“Everyone” is an artist..”

ok so i’m kind of melt-ing at the moment. and maybe that symbolism is derived from the fact that my last gig consisting of performing as part of this exhibition launch with the theme being_ a postmodernist queer spin on the wizard of oz. i’m sure i’ve had times in my life when i was this busy, the difference is before when i’ve been busy, i havn’t had quite so much fun. i seem to be working all the time now, and its defo work, but its also defo fun. for the moment i’m starting to feel a little on top of things. i had my stint at theatre performing my first 45 minute solo show at this theatre festival last friday, then saturday the exhibition performance, last night hosting a short film night i co-curated, this friday a slam, sunday, monday, wednesday gigs in london, more recording on the album,

then back to berlin for a slam then off i go end of march to chicago, more gigs, hopefully a workshop, onward the week after to newyork for hopefully more of the same (if i manage to organize it) and then all manner of other gigs when i’m back here again. last night i was talking to some poets i adore about a possible tour in september. only a couple weeks ago i was freaking out that booking as far as may blew my mind. thats the way it is.

clearly my darlings… its time for some comic relief. and what better than my favourite themes of dating and relationships. two takes on the subject- first my super talented painfully funny friend lizzy, half of the twosome that make up polsom and sankey. who will be premiering a show at edinburgh this year..

and then on to the berlin and male side of things, mutherfuckin’ david deary, aka b-ski. i may even have to post this one up again as i defo have a lot to say on the calendar of love concept..it’s soooo berlin.

in the small worldness (small… try *microscopic* ) that constitutes those various constellations that make up berlin society there is often the sense of two individuals circling, or maybe orbiting one another. waiting for the time of collision, of eclipse.

one quickly learns to reserve judgement of a new aqquaintance and to avoid burning any and all bridges at all costs. you will come into contact again and again with this person, and find a growing number of mutual friends, some baring connections you could never imagine.

at times an alliance is born from this, or scenes, or affairs, or very rarely, relationships. it is less a matter of courting or dating, and more a matter of the cosmos pushing you into contact again and again and again. maybe the first time you barely spoke, maybe you only just noticed one another. the next time, a nod. the next time, an introduction. the next time, an effor to remember names. the next time, a conversation. this is the best way…

the worst is when one or the other clashes from the start. or one dismisses the other totally. or one is outright rude. because then when you meet again, when your meetings rack up like the winnings of a good night at a casino, he/she that denied the other at first meeting is forced through an extended comeuppance. all translating back to the bottom line - now you have to deal with me.. and i have the upper hand. “ha… so now you want to date my friend?… oh did you realise i manage the list of this club… oh yes i’m friends with the owner of the gallery, oh you wanted to book me? oh you were hoping i’d book you…) and depending on the power involved or the necessity of the favour or trade off,  leading even the most arrogant and egocentric to somtimes.. beg.

then there’s the middle ground. those dalliances born out of one drunken evening, when two people connect so freely in the way you sometimes do with a stranger you never expect or plan to see again. maybe you even have sex that first time you meet. and then just as you wish to forever file that one night stand in your back catalogue, your repeated accidental meetings continue to haunt you with memories of that one night. and its not just like these meetings occur in warehouse clubs and decadent after hours like how you met. they occur in pseudo sophisticated gallery openings, and worse still at 4pm in the afternoon at kaisers… your basket contains whole milk, smoked salmon, eggs, a bottle of sekt, you’re grateful that you never leave the house without makeup. but you’re way too hungover for small talk.

and if you’re a performer of some description. if you stand out a bit, a way of dress, an accent, your skintone, ethnic features of any kind at all, you find yourself encountering people who *know* you. even though you’ve never really met. in order to perform i created an alterego. something to give me the courage to go in front of people and tell them really personal stories.  it was ok because *it wasn’t me*

but it doesn’t actually work that way.

because the audience doesn’t see a character. they see a person. talking to *them* and with an air of sincerity that suggests the stories they’re being told have truth in them. and off the stage, when the performer is seen out and about. they are still a continuation of this performance in the audiences’s eye. an ongoing embodiment of the character. not even a character.  the word privacy never really considered, just shrinks away.

what was i thinking? i guess i didn’t. i guess it never occurred to me that by putting myself out there, and doing everything i could to engage with people. to make them feel like i was inviting them into my private life, to make them feel like my friends, to make them feel like i was living what they were living or wanted to, that i would express what they may want to say but coudn’t , or wouldn’t dare, or wouldn’t know how to. i thought i could engage with people, and leave that engagement, that connection to the confines of the stage, or the hours of a gig.

but i live in a microscopic scene. and i stand out. i stood out even before i put myself out under stage llight after stage light to make myself stand out more. more and more strangers come up to me and make comments on the life i have invited them into via performance. more and more people have no idea that it is partly a character i have created for them. and its draining to be on all the time. i created paula to get away from me. this could be the point where i back away, or i make her even less like me. but as much as it may complicate my current need/interest for privacy further, the direction i’m now headed is to put even more of myself into this character to convey the work i’m interested in making, in writing in performing.

i need to put more of me into her to make her more 3 dimensional. i need to add vulnerablity to the rawness. and that is the point of this play i’m putting on on friday. and i’m terrified and excited.and now my small world is no longer just berlin, its the poetry scene of several cities. and i feel myself in orbit with several people in those cities, and i am very curious of how things will develop in repeat meetings.. .

Now don’t get this the wrong way, I don’t mean tracks that I want to hear when in bed having sex with someone, no I mean that if there was a way I could hook up with the track itself, these are the tracks I’d want to hook up with, and here is how I imagine it going down…The idea was inspired by an article I read in vice online   where writer Gavin Haynes fantasised about how he would hook up with his favourite gadgets if he could. The idea smacked more than a little of cheeky advertising but I liked it enough to do my own riff …. my reaction/inspiration with these tracks, is totally beat and tone driven, i’ve ignored the lyrics in the tracks altogether, that would have been too literal and not as much fun to write. So here we go, 8 tracks I want to hook up with.

Superstar- Benjamin Zephaniah vs. Rodney P
It’s the end of the night, we’ve stayed up til almost sunrise. He’s a lot older than me, and much taller. the whole night he’s been a perfect gentleman, and is incredibly well read and politcally aware and charming. He walks me to my door and asks if he can come up for a coffee. I try to take the euphemism at face value and we walk into my flat. We walk into the kitchen and he leans against the door frame as I get out two coffee mugs. . I pause for a moment looking down at them. And then he’s behind me, hands smoothing down my shoulders, lifting my hair out of the way to kiss my neck. I never get to make the coffee, but we do manage to make it to the bed…..

Ponderosa – Tricky
After a night out clubbing I’ve ended up with some people I met, at one of these ridiculously spacious loft style warehouse flats. There is this one impossibly beautiful couple sitting across from me. They are really tactile with everyone. They’re young and releaxed and smug in the way the beautiful, young and privledged are sometimes. I keep catching the eye of the boy and then the girl. I go to the stereo to change the music. Suddenly the girl is there. I love this track too she says. Then the boy is on the other side of me. So do I he says. And they lead me to a room adjacent. We shut the door, and turn up music and take off eachothers clothes while giggling. We end up kissing, and try to take it further. But we..re too mashed up to actually have sex, so we end up cuddling tangled up together, telling stories and talking nonsense until we fall asleep. 

Lovers and Crypts – Bunny Rabbit.
I’m waiting to order a drink at this really crowded hipster bar in williamsburg, new york. I’m getting more and more impatient, the cue is like thirty deep. I feel someone bump into me, I turn and she says “excuse me”, only she doesn’t seem very apologetic, she’s smiling. She’s petite and curvy and has features that suggest she’s mixed race of at least 3 different ethnic groups. Her lips are so full its impossible not to think about kissing them. “no problem I say” and she cruises me openly, I look her over just as directly. I’m shaken up a bit, I turn back to the bar, and then she’s right behind me. I turn my head to see her in my peripheral but she looks straight at the bar, a smile at the corner of her mouth. And as I wait the next twenty minutes to be served at the bar, I don’t care about my drink any more, because her hands are up my dress serving me…

Mysterons – portishead
Its 4am, I wake up next to this boy in this tiny grey flat in deepest darkest east London.. its raining loudly, percussively on the windows. Streetlight breaks through the the curtains projecting a line between the two of us on the bed. I sit up pulling the sheet around me, and look down at the boy lying next to me in the bed. He looks so peaceful sleeping, I shouldn’t wake him, we’d got to bed so late because of the kind of thoughts I’m starting to have again right now. And I don’t mean to wake him up. I just slide close to him in the bed as close as I can get to him. And then he turns to face me and I close my eyes. And we have sex in the way you do when you’re half awake, a little dreamy, not completlley there, your body on erotic automatic…

Sex dwarf- soft cell
Its this dark ginormous warehouse club. Some kind of fetish party, walk by a woman in head to toe red pvc, dragging ah naked man behind her, his wrists tied up in heavy rope. I find myself dancing with a group of burlesque girls, drift a way from them and end up with this beautiful androgynous girl. She looks like a very pretty boy. Or a boy who would have made a pretty girl. There is something wicked about he/she. I can hear the word “ darkroom?| murmered in my ear. But we never make it there, he?/she? pushes me back taking me behind one of the massive speakers.

Me and my imagination – sophie ellis bactor
She’s trying to get over her exboyfriend. I’ve suggested a girls night out in a poncy mayfair nightclub to cheer her up. 
But actually, I couldn’t care less about her idiot exboyfriend , tonight is the night I’ve been working towards for months. The night when I get her really drunk on whatever girly cocktails she wants and then convince her what would really cheer her up is to have sex with me. And then the moment comes, she’s on her fourth cosmopolitan or chocolate martini or something, and then she turns those big green eyes up at me and says. ‘you know sometimes I think, men are so rubbish, maybe I should have a go with women…. You said you’d been with women before…. Well (as she finishes her drink) maybe you could… “show me”… and before she can say “sex and the city dvd box set” I’ve got her coat and hailed a black cab. The moment the doors close and we drive off. I start to “show her”

Lies - Robert Koch feat Elle p - Trevor Loveys remix
It’s a massive open air party in berlin. The sun is blazing, Two giggly girls in fluoro bikini tops and cut-off jean shorts are doleing out mdma punch. Everyone is wasted beyond belief. There are people jumping into the canal,, splashing water at eachother. Someone decides to start a kissathon, the idea is to kiss as many people as possible. Well it starts out as kissing, but then it morphs ino this crazy drugged out hipster orgy. clothes strewn all over the canal bank. I have no idea how long it goes on for, time blissfully and confusingly elasticates…

Got it on Slow – Selfish Cunt
Something made me want to go out by myself and get seriously fucked up on whiskey. So I”ve been on my own in this really divey rock bar for hours. I’ve been eyeing up this guy the whole time I’ve been in the bar. He looks mean, but in a hot way. He’s there with a friend but every so often he looks at me. I get into conversation with some other guy who buys me another whiskey, and when I look back the two guys are gone. Some time passes and I walk into the unisex toilets. And I can hear something. I walk into the free cubicle and close the door. I listen carefully. There is a couple f%@king in the cubicle next door. They try to not make too much noise. But its forceful, the cubicle is practically shaking with their thrusts. 
Transfixed I focus all my attention on listening, getting more and more turned on by it. And then they’re done, and it sounds like, it may be two men? I go back to the bar and see that it’s the boy I’d been cruising earlier, and the “friend” hed’ been with. They pay for drinks and leave. I order another whiskey and light up a ciggerette, wishing I could have left with them.

Exit stage left…

do you mean like this??

ummm something like that. so i’ve been totally drowning in the number of projects,events and gigs i’m meant to be doing, but at the moment i’m most consumed by rehearsing for my first one woman show next month. a whopping forty minutes. i’m not sure i’ll be able to keep my heels on the whole time. i’m delighted to have been given the right to smoke on stage, just for the sake of artistic integrity of course…

all the performance groups/performance artists had to make a trailer. after deliberating over cutting a montage of live footage, friends gave me a better idea and then, i came up with the following. enjoy

not to be dark or anything. its just that this is so brilliant. i was lucky enough to see john giorno perform this live at the poetry film festival in berlin this year and it kind of rocked my world. it seemed to right to post now in this time post new years resolutions…. enjoy

thanks for nothing….

right, so i’m finally starting to feel like a human being again. if the  last two days are any indication of what 2009 has  in store, i’m a little bit terrified. after all there was a lot of madness and mayhem last year. 2008 started for me with a visit to my best friend in  Tel Aviv.( Its crazy to think of what goes on there one year later from my visit….) .i then returned to the LDN, so i could run away from my then stable media career in kids tv to the totally unstable concept of  becoming a documentary filmmaker. there was also the matter of reassesing/redefining my sexuality. this was somewhat related to a number of  romantic affairs .which had a little bit to do with my decision to leave London and move to Berlin for “six months” so i…moved to berlin, learned to ride a bike again, took german classes for two months, the first month was fairly quiet until i encountered two dj’s, who drew me into Berlin night life, and for the next month, taught me to party to a level i never knew possible.

months later I was at my favourite monthly: broken hearts club, where I  met a poet from california, and subsequentally found myelf writing a poem about how living in berlin felt like cheating on London. encouraged by poet, began writing poetry again. encouraged by performer friend in London, agreed to perform my poetry on  her  caberet night  on my 30th birthday. Somehow in London, came up with the idea of an Alter Ego to use for my performance. Researched scene in Berlin to discover Lady GAby, who graciously offered me a slot at her next line up at Fuel. Performed at Fuel, and suprised myself and my friends with a solid debut. Finished a film about that bar that was not a bar. took it to stockholm for the once infamous swedish outlaw couple to see it. screened and curated a night of Short films from Berlin and London, to a  packed crowd keen to know  when the next event would be.

So how would 2008 end and 2009 begin? A little bit at a loss with nowhere to to stay. i wander oxford street new years eve day hoping andreas may somehow get a hold of a phone  and let me know his whereabouts. i then give up and meet up with my friend nic and her boyfriend trevor at his house so i can get ready to go out. transformed with my silver dress and extra long fake lashes i get on a  bus  to tuffnel park. as i arrive at the pub where Salena Godden hosts her arty party, she spots me and asks if  i’d like to read. at this moment I kind of don’t want to, but i don’t know how to say no. Andreas isn’t  there. no one i know is there. i’m very much wishing i was Paula and not Sara.

i go to the mic and just  feel very girly and small and nervous. i can hear the loud chatter of the bar next door. I stumble through “its time to detonate” feeling far  too sober and certain i don’t quite have it memorized. and then i make it on  to “could have  should have did” and something  happens. that  curious moment when i can feel people smiling and resonating with what i’m saying. and then i relax. A few people come up to me after just to say they like what  i’d done. and  boys and girls smile at me who didn’t before. Andreas arrives around eleven and his presences makes me cheer  up . but i’m feeling restless and sober, so i decide to move on to another  party after midnight.

i go across   town to aldgate east to meet up with  my friend pierangelo at this warehouse party in this amazing flat five minutes away from brick lane. the trains are running all night and free as a new years eve special. walking into the tube, i’m wished happy new year by a group of indie boys walking past a big no drinking sign, they all carry large glasses of red wine. walking out onto whitechapel high street, i realise i have two ciggarettes left. a homeless man sitting outside the nearest off license wishes me happy new year. i give him my remaining smokes and he’s delighted. i buy another pack and a micro bottle of jack daniels. i drink half of it and give the rest to another homeless man a block up the road. as i walk off , i can hear the two homeless men commiserating about me, charmed by my alcohol and nicotine gifts.  at the party there is a generous ammount  of  alcohol going around which i liberally partake of. I  mix my drinks to creative affect.  i avoid mixers and just  go from spirit to spirit,  rum, whiskey, vodka ending with several glasses of champagne. We have a great catch up chat, i’m really happy i’d crossed town to see him.

But its 5.30 am now, and i’m late for the WetYoursSelf new years day party. which is by far the highlight of my new years eve partying. super fun music..  i(i knew Cormac and Peter could rock it, but Jacob really blew my mind this time too) friendly crowd, much  dancing in front of and behind the dj box. lots of flirting, lots of random kissing, drink tickets that kept coming, and other things. i think around 10 am Cormac asked if i was up to coming with him to the Trailer trash party at my much loved old local the Dolphin. to which i said emphatically yes, and left with him and  another mate in a cab.

From this point it  all goes a bit fuzzy. i remember putting  my stuff behind the dj box with cormac and his mate saying did i want another drink, to which i said no, to which he said  really to which i said - oh alright a tequila then” then Cormac looked at me and said with some seriousness, i think i’m going to play madonna, i think i’m going to play pop music….and this lethal combination of madonna references and tequila was too much for me. i don’t recall the details of how, but sometime after i passed out.

i wake up behind the dj box with the dj  the lovely jonjo asking to get behing me to get his dj bag. cormac is getting his stuff to go as well. i suddenly really need to take off my fake lashes. and i really need to leave like now. i hear cormac say, thats your place to stay in berlin to someone. this guy i’d been flirting with earlier says “you lost your energy pretty quickly” i really really need to leave. its 1.30 pm. i see some shoes on a pair of pink stockinged legs. i’m sure they’re mine. i take them off and put them in my bag?

i walk across the street, get on a bus and call my friend nic. i really really realy need to have brunch with her like right  that very second. so we meet up and eat and chat and then i take the train back to my parents. and  hide in my room in recovery mode till like now. so again i wonder… what on earth does this year have in store?i was kind of hoping  this year could be the quiet calm one. btw, did i mention that me, er paula, er paula and me, have been nominated for an award?

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog….

its all been a bit spoken word-centric. it started before i even got out of gatwick. i ran into rob of beatstreet waiting at the carousel for his luggage with his girlfriend silka. he seemed happy to take a break from all things berlin and poetic. when he asked me what i was up to i explained that after a day with the parents i was going to a slam the next day and an open mic the day after. don’t you take a break? he said. i think i must have laughed. my london adventure began with a girl who is sometimes known as patsy cole. her alter ego was running a stall at camden market and i came to help her close up, and subsequentally drink up at the christmas party held for all the camden market vendors (and me…) there was a free bar and the crowd were an animated bunch. it was a little hard to leave, to go far out to stratford for  this”performance poetry competititon” (oddly not labeled a “slam” on the website), but then the winner took 100 pounds so i had to give it a go.

i arrived ten minutes late, and the organizer had not got my email, or the marquis de grant’s email either… so we were fated to not slam, and beg most pathetically for an open mic slot. it was a nice event, i would have loved to compete, but i was happy just to read. it was nice to see so many familiar faces from last time i was in town. i felt part of the scene here in an honorary way.  i was really excited to see performances by deanna rodgers, mc angel, kamil and bunmi hassan (who rightfully won).i performed “development” hoping to strike a chord as the venue was in stratford, heart of olympics regeneration madness. but then as the theatre was kind of the positive side of gentrification, i think my anti-development poem fell on deaf ears… andreas on the other hand stole the show with his arrogant punk braggodacio, and i was a little proud of him for it. we definitely felt like  the freaks in the back of the class (and we kind of were) highlight of the night was sitting outside to smoke and having this super cool forty something woman from grenada rock out, asking me if it was true  i lived in berlin. when i said yes, i was immediately charmed by her caribbean accented german, as she spoke about how much she loved german men and then asked if i would mind if she recited some erotic poetry. andreas and i of course were very encouraging, and her work was not only erotic but sharp and drily funny. she promised she  would come out to visit. i hope she does.

the following night me and mr.grant were again fated to  not perform. we turned up (on time this time) to the kings head theatre pub in islington, only to be told no one else had  shown up for the open mic. we then considered taking the mic by force until  we befriended these two girls who were so sypmathetic to our plight of non-performance that they asked we perform directly to them. They were very taken with our prose. and i was very taken with them. It helped that one of them was cute blonde and super funny, and the other was a stunning dark haired ex model.  we left to catch up with patsy cole at a  party in bethnal green. but sadly her phone was switched off. this meant dancing to bad house at a pub until we were so over the music and crowd  we decided to leave(i had a russian boy flirting with me in the most forward fashion that involved addiing postive adjective to positive adjective until his  last line to me was “beautiful gorgeous intelligent lovely darling wonderful angel”. meanwhile a bicurious (or just drunk) blonde girl from unidentifiable eastern european country just went straight for dancing against me, mouth open coquettishly while her boyfriend watched us…)

back at patsy coles, wine was drunk and chocolate chip cookies were baked, and films were watched. somehow i managed to make it back to my parents the next day. somehow the marquis joined me the day after. and here in the english countryside we’ve been making the most out of having little to do. we are clearing out the house of chocolate and red wine. smoking in the freezing cold outside. freaking out over how many stars we can see. slumming with bad telly- from top fifty celebrity meltdowns to top forty 80s films to marthons of sex and the city, frasier, peep show,little britain, friends. to fighting over who’s checking their facebook account first. keen to educate the swede on british christmas culture: i have inducted him into the world of mince pies and christmas crackers.  boxing day was spent on the coast. we drove out with my dad to the sea and froze by white cliffs. mystified by those who actually chose to swim.

meanwhile as we come out of our chocolate and wine coma, we’re both super excited about spoken word rock star salena godden ’s new years eve party at  the dartmouth arms in tuffnell park. it promises a  debauched evening through morning of music, spoken word and mentalist fancy dress . and if we get drunk enough early enough we may even attempt some performance.

Btw, gigs are coming up i should mention. on january the 8th, his arrogance andreas de grant launches a new night at bardens boudoir, a venue i adore in dalston, east london. and on the 9th of Jan, i’ll be performing a poem or two as part of the first Farrago UK slam of the year. I’ve been nominated for some kind of award apparently. i’m very curious , to know what

I sent him a text…..

I sent him a question

“Are you the last thing I need?”

Immediately he replied

“almost certainly”
so a day later  I sent

“what is it about the word Almost

That always gets me into trouble?

He replied

“the first syllable”

so i thought about the first

meditated on the second

“is it really the all…? Or the most? I can never quite tell”

and then I clicked send

I keep walking, its half past

Christmas party meltdown

Soho makes me feel like a ghost

every familiar street, bar, piece of graffiti

haunts me with some kind of memory

Where we kissed

Broke

Decided to have another go

I need a neutral land

I need a place free of connections

I want to be somewhere

As unknown to me as me to it

I want to be where the streets don’t

whisper reminders.

I want to be deaf to my own history

I want to meet people

who’ve seen none of my past

 

My phone went off again

…Another text

“you back?”

He asked

“I’m always back somewhere”

I said

And then he sent a longer answer

(sometimes he fancies himself a writer)

“so is everyone…

Back at home

Back from holiday

Back and forth

And over backward

Only the scale varies…”

 

and so i sent

“welcome back…”

And then

And then

And then there were no

further texts from him.

And I was left walking

only to pause for

no particular reason

On a street corner Considering

this tiny phone screen

trying my best to read

between our lines

 

————- Paula Varjack

 

3 London gigs to kick the year off!! check out paulavarjack.com

 

 

it goes a bit like this…

“mate… after that party/gig/night out i…really, i mean i am shattered for real. i’ve got to take it easy you know. i’m thinking i need to lay off the drinking and partying a bit. just for a few weeks at least. “

three days or two days or several hours later. you find yourself dancing in a bar cellar on drink number 4? 5? 6? 10? you have new friends, they buy you shots, they dance with you. you have a new friend. he asks if you have a boyfriend, you say no, he says well we can kiss then…

so you make out with the portuguese guy for a bit, then you realise you’ve lost the friends you came with, so you start dancing with that really sexy, somewhat wasted kenyan girl. and you can feel the boys around you going a bit nuts. but being german they do not attempt to jump in or make comment. and you can tell this girl likes you but she will not let you kiss her in public. she’s kind of straight. but not soooo straight. when you take her outside, she falls against you and you’re making out along the wall. did the portuguese guy see you leave? three spanish boys watch you and the kenyan girl kiss. afterwards the girl goes in. one of your friends come out. one of the spanish boys comes up to you and says “i was jealous, i mean, i was jealous of both of you when you were kissing”. you feel shy for a second. your friend asks who you were kissing.

and you end up afterwards heading to another friend’s house. only to watch them take mushrooms that are too old to work and the sun is rising. you work out you’ve been drinking for at least 6 hours. your friends flatmate doesn’t understand that you hate beer so much you won’t drink it when he opens you a bottle and bets you five euros that you can drink it. and you don’t even know how you can possibly cycle back home. but you do.

and the next day you are totally utterly broken. your ARE your hangover. but you must not just stay in and sleep, you must go out and make something out of saturday night. so you go see a new friend play a super  fun gig, only to move on to and old friend’s new club. and as the third whiskey sour replaces the second you wonder if after these two days there is more alcohol in your body than blood.

you come home at six am. you sleep until 4. you try to convince yourself that tonight, tonight, today, you must stay in. you must. a friend invites you to go see a gig at a club around 1 am.

and though you say ” mate… after last night i…really, i mean i am shattered for real. i’ve got to …”

you recognise that this is the 4pm conversation. and its just as likely later that you will be knocking back shots and dancing, as it is for you to be reading poetry and falling asleep.

my first berlin winter is seriously getting to me. its not like i come from a place where the weather is all that wunderschön either, but my glasses keep frosting over, my fingerless gloves make noooo sense at all after cyclilng for about five minutes (i don’t like it when i can;t feel my fingers, it makes it difficult to smoke..)but this light or rather… darkness thing? i feel like its always night time, its a bit like parts of my summer when i lost track of how many hours i was in Berghain, or what day it was for that matter. i guess on the brighter side the ashtrays are being doled out in the bars and cafe’s of xberg earlier and earlier, and when its dark at midday its easier to justify drinking at midday

the first thing i was cheered up by this week, is this short film screening of films from my two favourite cities: london and berlin, thats taking place at pingpong bar in xberg on tuesday. i decided the best way to feel brighter was to bring some colour to my kiez so i sauntered over to overkill to buy spraycans. and being the only girl who walked in to the shop, they were not so subtle about being snobbish about my colour choices. (in my defense, i thought if anyone had flourescent pink, they would, and they didn’t even attempt to help me colour match) . i felt all renegade with the cans in my bag though, and they stayed in my bag as god seemed against the idea, snowing and raining day after day. so finally emblazened by an empty stomach and a few glasses of wine with THAT FUCKING SARA, i decided at 1 or 2 am that i had to paint my bike. right-that-very-second. and so lugged it up to the fourth etage, sacrificed some sheets and set to work.

if you see this bikearound, you’ll know to look out for me…

meanwhile back at the ranch, or rather the studio of my friend marty, a collaboration of sorts is in the making.
its a very different tone to what i;ve been doing of late. maybe because i’m feeling less sex/drugs/minmal techno and more cookies/gluhwein/toy organs. its definitely what some of my british friends would call “twee” or what my friend james would term *indie schmindie*
but I kind of like that

eventually we may play somewhere. right now we’re just playing…

p.s. the last time i performed i got so raging drunk i don’t remember anything from my set. apparently i was great, or so everyone told me afterwards. i finally got round to sorting through the bag that i used that night and found a phone number for a “will” i have no idea who ” will” is. i live in a will-less universe. i can’t work out whether to call him or not, and if so. what do i say?