Friday 14 September 2012

Becoming Feral


Waterwynch has my heart. It is a small beach down the road from my house, you have to do a little off road navigation to get there so it's often empty. I love having it to myself.
Something about it remedies me. The sound of the small waves falling onto the pebbles on a high tide like tonight is just delicious - the crinkling and shuffling of all the stones being jangled around by the water's undercurrent, sucking back with the pull of the moon.

When the tide is out I usually walk to the cave on the right, it's tucked into this tiny bay, snuggled up to the cliffs. I love how the sea looks from inside the cave; the mouth of it opening out onto the powerful light of the water. I like to climb here too. Nothing too ambitious, I just like moving up high and scaling the edges of my favourite place, seeing it from every possible angle.

Tonight it is a light evening. The sun is low, creating a syrupy blanket of soft light on the water and cliffs. The waves are kissing the pebbles right up close to the stone path that leads back up to reality. My body absorbs the views and sounds and textures as much as it can, they settle something inside me.

Whilst I am here I can think.
I don't come here very often any more. Mostly because it feels like a sacred place to me. I rarely bring people here. I'm protective of it. Like it is a part of me. Like if someone comes here the sea will whisper my secrets back with each lulling of the waves. It feels personal here, intimate.

I usually come to Waterwynch when I'm feeling a little low. Today I'm feeling a little lost. The months following the end of university have been fun, I've worked hard at a job I adore. But there has been something else. An underlying itch, a niggle, an undercurrent. It's asking "what next?".

Other people are asking that too. My parents, my grandparents, my friends, and I suppose I have been as well.

But I just don't know the answer. I don't want to go to a job that I don't have a passion for and end up turning grey inside. I don't want the money and the pencil skirts and that sinking feeling when my alarm goes off every morning.
I want to explore, to see the world. I want to explore my abilities as a writer, decide what it is exactly that I want to do, I want to get to know new friends, see new opportunities and paths. And I don't want to jump into something just because it is what people would want or what is expected of me.

If I'm completely honest with myself I know what's keeping me here in a tiny town with little job opportunities, gossip and extortionate drink prices. It's the sea.  I want to be in it. All of the time; preferably on a board but happily just swimming.
It's gotten so under my skin this year. I ache when I'm away from it, it frustrates me if  I can't get to it and it has started to bother me when there aren't waves.

And I know I can't flounce around being romantic about the sea forever, getting more and more feral as my money runs out, but I want that for now (not the feral part). I will be a responsible young adult and make big decisions and pay council tax one day, but I have the rest of my life to be a grown up. So I am going to enjoy being excited about nature for a while. It could be a lot worse. I could be into hard drugs and dangerous men.

And at graduation when everyone is talking about internships and jobs and their new lives I will be proud of my pals and their achievments, knowing I will one day have mine.

That's all for now,
Jojo xxx

Sunday 2 September 2012

The Sound of Music

My lovely pal and the very talented Grace Dean



Music surrounds us, it can swallow us and mangle our heads. It can persuade us or depress us, uplift us and understand us. Sometimes you'll listen to a song and think that it just must have been written for you at that time in your life. It feels like a sign that your feelings are justified. The truth is that most music is about feelings that we will all experience at some point.

For most of us its okay to listen to the words in amongst the instruments, but hard to face them in silence.

There's something very special about sitting in a dark room with some music on.I often find it hard to identify the feeling I'm experiencing. It can make you feel desperate, like you want to tie something down inside you. Like every fibre of your being is drawn to the sound in the dark, like iron filings to a magnet. 

Music has got to have been around since the beginning of time. It's absolutely human instinct to make noise and beat and tune with things. That's pretty cool to me. 

There are some artists that you will love but your friends don't really identify with. And vice versa. I don't know what it is that attracts us to particular music. Maybe it's like we all have our own music personalities, maybe its intrinsic, maybe it depends on who we are and what we've done and the types of feelings we are prone to. 

So here is a list of my favourite artists this year. You will probably notice a similarity in them as I think I'm an acoustic girl at heart. You might well not warm to them at all. But I would like to give them credit for being the soundtrack to my year.


     ARTIST
1) Daughter - Tracks: Peter, Candles, Landfill, Medicine, Youth, Love.
2) Trevor Hall - Te Amo, Where's the Love, Love Song, Other Ways, Lime Tree, Brand New Day. 
3) Matt Corby - Big Eyes, Breathe, Winter, Brother, Souls a Fire.
4) Alt-J - Matilda, Fitzpleasure, Breeze Blocks, Tessalate.
5) LP - Into the Wild, Levitator, Only Good With You, Tokyo Sunrise.
6) The Bronze Medal - Milk, Autumn.
7) The Naked and Famous - Young Blood, Punching in a Dream, No Way.
8) Walk Off The Earth - Corner of Queens, Broke, Love Sponge (Buju Banton cover)
9) Pretty Lights - The whole album, "Taking Up Your Precious Time".
10) Angus and Julia Stone - All of Me, Mango Tree, Babylon, Paper Aeroplane.

As I said, they might not tickle your fancy but they tickle mine. Music has a way of attaching itself to you and getting to the very core of you. These guys, especially Trevor Hall, did just that this year. 

I think the important thing is that if you love music to surround yourself in it. It's good for your soul. It magnifies your emotions. And yes, it might make you a little dramatic on times (I can't be the only one who has flung myself around my room pretending to be in a music video) but everyone needs a little drama in their life sometimes, and better it be in the form of music than your mum shagging your boyfriend. 

That's all for now
Jojo xxxx

I'll leave you with a classic.