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I am literally Madonna

October 14, 2007

Honestly I am. I only haven’t started a new blog because I like the url of this one. Seriously, Scattered Postcards is an inspired name. :-)

Well, it appears that the time of year is nearly upon us. Not Christmas. Don’t talk to me about bloody Christmas. I’m sick of it already! I mean National Novel Writing Month (or ‘NaNoWriMo’, if you want to be really smart). Despite  everything that has happened to me this year, I am sooooo doing this again. I had absolute ball last year. Its all just writing material isn’t it? This time, my challange is to actually finish a story that is 50,000 words or a bit over. Even worse, I’m just going to start off with a random sentence on the 1st of November and then stick with whatever comes out. Bring it on.

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Monday Night City Blues (A Poem)

August 26, 2007

Ever evolving gemstones, hand painted in black neon.

Strobe lit raindrops falling on the cobbled streets of night, while the trumpet player cries through his saddest song and the broken hearted girl in a fading red dress drinks wine as if it was water and thinks of the man she lost her heart to.

Somewhere music spills from a club, ever changing pop rythmns, house and electro and punk, fickle as the teenage butterflies that chant the words, defeated.

It’s a city where every sound is magnified a thousand times, as I stand on the wrought iron balcony, holding on to the railing, staring down at the drinkers below me, blue cigarette smoke curling between my fingers and up to the dirty roofs, the buildings pressed so close together here they form a box, a trap for those forced to walk the night like restless cats.

A band, two doors away from me and in the same building, rehearse the night’s set, somewhere behind and about half an hour in the future, the same future where once you lay waiting, the second thread to mine in this city of shouts and guitars and laughter.

The noise of so many people talking at once it seems like a droning of bees, with only one voice among them the one I want to hear, except that you and I are both alone by choice, even though it’s the last thing we want.

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Life On Mars

August 24, 2007

No, not the song by David Bowie, or the TV series. I just thought it was a good title for this post.

This is something I came up with a while ago. Read it and then re-ask yourself (if you ever indeed asked yourself this questiion) why men have problems with commitment:

When women fall in love, their attitude is (whether they are aware of it or not) ‘Oh whoopee! I’ve finally found a man who will buy me nice things and look after me. I can give up working and have babies! Squeeee!’

On the other hand, when men fall in love (if they ever really do. God I’m so bitter and cynical!) it’s more like ‘Oh my god – I’ve got to protect this woman for the rest of my life and I can’t run around having sex with anything wearing a skirt anymore. Bollocks!’ It doesn’t exactly induce warm and fuzzy feelings, does it? I’d run a fucking mile as well.

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Darker Shade Of Pale

August 20, 2007

too many pieces to escape the darkness,
clean swept,

black ink mirror

see the light reflected in the pool, more numbers and colours than you dare to name, all the things you can’t hold in your hand, they slip right through,
they slip right through,
oil slick,

through the world,
so fast you can barely see them, and the moment that you do is the moment they are lost for ever.

black rain,
past the pale white skin of a torn fruit, grey dirt filled streaks, beautiful rain
the skin, the metal, my tears,
the rivers of grit,
this is me standing here in the rain,

water falling over my face,

the place I hide, as I look up at the heavy purple skies,
melting me whole with their shards of of glass.

can’t you feel it pressing down?

the years that have been, and the years yet to come, the sadness and the pain that lingers,

a waiting shadow, biding it’s time til the moment when it all comes crashing down,

the moments we live for,

as the rain keeps on falling.

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My Creative Licence

August 19, 2007

Life is just too damn short to not be egocentric. That’s it. That’s all I have to say. The only way to be completely original and groundbreaking is to be completely yourself, all the time. I suppose that includes the endless lying on my bed watching Peep Show DVD’s and reading like a fury because I’m so flipping scared of doing any writing in case I turn out to not be as good at it as I thought I was. I’m not that good at writing. I could be, but I don’t do enough to improve, and every day that I don’t write, I get worse.

Henry has posted a lovely comment on this site (just a baby and it already has so many friends!) saying that, just by writing a blog, I was writing. It’s like a lot of things I’ve read but never taken a lot of notice of – it doesn’t matter if you write shit, as long as you keep writing. Even this, even a diary in a scrubby notebook is something. This is the only thing I was ever really good at. I love acting, but I’m not really that good at it. For me, it’s more the kick that I get out of being on a stage in front of people. I just like to be admired and told how wonderful I am. All the world’s a stage! (Shakey! You’re out of copyright now, so I can use whatever the hell I like.) I’m going to be totally honest with you – I’m slightly drunk. And it’s Monday tomorrow.

But hey! Look at me! I’m writing again! I’m so happy.

(Um, does anyone know how to change the size of the type in WordPress? I know it can be done, I just don’t know how…)

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Urgh!

August 19, 2007

Dear sweet lord, I am bored today. All I have done all day is eat grapes, drink Kronenbourg, listen to Greenday and fiddle around on the intranet. I know I should be writing but I can’t be bothered.

The thing is that I owe some writing to a forum, but I don;t feel like writing it, and I feel guilty trying to write anything else. It’s a vicoius circle. I’m trapped between a rock and a hard place, desperately trying to pick between the fire and the frying pan (and other assorted clliches).

Balls.

I also think ‘balls’ might be my new favourite phrase, along with ‘Damn it all to pus-spewing, blood-splattered hell’. That too.

So, yes, I’m going to fuck about with my blog for a bit, because I can;t bring myself to do any writing. Sue me.

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Story of my life…

August 18, 2007

How you uh, how you comin’ on that novel you’re working on? Huh? Gotta a big, uh, big stack of papers there? Gotta, gotta nice litte story you’re working on there? Your big novel you’ve been working on for 3 years? Huh? Gotta, gotta compelling protaganist? Yeah? Gotta obstacle for him to overcome? Huh? Gotta story brewing there? Working on, working on that for quite some time? Huh? (voice getting higher pitched) Yea, talking about that 3 years ago. Been working on that the whole time? Nice little narrative? Beginning, middle, and end? Some friends become enemies, some enemies become friends? At the end your main character is richer from the experience? Yeah? Yeah? (voice returns to normal) No, no, you deserve some time off.

 

 

 

 

Thanks, Stewie. The above quote is possibly the only thirty seconds of Family Guy that I hate. I can’t help having the motivation of a dead slug. It’s just the way I am. Poems and stories are pending. My head is so bonged up at the moment and I don’t have time. I’m sorry. I’m hoping to sort myself out. If I don’t do it by the end of the year I probably won’t so I’m going to have to try.

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A Camera Picture Of The Coast

August 3, 2007

Mixed mediums,
broken fragments,
fragmented hybrids of an established art form,
tiny blind and hairless creatures, unable to touch or think or breathe, struggling to move among the sea of thier fellow impoverished artists
Mindless drunk one night, no longer caring, no longer wanting to care, can’t take any more pain, they bring into the world these half beasts of beauty and nightmare, an assault on all the senses

a story to be written in song,
a song to be seen never heard,
a painting for the sense of touch alone,
a novel read in rhythm – the intricate melody of repeating phrases

Another song on the Ipod, words and noise to bring you out of the dried dead heat of the commuting bus, hot as hell, windows tight shut as though the fresh air could kill the honest hard working folk this time of the morning

Another story just been read, sounds in neon, beats in grey, swirling together, mating, moving on the sea and breaking out in motion
A desperate fumble behind the train station, Thursday morning, one a.m., with ears still pulsing with the noise from the speakers, not wanting to let go of this moment, for the knowledge that it can never last

The public won’t stop drinking, they sway in time to the spoken words, mixed, hands open and stary eyed, swinging from the barriers, screaming out the poets name, their own voices mingling with his as they surge forward, crushing, willing to die just to feel the touch of his hand

The children sit quietly in bus stops, hearing their own lives through the throbbing basslines, crying out at the raw power, the feeling it stirs up inside them like a restless rush of air shifting leaves, its noise, its endless ceaseless poetry becomes a wall between them and the rest of the world

a song that no one can hear,
the colours and textures and marks on our faces,
instruments and changes of voice,
structure as melody,
grammer the background noise, a static,
the plot becomes lyrics, optional