Dream rambling.

Last night I had a dream, vivid and chaotic. One of those dreams that keep you in a constant state of consciousness because of their physicality. Every so often I would feel the tension of muscles, the contracting of skin or the heat radiating from my limbs. It would jog me into some kind of dogged awakening, then I would fall back into it and return interrupted. I had a man by my side.  I was constantly aware of his presence, the gentle brushes against my skin and the rhythms of his breathing.

I dreamt I was a witch, all olive skin and tangles of dark hair. The inside of my mouth was a vivid scarlet, eyes the same green as the leaves of an oak. I scratched my name into the bark of a tree trunk, marked through with a cross and a misshapen heart. The initials of a lover, sealed and delivered like old magic. I heard him whispering my name, the wind carrying it through. I followed the sound of his voice and pad softly with bare feet on thorns and stumps.  My body is much like it is in real life, fluid curves and rippled surfaces, but it feels stronger. It is wrapped in an ancient nightgown, discoloured lace and frayed edges. My lover is a thousand leagues under the sea. His body is dust and sand, sullying the water. His voice now a crackle from a radio, travelling like the gentle beep of sonar through the waves. He speaks in riddles, he talks of spiders, he hides his charms.

I am at the edge of the ocean, I am holding a coin in one hand and a bunch of sweet williams in the other. My lover asks me to join him, I can see his reflection in the surf, amongst the jetsam and dirty foam. The water cold around my ankles, nightgown disintegrating, a swell of small fish upon my calves, they pull me under. I will drown in you, as I have always done with others before you, it will leave me cold and sodden and I will still forgive you love.

Hello

I went to Africa......

An incredible start to 2012. If you'd told me at this point last year that I would have the opportunity (and the guts) to do something like this I would literally have had you sectioned. But I did it, and I'm trying to utilise the feelings that it's left me with to the best of my ability. 

I really wish I had written this....

I've been posting and sharing on forums and livejournal groups since I was an angsty teenager, you know, before I became an angsty twentysomething. Amazingly it has been really helpful to go back to those places in the last couple of years and find a way of talking about things that I can't talk about as comfortably in reality. Try and coax how I'm really feeling out of me on a one to one basis, looking me straight in the eye, and you'll most likely get one of a number of well thought out sentences designed to steer you ever so slightly from the truth. Place a computer screen and a few thousand miles distance between us and I will bare you my soul. What a generation we have become. Anyway, somebody wrote this today, as a general train of thought about the beauty debate. It's just lovely, and I wanted to share it....

"I remember a conversation I had with my mother. She announced her thoughts that my tangled hair and unshaven legs were unsightly mechanisms behind which I hid the "real beauty" that I could possess, but that I didn't think I "deserved". She contended that my legs and my hair were relics of my inability to recover a sense of self-worth after years of childhood bullying. She insisted that by shirking my potential for (a very particular) beauty, I was permitting the bullies of my childhood to parasitize my current life. Her words devastated me. I felt like they trivialized a hard-won part of my identity. She had co-opted a necessary part of my survivorship and dressed it up as failure. And she was partially correct. There was a long, long time in my life when I didn't think I was good enough- for any kind of beauty, or for much else. I did everything I could conceive of to blend in, to become invisible. I worked desperately to mask, compensate, and apologize for the ways in which I thought I was dissimilar to my classmates. As I grew older, I realized that I would never be able to shave away, brush away, scrub away, give away enough pieces of myself to move stealthily through dangerous waters. Piece by piece, I began to collect all that I'd surrendered.
I knew that being invisible would never be enough to keep anyone safe from the systems that are in place to assimilate or destroy their differences, so I began to resist systems that reward people for homologizing themselves. I started to make space for myself in all the places I stood. I came to conceptualize the ways in which I dismantled oppressive systems-- like my feral hair and boyish grooming-- as a kind of triage that made the world safer for me to be in. I wanted myself to be safer, but I wanted others to be safer, too. Because my body was all I had to throw at the machinery, my body is what I used. It was wounding to hear my mother talk about my tangles and boyishness as if they were symptoms of shame, rather than as badges of honor. The ways in which I navigate through the world, and the body that I do it in, are not accessories of damage, or gimmicks of concealment. They are the evidence of my refusal to be concealed."

It puts to rest the feelings that I've been having about my skin being some kind of karma, like all the bad things I've ever said and done are somehow coming to the surface of me. Ultimately it's still my skin, it's still a piece of me and I have a choice about the way it makes me feel. The above writing also makes me incredibly proud and grateful for my mother. For being so unconditionally supportive and loving. For never demanding anything of me other than the pursuit of happiness....

Hey, give me back my perspective please....

So yes, of course it's vital to be in the midst of everything and see the positive, the moment of calm serenity in the eye of the storm. However, it makes you wonder if you'll look back and think 'no, actually, that was all just a bit shit wasn't it'? This applies to teenage years, which whilst full of angst and turmoil are constantly fed to us as a minor blip on the otherwise steady path to adulthood. That's rubbish though, take a look back, it was horrible, full of strange hormones and traumas that made you feel like the world was crashing down around you. I think for a lot of people your experiences in those formative years shape the type of adult you become. It makes me wonder whether it would be better to have the acne out of the way during that time, or whether I'm more capable of dealing with it now. It feels a bit more unfair that I should have to face it now, that it wasn't just over and done with along with all the other toxic mess. I'm also expected to be much more grown up about it, rather than having the full on temper tantrum I feel like having when I look in the mirror. I think that amongst all the realisations about inner self-worth and not heeding to pressure, I'm still just a young woman who has to wake up every morning and see this.

The doctor is pretty sure it's at a stage where it'll permanently scar, olive skin type is the worst. It's hard not to be trouble by the fact this could be avoided more if there wasn't a 6 week wait for dermatologist referrals on the NHS, by the time we even begin the Roaccutane it'll be too late to stop the permanent pock marks. I'm trying not to get angry about it, I'm sure that doctors have enough on their hands, this is mostly aesthetic, I have to remember that. But to think I wasted so many years feeling ugly, complaining about the odd spot or blemish.....

I want to go back and shake the living daylights out of the 19 year old me and tell her to appreciate what she has. I never knew what the word 'ugly' really meant until now.

I'm not sure this is a good idea....

.....But I think it's important that I do this, so that when I stumble upon it in a few months I'll remember the things that I realised about myself.

It's been an odd winter, that much can be read within the paragraphs of over analytical, seasonally affected ramblings I've been trawling through on this blog. I only really ever post here with the strong knowledge that nobody reads it other than a few close comrades, somehow that makes it easier to voice things that would otherwise stay internal (or certainly off the internet). I've been struggling with some medical issues, as anyone who's seen me in real life and has functioning eyesight will vouch for. A few years ago I started having minor problems with my skin, having got through the delights of adolescence fairly acne free I was pretty annoyed that my hormones decided to come back and bite me at the age of 20. However, with some potions and lotions and a little help from the NHS it's mostly been fine. The attitude I take towards my health is governed by the phrase 'it could be worse!'. In hindsight I should have touched some wood or rubbed a lucky charm upon exclaiming this........because it has got worse. My prescribed potions stopped working at the beginning of the winter, then I think due to being run down and unhappy it became infected, then it seems that I'm unable to respond to antibiotics. Skip to the end.

I've told myself many things; it's not cancer, everybody's too busy worrying about their own crap to care how you look, it won't be forever. But it's amazing how something so trivial can literally affect everything you do. I find it hard to be at work because I know how I must appear to colleagues and customers, I wouldn't want to have to look at me all day that's for sure. It weeps, it bleeds. It wakes me up at night, partly because it hurts, also because I have overly dramatic dreams where I wake up and it's gone. So I wake up, and it's not gone. A lot of the time I don't want to socialise, I certainly don't want to see anybody I've been in any way romantically involved with (or considered the possibility of being). Getting up on a stage, or under a bright light to perform music has been very hard, I feel that little bit more exposed. I've stopped going swimming, which I love, because I got a few audible comments, and a couple of mutters;

"I hope it's not infectious, I wouldn't want to catch that".

Amongst all this there has been some revelations, things that are important that I keep with me, lessons that need to be remembered. Because you know what? It really and truly doesn't matter what you look like to most people, and even when you feel it does you can still keep a smile on your face and look them right in the eyes. It's only when you look your worst that you learn how to lose your vanity. I never thought of myself as beautiful but I was more pre-occupied with my appearance than I should have been, once you lose the option of looking and feeling pretty it stops mattering. I'm going to feel great once it starts clearing up, which I'm confident it will as my hardcore hospital treatments kick in (3-6 months maybe....I'm learning patience too) but ultimately I'm glad it's happened. It's taken feeling right down low about myself to allow me to feel the best about myself.

Had a heated discussion with my sister about getting a tattoo, I've been trying to complete a design for a half sleeve for about 4 years now. I just discovered Thomas Hooper's work, which I adore. If only I had the plane fare to New York....

Anyway; "Well, I think if you're doing it for reasons other than aesthetics, the design has purpose and you've really thought about it then you're always going to be happy with it, no matter how your body changes. If there's one thing I've learnt recently it's that people can find anything to judge you on; look at her skin, aren't her arms flabby, that tattoo looks awful. It genuinely means nothing, it's a fleeting moment, it's you who has to stand in front of a mirror and see yourself for the rest of your life. People mark and scar themselves because they aren't comfortable with who they are, I love the idea that you might mark or scar yourself because you are completely comfortable with who you are. That's the biggest draw for me."

In response to her telling me that she worries a lot about the way she looks, especially as she gets older. This made me sad, she really is beautiful;

"Why worry though? If you really look at yourself you'll see you're totally beautiful, even the bits that make you feel like you're not. Other people can influence it but ultimately it's all about you. It affects the way you see people. Like I don't look at mum and see the negatives of age or think she should lose a few pounds, I see the lovely laughter lines around her eyes and how the way she holds herself shows how open she is with everyone. I'm not saying I'm never going to get down about myself, or wish I looked like someone else. However I am going to make a real effort to see my external self as the result of a life lived, experience had and choices made."

Over and Out

Hogmanay

I would desperately like to be able to say how much better everything feels. How revived I am at the prospect of a new year. Unfortunately I absolutely loathe new years with all it's little reminders of how fast life goes by and how much of that life we spend wishing we were living somebody else's. No, I'm sorry but January can really fuck off. February, however, will bring contemplation and a feeling of impending productivity. By March I will be full of the joys of the coming spring and all it's wondrous hope.

There are exciting things coming up for this year. The EP recording is finally scheduled for the first week in February. In the mean time I'm trying to start writing again, or at least trying to get some ideas, it's like attempting to unblock a particularly stubborn drain. There's some deadlines, I want a new set of songs to start performing once the EP is finished, so I can properly lay to rest the old stuff. I also have a song to write for the Barefeet Records compilation which will be out in April (http://barefeetrecordsmusic.bigcartel.com/). After all this I'm planning on taking a hiatus in the late spring and going to visit my father in southern Spain. He's renovating an old house out there at the moment and I'm offering my (very limited) skills in return for bed and board. We have an odd way of avoiding being with one another for long periods of time due to being overly similar and prone to driving each other insane. I'm not sure that spending a few weeks working together in an old house is the best way of confronting this.

I'm hoping 2011 will be much like 2010 but with more of the good stuff and less of the bad stuff.

So far I seem to be spending much of it alone, I'm never comfortable imposing myself on others when I'm in such a funk. But, as a very wise and gentle man wrote to me, it isn't winter forever.....

Electric heaters and multiple layers.

I haven't written anything for a while, not online, or in a book, or as a lyric. Starting to get that sinking feeling I get around this time of year where I feel like an impostor, some court jester doing a constant impersonation of myself. People tell you they write songs, diaries or journals for themselves, to hold memories, isn't there always an element of seeking approval? Can you ever really write honestly about yourself if there's a constant feeling that you're trying to portray something, that you want the reader or listener to think of you in a certain way. It makes me terrified of ever uttering a word again, for fear that all I am is the perception I want people to have of me. I'd like to convince myself that there is an essence to who we are. That, despite adapting to others and surroundings, we have a core to us that is strong and true. I desperately want to believe that when stripped of my relationships and interactions, I can still be truly myself.

I think I need to hole up somewhere remote for the winter, possibly every year for the rest of my life. Just to stop me spouting crap like this........

Here's to you, you delicious broad.

The view from the first jetty at Whitlingham.

From this spot I have;

considered letting icy waters fill my lungs

swam with the ducks and lovers

drunk from a solid silver hip flask

shed clothing and skin

celebrated birthdays

chain smoked

formed bonds.

Spring forwards, Fall back.

I've been going through piles of old photographs. Me and my school friends are meeting up for a reunion of sorts, a celebration of 15 years of being friends, and I wanted to find some pictures of us to take along. In the process of this I've found some beautiful things. The photo here for instance, I'm obsessed with it, which is odd as it was taken 10 years before I was born and I have no relationship to either of the people in it. The girl is called Kitty, she was at school with my mother. A few years ago my mum spent a summer looking for her old school friends, they all found each other, except for Kitty. Every photo my parents have of her makes me shiver, I don't know if it's her beauty, or the mystery, the made up stories of what might have become of her that pop into my head. She's like some mythical, ethereal creature. The man in the photograph is called Bruce, he lived with my parents for a while in the late 1970's. He died in a motorbike accident not long after this was taken, my dad has vividly recalled to me many times the knocking on the door, the stern police officer, having to phone Bruce's mother. I'm not sure why I'm writing about this, I think that seeing photos like this make me think about being young and uncertain, then looking back and seeing the fragility of it all.

I'm so acutely aware of time passing, and I wonder how it feels to have this huge expanse of life behind you. My mum's birthday was Tuesday, and today I found this photo of her, she would have been about 15. She was so beautiful, she still is........

I was woken up today by somebody talking sharply on the radio, which made me realise I must have left it on all night, which would explain why my dreams felt a bit like a series of Radio 4 dramas, there was one where I was playing support for Lou Reed but I won't get into that now. After switching it over to my iTunes and trying to get back to sleep, I found myself caught out by the shuffle button. This often happens, because I am a nostalgic fool and so much of the music I love reminds me specifically of a time and place. Today it was demos sent to me by somebody I was desperately trying to be involved with, both romantically and musically. Neither of these things worked out, and I was undeniably very upset about it all. So despite being all fine and settled now, I will never be able to hear his voice singing without feeling like someone is emotionally punching me in the stomach all over again. I think that's what being heartbroken feels like, a good, solid smack in the abdomen. I was talking with my good friend about this the other day, as people who hoard things, both relics and memories. It made me wonder if people like us can ever really have a hope of moving on, considering that a letter, photograph or a song will put us straight back into the midst of it all. However, everyone does this to some degree, no? It's the same with writing a song about something hard and painful, which is what so many songs are about, as performing will always make you think of that something. There's no conclusion to all of this, because there's nothing that I or anybody else can really do about their character. If I wasn't like this, I wouldn't write music, or have boxes full of old love letters, or songs sung by past lovers on my iTunes.

In less rambling news I'm gigging a fair bit over the next couple of months, I try to keep the myspace updated with a list of them. There's a particular exciting one involving Rob Young.....

over and out.

we swam.

With the warmth of a summer.

With the moorish eyed inhabitants of a cold broad.

With a clear water that clouded senses.

limbo.

It's been a while since I felt like I had anything to say. No matter how many people tell you that graduating c

auses some kind of slump in both creativity and general motivation, it still hits you like a punch in the abdomen. It becomes apparent that to successfully survive the process of finishing a degree, you need to be the type of person who goes on to grab hold of what they want, before the stale feeling sets in. I'm not like that, lots of people I know aren't like that, in fact I'm bewilder

ed by people who know what it is they want to be doing with their lives. So with this in mind I think I have to have the confidence to try things, and hope that I find something that will make me (and maybe some other human beings) happy. On the subject of happiness, things are ok. A lack of student loan forced me to move into the spare room at my parent's flat, which sounds shoddy but is made better by the fact it looks like this....

Yesterday I went to see the sea, and some clever trees. Blackberries were picked, jam shall be made. I woke up with a cold, but it could have been the cider.

Last week I wrote a letter to my friend Dan, then I finished a song I've been working on since I got back from the Green Man festival. It's written from the perspective of an old woman who was once the lover of the green man, it's a bit like she's looking out at the beauty of her surroundings and trying to invite him in once again to reminisce about their lives and loves. It sound a bit ridiculous, I think I was just trying to imagine being old and how I'd like

to end my days somewhere beautiful, looking back at the things that matter.

it lives....

....www.millyhirst.co.uk

Degree show up, a bottle of wine drunk, frogs jumping in my pond, Joanna Newsom on my stereo.....this is the life.

I can be fairly sure...

...that I won't ever feel this tired again, at least I hope not. People tell you the end of degrees are stressful, particularly creative degrees as there's an exhibition to go up on top of your other work load. You smile and agree, and say how awfully time consuming it must be whilst secretly berating them for being an ungrateful, lazy student. Well turns out they were right....they were all so very right. I've been locked in a dark space listening to Atlas Sounds and inhaling paint fumes for two days, and by night time I am trying to pull together a website (with some extraordinary Flash skills from my housemate). Things are going to come together, they have to come together, and then I will sleep and drink in whichever order I can muster. I will stop moaning now, here's something happy;

A man with amazing hair who is the lead singer of Endless Boogie, who I saw at ATP festival last weekend, thoroughly marvelous all round..

The panic has officially set in..

...or it could just be jitters from the amount of caffeine I'm consuming at the moment. I went to check out my space for the degree show again today, after being up nearly all night writing lists of pro's and con's for Plasma screens vs Projectors. The space looks good, a lick of black paint and some cleaning and it will really start to come together. Projector won the death match (not to imply that I ceremoniously had the plasma screen killed....although that does sound tempting) so I've been positioning it for the last two hours and testing film footage. I have so much to do before next Friday, I don't even want to think about it. This week I've been working on digitally editing some of the photos of the dust collection to put them in the show, I kind of want them to look like photograms but less, 'clean', I think? Here's a couple..

Heading to ATP on Friday, which is going to be incredible as long as I am sorted enough to not be in a state of mental hysteria all weekend.

We've got to get out of this place.

We took an 'unchartered voyage' out of the city to give Hester a hand with her latest performance art piece, which was incredible by the way. You can find out what Hester does here....
http://www.hesterdraycott.co.uk/ and keep an eye out for any performances coming up, they are an amazing experience.

The space that was used for the performance was also really interesting, a concrete bridge with traffic streaming over head and all this beautiful scenery right next to it.Aside from all the art malarky, it was good to get some fresh air. I walked along the river bank as far as it would take me and relished half an hour of simplicity; no degree show planning, no frantic editing, just me and a river and some cold spring sunshine.

More projected dust.

Our country may not always be governed in the way that we would like it to be. We might have never felt as under represented as we do now. We might not even agree with all of the fundamental morals and policies of any one party but we are lucky to have the democracy we do, and we have a responsibilty to allow our voices to be heard.....however insignificant you think that voice is. So go vote, and vote wisely.

New website ideas..

The ever elusive website, which I'm trying to create to encapsulate the project, is nearly on it's way. Sincerely hoping to have it up and running by the weekend. You will be able to check it out at www.millyhirst.co.uk....

In the mean time I'm still finding it hard to choose a layout, I never was much cop at fancy design. Also stumped with decisions for the degree show, include dust samples and documentation? Show film on plasma, projector, iMac...? Brain...failing..........