5 Favourite Songs | March 2018

It's the end of another month, so it's time for a new collection of my favourite songs. During March I didn't really listen to as much new music - I was much busier with books, TV, etc, and as a result it's been a little bit harder to pick out songs that have gripped me massively over the past month. Towards the end of March I did start listening to a lot of stuff again, so swings and roundabouts really. I naturally have phases of focusing a lot more or a lot less on music, but still, here are the songs I've been enjoying the most in March.

1. 5 Seconds of Summer - Want You Back

This song. This is one of those songs, okay. I heard this through a Spotify advert (seriously, my music exposure relies way too much on Spotify ads lately, but damn it they just know exactly what to advertise to me), and immediately felt a wave of passion roll throughout my entire body. I don't know if it's the theme and feeling of yearning, the cool little guitar bits, or the transition from gentle piano to a perfect, hard rhythmic synth (my eternal weakness). It dips in and out of a big sound in the best way, and I'm going to listen to it again and again until I get fatigued.

Links: YouTube | Spotify

2. Howard Jones - No One Is To Blame

This is an old favourite of mine, but I've been listening to a bit of Howard Jones recently, and man, this song makes me feel so melancholic. It's such a masterful use of the poignant and pausing piano, and so perfectly encapsulates a wistful feeling, but has an oddly happy/accepting tint to it as well? I love it so much. Find me outside a chip shop at 3am howling "we want everyooooooooooooone".

Links: YouTube | Spotify

3. Stanley Brinks and The Wave Pictures - Orange Juice

This is such a chilled out guitar song that wonderfully reflects a kind of resigned, sardonic displeasure. The guitar works is very nice, and the lyrics are golden ("life doesn’t have a meaning/anything goes/you might as well be dreaming").

Links: YouTube | Spotify

4. Years & Years - Sanctify

Okay, so Depeche Mode are more or less my favourite musical artist, right? Well I just want to posit that Years & Years are in so many ways a modern Depeche Mode. The Martin Gore sensitive boy approach, a lot of elements of their sound, and oh boy, the evocation of religious imagery. That's what I love, and this song does it well. Another addition to the flawless back catalogue of achingly perfect bops that Years & Years have brought forth for me to sup like communion wine.

Links: YouTube | Spotify

5. 米津玄師 (Kenshi Yonezu) - Lemon

This is such a sweet, light song. It's soft pop/rock in style but the thing I like about it most is that it has this lovely build up and slow down. It makes nice use of a gentle piano and some clapping. The music video is also so evocative and visually pleasing, taking place in what looks like a dim church with lots of big windows making pretty shafts of light.

Links: YouTube | Spotify

♬

Having a little break in my endless quest for new music is probably a good thing, and hopefully will allow me to explore new music in some unexpected ways instead - but mostly I ended up reminiscing about 2013 Ariana Grande for a bit, before coming back to find some new music and stumbling upon a YouTube playlist of new Japanese singles. 'Baby I' somehow feels like it's deeper in my heart when I listen to it now. Thanks Ariana. See you next month for my April picks.

Changing Your Phone Wallpaper Feels Nice

It's kind of amazing how refreshed changing your phone wallpaper and lock screen can make you feel. I've just changed both of mine to pieces of art by Alexandra Levasseur (via this Tumblr post), and I feel so fresh and new. They're really inspiring, lovely paintings too, so I feel encouraged to go paint something whenever I look at my phone right now.

Now that I've changed that, I gotta clear up my apps, files, and whatnot. A digital clear out. It's as calming and pleasant as any kind of tidying up for me. It makes me feel more comfortable and satisfied in my own existence than maybe anything else. It all somehow makes me feel more solid. Maybe it's because it makes me realise momentarily that everything I surround myself with is more or less a shifting process, whereas I'm a constant reality to myself. I'm the only thing that is always in my presence, if you see what I mean.

Anyway, next time I'll change my wallpaper to a picture of Mr Blobby or something.

Loving Everyone Online

I was going to write this post and then I decided to listen to Toto IV (one of the greatest albums of all time) for a bit first, and I'm glad that chain of events occurred, because the Toto-based delay meant that I saw my awesome friend Craig's video with his awesome girlfriend and fellow incredible human Leena, which can now also be an integral part of this post about how much people I know (and don't know, and kinda know) mean to me.

Okay, so let's just dive into this huge bucket of feelings that I have prepared. I've had online friendships ebb and flow across the years, like anyone has, and I've made the most amazing friends and acquaintances through YouTube specifically - since when you make and watch videos there just seems to be this huge potential for connecting with people on a deeper level than you'd otherwise be able to. When you make videos you're putting not just your ideas and thoughts and words out there, but you're also putting your mannerisms and tics and your laugh out their. Your grimaces, the way you make your breathing noises even. Everything about the way your expression and personality connects to your body is right there and anyone can watch it. So when you meet someone else who makes videos in person, and you've watched their videos, it's like you already know them. Often with that there's this click, as if you've known each other for years. Your interests and intimate worlds have already collided by then, so everything feels right, and good, and fun. You can share David Byrne memes and Freddo references forever.

Molly Fairhurst's utterly joyful and perfect work, via this tweet.

I guess I've been feeling so thankful for these kinds of people lately, and all the people who in various ways send out a chunk of themselves to me online. Those that know it and those that don't. Like Molly, who draws horses and tigers and guitars, and whose tweets make me feel like she plucked 'em right from an alternate universe where my Spotify playlists have become sentient.

Like Dodie, who has this feel of slightly unpolished, light crumpling in her videos that resonates so much with me as a person who also sees so much value in those tiny markers of real and fleeting human individual... realness (wow, I'm very articulate - hopefully this makes some kind of sense). She has these moments in her videos that feel like mini pockets of time, captured in a jar. There's such a clarity to the magical little pieces of mundanity she keeps in them, like in this Abba cover where we hear the audio cut off after she turns off her microphone, but we still get to watch the video footage play out as she scoots over to turn her camera off too. That's why I left the comment below, because I felt so alive watching those moments. It meant something to me.

And now I gotta talk about the video Leena and Craig made. The video I'm glad I ended up seeing before I wrote this post. Because here are two people talking so candidly about each other, and their relationship, and how everything works and feels, and woah, I feel so connected to it. I love how it expresses the "muddling through" sort of nature of being a person - the fact that so much of what we know and do is subconscious or conditioned. I spent the whole time watching this internally nodding like Churchill the dog after a shot of apple Sourz, because something about this entire thing is so incredibly me. I feel like I must have somehow been retroactively born from this video, that's the level I'm on right now. It's so good, so touching, and so lovely. Watch it right here:

I've been feeling more and more like I ought to express these feelings and tell people how something had meaning to me. I think this fixation on loving and appreciating others has probably come from a few things recently. I met a YouTube friend in person the other week, for the first time and on a pretty spur of the moment basis. I went to a room of strangers and went home later carrying two boxes of leftover cake. We sat outside a train station as it started to get a bit colder. It was such a nice day. Shortly after, I also found a new YouTube channel I loved, and after I told the person behind it that, we ended up talking and formulating secret plans, sharing this creative excitement together and making cheesy jokes. And then a minor thing too - I sent a cute picture to someone who makes stuff I enjoy, and they liked it. I think that's the perfect example to end on, because it's the most miniscule thing, but it's things like that that brighten up my day and make me feel glad to be here. Having any kind of connection with someone, making someone smile, or feeling like you're just there, in someone's presence - it's all so nice.

It's all the tweets about trains I see from a guy I've met once, all the weird Garfield pictures that one person posts, all the messages about life I exchange with someone I bonded with on Tumblr through a shared love of Nobuo Uematsu. I love you all so much, those I know well, those I know a little, and those I don't know at all.

An Ode To Fairy Lights

Fairy lights are such a simple home decoration that can bring so much warmth and pleasantness to your surroundings, but I also have grown to love them on another level thanks to YouTube friends making joke after joke about them as a staple of video backgrounds. Are you even a YouTuber until you have six sets of fairy lights upon your person? As soon as you are not within three metres distance of some fairy lights you actually cease to be a YouTuber according to UK law.

I keep using them as a prop for pictures and things. They're irresistible now. How did I live without fairy lights? Who was I before? A mere unlit shadow of myself. It doesn't help that I don't have a very well lit room, so often it's really useful to use fairy lights to make up for the chasm of darkness I realistically operate in about 72% of the time. And really, adding fairy lights to an outfit can only make it better.

Speaking of outfits though, here I am wearing a perfectly cut black top (from New Look) and my velvet pleated skirt (from Tesco). Whilst there's something about recovering from all that cold weather that makes me want to wear a cute, fitted or slightly loose top that's pretty much the opposite of the bulky coat I've been cocooned in all winter, there's also my unending desire to wear really long  skirts. I'm a relatively short person, so long skirts are a little bit of a challenge for me. It's too easy for my proportions to look a bit weird in them, but this skirt sits relatively high so if I wear it with a short top it works really well.

Please take me to an empty school hall and dance gingerly with me to Africa by Toto (and before you ask, yes, I'll be wearing fairy lights while we dance).

Blue Buns

Yes, it's bunnies. Are you surprised? Were you not prepared for the bunnies? Well, they're here. Don't worry, it's fine.

They're very caring and friendly. They'll be happy to talk to you about all your interests, whether they be croissants, The B-52's, or Noel Edmonds.

They'll probably also let you borrow their jumpers, which is nice because they smell oddly cinnamon-y.

Bedroom Bliss

Here's some casual pictures of my bedroom, because I love my bedroom a lot and it makes me happy. Honestly, the toys and colours and pictures everywhere feel so right and make me feel like I'm in my own little clubhouse, scribbling continuously with several empty Freddo wrappers strewn around me and the dim sounds of Star Wars movies in the background.

I think ever-so-slightly rearranging my room is my biggest hobby. Nothing is quite as satisfying as moving an ornament 2cm to the left and feeling that everything is in exactly the right space. Should I get more dog ornaments? I should get more dog ornaments.

TV: Oh My Ghost

I started watching another Korean drama, and this one is about ghosts and restaurants. It stars Park Bo-young, who is fast becoming one of my favourite actresses, as a painfully shy girl working at a restaurant who is suddenly possessed by the boisterous, over the top ghost of a recently deceased girl who can't move on from her life.

Park Bo-young plays her role(s) with a perfect blend of coy charm, argumentativeness, and tenderness. She carries the show, and does a great job of encapsulating both characters who reside in the same body. I was a little put off at first by certain elements of the show's plot and focus concerning possession and the use of possessed bodies, but it quickly shook off those elements and dove into a densely-woven plot concerning ghostly hardships, jaunty chase sequences, and sweet moments of back story - that familiar blend of goofiness, drama, and heart that seems to flow through countless k-dramas like the scent of a freshly cooked meal.

I think the background and setting of Oh My Ghost lends a particular richness to its story that is super compelling. Food is a central theme, naturally, and is intertwined thickly with the emotions and narrative of the characters. Food connects and divides them. Food and drink are used to illustrate relationships, events, memories, and the overall universe. The title sequence even uses food and steam to introduce itself. All of this gives it a visceral homeliness for me, and connects the story and characters in this direct sensory way to me and my own relationship with food.

And you bet it makes me hungry.

Was 2013 Real?

I've been noticing time passing lately - being struck with sudden realisations that things happened a long time ago. It keeps happening, and I don't know how to feel about it. Wasn't it only just 2016? Has it really been almost a decade since I joined Tumblr? Is it okay for me to feel incredibly nostalgic for 2012/2013 One Direction?

My reaction when I realise 2013 was five years ago, and also when I gaze upon the fluffy hair of still-existing One Direction during this time (1 like equals 1 respect) /// Screenshot from One Direction's "Kiss You" video, which is so playful and somehow exemplifies an era we have utterly left in the dust.

That's how this happened in the first place. I was innocently watching some YouTube video or other, when I noticed that one of my suggested videos was One Direction's "Best Song Ever" - a song I was somewhat alarmed to realise had come out in 2013. Five years ago. Five entire years. It sort of feels like a lifetime since then, but also maybe about a year or two. Not five. Please, tell me it's not been five.

It all feels too uncanny for me. For one thing, the pop landscape is not something that allows for the kind of dorkiness that propelled One Direction into the spotlight any more. No fluffy, stripy, silly boybands. No no, only very cool, biker jacket wearing pop stars who make videos full of coloured gel lighting and stern looks. Only bitter, yet incredibly funky songs about ignoring men, are allowed in the 2018 landscape. That and Ed Sheeran and his particular brand of fiery brooding. We do not have time for fluffy laddish boybands riding double decker buses and faffing about with some knowingly cheesy green screen. It's not 2013, and it feels now as if perhaps it never was.

In 2018 we are BANNED from seeing anything that might be expected to appear in Smash Hits, such as this gloriously goofy sailor suit look, also from the "Kiss You" video. Although to be honest, I'm expecting to see a kpop group try this concept any day now.

Yep, pretty sure 2013 was a lie and I'm trapped in the matrix with Zara Larsson. Someone please bring us some sailor suits and break us out. Thanks.

More Yellow Friends

I've got some more bunnies looking a little like warm lightbulbs in a dim room at night, but also this face:

Something about that face is extremely relatable. It's wrapped in disjointed darkness, possible anxiety, or maybe a bin liner. The tentative grimace says it all.

I'm once again enjoying the earthy, streetlight look of the yellow/black/brown combination, and I love the odd sense of light and shadow going on with the cat in the picture above - the slight lack of line work gives it a really interesting depth. It reminds me a bit of the kind of gravity some of Lottie Pencheon's more textural, painterly work has. I might try doing some stuff with a more painterly approach, because most of the time I do very line-based stuff and it's always nice to go towards the shadows and do something different.

Stardew Valley: Starting Over

Sometimes you've got to start anew with something, and I have decided to start a nice new save in Stardew Valley in order to enjoy a fresh start (and buy a JojaMart membership because I'm evil and want the JojaMart achievement). I'm still going to be playing my older save alongside this one, but I thought it was time. It felt right.

One of the first things I've done is get a couple of baby chickens, and I've decided to name them after SHINee members. I've said it before and I'll say it again, there is endless fun to be had in games where you get to name stuff.

I'm actually surprised at how smooth and fast everything is going with this new start. Because I know the game inside and out now, it's taking me a lot less time to build up funds and unlock things. I know what the smartest and most profitable early moves are, and it feels great putting all those building blocks in place, harvesting my first crops, and racing down the mine as fast as possible to collect a gargantuan amount of ore.

It's quite serene in a strange way to start all over again from scratch. No-one in Pelican Town knows me, so it's like I've time-travelled, or everyone's been struck with mass amnesia. There's something so satisfying about getting to go back to the beginning. I won't waste time crafting useless items, or putting my new farm buildings in awkward places.

I also like my character's design a bit more this time around, although I went with a very similar look to my old save, but the ponytail is a bit fancier. That probably reflects my life goals quite well. I just want a cuter ponytail.

I think I'll have four hens, named after Onew, Taemin, Key, and Minho - but Jonghyun is my dog, because it's the perfect name for a boisterous, playful puppy. Now if you'll excuse me, I have an awful lot of grass to cut.

Paintings: Rust & Streetlights

I love the fuzzy, blurry look you can get by loading a paintbrush full of water and paint, and there's something very cathartic about having a big blob of paint on your paintbrush. Whenever I paint I usually paint multiple things in a session, and towards the end I get much more loose and gestural and end up making more wobbly/messy/thick/careless paintings, and a lot of the time I love these the most. I like the character of them compared with neater lines, they're representative of fun and sleepiness alike.

I used some red and yellow this time, and I love the rusty red colour I got. It reminds me of Mars. Or blood. There's a life to it. I guess every colour has some kind of image it conjures up, or some idea in our minds that it's connected to. I feel like colours all have so many stories hiding inside them based on how we see them culturally or psychologically, and it only makes me love them more.

Here's an earthy dog. I love him. I really like when colours remind me of some element of nature. The earth, brightly coloured flowers, or the deep and dark tints to the sky as night rolls in. I love the earthy, rusty red here, and the bright yellow used with it kinda reminds me of streetlights at night. That ominous yellow glow.

There's something about bus stops at night that I like. They look so perfect, surrounded by circles of yellow light. A place that exists just as a place to wait. Streetlights, bus stops, and spring blossoms in the evening.

This painting of the moon, stars, and bunny came out really nicely. This has to be one of my favourite paintings from recently. I like the white space in the ears and the points of the stars, and the yellow mixing into black in some of the lines. There's the perfect amount of smooth shape to rough line here for me. The entire bunny's head is really satisfying to look at.

I love painting so much.

Bunny Hearts

I've covered myself in paper hearts again, but there's a little bunny this time too. It's an alluring motif to me. I get to become a cartoon character with hearts physically manifesting to float around me, love emanating in blue felt tip pen form (its natural form).

I suppose when I add props to my scans like this, it's like I'm adding a visual representation of a thought - or at least, to me it sort of looks like it has some kind of narrative value, like something's happening in my head.

Of course, as we all know, what's usually happening in my head is lots of thoughts about cheesecake and large cups of tea.

The hearts do represent my thoughts about cheesecake pretty well though.

I'M HERE!

I'm still really enjoying using this red for some reason. I've been sucked in by red and I'm probably going to keep painting in this colour for a while. It's nice to settle into something like this, I guess. Just painting red things for ages. Experimentation is fun, but there's a nice serenity to doing the same thing for an extended period. You get to focus on something and explore the ins and outs of how you do that specific thing. And it can be relaxing, which is nice too.

It was kinda late at night when I painted these, so there's a little extra sleepiness mixed in. That's my natural state though, a bit sleepy.

Maybe I should try doing some more lettering in paint, because I love to paint some big, wobbly words. When you're using words all the time, it's really easy to forget how pictographic they are, how they're drawings too, and I really like how typographic illustration can bring back that sense of words as artistic shapes. It's so interesting. But, y'know, I also just love to write a word in a really wobbly way. There's something satisfying about it. Turning letters into noodles.

One thing that I love about lots of animals is how demanding and grumpy they can appear, and it's kinda funny how much this entertains me. I guess it's such a constant theme for me because it's cute and silly, but it's also pretty relatable. I, too, enjoy eating and sometimes act grumpy. That didn't really need to be explained, but I just love how we forge connections with animals that communicate so differently from us and see ourselves in them. I want to hug all of them please.