The day the music survived

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt about life in the past year it’s that it moves – fast.
Times change. People change, places you called home morph suddenly into blurred visions from a dream you never quite grasped. A steady year of settling down becomes a fleeting moment of passing through. It wasn’t real. It was just a scene in a play of your life. And when the dust settles around the memories of this life that once seemed so true and permanent, you start to realise perhaps the foundations weren’t as solid as you first thought.
In short? I miss Guildford. And I don’t.
It’s complicated. My relationship with my life past and present (and maybe a little bit of future) is ultimately very complex.

Every decision you take is not without risk. Some are bigger than others, but all are reflections of character and all are shaped by you. Some may even shape you in return.
Some are as small as what you will have for breakfast this morning, some are as large as having to choose between two careers.

I had to make that choice. I had to choose between Music and Acting. I chose Acting.
For now.
And it kills me every day because I literally cannot  live without music.
This isn’t just an enjoyment thing, this is an actual addiction! for the past year I, Holly Mallett, have been going through what I would medically diagnose as “Musical Withdrawal.”
Symptoms being

‘An obscene rush of joy after the one scheduled music lesson each week; singing as loud and as often as humanly possible (whether appropriate or not); spending lunchtimes alone with a piano/guitar/listening to someone playing said piano/guitar just to soak up the vibrations; depressive episodes where one exclaims loudly and to anyone who will listen – or not – “I MIS MUSIC SO MUCH!!!” and the need to listen to music every morning whilst straightening ones hair – not to enjoy the odd tune, but because it is necessary for survival.’

It’s currently at its worst. I am currently enduring what can only be described as a musical ‘dry spell’ and MY GOD am I hungry for some action!

I have gone from playing drums every day – sitting behind a kit for most of my lectures, learning about music and its politics for the rest, playing music with others every day after class. Exploring and experimenting with timing, genre, speed, control, technique, writing, composing, collaborating, performing. Singing, drumming, talking, strumming. Immersing myself fully in music as a whole.
I spent a year creating in every sense of the word.
I created songs, arrangements, parts, vocal lines, beats, chords, solos, rehearsals, bands, friends, family, bonds, home…love.
I have gone from that – to this. This…stagnant limbo of silence. Stuck between my endless ideas and lack of time I spend my days in withdrawal. Don’t get me wrong, I am LOVING the content of my course this year. But this blog post is about the art I left behind.
We’re currently doing a project in singing where we take a famous song and totally reinvent it so it’s almost unrecognisable (think “All The Small Things,” minor, as a 5-piece a cappella church choir. No seriously!) and I honestly cannot explain the joy it brings me in rehearsals when we hit that EPIC 5-part harmony we’ve just written for “Say it ain’t so” or the “Nananana” section, and I can just feel the notes soar.
It’s like a drug to me. But it’s one I’ll never be able to kick. It’s not a recreational drug that gives me that hour of joy then leaves me on a downer for the next two days, I need it to survive. It’s the pulse through my veins as my heart struggles to go on and without it after a while it’ll fade away, and with it so will I.

I miss the joy of writing, structuring and performing music as I would miss my hypothetical child were it taken away. I miss that joy and camaraderie that comes with being in a band. Because to be in a band is to enter into a kind of dysfunctional family you never quite find anywhere else, and the termination of a band is akin to that of a rather painful break-up.
It takes a while to get over. If you ever do…

So I’ve spent the last year slowly losing every tie that binds me to my projects, my bands, my musical education and with it the life I led in parallel. So much changes so fast when you’re young that a year ago can seem like a lifetime. You were a different person then. You had different skills, different ideals, different priorities.
But when you invest your heart and soul into a place – and I mean really invest – and you build not only a life but a spirit and a meaning, the spirit of that time and that love will stay with you.
The memories themselves may grow tired and worn but the message itself and the connection with that time and that place and those people…will remain timeless. It’s more than a thought it’s a feeling. And it’s palpable.
It’s in the air.
I will never let it go. I could never let it go.

But I have to move on. For no other reason than it gives me a reason to return.
And reunite, and live and love and remember again.
And I can’t fucking wait!!

I spent my first year at Acting School being told I needed to stop being such a musician and a drummer and start seeing and identifying myself as an actress. So I separated the two halves of me into two places and with it I kind of split myself in two.
When I was in Essex, I was the actress and when I was in Guildford I was the drummer.
But it didn’t quite work, because no matter how hard I tried I was both. In Loughton I was the Actor who is actually more of a Musician and in Guildford I was the Musician who gave it all up to go to Acting School. When all I wanted to be was me.
I wanted to be them both, and in order to do that I split up the two. I thought I had to.

Naturally, it failed. The nature of a life like this is it is utterly impossible to live two lives equally. Any time two opposing forces meet one of them has to win. Life is about priorities. And so Acting had to win, and I found myself here in Essex, living the dream but at the same time missing music and everything that means.

Until this year. Year two of my “Acting and Contemporary Theatre” course at East-15 Acting School. And – with the help of my musical withdrawal, the collapse of what I had been working towards for the past two years, the opportunities of a devised piece of theatre with no boundaries and a less than subtle nudge from my course leader and director (who is a genius by the way) it dawned on me how ridiculous this has all been!

WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING!?!?

You can’t just split yourself in two because the world wants you to “conform,” because then all you are is half a person. Whoever says Music and Theatre are mutually exclusive and cannot go hand in hand is an idiot and needs to be pointed towards the West End (and Lady Gaga!).

On the day I auditioned one of the pieces I chose was a monologue from one of my favourite plays, the Rupert Goold rewrite of Pirandello’s “Six Characters in Search of an Author.” After completing the monologue I was workshopped and asked to perform it as a piece of interpretive dance.

I was shit.

Uri looked at me, pondered a while and said, “Are you in a band? Good, ok. Do it like you are in a heavy metal band.”

I paused, contemplated, gathered myself and…won my place at East 15.

His response?
That I was quite apologetic in my acting style and…I quote(!!!) “You should bring more of your rockstar to your acting.”

BOOM!! Point proven. Case closed.

So why didn’t I take the fucking hint!?

I have spent a year since then being apologetic of my inner Rockstar. For the past 12 months I have suppressed that part of me within East-15 so it has become something that feels like a myth. A legend in my history buried deep in the chasms of time (All 20 years of it anyway).
I spent a year feeling like I needed to be ashamed of the very thing that got me into this school in the first place!
Being a muthafukkin’ Rockstar!!

Not anymore.

Our last project – the first of this year – and the subsequent feedback from it made me realise I’ve been doing it all wrong! Being a musician doesn’t make me any less of an actress! Far from it.
Being a Musician makes me twice the artist I could every dream of being if I was just an actor. Being a Musician is Who I Am!!

And I need to start showing it again.
This current project is going to involve a lot of music. Both live and written by the company. It’s a chance to really let rip and enjoy creating again, for a real purpose – and I am ON that shit!!!

So in conclusion peeps here is my pact for myself.
Never again will I apologise for my talents outside of the Acting skill set. From now on I will be who I am.
Not Holly the Actor or Holly the musician. Not Holly the girl, the woman – the small boy in the Duchess of Malfi project in the Blue Room – or even Holly the bisexual. Not Holly the activist or the strong-willed debater or the “crazy little drummergirl with purple in her hair” from first-year.
From now on, I’ll settle for nothing more or nothing less than…

Holly Mallett. Individual.

                                           And unafraid to show it.
Don’t believe me? Read my blog…

Peace out. xxx

Oh, so I guess this’d be a good time to point out I’m actually looking for musicians.
Drummer.
Bassist.
And MAYBE a Guitarist, if you can convince me 

Oh, and on Monday I get to play the drums again.
TWICE!

Things are looking up for Holly!!!

That Gay Thing…

Around a year ago I wrote a blog entitled “Pride.” I wrote it after attending my first London Pride and I wrote it not about my personal experience of the day (which was interesting at best), but about the experience I had of everyone around me.

Since then I have myself come out as bisexual – next time I attend Pride I will not be the only one there still in the closet! I will get more than one hour to be Proud.
There’s a project in America called “It Gets Better” ( http://www.itgetsbetter.org/ ), a movement I have no doubt is helping thousands if not millions of young people come to terms with who they are. The beauty of “It Gets Better” is it’s true. It does get better. Every day. But to pretend everything magically rights itself would be wrong. It’s not all roses – it is an ongoing struggle.
I am lucky enough to have the most incredible parents and support group who don’t give a shit who I bring home as long as I’m happy. I have friends who are gay, straight and bisexual (even one pansexual – something she has tried to explain but still escapes me…) who will love me and I them no matter who they let into their bed.
All in all, I got it pretty cushy.
But there’s still that little niggling thing in the back of your mind you can’t quite explain – I honestly don’t think you can ever really understand it unless you have gone through it yourself – it’s that point you get to where you are totally comfortable in yourself and the way you are. You don’t care who knows and yes, to buy into the cliché, you are proud. But at the same time – you’re not..? It’s something a lot of people live with every day, sometimes for the rest of their lives. And there has to be a reason for it whatever that feeling may be.

There are those who will belittle my argument because I am – in their eyes – “one of them” and only out to help myself and those like me but that is just an excuse to brush off the true nature of our cause. And that cause is basic human rights. The basic right to love and be loved and live the life you deserve regardless of gender, race or sexuality.There was a time when to be black was to be inferior, or to live by a different Religion and moral code. These people were scapegoated as a minority of inferiority; a lesser race: an underclass. The simple task of living was made doubly hard just by being born the way they were.

Throughout the history mankind gay people have been continuously treated with the same disgust, hatred and cruelty as any other underclass and this was widely deemed acceptable. Gay people have been continuously segregated from the rest of society since its conception. The gays were beaten, killed, taunted, forced to wear bands that displayed them to the world. People would cross the street to avoid them; pools were closed because a gay man with AIDS decided to take a swim; laws were made stripping gay men and women of their rights; people spat on them in the street and that was all ok.
Well it’s not ok anymore.

In America a black woman refused to sit at the back of the bus. A German factory owner helped save the lives of hundreds of Jews. A woman picked up a gun and decided she would fight with the men. History is littered with those little moments of individual strength which, through example, spread the message of equality throughout society and helped change the lives of millions.

Ideas start small and build up to become movements. Radical notions become physical forces which in turn grow to become accepted norms and now, all over the world people are opening their eyes to the fact that actually, being gay is OK. It’s not a sin, it’s not a disease. It’s not an abomination or a manifestation of evil or even just a bit of natural curiosity gone wrong. It’s a fact. And it is OK.

Unfortunately, some people still refuse to. Now I don’t wanna play the religion card here – I am myself a believer in something altogether else, a force bigger and greater than us – but it has to be noted that what is potentially the greatest cause of homophobia in the world in fact the ‘r’ word. Even those who do not practice a particular religion are influenced because our whole society was originally built on the teachings of a big ancient book called the Bible.

What I find truly astounding is that people still take this book as if it holds any real and direct relevance to modern life. I’ll be the first to accept the Bible holds a great many important and valuable lessons for mankind but I’ll be damned if I can find the passage where they predict the invention of the car. Or the aeroplane. Or even electricity! The fact is science has come on so much that we have to start accepting our ancestors sometimes got it wrong. That is the nature of progression. Religion, like all things, has to move forward.
And we see this at every Pride march when a Christian association is out in action spreading the message of love and equality for all. But we also see the opposite when, inevitably another one racks up to protest and spew its message of hatred to all involved.
               

Let me ask you – which group seems the most truly Christian? I know which one I’d trust with my soul…

And so I guess the message this time is one of moving forward with pride and compassion. I am not asking you to understand the impulses of one man to sleep with another, I am asking you to accept that it happens and accept that it is ok.
No. I’m telling you.
As far as I’m concerned it is your responsibility as a good human being to treat your fellow humans with the fullest respect regardless of their race, gender or sexuality. We are all part of what makes this world so wonderful and diverse. And to be honest, at the end of the day the gays are normally more interesting anyway…

Kids in our country (and I mean all countries not just mine) are still being driven to kill themselves because of who they are. The gay kid still gets bullied, beaten up and called names for something they have no control over when really they should be congratulated for having the bravery to be open about their identity.
To be your true self takes ultimate courage and these kids should be admired. Instead they are tormented into an early grave – sometimes by their own hand, sometimes by that of their oppressors. THIS IS NOT OK! It never was and it never will be.

We have to make this stop!

Rise Against’s latest album “Endgame” features a song about a string of teenage gay-related suicides in America after a fan approached them inquiring about their stance on homophobia. Shocked that someone was even unsure of how they felt on the matter they wrote this song “Make it stop (September’s Children)” and it has recently been released alongside the “It Gets Better” campaign.

I’m not gonna lie the first time I saw this I bawled my eyes out. Not from fear, not because I can empathise with the situation shown here from a personal point of view (I have never been bullied for my sexuality at all), but because this shit really happens! It’s the truth, and it’s real life for a lot of people.

Nobody should have to go through this shit. Nobody! Nobody deserves to wake up every morning feeling like they want to die. Nobody should have to go through life feeling absolutely no hope of ever feeling happier.
So please, if you take one thing from this post, take a bit of compassion. Think about how your words and actions really affect other people and realise that if you don’t understand what’s going on in the head of that boy or girl you think might be in the process of coming out – realise that they probably don’t understand either. It’s a scary thing coming to terms with your sexuality. Contrary to the rumours – no-one chooses to be gay. I know many people – including myself – who would openly cite how much simpler life would be if they could just turn it off. But you can’t because it’s really and it’s innate. It is who we are.

And to anyone reading this who is currently going through the confusion of deciphering their own sexuality or facing the fear of coming out, take this in your hearts to give you strength:
You are not a freak, you are not a lesser person and most of all, you are not alone.
You deserve as much happiness in this world as anyone else and coming to terms with who you are inside is the first step to achieving this – it will get better!

Last year in my post my closing statement was this…
“So to all you people filled with hate who spread your bile around the world in any way you can, I have this to say…
I am Proud to stand for everything you hate and I am proud to call myself your enemy.”
This year I think I’m going to go for a bit more love. Because in the end that’s the only thing that will overcome hate. That and events like Pride which celebrate not only the joy of being part of the LGBT community, but of being yourself and loving it.

Because really this is not about just being gay – this is about being full stop. This is about the basic structure of humanity.
I’m very open now about my sexuality. Most of my friends know, I told my family almost a year ago and I identify (if I have to put a label on it for others’ sake) as bisexual. But still, to post it on this blog potentially for the world to see was scary prospect – one I don’t take lightly and one I pondered on whether to even mention on this blog. But then I thought wait a minute, how dare I preach about the bravery and courage of all the individuals who come out in spite of great adversity and threat and even consider not sticking my own, well-protected neck out for them. That’s the thing isn’t it. It still ain’t easy – even for me. The road is being built towards greater equality but we still have a long way to go.

Perhaps one day soon we WILL get more than one day to be proud – we will get a lifetime. Perhaps one day we will all look back on this with the same disbelief we look on slavery or the Holocaust.
But until then, let’s all do our bit to make this world a little brighter. A little more diverse. A little more, well…colourful.

Oh, and let’s have a few more smiles.

Happy Pride everyone – and I don’t just mean the day! xxx

Chaos li(n)e

When formulating the premise for this post I originally thought to call it Cycles but then I thought shit, I’ve already written a blog of that name! I wrote it June last year…and doesn’t that just prove a point succinctly.
Then I came up with “Phases.” Yeah, we go through phases in our thoughts, our preferences, and often the choices we make in life are down to whether or not we believe something is permanent or if it is ‘just a phase.’ I agreed with myself on that theme then promptly forgot about it for a good week or two.

“Phases” wasn’t my best idea. Unless I’m referring to the Buffy episode of the same name (which by association would automatically make it AWESOME!) it’s all a bit wishy-washy and unless I’m writing a blog with the theme of society’s shallowness and falseness in mind – which I am not at this point in time – it doesn’t really work.
Anyway, if I was gonna write about that I’d call it “Just a slice of reality…” and that was last month.
Oh wait, I’ve done that too? Last may? SHIT man this cycle stuff is deep!

So I’m pondering why I all of a sudden don’t like “Phases” (This implies I actually spent a long time thinking about it. I didn’t) and then it dawns on me: the cycles aren’t about phases, they’re about these events in our lives that change us, in turn changing the circumstances with which we deal with the next circumstances, affecting anyone else affected by them or us, thus creating the path along which this turning wheel rolls. A path dictated both by our decisions in that moment, and what we have learnt from those decisions in our past. 
It’s only when we hit the crossroads the wheel stops. And then it’s up to us. Either to roll down the path we wish to follow or be pushed against our will by someone else at the same crossroads as us whose decision affects ours.
Oh, there’s that cycle again.

Now I’m someone who believes it’s never too late. (Not for everything mind. You shoot someone in the face then regret it, that’s too late. My advice? Never shoot someone in the face. It ain’t worth it.)
In my life and the way I live it I like to feel like there’s a possibility we could get a second chance; that sooner or later the wheel will turn on us again and we’ll see that glimmering sparkle we missed out on last time.
I – genteel readers – am naive.
What would be far more useful would be to look not for that same old missed train, but for the new opening that may arise out of the next turn of the wheel. That’s harder than it sounds, because every time you see that wheel turning round all you can think of is how it turned last time, and how much you wish it could turn like that again. Turn back the clock. Roll you into the state you wish you were in the first place.

Ok so I think I might have used that wheel metaphor to death.

But put it this way. Every time I think about that post “Cycles” I wrote last year, I don’t think of what it could mean for me in the future, I think about the circumstances I wrote it in last year.
It’s a shame because I think it holds a lot of wisdom in it IF I ACTUALLY LISTENED TO MYSELF, but I know exactly what was going on in my mind at that precise moment and for some reason, although I know what I was feeling was very sad and lonely, part of me wants to be there again. Not so I could relive all that crap, but so I could grab hold of that glimmering sparkle I didn’t manage last time and figure out how this time I could make it right.
That.Is.Dangerous. Regret and uncertainty are the bitchiest of bitches.
Things happen for a reason and I guess for better or worse they happen when they do for the precise same reason. If that reason is to learn and grow then great. It it’s to be happy then even better. If it’s to hurt – then I guess that’ll have to do too. Maybe then I can grow and learn from the pain. So it won’t happen again.

But if you’re always thinking about the cycle and never the eventuality you’ve got nowhere to go.
If I’m always thinking of ten years ahead and what might happen if I do this or do that then I won’t be able to move on now. And that’ll sure as hell make ten years from now a hell of a lot harder!

Bloody hell, how did I get here!? This wasn’t at all where I was going to go.
But things happened while I was writing that opened up new thoughts and they brought me here. They happened for a reason. Due to the tiny butterfly effects of the last 10 minutes I changed what was originally a fairly well-structured thought into a new thread of thoughtfulness.

I broke the cycle.

And if I can learn to do that in everyday life then I can begin to move forward. Not round in circles. I need a way out of the cycle. And that’s up to me.

There’s a song I fell in love with exactly a year ago that now makes me sad because it reminds me of something in the cycle I lost. Ironically Newton Faulkner went to ACM a few years before me. Extra-Ironically there are other connections within the cycle that make me relate it back even more. But my life is my life.
I want to reclaim that now.

I want it back for me.

 

Holly xxx

 

PS – The title? Nothing to do with anything I’ve just written down. But I Googled “What is the opposite of a cycle” and Google had a tough time. Someone on a site came up with “Line/moment/chaos” all of which were connected but not right. Because I’m not sure I believe in true chaos. Or if I do I guess I believe in the kinda chaos that has an order. So I wrote “Chaos line” – but I typo’d it. And that gave me “Chaos lie.”
And that little bit of randomness, that little mistake – came up with the well-planned title to this well-planned chaotic post about cycles and the order of the word…

Go figure.

A hell of a story to tell…

Wow, ok, I’m swamped. This term at East-15 is well and truly kicking the shit outta me. Every subject seems to want you to step it up, completely forgetting about the fact that every other subject wants you to step it up too, and you have a bloody showing of The Duchess Of Malfi in just over a week and you’re tired. 
It’s a killer. I’m spending every day from 9am-6pm on Campus and every night from 7-11 working to catch-up for the next day! Then there’s the weekend: making up for the time you spent eating and sleeping during the week.
*SIGH* Such is the life of an actor I guess…
And it’s FUCKING BRILLIANT!!

I may be shattered now, but I know each little thing I do is working towards the bigger picture and the general outcome of my future. This time I’m gonna soak it all up. I’m gonna take every moment and bottle it and enjoy it while it’s there instead of focusing on how tough it is and how tired I am right now, because I think that’s something we all do quite a lot and it’s not always such a good thing.
It’s all about looking at the bigger picture I guess…
Everything seems a little better in retrospect – a little brighter. Everything sucks and then you look back on it and realise it was amazing!
Or was it?
Is it that we don’t appreciate all the good stuff while it goes on or is it because we filter out the bad, like a censor?

I mean, I know without a doubt my year in Guildford was on the whole the best year of my life – but in some ways it was also the worst. What then?
There is no way in hell I could count that time as mediocre in any way, so which one was it?
It can’t be one or the other, because it wouldn’t be true, and by definition it can’t be both: so what?

And on the other hand, I may miss it a hell of a lot and I may not for a few years reach the level of pure happiness I hit last year about this time, but at the same time leaving was the only possible thing I could have done. I miss my band Indigo Rose so much; I miss my friends – no, my second family – so much it almost hurts and I constantly have those pesky “what if’s” raging on in my mind but there’s no way East-15 was the wrong decision.
It was something I just had to do, and no matter how hard the decision and the consequences I had to face because of it, I cannot and will not ever regret it. I won’t let myself.

It may be a little over a year since I was standing on a platform waiting for the train to take me to London to see “The Little Dog Laughed” and I received the call from my Dad telling me I had a letter in the post from East-15 Acting School, but the consequences from that day ripple out into every new day of my life.
And not just the obvious things, like the fact I now live the other side of London and I study a different subject, or that I now belong to one less band than I used to; but the things that originally seemed so unconnected in the end turned out to be caught in the ripple just like everything else. Things like who I was to meet over my final few months in Guildford, the brand new thoughts and feelings and emotions and pangs of utter joy and total and complete despair I can now add to the list of feelings felt. Everything I was to learn about myself – the abject fear of both discovering and losing who I was and who I now am.
The shedding of my skin: the butterfly effect of everything I am now and ever will be.
The fastest fall and the slowest journey back up I still have yet to complete.
It’s all here on this blog if you look deep enough; if you look close enough to see through the words into the truth behind them. It’s a journey in the rawest sense of the word. A year of my life that will be felt through the ripples of time and space and come back to haunt me in decades to come forever and ever Amen.

It was the beginning and the end of me. And it was a year ago.

And so we reach what I suppose would most aptly be called the anniversary of my decline.
And a year on the question remains, would I do it again? If I got a chance to go back; to change the decisions I made and re-evaluate the chances worth taking, would I do it all again?
You know what, through everything that’s happened, I think I probably would.
I’d do it differently, but I’d do it again.

I think that’s when you know something was meant to happen, for better or for worse. I go through phases of thinking my life would be a hell of a lot simpler if I hadn’t met that person, gone to that audition or made that choice, and I’m 100% right. But happen it did and I can’t shake the idea that maybe it was all meant to. 
I’m not suggesting that our entire lives are mapped out for us and we are all but pawns in one higher being’s master plan…but life has a funny way of turning out awfully poetic. Sometimes it’s a tragedy, sometimes it’s comic, sometimes it’s an epic yarn yet to reach a conclusion, but that’s ok.
It’s annoying, but it’s ok. And all in all necessary. And fluid, and free.

So maybe I was meant to meet the people I did when I did – at the most inefficient time in the most unlikely of circumstances – maybe I was meant to fall into this most unlikely path and make the decisions I made and maybe that’s ok and it doesn’t have to mean the story’s over yet. Maybe it can carry on. At the very least, it provides me with a wealth of inspiration to turn into song and a wealth of experience to put into my studies.

I still haven’t figured out why everything had to happen as it did last year – why everything had to go from so utterly wonderful to so totally fucked and wrong within a couple of months, but one day I hope I will. And when that day comes maybe with it will come a sense of peace. But until then I’ve got time, and lots of it. Peace is for the elderly, the ones who have finished growing-up. Peace is for settling down and having a rest.

Youth is for the restless. And restless we remain.

But I really do hope it’s not the end of the story – of the poem – with the people and the places and the memories I built last year. I hope one day I’ll be able to revisit them with a smile and understand why everything had to happen as it did.

I hope one day – not too far away – that same force that pushed us together in the same place at the same time, at that exact moment in our lives and then tore us apart will use its pull and power to bring us back home. And maybe then we’ll all find one another again through the haze of semi-sincerity and complete uncertainty that comes with the uncompromising adventure that is life. And until that time. I promise I have not forgotten you and I promise I never will.

Because as much as I believe you make your own fate, I also believe everything happens for a reason, and sometimes the things that are the most out of your control are the most important experiences and the greatest stories to tell.
After all, we’re the artists of the world – we live to tell them. And we live them to tell them, to live.

They are our oxygen just as much as we give them life. They are our life-source, one by which we are both the actors and the acted. We are the puppet and the puppeteer together and we bare our souls and our stories with pride. We let them in blindly and hope they will lead us through all eventualities to that one conclusion we so desperately covet.

We cannot predict the future – no matter how much we dictate our own paths we will never fully have control. You cannot be the writer and the written. And you cannot choose a time and a place for love. 
All you can do is choose to let it in.

Now isn’t that an adventure worth taking? And a hell of a story to tell…

Holly x

Youth:Structure:Naivety-Part 1.

When we are young we are foolish and naive, that’s a given – that is part of the definition of youth. But when we are young and we know we are foolish and naive are we then still young? Or is that – again by definition – part of the ageing process?

1: We are young, we are naive and yet we think we are old and wise.
2: We are young, we are naive and accept these terms as fact whilst we strive to both better ourselves and shelter our fragile selves behind the silk-curtain of foolishness.
3: We are young and we are no longer naive. Foolishness is now something we may or may not choose. To be foolish is now a choice. A choice we make in full understanding of what it is to play the fool.

Are these the three stages of growing up?
Can you ever really be young and jaded? Words that when apart are a complete oxymoron, together make a kind of oxy-anomaly that almost serves to re-define our generation.
Now I’m not saying – like many do – that ours is a generation of lost innocence, because I don’t believe that’s entirely true; what I am saying is that we, as a whole do not live by the same definition of ‘youth’ those generations before us did.
Thirty years ago a child gets in a fight, the teachers pull him apart from his opponent and send him away to get the cane.
2011, a child starts a gang-related scuffle, threatens to stab the other pupil, the teacher intervenes and for the next five minutes has to stand in stunned silence as said child reads them their bill of rights and reminds the teacher they have no authority on which to touch them.
“I know my effin’ rights.”

Now I’m not saying we should bring back the cane, I don’t believe in that at all! But there’s gotta be something to be said for the amount of knowledge of the world of the law and its loopholes and the continuing arrogance many of our generation and the next seems to possess.
The best thing about getting rid of our Labour Government..? We don’t have to deal with all that “PC” crap anymore!
If anything it’s all gone too far the other way…

I look around me at the world we live in today and it’s absolutely fucking fantastic! It’s incredible all this amazing stuff we’ve created. I could sit for hours and complain at length about the ridiculousness of our London Underground – it’s delays, it’s structure and positioning, prices, the fact that the jubilee line just doesn’t actually seem to work… – but at least we have a London Underground. That is trains, running under the streets and the rivers of London, every day, with only a few hours rest in between. How flipping lucky are we!?
And yet we choose to bitch about it because we think, well, now we have it, we deserve to have a better one, it should work better. I’m not one of those people who bitches about how ungrateful we all are because I don’t think it’s wrong to want to live in the manner at which we’ve grown accustomed and to push it forward – that’s how civilisation thrives and evolves – but take a step back for a minute and think about how easy it would be for me to hop on a train right now and end up in Paris in two hours and you start to gain a bit of perspective.

Our Grandparents didn’t live in a world where everything was so easy – or even possible – it’s got to be a revelation for them! Even our parents had to readjust to mobile phones, something we grew up knowing about, and now the amount of seven year olds I’ve seen with a phone BETTER THAN MINE positively astounds me!! What happened to get set chocolate factory? What happened to beanie babies and stickers with the furry animals; yoyo’s, slap bands and the aliens every child in the 90’s was convinced could reproduce!? Now it’s all about the newest Wii game and the ipod touch.

And fashion? When I was 6 I was running around in a big coat made of all the colours of the rainbow, little jeans with footballing grass-stains and a bag of penny sweets from the corner shop. WIN!
But now it’s all about fashion, even for the 5 year olds! When I used to help out at a Brownie pack, 7 year-olds were coming in with Uggs more expensive than mine! And the other day I saw a tiny kid wearing a little military-style denim jacket I can’t believe they even sell in those sizes! People don’t like to take their children out to the park, people don’t wanna play board games. They HAD to make Eyetoy and Wii fit because they desperately needed something that would get kids moving whilst still believing they’re just inside playing another computer game.

When did kids stop caring about being kids!? There are children living in Africa and the slums of India who have mire vivacity to be young and alive than we do! All we want to do these days is grow up.

Wow, don’t I sound old. Look at me going on about “my day…” as if it was an age away!
And so I guess we come back to my generation again, as the generation of the jaded youth. That oxy-anomaly that seems to sum us up so well…the last of the 90’s kids – a dying breed.

What can we do?

While I was forming the idea for this post I had my ipod playing when all of a sudden an old Frank Turner song came on (Jeez he’ll be sponsoring this blog soon!) and the chorus was exactly what I’m on about to the extent some of the words are even the same!
Here it is…

“Because I’m young enough to be all pissed off
But I’m old enough to be jaded
I’m at the age where I want things to change
But with age my hopes have faded
I’m young and bored of being young and bored
If I was old I could say I’ve seen it all before
In short; I’m tired of giving a shit”

What he’s talking about here is jaded youth. It’s that point you get to where you still want to do something about all the shit in the world but you now have enough of a grasp of the way it works to see your old ideologies won’t ever work. So what do you do?
Well I write songs about it. So does Frank. So do The King Blues. Rise Against. System Of A Down. Rage Against The Machine. The list goes on…
But in the end, unless we get Itch or Frank into parliament, what real good can we do? How can we really shake things up on our own? It’s a tough question and nobody’s really found the stone-solid answer yet – I’m not even sure there is one – but we still continue to do it because we can. And to a certain extent I think we do it because we feel we have to.

I do occasionally wonder why it is I care so much when so many people seem not to care at all. It would all be a hell of a lot easier if I didn’t give a shit, but I do. And you know what I’m glad I do. Now it’s all about taking that next step from 2 to 3 and then onto the “old” which Frank sings about in his song. (It’s called “Once we were Anarchists” by the way) And when I take that next step, which I feel myself edging towards at an increasingly fast pace, I want to make sure I don’t lose any of that sense of passion and wonder and exuberance I rely so heavily on today, because I think it gets harder to keep hold of as you grow up, but it’s that little spark of creativity that will really make a change.
When we are young we have the incentive but not the tools. When we grow older we learn the tools but we lose the incentive. I wanna make sure I don’t do that because I really do want to make a difference in this world and I can’t stress enough how much faith I have in my generation to really do it and to really achieve something great.

I know I mention him a lot (too much?? Nah, he’s a total genius!) but there’s another song Frank Turner wrote, a few years after “…Anarchists” only this time instead of brash angst there’s a kind of strength to “Love Ire & Song” that really rings powerfully every time I hear it.
And again, it’s about taking that spark of youth and letting it in once again and fighting the good fight and knowing we will probably lose but absolutely doing it anyway!

That is what I want to hold on to. That is what I’m trying to say, and in the end when all’s said and done, that is what will make all the difference.

So for once, let’s be young, let’s be crass enough to care…let’s get out on the streets and be proactive and put that jaded youth to one side and just be young. Let’s live and learn and love and unleash some of that inner hippie that HAIR does so well when you’re up onstage singing “LET THE SUNSHINE IN!” and and jumping about. Let’s really grab every opportunity we can and use it to make a real difference to the world. Let’s be heroes and martyrs and radical thinkers and let’s mark that change with our own stamp.
Of youth, and honour, and optimism, and equality and power and strength and the right to be whoever the fuck you wanna be and do whatever the fuck you wanna do and love whoever you wanna love and, and,
and…

Well, take it away Frank…

 

Well we’ve been a good few hours drinking
So I’m going to say what everyone’s thinking
If we’re stuck on this ship and it’s sinking
Then we might as well have a parade
Cos if it’s still going to hurt in the morning
And a better plan’s set to get forming
Then where’s the harm spending an evening
In manning the old barricades…

10 reasons Subway are out to steal our children….

Ok, so I’ll admit, much like “How many CD’s can you play on the London Circular..?” this post will in fact not necessarily reveal 10 reasons why Subway is out to steal our children. I do not even have children. Sorry guys I’ve done it again. Damn, this blog is turning out to be a legal nightmare!

But I do have a bone to pick with Subway. I have been betrayed by that great, joyless Anglo-American fast-food chain of DEATH!
Too much? Ok. Story? Yes.

I will admit that both Tim (My partnero en crimo) and I had consumed much alcohol this fateful night and it was nearly 2am in Central London after a night out being Popstar(z), but that is no excuse to charge us just under TEN POUNDS FOR TWO FRIEKING 6-INCH SUBS!!! What were they filled with? Golden mustard and champagne cheese, toasted under a recreation of the Mediterranean sun!? Nah man – They’re just dicks!
What ensued was literally a 20 minute debate/argument Tim had with the Subway man on how we’d been overcharged and wanted a refund. This man…was a dick. An angry, unfulfilled, sweet-onion-sauce-odoured dick! Extra pickle, not toasted. Double the stinky cheese of doom.

We must not let them get away with this guys! THERE WILL BE RETRIBUTION!! I can see it now – the headlines – all the papers:
SUBWAY CORPORATION TAKEN DOWN BY GAY MAN AND SMALL HUNGRY FEMALE WITH CAMERA-PHONE!!
I will sell my story to the Sun. But for now: Here’s your exclusive…

During this epic ‘sub-off’ a series of mini-events occurred…it was a real rollercoaster-ride of emotions I think you’ll agree…

- Tim asked for a partial refund and after being denied asked if the angry man was the manager.
- The angry man told us he was not the manager.
- Tim asked to see the manager.
- The angry man got angry.
- Tim asked again to see the manager.
- The angry man got angrier.
- Tim got angry and started stating his consumer rights.

[This is where it all got interesting…]

- I decided it would be a good idea to start filming the episode like a ninja so we could take both this man and the corporation down with the cold hard proof of bad service.
- The shop became full of hungry late-night partiers all (presumably) desperate to be ripped off like us.
- The angry man continued to get more and more angry.
- We deduced that the angry man was in fact acting-manager for the night and this fact seemed to anger him.
- A customer came over to help with what he originally assumed was 2 drunkards causing a ruckus for the hell of it but, after finding out why we were complaining nodded, went “yeah ok I’ll admit you got a point, you have been overcharged…” and left Tim to continue his battle and me to my ninja corporate-revolutionising. Win!
Next…
- Angry man had a miniature freak-out which I skilfully and subtly caught on film and the other man left his post as sub-maker supreme to come over and help out (after a good 10 minutes of feigned ignorance of the proceedings)
- Submaker-supreme was no use at all, simply discovering that during the 10 minutes between receiving my sub and his involvement I had in fact eaten most of my evidence of misconduct. (Not my greatest moment I’ll admit, but being a ninja – and drunk – is a tough and hunger-inducing job)
- I believe Submaker supreme gave up and decided to actually do his job, (GASP) leaving us again with angry man and the 1/4 of my sub I still had yet to finish.
The Fight or flight moment…
- I looked over and noticed a man who had been standing nearby 10 minutes ago was still there and using my ninja-brain rationale decided that he was in fact a corporate agent dispatched to ‘deal’ with the two Subway-crushing Agents of righteousness and destroy the evidence (although my empty stomach had in fact done most of that for him) with whatever means necessary.
- With this revelation weighing heavy in my mind I instructed Tim to leave quickly and made him run to the other side of the road without looking back and head to the nearest McDonalds in case the Subway Hit-man decided we were to much of a threat and to follow us with a poisoned refund voucher.
SAFE!!

In retrospect and after great consideration I have come to the conclusion that this “secret agent” was probably just another customer waiting for his order but you know, couldn’t be lax in my judgements. I had precious evidence to protect. Evidence that I am as of yet too cringed out to watch in its entirety.
And don’t even get me STARTED on when McDonalds informed us that they weren’t selling any burgers…only Big Macs. (Which I assume must now be classed as a desert as I had previously assumed it in fact was a burger…) Tings were bads.

So I think we can all agree that although I may not have numbered them in a coherent list I have given you more than enough points for you to make your own “10 reasons Subway are out to steal our children…”
Mother, if you are reading this do not fear. I am safe. You have taught me well!!

I will warn all you parents though – beware. We are the generation of The Underclass, we will fight for our right to be drunk, hungry and cheap! We will find a bargain! We stand for late night kebabs and chips with gravy! We stand for 20-pence space-invaders and WE STAND FOR A FREDDO THAT ONLY COSTS 5pence!!!

With our new CONDEMN government pissing everyone off I say we take a stand and fight the real late-night fight of justice! Wouldn’t that be waaay cooler than two guys punching each other because one of them supposedly “pushed in” or “eyed up my bird in the wrong way.”
Come-on guys, we can do better than that! Let’s take ‘em down from within!
…and by within I do not mean breaking into a government building and throwing a fire extinguisher off the roof. I think we can all safely agree that doesn’t work…

We need to enlist a bit of tongue-in-cheek humour into the proceedings. A bit of the ol’ ninja injected into our souls.

Take control innat. Yar…
Wow this post was originally gonna have a proper point. About corporate bullshit and how everything’s become so consumer-centralled we don’t know what’s real anymore! And it is…I mean I bought a creme-egg Easter egg for £1 in March. THEY SHOULDN’T EVEN BEEN SELLING THEM IN MARCH!! They’ll be stocking up the Christmas-trees come October and I wouldn’t be surprised if Halloween arrived in July.
We’re losing any sense of time and order and what’s more they’re ripping us off as we go.

But in the end, it’s all a little bit silly. Yes, we did get ripped off that fateful night out in Soho, and if you ever find yourself outside a Subway just off Oxford Street on a Friday night let me know how you fared, but it’s a bit ridiculous in the end. It’s all a bit like thinking you’re a camera-phone wielding ninja on a Friday night with a bread roll in your hand.

The people that run the country do it too. We’re all dicks!!
Take a look at my favourite question from the 2011 Census…
Now they’ve said the reasoning behind this was that the question was only relevant in Wales so they cut it for households in England, but I find it absolutely hilarious and I reckon someone really important and tool-like shoved it in for a laugh. It’s pointless and silly, but it would show that someone, somewhere in the midst of all this corporate bullshit has some sort of a sense of humour…
and isn’t that a much nicer thought than the truth..?

Happy Easter everybody. And remember it’s not all about chocolate. It’s about love.
Which I guess, depending on your love of cocoa could be the same thing   
xxx

Of muso’s and music itself.

I like the word “muso.” My music teacher in secondary school (DJ LONY 4EVA!) called my best mate Charlotte and I muso’s and I guess the name stuck. Tbh I think it’s fitting really, can’t say why…but it should definitely be in the dictionary!

Muso: [mju:zəʊ] Noun: Person(s) showing a great affinity and often talent for the art of music in all its forms.

And yes, I did just write the phonetic pronunciation of it. All you Acting students out there can eat yer bloody hearts out! (that and check whether or not I got it right…)

Or National Geographic bio online…
The muso or the ‘Musical-loverplayerus’ is a music-loving creature with, as of yet, no discernible origin we can pinpoint. Muso’s are commonly found alone or in groups loitering around school music-blocks, outside local venues (such as rebuilt public toilets if you grew up where I did…) or in the corners of specialist music shops sharing the latest artists/instrument models/set of new guitar strings with anyone and everyone who cares – which is often not a lot of people…
Within the term “Muso” lie a series of sub-species, much like differing breeds of cat or dog. These include the classical-muso or ‘classicofalus’, rock-muso or ‘dio-hornipus’ or the much rarer and often overlooked theatre-musiluvagaypus’.
However, the only true Musica-loverlpayerus is the genre-bending and grammy-defining "”musolextra” often known as the “hippy muso” who is a lover of music as an entity in itself, in all forms.

Well that was odd.

Soooooooo yes. I am a muso. Self-professed, self-confessed and often self-loathing I am a lover of all things music and as I mentioned in my last blog I will be writing the occasional music-themes post soooo, here’s the first one.

As I am now on not-so Easter Holidays I have had the opportunity – for the first time in baaaaaare months – to put up my kit again! Yes, that sexy piece of ass is currently taking up the significant portion of my room downstairs, for the first time with all its tomtoms. And it looks beeeeaauuuuuuuuuuutiful!!
Don’t believe me? CHECK IT OUT!!

I’ve also just managed to get my voice back after epic germs over the past few weeks and started revisiting my vocal warm-up scheme a la Brett Manning (Ok, so I’ve done it twice thus far, whatevs I’ma keep going!) which should hopefully bring my technique back on track after a couple of weeks without any regime.
So, I’m all musical right now and wanna share with all of you via this blog!

First-off: Black Nazarene.
As I mentioned in my last post we played “THe Pitz” in Milton Keynes the other day and it actually went really well! UBER thanks to El from “November Fleet” who filled in on bass. She did a cracker of a job and she can be seen in the latest Black Nazarene video “System Failure” which has clips of the gig we played.
System Failure is one of my favourite Black Naz songs and the footage came out really well so take a gander at that if yer fancy…       [18 seconds is my personal favourite moment – none of us knew she was gonna do it. HA!)

System Failure is also available on our ep which you can buy off itunes for a very small amount of coins!

And to any of you comic book geeks out there, you might recognise the name of the artist whose work was used to create the design for the ep. He is none other than David Mack, creator, author and artist of KABUKI – a really popular set of cult comics. David is also the writer and artist of “Daredevil.”
There, knew you’d have heard of that one. He’s a bloody MARVEL! (HA Comic humour…)

http://www.davidmack.net/
http://davidmackguide.com/portfolio/cd/blacknazarene.shtml

Ok, so on with the show. The mate I mentioned in my last post…

Friendz in da biz…innat.

So I ran into him the other week when I was down in G-town (yes it was on the first leg of my 360degree journey.) and he told me about what he’s been up to. He’s doing pretty good for himself (woooo) and I said I’d take a look at his songs and give him a shoutout on the blog so without further ado…
If ya like yer Hip-Hop, RnB, Electro, Dubstep, House, Dance, Jazz, Neo- Soul…then producer/songwriter Cold Fever is one to watch!

http://www.coldfevermusic.com/

The interesting thing here for me is the use of rhythm. A lot of music of this genre simply sticks with the same pounding bass-drum beat the entire time but there’s an almost-funkiness to the beat here which is cool.
Perfect for a car advert no..?

 

Pick o’ the post!

Ok, so I listen to a fuckload of music almost continuously and the choice changes depending on my mood.
Recently I’ve been finding myself listening to a lot of Amy Macdonald, in particular her 2007 album “this is the life” which is a truly astonishing piece of songwriting! Every bloody track is a corker and really emotive.

The song that first intrigued me and is the reason I bought her CD in the first place was the track “The Youth of Today,” a gutsy callout to the so-called “grown ups” who like to put our generation down and tar us all with the same brush of dishonesty and blame.
Many of you will know I am forever one for the pro-youth agenda even going so far as to pen a musical about it, so with lyrics like…

”And maybe if you had a true point of view I would listen to you,  
But its just your one sided opinions getting in my way,  
And you don’t know a single thing about the youth of today”

I was always gonna be a fan! Not to mention one of my personal favourite lines…

”And we are the youth of today – change your hair in every way.
And we are the youth of today – we’ll say what we want to say…”

Pretty much about me eh? Ha.

But anyway, that’s not the song I’m gonna share with you guys. The song I’m gonna share is called “Run” and in looking on youtube I just found out it was a single of hers which is EVEN BETTER!!!
This song is absolutely brilliant and so beautiful. And I know I believe it. And I know I’ve felt that way before.

And I hope I’ll be brave enough to fight for it again one day…

 

And Finally…

Well I’ve still got plenty of stuff to write about, plenty of friends’ music I’m just dying to share and plenty of newbies to expose to the internet masses but frankly;
1. This post is getting long enough. Even I, a muso-supreme understand the boundaries between interest and blog music overkill…
2. I’ve just uploaded a new video onto Youtube (after almost a year…) and want you to check that out before you go/before I link you to my most-likely superior friends 

At least I’m honest…

So this is me playing a song from my To Apathy project called “On Letting Go…” which I wrote last summer.
It ain’t happy, it ain’t sad…It just is. Eventually I’d love to record it properly, maybe even add some strings or something, but for now, it’s just me in my room in front of a bookcase.
Enjoy…

And thanks for reading, I love you all.
Not as much as I love music mind…

xxx

How many CD’s can you play on the London Circular..?

The answer? Quite a few.
How do I know this? Well, last weekend I managed to drive the entire circle of the M25. Exaggeration? No.

Why?
Well, my journey began last Friday afternoon as I made my way South/West to Guildford where I was to perform at an industry showcase for my function band “Cover Girlz” (see “projects”). After a Friday night of music, beer, shots, frivolities and…more beer, I spent most of Saturday hungover in spoons. This was a joyful 3 hours which involved much laughter, beer/burger combo’s (beer substituted for pepsi I hasten to add) and photo’s such as…

and

Yes, I did genuinely spend about 20 minutes trying to take photos of myself looking fat…

After all that malarkey in Spoons I headed to a party in the evening until at 1am decided it was probably time to head back to Tonbridge with a car full of drums and an exceedingly tired purple-haired girl. (That’s me by the way.)
Does that imply I have multiple personalities..?
Sunday was to be a leisurely affair until I woke up around midday when my good friend Sarah (Thank you miss Hinds!) notified me that the Central line was in fact down (those of you who have done your homework/stalk me will know this is the only tube line which goes to Loughton) and thus lugging both myself and a full set of breakables on various trains and stand-in buses was a less-than brilliant idea.
Solution..? Drive back up to Loughton!

Want a pictorial version of my weekend..? Well here’s one I made earlier!

TADAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

Anyway, I feel I should admit I cannot accurately answer the original question as mentioned in the title of this post for a few reasons…
1.) CD lengths vary so an answer based on my driving taste which includes a blend of various Frank Turner/Biffy Clyro/Brand New/The Gasslight Anthem/etcetc albums may not be the same for all you lovers of Arcade Fire, Slayer, Kate Nash and watnot… (ha, I am jokes)
2.) I am partial to the odd skipperoo of a track for various reasons so even taking into consideration the particular CD’s used the end figure may well be somewhat misleading…
3.) Half way down to Guildford I started to get a scratchy throat from all the harmonising to Frank Turner turned up to 21 so I turned my music off for a bit so I could go through a series of Brett Manning/SLS warm-up exercises (True story!) to warm-up my voice before turning it back on again and continuing my epic vocals. (Want me for the next album Frank? I’m sure I’ll be able to pencil you in…)
4.) The M25 is a temperamental bugger at the best of times – affected by all manner of things such as weather, time of day, day of the week, time of day of the week, accidents and such…
and finally…
5.) At gone 1am on Saturday night/Sunday morning I got to the roundabout ready to turn onto the M25 only to find the exit I needed was closed for maintenance work – or whatever the fuck they do with motorways at 1am…GAH! The next 20-or-so minutes were spent with me going up and down the M25, A3 and through a town that I want to say began with “Ox” but believe may have been Ockham – until I rejoined the M25 at a juncture of which I am openly unsure…Needless to say Frank was put on pause for much of this diversion palaver.
So I suppose, really, a more accurate representation of that part of my journey might have been…

Joy I’m sure you’ll agree…

So although the title of this post is “How many CD’s can you play on the London Circular..?” which implies I both – a.) know the answer, and b.) intend on sharing it with you – I in fact do not know the answer and neither will you until you try it yourself (which I would not advise for the above reasons).
I hope you are not too upset with your decision to click yourself onto the site and read this post and thus will not sue me for false advertising. (please?)
Feel free to hate mail instead – people seem to like to do that and I enjoy a good laugh.

It has also come to mind whilst creating these wonderful and (semi-)informative (if utterly useless in the grand scheme of things…) diagrams that due to unforseen circumstances on my part, there is in fact a short stretch of the M25 that I was unable to travel down. However, as I have travelled down that stretch many a time previously and at time of travelling I’m gonna say its temporary closure means it doesn’t count as a part of the M25 for that period, I think it still counts. So no false advertising there…phew!

It wasn’t all for nothing anyway. The showcase proved itself useful (if stressful and rather soap-operalike), I saw a bunch of people I haven’t seen in donkeysssss, got to have the car for an entire week (WIN!), managed to take multiple photographs of myself in Spoons where I looked genuinely fat, realised the world (or South-England at least…) is a very small place and achieved the most impressive hangover I’ve had in months…
Another thing my journey back in time (in so much as I didn’t travel back in time at all) really drilled in was how much I miss music!!!

Music – this thing that was my entire life for a year. It was my morning, my afternoon, my night. My drunken evenings and late-night dances – new song each week, band into the early hours and doing it all again the next day…has become somewhat of a rarity in my life.
Indigo Rose is over for me, Cover Girlz is dotted around the calendar and the map and Black Nazarene are running on low until the summer tour (which I cannot WAIT for by the way!) and it’s left a gap that really can’t be filled with anything else.
Yes, I still get 2 lessons a week. I still sing. My voice is getting stronger than ever with the new regime and technical workout and my confidence is on the up again (finally!). I’m starting to think about the musical again, piecing together a new one-act in my head and working on my EPIC multi-vocal mash-up between Jessie J’s “Do it like a Dude,” Destiny Child’s “Jumpin” with a hint of “Crazy in Love,” but it just ain’t the same as that sense of creation and business venture that comes with the lifestyle I led last year at ACM in Guildford.

So I’ve been thinking now I’m settled into what this blog might mean: after tirelessly analysing the message, the meaning, its reason for being and coming up with “meh, it’s whatever I want it to be at the time,” why not bring a bit more music into the mix? I’m still thinking, still writing, still creating and with my monthly subscription to Rocksound with its abundance of new bands and free music, with my steady links to the music world of Guildford and toe still firmly dipped into the choppy waters of a touring musician I’m still pretty switched on to the scene.

Thus, from now on, every now and then I’ll be writing a blog which focuses on music.
Old, new, uber-retro, heavy, light, intense, chilled, live-recorded, gigs, video’s, CD’s, artists, albums – songs.
Songs that inspire me, songs that inspire other people, songs written by my friends, songs written about my friends. Songs about things I know, songs about things I don’t know, songs about things I wish I knew about…long songs, short songs, multiple songs or one lonely gem I picked out from the pack.
In the end music is all about the songs. I love songs! And I love music!

It won’t just be that of course. You aren’t rid of my ramblings just yet – it’s just a heads up…

What I’m doing now is way too interesting to leave out anyway! Acting School’s the BOMB guys, seriously! Check this out! This is my classroom, my actual classroom! Ladies and gentleminges, I give you CS2!!!

By term-time a normal all-white grubby studio, by priority week a fully furnashed shabby forest of doom! YESSS!
National Theatre, eat yer fucking heart out!

It even keeps giving me hayfever!

So yeah, consider this – if not a new chapter in the ongoing life of this blog – a warning. A new idea for a tried and tested theory; an added theme designed to help quench the thirst for music in my life – and occasionally perhaps an additional sense of structure and meaning to my ramblings.

Peace out guys, and keep the music alive!
xxx

Oh, and I know I said things were pretty quiet in the Black Nazarene camp ‘til August, well they are but tomorrow we have a pretty cool gig at the Pitz in Milton Keynes! Anyone who knows the area will have heard of it – it’s a 400 capacity venue, one of the places to hang in Milton Keynes and this is a great opportunity for a band like us, so if you’re around, come along and say hi! Free hugs and love available at the venue to anyone who comes and lets me know!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, and if anyone wants to be featured on here as an up-and-coming artist or anything, just email me on holly_mallett@hotmail.co.uk with any tracks, links or video’s and if I like it I’ll be happy to include you in an upcoming post. Already spoken to one mate and he’ll be featured, hopefully on the next music post.  Peace xxx

Over my left shoulder.

I reckon the devil – is damaged.
Mostly mute, maybe colour-blind.
Nah not colour-blind then; she created racism after all. And yes, I have labelled the devil a girl…I guess I see more of a capacity for deviousness within our sex. We women after all, have our ways…
And I reckon she’d be well-dressed. Not overly so – less Lizz-Hurley more smart/casual; but with a good pair of heels – good heels are vital.
And nice legs.

I think she’d be bright, extraordinarily talented, full of potential. But most of all I think she’d be scared.
She could be an angel, the best of the lot. If only she wasn’t so afraid.
I think really, that’s the cause of a lot of our wrongdoings in the end. Fear. And I think no matter how strong a conscience you may or may not have, fear can topple us all. Our resolve is nothing when faced with fear.
Dread fear. Dead fear.

It’s much easier to be afraid, it’s passive. Just let it in and all of a sudden you don’t have a voice anymore, you have relinquished your choice. Yet to choose not to decide is still to have made a choice. An easy one maybe, but nevertheless a choice. Brecht said you always have a choice and he was right. You may chose to condemn yourself for stepping out of line or risk being universally hated, but everything stems from your initial impulse to take action. Or not. Things may happen which are out of your control but it is the way you chose to re-act that shows the world who you really are.

Blame is the relinquishing of any accountability of your own actions or reactions. Blame is fed by fear. Without the blinding fear of punishment or loss there is no need for blame. Blame is not a commodity in this life because any hint of positivity we could squeeze from it is then quickly thrown out by the human condition.
Both the fearful action and reaction to blame is unnecessary recrimination and there starts a cycle that will draw us all down and down until we have nowhere left to go and so there is no longer a way out for either party.
More often than not it is the weakest who is blamed simply for being weak – regardless of whether or not they deserve it. Natural selection maybe, but there is no justice there. Scapegoating is not the right out. Here we chose to listen to our fear and thus wins the we’ll-dressed, calmly-quiet woman gently swinging her well-formed legs over the left-side of our collarbone.

She wins too much – she must be bloody smug up there! The angel requires time and space and lines and lines of prose to state its case ready to be analysed and most likely rejected. The devil merely smiles her coy little smile, gives fear a small wink and off we go, running scared for the easiest way out.
Told you she was clever…

In my line of work fear is a vital commodity to achieving the desired result. The day I do not fear failure when I walk onstage is the day I no longer care enough. But this fear exists solely to be beaten by bravery. Once you think of it that way it suddenly seems a lot less scary. To feel fear, means that something matters.
Tell yourself that and straight away fear can become a good thing. It’s healthy. It can save your life. It can be beaten or heeded depending on the situation. This way we still feel fear, but have the capacity to use it to our advantage.
With strength.
Here we no longer relinquish our power to have a voice, to be heard, to follow our own path. We have rediscovered our right and responsibility to have a choice! This time, we can approach fear with a level-head.
We are afraid, but we are not ashamed to be afraid. We will not be beaten.

Nifty eh? Take that well-dressed shedevil! POW!!

It’s hard, the pursuit of being the best person you can be; it takes a firm knowledge of the devils work to be able to topple it which by definition means we must know the devil well. As well as we know ourselves. We must let it in, embrace it to beat it.
Like I say – use the system to beat the system. It takes both strength and courage to gain strength and courage.
Damn.
In the end we are our own devils and our own angels. It is us alone who hold the key to marking our own destinies. We hold the power to take the right path and be the best person we can. We are our own angels.
But pan over to the left and you will see the other side. We are no more good than bad, no-one is fully righteous, that would be no fun at all!
What makes a man good is not only having good thoughts or feelings or intentions, but having both and choosing to act on the good ones and disregard those coming from a little to our left.
If there is no bad, there can never be a good. They are intrinsically linked and necessary in equal measure.

I have a devil. She’s a bitch. But I need her, if only to remind me I’m not that great after all and to want to be better. I feel sorry for her because she’s weak and thus my weakness is wanting to help her be strong.
Now there’s a battle I may never win. Masochism eh? The downfall of us all.
Not the impulse to follow a path I know will end in self-destruction, but the choice I make to follow it.
That’s a choice made from the angel inside me – to help – and yet it most likely leads back to my own loss.
Tricky business…

Still, maybe one day the devil will know herself as much as I know her and learn to be happy. I could help her do that, if only she’d listen. Still I guess it seems much easier to run away from feeling and opt for the simplicity of shallowness. Not like it’ll come back and bite you in the ass…Oh wait, yes it will.
*sigh*
Such is the juxtaposition of life.

The message readers, is this. We are all our own worst enemies. Any other evil is lesser than that which we can – and often do -  impose upon ourselves. Letting fear rule your life and relinquishing all responsibility to its power is easy but it is wrong.
Yes, for possibly the first time in this blog I am going to be black and white with you. A life of apathy is wrong. It is easy but it is wrong! You’re scared of something, then it probably means that is the one thing you should do, because it’s that important.
Bottling it up is a short-term fix which which will not last. It will come back and it will be stronger and it will ruin your life. You will get ill.

The devil is a disease and its only cure is strength.

But hush, I am projecting.
To Apathy eh, beaten by strength? Fancy that…

xxx

To the marriage of true minds…

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.”

William Shakespeare.

This is Sonnet 116, probably my favourite of all time. It just rings so true. It doesn’t get caught up in the web of comparisons and overdrawn romantic gestures. It just talks.

The message is simply this – Love is not circumstantial, it cannot be turned on and off. It is not dictated by the time or the place, by how near or far it seems. It doesn’t have an expiry date or a number with which it waits to be called.
It just is. It just lives and it cannot die. Or it is not love.

It’s a great idea that, one which is easy to romanticise and worship. We put this crazy little thing called love up on a pedestal and hope that in time we will get our chance to experience it. It’s a beautiful poem too, about the endurance of love and a lot of people approach sonnet 116 with this overarching sense of wonder and awe.
But I think that kind of defeats the point.
To me, this poem is much more defiant. It’s not all airy and full of awe – it’s fiery and powerful. It’s full of resolve.
I don’t think Shakespeare wrote this in the height of his happiest love affair, I reckon he wrote it when the person he loved was scared and distant, or trying to run away. Maybe there was distance between them, maybe there was the ever-looming killjoy of a blossoming career, or simply a farce of timing. Either way I can’t shake a sense of threat lingering between the lines.

The cynic in me is prone to speculate that as defiant and full of strength as this poem may be, I am not entirely convinced it tells the whole story. You see, as Omnipotent as this Godlike, infinite being “Love” may be, it’s very intimate and personal – it’s very human. And as it is human, it is as we all are prone to becoming – a victim of circumstance.
I used to believe in the end two people who really felt for each other would stick it out – that in the end love conquers all and even the most scared of us will eventually learn to be brave and courageous beneath the sheer power of it’s glare.
Yeah well, not so much – at least not while you’re young…
Although I guess I have yet to reach this “in the end” and I suppose part of this love is a journey and we are the wondering barks’ who need its shine to guide us along. And getting to that destination takes time. Space. It takes distance.
In order to get somewhere you have to have been somewhere else. In that respect love’s a bitch.

I firmly believe that love should not be easy. I think the moment it becomes too calm and structured it’s not really love at all. Maybe that’s my tortured artist masochism creeping in again but to be honest I don’t really care. There’s a reason we try and make bad relationships work, and that reason is simply it means so much. It is too consuming, awe-inspiring, worth it to give up without a fight.
Now I’m not saying that an abused wife should stick with her husband until he either changes his ways or eventually kills her all in the name of love, but really, love is supposed to be tumultuous.
The journey isn’t about getting rid of this feverous tumult, it’s about learning how to harness it and still allow it to swallow you whole. It’s a leap of faith – one which unfortunately becomes very difficult when you are young and new to this world, and the simple matter of growing up takes you away to different cities, countries and places of significant growth and change. How could you possibly cling on to love?

Love cannot die no – but it can be ignored. And it can be locked away in the back of your mind and never really be experienced. And I think that’s sad.
I for one made a promise to myself years ago that if I found even the spark that could lead me to the possibility of love, I would fight for it. It hurts and it’s scary, and I almost admire those who seem readily able to just lock their feelings away – but I can’t help but feel like it’s so worth it. And it’s worth waiting for.
Even now when the naivety of youth makes everything feel like it has to be so immediate, it still seems worth waiting for. Worth sticking out. This is the one respect in which I am unequivocally brave.
I will fight for something I believe in.

I’ve never had the pleasure of being in love, but I have loved, and will continue to love for the rest of my life. And if there’s one thing I’ve learnt in 19 years it’s that the biggest, most important things in life hit you when you least expect it. It’s that ‘punch in the gut’ feeling that really let’s us know we’ve hit the real thing. Those fireworks, that dizziness, the tears and the screams and the silence and the rain…it’s those explosions of noise that ripple out and seem silent yet remain present forever.
It’s the butterfly effect.
It’s love.

So maybe that star’s still there pointing the way, I just need to find out which one it is and how I can reach it.
Sometimes that means actively following it to the ends of the earth, sometimes it means waiting.

And maybe one day the strength that ol’ Willy-Shakespeare was talking about will become apparent, and time and distance and circumstance and fear won’t seem such a big deal anymore.

It’s ironic really, that the scariest and most feared of human emotions – love – is the one thing that can teach you to conquer it.
And so bloody tiring to work out!

But I have to believe that in the end that mark will remain fixed on the point of longevity and happiness. And in the end love really can conquer all.
Even time, even distance, even death.

If this be error and upon me proved…William Shakespeare was wrong – And William Shakespeare is never wrong!

Happy Valentines day singletons. I love you all. Holly xxx

“And I’ll fight for this life and this love and this feeling.
Give up my pride and I’ll hand it to you.
I’ll hold out my heart and surrender its beating
and risk all the bleeding for the prospect of freedom and
hope…

What’s a life without hope?”

xxx

 

Oh and this next song gave me some solace once. It’s PHAT!! And I think William would approve…
Peace.