“Everyone” is an artist..”

a mate came over to the flat, so we could discuss some work we are doing together. And as is sometimes the way with these things, we ended up doing more chatting about love and life than work. Not a total loss though. After a few vodka & sodas, we discovered we both had  had long distance relationships, with a girl of the same first name. which isn’t that impressive sounding, until I mention that the girls in question were Korean. We may have dated them at the same time as well, but of course we are  sure it’s not the same girl..

I think..

 

Saturday was a little ridiculous in terms of overbooking. I was slated to go to a babyshower, a divorce party, a thirtieth birthday party, as well as helping run auditions, for viral campaign for this event I’ve gotten myself involved in.

I had stayed up far too late on the Friday night however,  and by the time I had bought my presents for the babyshower (who knew nappies and other baby paraphernalia were so expensive!) I realised had to be heading  in the direction of the auditions. I was gutted, as my friend who is having the baby is not only the most glamorous mother I’ve ever met, she’s a super lovely person and I really wanted to be there. But caught by time I handed the my card and gift to the mrs, and I ran to catch a bus to brick lane.

 

now I had been warned that the room we had been given for the auditions was less than glossy, but I was a little unprepared for just how crack den it felt when I walked through the door. Me, my friend, and another friend of his who had been roped into the proceedings, quickly decided we were better off filming the auditions in the hallway.

 

And so we three sat with a portfolio of headshots, and a baseball bat (a necessary prop for the auditions). For some time we worried that no one would show up. Apparently my friend had held auditions before for other projects and had no-shows. I had never had anyone bail on an audition before. I maintained that those booked would come.

And then as if by my magic they all turned up at once…

 

Given the role of “manager,” and much needed female presence ( to make everything seem more legit and less dodgy). I sat with a straight back in my chair, legs crossed, heels sharp enough for battle. I attempted to stay quiet and exude professionalism, while my friend pitched the film to our willing contenders.

 

what followed was a truly pleasurable way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

These petite Chinese and Japanese young women, were given a baseball bat to tear into an object with all of the rage they could muster. I can’t tell you what the object is, as when the viral is finished I will definitely be posting it here. suffice to sa,  no matter how “cute” someone may appear to be,

beware, beware,  beware!

 

After watching the ladies enact random acts of violence, we bid themfarewell, and retired to the office to watch the footage. We  need three actresses. Out of the those we saw,  two were two strong contenders. More auditions to follow tomorrow. Sadly I will miss out.

 

I then had to run back to the house to get changed to go out again. By this point it must have been about

7pm

. At first I thought I could manage stopping by at my friend’s divorce party, before making it out to another friend’s thirtieth, but the timing and location of both, made going to both impossible. As my friend Heidi had been plotting this party since the beginning of the year, and lazy me had never bothered to go to her part of

London

(south) EVER in the five or more years we had been friends, I decided to go to the thirtieth birthday. Sandra if you’re reading this please forgive me!

 

So I call along my friend kelli to join in the proceedings, and off my dolled-up self goes to Battersea. (The theme was black tie/ burlesque) The party was on a moored boat on the thames. Apparently owned by a film director (whose name I’ve already forgotten) but rented by my friend heidi’s ex. It was amazing. A dark wood panelled 1930’s bachelor pad with a massive living room, bookended by a spacious bed, and a vintage claw footed bathtub (just between the kitchen and the lavatory of course..)

 

as i walked in, I was grateful on the choice of my attire ., Earlier on I had deliberated over a 40’s influenced 70s copper creation, and a classic black 50’s cocktail shift. As I walked past a myriad of black dresses, unveiling the copper sheen under my leopard jacket was very very satisfying. My friend heidi is on the jitterbug/jive dancing scene. And so the setting was made even more cinematic by all of the couples dancing intricate swing dancing steps to scratchy sounding jazz tracks. I kept out of the way until the music got slightly less vintage, no great talent at partner dancing am I .

 

And then finally I left, and the end of my night was marred slightly by falling asleep on the nightbus. I ended up in a fairly dark offshoot of Homerton, east

London

, where there was no off license, mini cab offices, or street lights. I could hear a nasty domestic occurring between two people in a flat upstairs, including the unmistakable sound of slapping followed by crying. Really not pleasant. After walking twenty or more minutes I found a corner shop where a demure polish blonde warned that I shouldn’t be in the area at that time of night (er..early morning) I agreed and asked for  directions to the nearest bus stop.

Waiting there, being passed by angry looking groups of guys in jackets far too heavy for the weather, I considered walking home. But I kept my senses and eventually got the bus, arriving home late enough to be exhausted, but still not late enough to not be asleep before the lady got back from work.

 

And then last night I saw the gossip!! They are truly amazing, referencing early rock in roll in the best possible way, but taking it in a direction that feels both timeless and very now. I really recommend going to a gig if you ever have a chance. Other than the quality of the music however, it was great going to the gig with my girlfriend (who rarely dances, but can’t help it if she’s as riveted by the music as she was last night) and my friend kelli, who had more than a little admiration for leadsinger beth ditto. Miss ditto is unbelievably sexy performing, as is the drummer of the band..

 

And thus endeth another weekend…

 

 

i never really set out for this job
i only vaguely set out for this industry

or at least i think i started with some direction. …

i think the plan was to make films right?
and then it was at least to write scripts?
and then it was to facilitate the creative process of writing scripts and making films?

and as for the latter i guess i’m still doing that. which to be fair does feel good.. when its good.

but then it also feels bullsh*t when its bullsh*t.

maybe i’m just having a bad day
maybe i’m just having a bad month.

maybe i should be doing something else (and if so what???)

i can still hear one executive screaming at an actor to "try it again but ACT!"
(um i think you interrupted him doing that?)
another exec screaming "why isn’t celebrity-x interested"
(perhaps because s/he generally gets way more money?)
and of course the overseas studios never deliver on time, on model, on budget
(but i feel bad complaining about them, because i know the staff sleep at their studio.)

and i can’t help but check my work emails at home to be "prepared" for what the LA and new york time zones have set up for me the next day
and i wake up in the morning wishing i could stay in bed

i take a big sigh and get out on the bus.

i read the  the paper.

and sometime after breakfast and before lunch, i walk into the ladies room, shut the door of the cubicle, stare at my  reflection.  after touching up my make-up i make eye contact with myself and try to gain a little perspective. i quietly remind myself

i work in cartoons
i work in cartoons
i work in cartoons

i’m not winning a war, i havn’t saved any lives, I havn’t discovered any miraculous cures for anything, or created a seriously provocative piece of art.

and it can’t possibly really be worth all the stress because

i work in cartoons
i work in cartoons
i work in cartoons.

if only when i was little, when i was having sugared cereals on saturday mornings.
if only then i knew what it took to get those chatty animated characters on the screen, maybe i wouldn’t find myself here today.

its saturday..saturday night in fact. i was supposed to go out yesterday but flaked on the event i was intending to go to, mainly over concerns about my expectations being far from met. tonight was also a big question mark, but a question mark leading to many potential exclamation points. and yet here i am ten to twelve at my laptop. what is going on?

years ago in the ill fated house share with the wrestling den (if you don’t know what i’m on about check back to one of my first ever posts "why i now live alone"). one of my flatmates and i worked out that the period between tenpm and eleven is the danger zone. The time spanning from 10 to 10 thirty was always when, if we weren’t already out, an overwhelming sense of restlessness would settle in. suddenly regardless of the logic of having to get up early the next morning, and dwindling bank account funds, all would be silenced by a quiet inner mantra

"go out go out go out go out."

and 8 out of ten times we would go out. sometimes somewhere gentle and local back by a not too outrageous hour. and on other occasions where the party mantra monster was at cataclysmic proportions, proper adventures would occur. on one occasion an abundance of eyeliner and over "customizing" of blazers (i suppose i should mention my flatmate was male), on another occasion an ill fated trek to mayfair that ended up with the dryest of dry martinis in the american bar at the savoy.  and i admit with no great pride or great shame, a few quite enjoyable escapades in various lapdancing establishments. considering i was making far less money then, as in at times barely getting by, i really question how i afforded such adventures.. but ah yes my rent was obscenely low…

removed from my partner in crime, i now live with my real partner. and she works nights. the affect this has on me on weekends is quite particular. i’ve never liked going out on saturdays. i’ve always been more of a midweek or sunday night kind of girl. saturdays to me have always been when the outter reaches of london pour into both the city center (easily avoided) and shoreditch (by default of its proximity, my main stomping ground) ruining my nights out with un-tucked ben sherman shirts ,and more mileage of pasty legs than i would ever ever want to look at.

and yet every saturday the lady leaves for her bar supervisor job at that fatal time of 9:15. leaving me home alone on the brink of the witching hour. and no matter how much i could actually use a night in, being left alone at this time sets the twitch in. from the moment the door closes i’m thinking about going out.

today i planned ahead slightly. but one by one my potential plans went from potential to improbable and the miserable weather did little to help. and so i sit here in my dress and heels with nowhere to go. well nowhere is a lie, its just that everywhere i could go doesn’t excite me enough to face taking my heels to the slippery streets.

funnily enough i think the feeling is in the ether.  i’ve just had no less than five phone conversations with friends who felt the same. i even managed to talk one friend into going back home, as he deliberated outside his local tube station, questioning his somewhat questionable plans.

i don’t think its just a twenty something/thirty something thing that makes you think
" i must be out"

. i read an article a while back that had some insane statistics about how many people lie to colleagues on monday, about what they got up to on the weekend. apparently as a nation we are overcome with anxiety about whether we get up to as much as we should do. and for those that aren’t anxious, its because they’re out to much to think about it.

ultimately i’ve gotten very very fussy. i either want quality time with a friend or my girlfriend, where i can banter and sit and drink nice drinks, or I want an EXPERIENCE not just another night out,. i want a night that will make me think, feel, and happily flashback days and days after. i want something thats worth the hangover. is that so much to ask?  maybe.

excuse me. i think i have to go to bed…..

i’ve always been a bit of a reverse snob when it comes to the mainstream and hype in general. its usually safe to say that if everyone is talking about a book or film or album, i instinctively steer as clear from it as possible. its silly in a way for me to be obssessed with the unsigned and the underground,as working a day job in animation doesn’t really keep me on the pulse of whats at the knife’s edge of new music.

And then be honest, even when i was at that desired place (in touch the newest of the knew of underground music), i didn’t enjoy it much. Working at a night club always meant hearing new stuff, you could never hear anywhere else, that you could never get hold of.. but it also meant

i could never get hold of it.

Record companies weren’t going to send me white labels for being a bartender , and even if you do get on with the dj you can only sweetly request mix cd’s so many times before irritation kicks in. The other method is the walking up and asking for the name of the track model. (which i still do with some frequency). This has occasionally led to new music being acquired, but sometimes it just results in me having a track stuck in my head, and the name of it, but still with no way to get it on my own stereo. To make matters worse, by the time it finally hits radio (let alone the stores) I’m usually way over it. i remember going through that with kelis’s milkshake.

Saying all this makes it embarrasingly obvious that i’m not quite ofe’ with downloading culture. But to be honest i’m keeping it at bay for a reason. The music geek within me is dangerously intense, and rather than be a borderline trainspotter, I think its best to put a little work into searching for albums, in record stores…

Yes i know i’m the old school (it’s even been argued to me that i’m a dying breed), but i just can’t get over my love of albums.
not tracks,…albums.

I hate how my itunes has a collection of mixmatched singles that have no connection to eachother. i like the discipline required when soaking in a new album. There’s always the track that first grabbed you, followed by the close in second favourite, and then the few you’re not so sure about, and then the one you can’t abide by.

the beautiful thing about albums is you have to put a little effort in. form a relationship. Stick by them and listen through, even when you’re desperate to skip ahead, or to just replay your favourite track again and again. Soon you find yourself with a new favourite, and it’s so much better than the single you bought the album for. And then you get used to how each track flows into the next. You can hear the third begin just as the second finishes.

I hate when I go through that process and the artist/band/producer slowly releases practically every track as a single. I feel betrayed, like the album has been unfaithful to me. Suddenly the tracks i grew to love are overplayed everywhere to over familiarity. Suddenly I have to shelve the album for a while. I can’t listen to it anymore.

I hate to be the last person to buy an album. I’m obsessed with being someone who spreads the gospel of a newly discovered artist. But without spending the time and money my obsession demands, I have become fated to only catching up with those who are truly one step ahead, and being too leftfield to those i would like to indoctrinate.

i’ve hit that point where if i don’t buy it/acquire it in first pangs of hype stage, i forget about the album altogether. well maybe not forget, but i certainly decide against buying it, and wait until its really gone mainstream and then borrow it from one of the 10 or 20 coworkers who by now is playing it hourly and singing along. Then i force myself to listen just to understand what all the hype is about. and more often than not i disagree wtih the hype and get annoyed that other more unknown artists i like aren’t enjoying the same level of success.

This happened to me with the arctic monkeys. i was genuninely curious. A friend who’s music taste i respect was really excited about them. he made me a copy within days of buying it, i took it home and played it on repeat for a few hours and then tried to remember anything at all about what i’d listened to. despite the fact it had played for hours.. i couldn’t . i listened to it at work the next day and recognized i bet you looked good on the dancefloor but didn’t really get the fuss . i was genuninely disapointed. it wasn’t bad, but how on earth had it received this much attention? i still have the (copy) of the album. i can safely say i listen to it never.

so i had similar reservations when i heard all the madness over crazy, the gnarls barkley track that as most now know is the first to have a hit number one in the charts without ever pressing a single cd. i was curious but was happy to leave it at that. just more fanfare over nothing surely.

last weekend i was out at a party and larry tee was spinning. it was an odd mash up of early (well a few years sgo) nyc electroclash, horrifically horrible house and then two tracks that didnt’ fit at all with anything else but really got my ears. one of them was an ace cover of the violent femmes gone daddy gone, the other was this track that immediately lodged itself in my brain and refused to leave for days. i desperately wished i had asked what it was and strained to remember a lyric but all i could work out was a sample i recognized from something else. i gave up. larry tee had played it, it could be anything from anywhere, released years ago, years from now or never. best to forget about it.

but then over the weekend I arrived into the west end to meet a friend. I had some time to kill. i stroll into virgin megastore. I see a poster and there is something about the graphic i really like. I walk up and pick up the cd beside it. Ah.. so this was the much hyped gnarls barkley album. I had 15 minutes, why not have a quick listen? I load it up into the listening booth and make the massive headphones snug on my ears. suddenly i’m kicked into that track that had been haunting my head followed by al ot of of other brilliant pychadelic hiphop/ fucked up soul and then the very fun cover of gone daddy gone.

and yes its a great album, and yes, two days later i can’t help but buy it, and yes i can’t bring myself to listen to anything else at the moment. I’m a huge outkast and N.E.R.D fan, but its the kind of album that makes you go andre3000, pharrel… who?
and even the girlfriend (who it has to be said is not at all a hip-hop or r&b fan) loves it. I had to copy it onto my itunes at work just so we could both listen to it at the same time.

so whats the moral of the story?

sometimes singles blow up simply because they are fantastic accessable pop records, and they deserve to be big, because they sound like they already are.

sometimes (and i underline sometimes)
you really got to believe the hype.