.

Well, time for me to be off and take my mask off and then maybe take a nap or curl up and read a good book. Ah, if only all weekends could be like this!

After putting in my (real) nickname, this is the pirate name I got christened with. Pretty cool. I also did two other quizzes that told me I was a ditzy Viking in a past life that lived in South Africa (?!) and died of decapitation. Very Elizabethan. The second one told me I was a lime tree for the purposes of Celtic horoscopes - I disagreed highly with the bit that told me I was jealous…I’m not a naturally jealous person, unless I’ve been ditched for a cricket-watching marathon…*wink*

Your Pirate Name Is…

Skull Crusher Ivy the Infected

I didn’t think it would happen so soon, admittedly, but I’m now truly a published poet! Today, I opened a submission I sent thinking it would be yet another rejection and lo and behold, they tell me they are pleased to announce that they are accepting my ‘Watermark’ for publication and that I shall get my complimentary copy of the magazine in late May, when it is ready. The name of the publication is Poetrix.

Needless to say, I’m pretty bloody excited. It’s an actual well-established, well-known publication locally so it raises my profile somewhat…let’s just hope that from now on I get published in paying magazines.

I’m all nonsensed out! This wasn’t quite as enjoyable as I thought it would be, especially as everyone loves ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ which is just an adorable poem. The humour is more adult than suited to children, and very surreal. In any case, it was good to finish a book I’d been in the midst of for quite some time.

It was a good day for reading today - one of those wintry wet days so I spent my rainy Saturday afternoon snuggled up with a book. That book was the most recent collection of poems by one of Britain’s most acclaimed female poets, Carol Ann Duffy. The recent volume is entitled The World’s Wife and each poem focusses on an imagined woman attached to a famous man either in history or in myth - Pilate, Midas, Darwin, Pope Joan - even Elvis’ twin sister.

One of my favourites in the collection (which I devoured fully in the space of a few hours) is ‘Mrs Icarus’:

I’m not the first or the last
to stand on a hillock,
watching the man she married
prove to the world
he’s a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock

Fantastic poetry, but I’ve been a fan ever since reading her early one ‘Warming Her Pearls’ - it’s available in The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, edited and chosen by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland.

A friend (cheers ralenth!) recently told me about Last.fm and seeing as I seem to be in the mood to listen to music (I have a certain suspicion that this may have to do with a certain fellow I know who I discovered quite likes Britpop…enough to wear desert boots like Damon Albarn…drool…) and the fact that I went to an electronic music gig the other night, I decided to sign up and have been obsessed ever since. I’ve been listening to some minimal techno and artists similar to Pulp - ‘egads, Jarvis is married, has a kid and lives in Paris (I’m genuinely heartbroken but maybe it’s for the best - he’s extremely tall and I ain’t. Might be hard to make whoopee).

It’s a bit glitchy in spots, the radio service - sometimes it has a bit of a delay when my connection is running slow but seriously, last night I was just enraptured listening to music for hours. I guess I should link to my profile, shouldn’t I? Edited to add actual chart…

Another service I was trialling the other day was MediaMaster - this service allows you to upload all the music on your computer to their server so that you can theoretically listen to it from absolutely anywhere provided you have access to an internet connection. Again, it seemed to take ages to upload tracks and it wasn’t always fuss-free (it seemed to have an aversion to uploading ‘Stereotypes’ from Blur’s The Great Escape, to my infinite horror). It is a pretty cool service worth checking out, I think I might have found out about it from Lifehack as usual.

Last thing! I read about this on a friend’s LiveJournal - Basenotes have this cool thing called a fragrance wardrobe. Here’s the link to my Basenotes fragrance wardrobe - you can see what fragrances I currently own (that are listed in their database), what fragrances I’ve tested, what I’ve owned previously and even what ones I wish I had! Quite voyeristic, really. Gosh, if only I could list what Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab ones I have! Alas no, doesn’t seem to give that option - yet.

Yesterday, I finished paying off my first piece of grown-up jewellery. I’ve never bought anything not-fake before except for this beautiful freshwater pearl and garnet necklace I found at Portobello Market in London - and that was just a fluke find really.

This is me actually wearing it…

And then this is the locket in all its shiny glory. It’s not a locket per se as it doesn’t open. Incidentally, the stone is a garnet. I’m wearing it today, with BPAL Snake Oil. I was proudly showing my parents and my father jokingly warned me not to get all high on it, chortle.

I’m pleased as punch with it! It smells delicious too!

Done is the whining of Achilles over his dead friend Patroclus, done is the dragging of poor Hector’s body around Patroclus’ tomb (how twisted is that?!? Thankfully the gods decided to preserve Hector breaker of horses so he could be returned to his father Priam in pristine condition).

This is an epic translation of Homer’s The Iliad, make no mistake! I can’t believe I finally finished it, it’s been quite some journey. At times, the descriptions of killing during the actual war scenes are somewhat…visceral? One can imagine truly - without the aid of television when reading this tome just how graphic and violent war was when they used swords and spears…ugh.

Anyway, if you’ve not read any version of The Iliad then I highly recommend giving this one a whirl. I’ve read it before and still had to read this one. It’s pure poetry - a wonderful, rich translation and you can just see everything unfold before your eyes as you read. Put it on your list!

And for a change not with fragrance oil, bath products or lipgloss (though I think I’ve had my fill of lipgloss…damn, I must be mentally ill to be saying that!)!

A friend of mine told me about Flat Eric, and since meeting this adorable little toy, I’m slightly obsessed. Seeing as I can’t stop watching the bloody clip myself, I thought I’d paste it into a blog post. Someone on YouTube points out in very Brit fashion that Flat Eric’s head ‘moves well quick’.

Check the machinery he uses, very old-fashioned. I also like his choice of smoking…er…brand. Just watch already. Thanks to Ashley for introducing the joy that is Flat Eric. He’s so damn cool.

My mother let me place an order with Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab for my birthday, and the order arrived at the beginning of this week! Woo hoo! Some more fragrant fancies!

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Dorothy Porter, Wild Surmise (2002)

I can’t find an image of the cover of this novel written in verse by one of Australia’s most well-known female poets but it’s available on Amazon.com.

Alex is a proclaimed glamour girl of astronomy because of her research on the satellite Europa (satellite to Jupiter). She’s married to a failed academic who spends his time complaining about all the shitty undergraduate poetry he has to mark (and oh sweet jesus I can only imagine how bad undergraduate poetry must be. Mine barely passes for real poetry now and I’m almost in my thirties…shudder!).

So Alex is obsessed with Europa, and also with another woman she’s had an affair with - also in her field, called Phoebe. Wow, how saucy - a lesbian affair, big deal.

This novel tries far too hard to do things that have been done before. I know I’m not exactly a published poet so it’s all well and good for me to criticise this but reading this was too easy and I had very few ‘connecting’ moments with the words - which I do expect from any poetry I read. Otherwise I’ll just stick to reading the latest issue of Harper’s Bazaar. I have read some of Porter’s other verse novels - What a piece of work and The Monkey’s Mask, the latter of which I thought was brilliant. What a piece of work is flawed but still engaging.

Wild Surmise has some really poor examples of pieces that apparently pass for poetry. If that weren’t the case, I’m sure I wouldn’t have rush-read through it in a matter of a few hours. Anything that makes me think “duh, I could’ve written that” can’t be that remarkable.

And no, not the music one listens to, but music of the homemade kind! I was beginning to forget that I’m actually a musician first before I’m a would-be poet. I like to call music my wife and literature my mistress…

Over the weekend, I saw a fabulous (though of course a little over-the-top) production of an early opera by Monteverdi called L’orfeo - it’s based on the ancient Greek myth where Orpheus goes down to the Underworld to get back his lady-love Eurydice. He also happens to be a kick-arse lyre player. The performance was directed by none other than viola da gamba superstar Monsieur Jordi Savall - for those of you who don’t know, he’s probably one of the most famous gamba players, and he’s also now a conductor. He heads an early music ensemble called Hesperion XX and they put out some fantastic recordings.

Soooo…I got it into my head that it might be time for me to practise. My arms are sufficiently recovered from injury (overuse of both arms) so I whipped out…

…wait for it…

the flute.

I don’t even remember the last time I actually played my flute and was quite surprised by how natural it still felt. I didn’t play anything shabby either - I went straight for the jugular and cut my teeth into some Bach flute sonatas - oh how wonderful it was to play them! I wish I could link to a recording because it’s such a lovely piece for the flute - kind of the sound equivalent to rich, dark chocolate…mmm…

I’m trying to think of something famous I can play to give an idea of what sort of standard I was but all I can think of is the Sabre Dance by Khachaturian (you know, that stereotypical piece of ‘circus’ music???). Found a sound bite here (it might not seem like it, but the flute part for this is bloody hard - we’re talking harder than calculus or modernism, or something).

But I am practising my gamba, I still suck at it but am starting to sound sort of okay. God, at least I play in tune. Hopefully soon I’ll be doing the damn music and instrument some justice.

I feel a bit like I’m cheating by adding this to my ‘finished’ pile, because it’s a trade paperback collecting four issues of the ongoing comic Fables which I’m a big fan of. I love reading comics when I’m depressed - they’re entertaining, not too taxing on the grey matter and they still manage to be very clever. I don’t know why some adults think comics are for kids because judging from the ones I’ve read, I’d say as a kid I’d miss half of the references!

Anyway, I recommend the Fables series - it’s about a bunch of fairytale characters living in 21st-century Manhattan as they’ve fled their original Homelands because of the evil Adversary (you would never guess what fairytale character the Adversary actually ends up being). The reason I enjoy this series so much is probably because it refers to contemporaneous events and political climate, but not too much - it’s still mainly fun and very well done.

Besides, don’t you want to know what the Big Bad Wolf got up to after that Red Riding Hood gig? Hence the subtitle for this volume, the eighth in the series, ‘Wolves’.

Now NMD could have just lent this to me after my periodically begging but alas no, he kept forgetting as bloody usual. So while I was out with Rob when the loony bin let me free, I bought a copy of it at Readings (one of my favourite Melbourne bookshops, near my old uni).

This is a book that tells old stories, stories that have been passed down for centuries - primarily of Anglo-Saxon origin. The stories are based on ballads, yes, those ones you sing. They are rephrased by some extremely eminent fantasy writers, and illustrated in the inimitable style of Charles Vess. Makes me think I’m a kiddie all over again - the illustrations are sumptuous and really add to the storytelling. Neil Gaiman has a ballad in here, but my favourite is probably one by Charles de Lint (very famous in the fantasy world, I hear) called ‘The Three Lovers’. This book should also be a big hit with BPAL-lovers (hint hint ViolentKitten and Baudelaire; though ralenth I think you would gobble this up!). Sometimes the art has a very gothic edge to it, other times a very Aubrey Beardsley feel. I was very sad to finish reading this and made sure I did it in a deliberately slow fashion.

Verdict: loved it and will definitely reread, as I have Stardust.

I also decided that it was time to give these reviews their own category. I’m hoping there will be a lot of ‘casualties’ in this reading challenge.