‘2008’ Category Archives
Nov
On the homestretch
by Kaia in 2008
While we are talking writing I’m going to share my latest playlist. because I have found that putting on headphones and turn the music up is the best way to get the words flowing. I have also found that I write faster to fast music – so I have ditched almost all the slower songs I always use.
Alkoholen // Doktor Kosmos
Army of Me // Björk
Astronaut // Amanda Palmer
Black Tongue // The Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Bleed Like Me // Garbage
Bomb // Bush
Camp Out // An Horse
Coin-operated Boy // The Dresden Dolls
Curbside Prophet // Jason Mraz
Dusseldorf // Regina Spektor
Get Back // Ludacris
Hallelujah // Regina Spektor
I Feel It All // Feist
I Like You Better When You’re Not Around // Kate Miller-Heidke
Jumpers // Sleater Kinney
Kom Änglar // Lars Winnerbäck
Little Lungs // An Horse
Love Type Thing // Tegan and Sara
My Own Private Waterloo // Copilot
My Reputation // Joan Jett
Not Big // Lily Allen
Och Jag Grät Mig Till Sömns // Säkert!
Outta Me, Onto You // Ani DiFranco
Playgirl // Ladytron
Portions for Foxes // Rilo Kiley
Shut Up and Kiss Me // Pony Up
Sofa Song // The Kooks
That Time // Regina Spektor
These Boots Are Made For Walking // Nancy Sinatra
Why Do You Love Me // Garbage
You Talk Way Too Much // The Strokes
2008 // Hello Saferide
Kisses to all my friends who have shared what music inspires them. This is including, but not limited to Tansy, Jenn, Larissa, Becca, Mils, Dora and Anna. (And my little brother, who I “borrow” hiphop and Jason Mraz from.) If YOU have an addition that must be share, comment! In Swedish or English, both are lovely.
Nov
When in doubt, Wordle
by Kaia in 2008
I have 27k. I have two plots. I have no idea how this is going to end. And I’m loving every minute of it.
Nov
I’ll never be an American
by Kaia in 2004, 2008
(I never thought I would root against the first female candidate.)
I remember the last election vividly. We lived in a trailer park. It was just like in the movies, with these dingy, once white single-wides, four rows of them, creating a community that housed those unable to afford better. People came and went, friendly when they came, most of them leaving overnight, without saying a word.
There was our neighbour on the right, J.D. I never found out his full name. He was short, scrawny, with the sort of tan that seems to run deeper than the skin. He worked in construction, had lots of wrinkles, no front teeth, and apologised every time he swore so that I heard it.
His trailer, bizarrely neat, reeked of smoke, because he always seemed to have a cigarette in his mouth, even after he admitted he’d been coughing up blood. He told us the doctors wanted him admitted to the hospital, having found a spot on his lung. He refused, saying “Every day I live after ‘nam is a blessing, when my time is up it’s up”.
Those words are still my most vivid memory of him.
Our neighbours on the left changed far more often. For a while it was Mexican immigrants with a fondness for “cookouts”, where they lit two or three barbecues and rigged speakers to their truck, parked less than a metre away from our bedroom wall.
The first time it was kind of fun. The second it was tireding. The third, fourth, fifth? Not so much. There were others too, like the family with four or five kids, and trampoline in the space between their trailer and the next one over. Two bedrooms, five kids. You do the math.
Our landlord lived across the street, in a real house, as big as four or five of our trailers put together. When it was time for election he put up Bush signs in his yard, and outside the office where we paid rent. He had a Bush sticker on this truck, too, and on the lease there was a clause saying that he was not responsible for damage that were caused due to an act of God.
I suspect that the year of five hurricanes came in under that one, but I’m not entirely sure. I remember that too – how the TV kept urging people in trailer parks to go to one of the shelters downtown, but A. had to go to work, and I was stuck where I was, with five cats and a TV that upset me more and more. I went to pay rent, and the landlady tore herself away from her daytime soaps long enough to write me a receipt and tell me to seek shelter.
I still didn’t.
We were lucky. There were no trees around that could fall on us, and the thin walls held.
Back to election day, though.
A. didn’t want to vote. He said it didn’t matter. Bush would win anyway. There was no way Florida would vote democrat. I put on a red shirt and dragged him with me to the polls. I had no idea that red was the republican colour – socialists are red, of course the most left-ish option was red!
I was wrong, I realised, when we got there. I waited outside in my red shirt, showing too much of my pale stomach, because I accidentally shrunk it in the laundry. I had no ID, and thus wasn’t allowed inside.
It was November, but the grass was dry and the weather was hot.
He took me home before going to work, and I spent all day in front of the TV. I was hopeful. I had the Swedish naiveté. I believed that the Americans would know what was best for their country. As the results came in my hope was crushed, one bit at a time. Eleven states passed the ban of gay marriage in that election. I didn’t get a vote. I wasn’t American.
I’m still not American. But I have friends who are. I hope this change is a good one. And I can’t describe in words how happy I was when I woke up to a map that marked Florida in blue.
Nov
Music to write to
by Kaia in 2008
NaNoWriMo is on day three, and I have 5k. I am still in the OMG-I-love-my-book-stage, and is giddy over all little things that comes out of my fingers as I type away that I had no idea of. I am going to find a counter and put it in the sidebar. Just because I can.
Also, what did we do before iTunes? I have a writing playlist, which, obviously, you could do before the iPod revolution, but you couldn’t fit 54 songs on a CD, could you? Or, being even more old school, a tape. (Ania always teased me for being entirely and utterly unable to pick just one song of each artist. Because I play favourites. Over and over and over again.
The best thing about iTunes it is that you can edit the genre to the name of a specific character, and narrow the list down from “writing” to “writing about ____” by typing in the name in the search box as you view your special little playlist.
This is my playlist at the moment. And yes, I love sharing my music. Poke me. Or, you know, go to their MySpace (except for Janis Joplin, she, um, doesn’t have one). Is it just me or is there something funky with big artists having MySpace-pages?
Alanis Morissette (myspace)
Incomplete, Not as We, Orchid
Amanda Palmer (myspace)
The Point of it All
Ani DiFranco (myspace)
Callous, Dilate, Fuel, Garden of Simple, Independence Day, Red Letter Year, Used to You
Ben’s Brother (myspace)
Kiss Me Again (Stuttering)
Ben Folds (feat Regina Spektor) (myspace)
You Don’t Know Me
The Dresden Dolls (myspace)
Coin-operated Boy
Feist (myspace)
I Feel it All, Now at Last, The Mast
Hello Saferide (myspace)
2006, Re: You’re Always on My Mind
Ingrid Michaelson (myspace)
Glass, Over the Rainbow, The Chain
Janis Joplin (um, no)
Bobby McGee, Little Girl Blues, Piece of My Heart
Jason Mraz (myspace)
Butterfly, Lucky, The Forecast
JayMay (myspace)
Grey or Blue
Jenny Owen Youngs (myspace)
Drinking Song, Fuck Was I
Kate Miller-Heidke (myspace)
Delay, Don’t Let Go, Little Adam, Shoebox
Ladytron (myspace)
Seventeen
Lily Allen (myspace)
Little Things, Not Big
Regina Spektor (myspace)
Daniel Cowman, Hero, Music Box, Pound of Flesh, Some Days, Summer in the City, That Time, The Noise
Rilo Kiley (myspace)
A Better Son/Daughter, Accidental Death, Breaking Up (Hot Chips Remix), Does He Love You, It Just Is, Portions for Foxes, The Absence of God
Oct
Being a writer
by Kaia in 2008
I’ve been wanting to be a writer since I wrote my first story. You know, the ones where you folded three or four sheets of paper, one of them in a pretty colour, in half, stapled along the fold and got A Real Book. Yeah, those. I made a lot of those. Other kids drew pictures and wrote little comments underneath. I wrote stories. With plot. Usually they were about a girl with long, blonde hair and a pony. Sometimes the stable burned down. Sometimes she overcame a mystical illness. The point was: she got the pony. Every time.
So yeah. I’ve always been writing, but I’ve never called myself a writer. Because, for most of that time I was told that if I wanted to write I had to become a reporter. For a shy, pale little girl with glasses and braces and straight A’s in all subjects that pertained to memorising stuff from books that was a very scary prospect.
I wasn’t a writer. No, no. No chance. You had to talk to people. How scary is that?
Life happened. Stuff happened. I somehow found myself doing NaNoWriMo. The year was 2006. I made the goal of 50k and everyone asked me “But why are you doing this? What do you get for it?”. They all looked at me like I was insane when I said “nothing”.
I got nothing. I still wrote 50k. Meanwhile my world was falling apart. A few short hours after making the goal I had put up, writing 50,000 words in 30 days, everything went to hell. One thing lead to another, and for a year I didn’t write a single word. Not a single one. No journal entries, no grocery lists, hell, I didn’t even take notes in class. It was like I ran out of words.
In October of 2007, almost a year later, I somehow fell into an online RPG. I’m still not sure how it happened. RPGs were for nerds, right? And I hadn’t written a word in almost a year. Still, I picked a character, and wrote up an application. I was approved, and suddenly everyone I talked to were writers.
In the very first day I wrote more than I had for the whole year up until that point. Seriously.
I didn’t do NaNoWriMo that year. Too many bad memories. I still wrote. Many, many different things. And I’ve learned that even if RPGs isn’t as good as original writing, it helps you figure out how to write a character. How to get their voice. I think I’d still not have written a single word had I not tripped over that RPG last year.
One friend I’ve made over the last year is a published writer. She rolls her eyes when I distinguish between her and me because it’s her actual job. She insists on inserting a “yet” whenever I say “but I don’t get paid to write”.
And really. What makes a person a writer? Is it having a story to tell? Because I do. Is it looking at a tin of mushrooms and get this whole flood of memories, enough to make a story out of it? Because I do. Is it staring at a poster for knee injuries at the doctor’s office the entire time you’re waiting for the doctor, because the girl in your current project tears her ACL badly and you want it to be believable? Because I so did that just last week.
Today I got an e-mail from a friend, who, having read two versions of a short story I just finished. One was in Swedish, my first language. One was in English, the language I happen to be comfortable with. Her comment about the former was “interesting”. About the latter it was “so interesting it’s like porn for the mind”.
Yeah. I think I am a writer now. Just not in the language I expected.