"These are a few of my favourite (albums)..."

Saturday, 11 April 2020

"These are a few of my favourite (albums)..."

Someone tagged me in one of those Instagram posts where they ask you to list 10 Albums That Changed Your Life over the course of 10 days and, as lovely an idea as that is, I deffo can’t commit to that because a) I will most likely forget, b) I will most likely change my mind halfway through, overthink, and then sack the whole thing off and c) I don’t want to bore people by clogging up their feeds as much as I already do with cries for attention and begs to read my stuff.

In that same vein, then, I figured I’d make a quick blog post about the whole thing. If you know me, you know that I love a good list and it’s something a bit different from the usual content I post.




So away we go – 10 Albums That Have Changed My Life:

1)      Traveller – Chris Stapleton 

He may appear to be a thick-bearded Seventies outlaw-country throwback, but make no mistake: Chris Stapleton is a soul singer, with a preternaturally creaky voice that can turn wizened or brawny, full of pained howls and distended vowels. He leans towards an artful and gimmick-free simplicity and lacks showiness in his stories about flawed characters; he’s raw and without the whole ‘I’M n0T lIk3 tH3 oTH3R G1rLz*’ *(country singers) “authenticity” people try and masquerade behind. His lyrics are beautiful. Best song has to be Sometimes I Cry. For sure. Shit. I smile just thinking about it – which is sort of weird and twisted because it is one of the most painful songs I have ever heard, with Stapleton’s rough growl and southern twang. So good.

2)      Rumours – Fleetwood Mac

I’m only 21 so I sort of lack the cultural baggage this album truly stands for. If Rumours was a person, they’d be that old, sweet, quite complicated friend who gets more and more interesting every time you talk to them. They might tell you the same story again and again, but you’re always able to find some new twist or detail or angle which you never noticed before. Rumours gives me something different every time I listen to it. And Stevie Nicks’ hair is just one reason to give it a go.

3)      Back to Black – Amy Winehouse

There is literally an entire article dedicated to this album in The Guardian, called Why the Best Album of the 21^st Century is Amy Winehouse’s ‘Back to Black,’ and if that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know, I don’t know what will. It’s quietly beautiful. It’s impermeable in nature; it contains the sorts of songs that will be listened for decades to come. Winehouse’s voice is one thing; what she sings about is another. This album is the very definition of a ‘beautiful tragedy’ and it bangs every time.  

4)      Come on Over - Shania Twain

I would listen to this album every time I got in the car with my mam (along with Dolly Parton's Greatest Hits and the Dirty Dancing soundtrack) and the lyrics 'get a life, get a grip, get away somewhere take a trip’ had might as well be tattooed on my arm because I take that phrase far too literally (in a Corona-free world, that is.) Yeah, I love Shania. I mean, who else could slate Brad Pitt in one song and then flip to a track about domestic abuse in Black Eyes, Blue Tears? A pioneer of feminism in music and proof you can look good in head-to-toe leopard print. Goals. 

5)      The Stranger – Billy Joel

I gave my mam a shoutout so it’s only fair I include the other 50% behind my genetics. I remember being set the task to clean out my dad’s old CD/cassette tape drawer in the garage as a child and finding a dust-ridden, scratched disc at the very bottom of the cupboard. I put it in the stereo to see if I recognised it and, before I knew it, I was being clumsily waltzed around the room by my dad to the tune of Vienna – possibly one of my favourite songs ever still to this very day. Again, it’s very much the sentiment attached to Joel’s album which makes it a standout for me; I hear any of his songs and I immediately think of my dad and him lecturing me to “slow down, you’re doing fine, you can’t be everything you wanna be before your time.”

6)      A Rush of Blood to the Head – Coldplay

I know, I’m openly admitting to loving Chris Martin – and I’m not even sorry. No shame. I don’t care how basic it makes me. They might be something of a pop culture punching bag (when and why this has occurred is beyond me) and if they were a colour they’d be a nice, gentle beige but are you really going to sit there and tell me that The Scientist is a bad song? Of course you’re not. You know exactly what you’re getting when you select a Coldplay playlist on Spotify – nice, slightly melancholy, songs that you can play in the background as you go about your day or turn up to full volume for a heavy whack of nostalgia. And they’ve collaborated with Beyoncé. And they support, like, 30 different charities. And they come across as decent guys – all of them, Chris and…er…the others. And they’ve sold nearly 100 million records. You know why? Because beige goes with everything – everyone likes a nice beige. 

7)      Body Talk – Robyn

Reminds me of some of the best nights out/girls holidays I have ever had with friends because it nearly always includes some absolute bops from this hyper-optimized fembot that you don’t fuck with. It’s hilariously catty and euphorically weird. I only need to hear the intro to Dancing on my Own and can pretty much smell the upstairs room of Pulp in Leigh. I don’t know if this is a good or a bad thing.

8)      Greatest Hits of Bagatelle – Bagatelle

I don’t think Greatest Hits albums technically count but this one is a must, simply because every single song on here is a banger – are you even at an Irish wedding if you haven’t been whisked around the dancefloor by a piss-drunk uncle to one of these bangers? Are you even in a pub or sat round someone’s kitchen table if a distant relative doesn’t whip out their fiddle/tin whistle (casual obvs) and start playing Second Violin? I’m never normally a fan of Irish bands with the exception of Westlife’s Key Changes (each and every single one of them form a piece of my personal brand along with Linda McCartney sausages and falling down the stairs) but Bagatelle strike a different sort of chord. Kind of hard to explain, if I’m honest. I hate to be that gal but if your fam is Irish, you’ll get my vibe. Also, Johnny Set Em Up is my favourite song; it’s simple, it’s easy to listen to, and the lyrics are beautiful. 10/10. Just thinking about it is making my eyes water a bit.

9)      Mary Poppins Original Soundtrack

Julie. Fucking. Andrews.

Fin.

P.S: I don’t care if cast albums don’t count. I will Sister Suffragette you if you try and take this away from me xoxo We all know that Mary Poppins bangs and if you disagree it’s just because you never got a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down and you know it.

10)   AM – Arctic Monkeys

I’m immediately cast back to my Teenage-Angst-Rebllion-You-Don’t-Understand-Me-And-What-I’m-Going-Through days every time I hear a track of this album. Do I Wanna Know? – legendary. Arabella – gorg. And Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High? Was always played towards the end of a night when a house party began to slow down. This bad boi is the soundtrack of my teenagehood. It’s haunting in the best possible way and, though it hardly competes with some of the legends and their works that I’ve listed above, we all know that, without AM, Arctics wouldn’t be where they are today. Facts brought to you by the musical genius that is she, Kerry Maxwell. Word. 

Some top contenders that narrowly missed out for no other reason than that the list specifies ten albums:


The Beyoncé Experience 2007 Live Album – Beyoncé. Queen B can do whatever she wants. She can. This live concert recorded back in 2007 proves it. She can dance like a demon in heels and proceeds to mash up Crazy in Love with Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy minus Jay-Z. Beyoncé could slap me across the face with this album and I’d still say ‘thankyou.’


What’s The Story Morning Glory? – Oasis. Offspring that vacate the womb in the Greater Manchester county are genetically modified to know the lyrics to pretty much every song off of this album. Honestly. It’s the truth.


Born in the USA – Bruce Springsteen. All my friends know I’m in love with Bruce Springsteen and I am completely ok admitting that on the internet for all to see.

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The Toilet Roll Archives (4) - A bit more on Anne and a bit of a gridlock

Monday, 6 April 2020

The Toilet Roll Archives (4) - A bit more on Anne and a bit of a gridlock

Day 21. I've tested positive for missing my pals, despite frequent h0us3par1y meetings and WhatsApp group chats.

Been thinking about Anne Frank’s diary in relation to our current situation some more this week. I, myself, haven’t promised to keep any sort of Quarantine Diary because I know I’ll end up getting bored-in-the-house-im-in-the-house-bored and I didn’t want to give myself a reason to let myself down. I knew I was obviously going to write about Corona and stuff but I wanted to wait until my thoughts had ‘matured’ somewhat. I’ve gone from laughing at memes to making a sunbed on my windowsill because my balcony is too shaded; #stayhomesavelives and all that.

#sunbed(room)

Anyways, I’ve hit a bit of a mental / creative gridlock this week. I’ve been waiting to stumble into bigger and bulkier and self-isolative-y (?) thoughts to get my teeth into and nothing has hit me just yet.

But I’m treating this as a sign. Because the problem is that time is all the same these and quarantining isn’t helping. Not leaving home and minimal social interaction (aside from my flatmates) is eliminating the spread of the virus, which is great. It’s the only solution in the short-to-medium-term. Nevertheless, it’s limiting any possibility of spontaneity and excitement – I sound pathetic and I swear I’m not complaining; ‘it is what it is’ at this point!

The same sequence of things happen today as they did yesterday and as they will tomorrow (I can safely assume). I get up, I go for a run, I work, I write, I listen to music but then don’t feel like it, I try and tune into a podcast and I don’t feel like that either – there’s too much to choose from; I don’t choose anything. It’s like there’s this cultural bulimia of excess supply. How many books do I have to read? How many episodes do I have to get through to feel like someone who has truly put this period of a-sociality to good and productive use?

I’m not sad about it. I’m not really feeling any apathy at this point. I have this new routine. My favourite part of the day is the morning. I’m naturally an early riser so I’m wide awake and off for a run at around 6.30 am. I shower and stuff and then have around forty minutes to fill with struggling to pick between podcasts and playlists and channels before I settle down for work.

Since every day is the same as the next, their names barely matter anymore. Only the weekend is different because you don’t have work – at least, on a structured and formal level – so you have 48 hours to fill. For the rest of the week, Tuesday had might as well be Thursday and the ‘Friday Feeling’ is something of the past. I can safely make the assumption that perception of time has changed and distorted drastically in the space of a few weeks. I mean, I literally forgot the clocks changed and went on for four days without realising! My phone and laptop change automatically and, since I haven’t been wearing my watch, it never occurred to me that time is ticking on (lol) outside of this Corona bubble.

Sometimes an abundance of time translates into scarcity of time, just as abundance of options translates into rejection of choice. If I have little time, I know how to use it. If I have a seemingly infinite time I no longer know how to use it and yet, somehow, it never seems enough. Kind of like when you’re still tired after getting too much sleep. Seems illogical, but it’s perfectly reasonable.

The whole quarantine situation is so ‘surreal’ (I probably use that word at least 20 million times a day) that we can no longer measure change by comparing it to before, after or during. You can try and compare this to wartime Britain, but it’s obviously not the same. Even mapping out Corona-spread-graphs and comparing countries side-by-side on a bar chart isn’t quite the fairest of measures.

It’s not like being on holiday even if you’re forced not to go to work, so you can’t fool your brain into believing it. What used to be taken for granted – meeting friends, going for a Nandos (it’s not goodbye, it’s see you soon), even walking – is no longer like that, but the conditions on the margins are so unprecedented that it is difficult to see these as shortcomings. You can’t even really miss them properly yet, because everything is suspended and distorted and overwhelmed by events. It’s like we’re all waiting for that nine-year-old school-child-author of this Corona Creative Writing Homework to come and write their next paragraph.

How will we tell it in a few years? Well, that’s where the whole Anne Frank thing comes into play. People’s diaries, their accounts, their illustrations, will be what makes this whole thing interesting. I was reading something in The New Yorker about how important these accounts are to historians and it makes sense; how can you measure the gravity of an event without looking at the people who are directly affected by it?

The sense of isolation will be read in the diaries of lots of little girls who hide their locked journals beneath their beds, who tell their stories about online homework and skyped music lessons and no more trips to see friends. It’ll be conveyed by artists who paint from the window of their kitchen. But is there only so much words and pictures can convey, before people start projecting their own opinions and assigning their own meanings onto them? Like if I was to draw a picture from the windowsill in my bedroom and it was to be studied by students in years to come, they might argue my sketch of the overflowing recycling bins out the back is a metaphor for my own thoughts and ideas spilling out of my head. Or that the big tree that is beginning to blossom is symbolic of the dawn of a new Corona-underpinned normal.

But it is hardly that deep and romanticised. I’m trapped in a box. I can’t decide if I want to listen to Coldplay or Chris Stapleton. I don’t know if I want a stir fry or cereal for tea. Sure, projecting your own metaphors might add some exciting and ‘meaningful’ dimension to this experience, but really, the experience is arguably one to be felt, not one to be read.

That being said, the view from my bedroom window hasn’t changed. I doubt any artist’s landscape has changed either. And the little girl’s bedroom in which her diary hides probably looks the exact same too. Yet the world feels different. It’s like a parallel universe, this Corona bubble. The world around us is extremely familiar but, at the same time, it is completely different and we have no references to look to for guidance. Everything looks the same as before, minus our freedom and a good portion of the behaviours that are familiar to us: hugging, kissing, talking to each other in close proximity. The view from my balcony is the same but it isn’t, in the weirdest way. It’s all rather ‘Black Mirror.’

So yeah, Day 21 has given me a lot to mull over. A whole lot of nothing, more like. Hope you’re all keeping well; like I said, I'm ok though I've tested positive for missing me pal$ xoxox jk I hate you all and I pretend to like you by speaking to most of you at least once a day J  >>>> "hey what you doing?" ::: "staying in wbu" <<<<

PS: the insta story 'would you rather...' polls are getting extremely popular and all is getting a wee bit rowdy and excited in the DMs. Shall I continue? After all I'm just a girl, standing in front of her laptop, trying to entertain the masses (if u don't get the film reference, look it up and watch it; it's not as though you don't have time!) xoxo 

All the love xoxo

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Sleep Stuff

Sunday, 5 April 2020

Sleep Stuff

Hey hey! Hope we’re all doing good J


I thought I’d venture away from my Quarantine Diaries today. I wanted to chat about something a bit different. Now's probably a good time to warn people who are sensitive to content involving nightmares, sleep paralysis, sleep disorders etc to skip this post. It's not graphic or anything; you should be alright, I just want to pre-warn!


I’ve always had extremely active and realistic dreams: kind of amazing in the moment, kind of disappointing when you wake up and you a) aren’t in Boston or b) haven’t got millions in your bank account like your dream suggested. Lol.


But, in that same vein, I’ve also always suffered with really bad nightmares since childhood. Call it what you will – an overactive imagination, too much television before bed, whatever – but, especially in periods of stress and worry, my dreams would darken with demonic clouds and horrifying circumstances which felt all too real. I would (and sometimes still do) wake up frozen, stiff with fear.


As a child, particularly between the age of 8 and 10, I would wake up crying and thrashing about like a possessed demon because of the terrors that would fill my dreams. My dad says the first time he recalls it ever happening, he sprinted into my bedroom with a lead pipe thinking I was being attacked by some intruder, only to find lil’ ol’ me with my open eyes dead in deep sleep and a primeval scream filling the room. It took him nearly ten minutes to wake me up.


Night terrors plagued the better part of my childhood. Weirdly, I could never recall what my dreams were about if anyone asked me. Yet, I could never shake off the icy fear that zipped through my body each and every time I woke up from one. I would be exhausted from it, like I hadn’t got any sleep at all.


It all seemed to stop in my teenage years, though. I thought I ‘grew out of it,’ in the same way you do with many childhood fears and phobias. You know the sort – fears of the dark, refusing to eat broccoli, ignoring demons plaguing your dreams, blah blah blah.


And then I was hit with a jarring level up in my second year of university. Completely random and out of the blue, sleep paralysis hit me like a ton of bricks and, quite literally, I guess, floored me. I had no idea what it was at the time. I just remember feeling awake but completely incapable of moving. Each time I would try to wake my body up, it just sank deeper and deeper into the mattress, like someone was pressing a weight down against my chest. All my senses were heightened but, at the same time, I felt completely incapable of doing anything. The first time it occurred, I don’t know what I did to get myself out of it. All I remember is waking up feeling the same way I used to after my night terrors as a child – icy cold with fear and exhausted, like I hadn’t slept at all.


It went on for a couple of months; not every night, but at least a few times a week. At first, I was completely baffled. I was nineteen and still getting nightmares? I would roll my eyes in exasperation and put it down to stress or whatever. But then it would happen again. And again. And again. One night it was so terrifying, and I was so short on breath, I genuinely thought I was going to die and woke up with my mouth wide open in a silent scream. I couldn’t get over the level of helplessness I felt in the midst of these dreams. You’re completely out of control in your own head, in your own space. Scary. I would wake up feeling like I’d been beaten up.


When I described it to my flatmate, she immediately knew what it was. Sat on her bed in her room (I MISS U MILLIE!), I explained to her that it wasn’t even a dream. It felt far too real to be just a bad dream. These episodes felt like a struggle for my life. Sounds ridiculous and overly dramatic in the daytime, I know. But try waking up in the middle of night unable to wriggle your fingers or toes, helplessly frozen and incapable of breathing whilst some thing (this is the Old Hag Theory that’s commonly associated with sleep paralysis) sits on your chest, weighing you down. Then you’ll understand.


But as quickly as these episodes started, they stopped. I encountered another one or two maximum for the remainder of my time at uni, but they were never as intense as those over a period of two or three months in my second year.


When random episodes attacked me again back in January/February this year, I immediately (albeit internally) freaked out. I didn’t have the time and the energy to trawl through all that shit again. So, I did what any person my age does: I consulted Dr Google.


First stop (as always): Wikipedia. Spot-on definition (like I said, as always). According to the website, sleep paralysis “is a transitional state between wakefulness and sleep characterized by muscle atonia (muscle weakness). It is often accompanied by terrifying hallucinations (such as an intruder in the room) to which one is unable to react due to paralysis and physical experiences (such as strong current running through the upper body).” I can’t describe it much better than that on a basic scientific level. I’ll let Wiki lead on that one.


After searching the internet for the meaning behind sleep paralysis, I came across some images. As I began to mindlessly scroll through them, I came across an image of a weird animal hovering over a terrified-looking person who looked as though they were struggling to wake up. I raised my eyebrow a bit; that picture encompassed a feeling I knew all too intimately.

I’ve learned to stay as calm as possible during these episodes. I have to remind myself that they aren’t real and that they will always pass. You just have to run with it.


The one back in February was the last episode I had. I put it down to a number of things going on at the time and I truly think it was a result of these because I haven’t had one since. Not to jinx things and speak too soon and all that, obviously. Sometimes these things spring up when we least expect them!


But I think reading up on these kinds of things helps. At least, it does for me. I can remind myself I’m not just a twat who imagines these things; they’re real and they’re scary and it’s ok to be a bit frightened of them. But reading about these episodes and listening to others’ experiences has given me a bit of a toolbox I can use to, well, not necessarily combat sleep paralysis. Is cope the right word? Idk, but you get my drift (hopefully!)


Anyways, thought I’d give you a break from the self-isolative content because it’s all a bit same-old, same-old (as if it could be any other way?) And by no means am I a qualified medical professional so don’t take any word of mine as gospel (in all walks of life, really. I am a self-proclaimed mess!) Just thought it would be wise to share my insight into this whole thing.

Hope you’re all sleeping well J If not, I’d suggest reading around sleep or doing a quick google search (keep in mind that some stuff might be triggering for you if you’re sensitive to this kind of content!). Now’s the time to, I guess; we have a whole bunch of it!

Love and all that xoxo

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