everything elseLeave a comment

waiting. and then. and now.

Briar

I worked a regular forty hours last week. Then I hopped on a plane and went to Wellington and stayed up until 2:30am catching up with beautiful people. I left their house at 7:20, walked down the hill from Brooklyn. So that I could get some early morning cold air into my lungs to wake me up. I worked from 8am till 7pm, because that’s what you do in the festival. I caught up with other beautiful people afterwards. I realised at my sister’s that night that I hadn’t told her that Virgil was sick. That he was dying. The next … Continue reading waiting. and then. and now.

musicLeave a comment

Sleater-Kinney at the Powerstation February 29th 2016

Briar

AKA the most important gig of adult life. In my teenage years, there were three bands that I ADORED at various times. The White Stripes were my first ever true musical love. I saw them at Big Day Out 2006. The Dresden Dolls were an integral part of my older teenage years. I didn’t make all of my American friends via Amanda Palmer’s management team and the Shadowbox forum just by chance. I saw Brian and Amanda play a song together in at a late-late New Years gig in New York in 2009, and then I saw an actual Dresden Dolls … Continue reading Sleater-Kinney at the Powerstation February 29th 2016

mind & insides2 Comments

The Crohn’s Saga (to date)

Briar

When I talk to people, I speak freely. I open my mouth, and words come – thoroughly rehearsed, to a point. Every time I tell my mirror about my life, it’s a slightly different rendition of the same song. This is how it goes.

In high school, I was a swot. I went to a posh school, I was a high achiever, I was a musician. I didn’t even think to be rebellious until my last year, and my rebellion was not of the extreme variety. Most of my free periods were taken up with scholarship classes, but swot that I was (am, at heart) I had far too many, and three sessions overlapped.

So on occasion, I would tell art history I was going to French, French I was going to Spanish, and Spanish I was going to art history, and spend the fifty minutes feeling guilty while scribbling rambling poems in my binder instead. I got a second piercing in one lobe. That was my acting out. Continue reading “The Crohn’s Saga (to date)”

everything elseLeave a comment

A Vigil

Briar

Someone who I hold very dear does not have much longer for this world. It’s not uncommon to feel that the worst part of a break-up isn’t losing the other person (especially when time has provided a little perspective), it’s losing touch with their family. After the initial hurt of my last big break-up had mellowed, the thing that really stuck out was how much I was missing the rest of his family, who I had spent so much time with, adventures over to Devonport on the regular to see C and V and O. My timing in going to Wellington … Continue reading A Vigil

everything elseLeave a comment

Little House Near the Dairy

Briar

Sometimes you shouldn’t go with the first pun that comes into your head, but so be it. My partner Uther and I have just moved into our own place for the first time. Exciting! It’s nice and fresh and modern, hooray! It’s also very small. It’s a studio, sort of a detached granny flat, really. But we live within these walls and nobody else does, so it’s a good time. Or it will be, once we have it set up. Small houses are a major Thing right now. So good work, self. We’re bang on trend. But small houses that … Continue reading Little House Near the Dairy

creative, everything elseLeave a comment

Salt Lick

Briar

last time all of us a smaller, self-contained, of the moment kind of all of us we sat at the water she went into the ocean her feet cautious then enraptured the elongated vowels of a toddler whose life is overwhelming/exciting/in danger pick one she’s not sure herself trying to stamp down the water as it licks her ankles swift kicks and sun hats and sandals up on the sand we watched and laughed and talked and said we’ll keep in touch Continue reading Salt Lick

musicLeave a comment

Planet Earth is blue

Briar

  One of my very closest friends in high school was – still is – the biggest David Bowie devotee I’ve ever known. I knew a little – I was already trying to broaden my musical horizons, the way that you do when you’re a teenager with deep feelings of nonconformity. But Changes gave way to Looking for Satellites and Golden Years and it heralded the start of my investigating music from the past. Apart from my parents’ Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel. Sometimes we played records, even though it was 2005. There were windows all along the lounge, and the … Continue reading Planet Earth is blue