Time to myself!!

Me and my boyfriend are at his mum's for Christmas.  It's good here, suitably different but with no pressure.  However we have done something or seen someone every day and it's felt a bit exhausting to me.  I also haven't been sleeping well - really tired during the day then when I go to bed I perk up and can't sleep. Bah.  But today no one else is around for a couple of hours so I am going to be a right proper introvert and spend the day blogging and thinking and listening to my youtube playlists and ignoring everyone.  Hurrah!

Manic Street Preachers The Holy Bible 20th anniversary gig

On Tuesday I went to go see the Manics perform, in it's entirety, for the first time, their most accomplished album, The Holy Bible.

I've been a fan for 20 years.  Some of these songs have never been played before.  This is the one thing I've been looking forward to since my son died.

They were good.   They played very well.  I was too short to see much of them on stage but I'm always too short to see much of them on stage.  They noodled a lot.  They are different musicians to their 20 years younger selves and so they played the music differently.  It was good.  I got emotional, of course I did, it's a Manics gig, I've had a pretty shit 6 and a half months and I'm a cliche.  But!  For a few seconds, for a little while, I forgot my troubles.  I felt OK enjoying the gig. I felt OK being out.  I didn't feel guilty.  This was the first time since June that I have been in such a big crowded environment and it didn't freak me out.  That's good.  I also started signing to 4st 7lbs and This is Yesterday.  I haven't really voluntarily and unconsciously signed since June.

They did 2 sets. The first was the Holy Bible in full.  Then there was a 10 minute break and then they did a mix of hits, songs from Futurology and rarely played.  And a little bit of Last Christmas of course.

I wore a leopard print skirt and a DC Roller Derby girls vest:
https://twitter.com/SarangaComics/status/544890981448167425/photo/1
No one commented on my vest.  There's a distressing low number of comic fans out there.  Or maybe there were lots and they all thought I was a fake geek girl (ha!).

I didn't come out of the gig feeling elated and buzzing.  Of course I didn't, I imagine it will be a long time before I feel elated and buzzing again. But, I am glad I went.  I'm grateful for the chance to be there and I'm grateful for how I could forget my troubles for just a short while.

I recommend you go listen to the Holy Bible now.  There are various playlists on youtube, this is one of them:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0F4BA11B133BFBA0

She bathed herself in a bath of bleach

Following on from yesterday's inspiring music post, here's another set of lyrics by another favourite band of mine, the Manic Street Preachers.  I've posted about them before.  I saw them again recently, and while they didn't play this song they were still pretty awesome.
This is from their second last album, and I think is about one of the women that the ex lyricist met in a mental hospital, (so, trigger warning for relationship abuse and self harm).

She'd walk on broken glass for love
She thought burnt skin would please her lover
To keep love alive and lust beside
Kind people should never be treated like...

Empty arms and aching heart
The love she sought through faltering thought
Table for two, such a sweet delight
Whispers "I love you my darling" tonight

Love bathed her in a bath of bleach
"I'll brush your hair, no one else will"
don't hurt her anymore, stop now
But salmon pink skinned Mary's still caring...

Empty arms and aching heart
The love she sought through faltering thought
Table for two, such a sweet delight
Whispers "I love you my darling tonight"

Empty arms and aching heart
The love she sought through faltering thought
Table for two, such a sweet delight
Whispers "I love you my darling tonight"

Listen to it here.  I can listen to it over and over and over and over and over.  I love it.

She bathed herself in a bath of bleach

Working at home means I get to listen to lots of music, so today please familiarise yourself with the Manic Street Preachers She bathed herself in a bath of bleach, from their latest album, Journal for Plague Lovers:

She'd walk on broken glass for love
She thought burnt skin would please her lover
To keep love alive and lust beside
Kind people should never be treated like...

Empty arms and naked heart
Violence, a sad truth followed with a
Table for two, such a sweet delight
Whispers I love you my darling tonight

Love bathed her in a bath of bleach
I brought you here, no one else will
Don't hurt her anymore, stop now
But salmon pink skin memories took care of...

Empty arms and naked heart
Violence, a sad truth followed with a
A table for two - such a sweet delight
Whispers I love you my darling tonight

You can hear the song here (Youtube video).

I am an architect, they call me a butcher

Emphasis mine.

[spoken] I hate purity
Hate goodness
I dont want virtue to exist anywhere
I want everyone corrupt

I am an architect, they call me a butcher
I am a pioneer, they call me primitive
I am purity, they call me perverted
Holding you but I only miss these things when they leave

I am idiot drug hive, the virgin, the tattered and the torn
Life is for the cold made warm and they are just lizards
Self-disgust is self-obsession honey and I do as I please
A morality obedient, only to the cleansed repented

I am stronger than mensa, miller and mailer
I spat out plath and pinter
I am all the things that you regret
A truth that washes that learnt how to spell

The first time you see yourself naked you cry
Soft skin now acne, foul breath, so broken
He loves me truly this mute solitude Im draining
I know I believe in nothing but it is my nothing

Sleep cant hide the thoughts splitting through my mind
Shadows arent clean, false mirrors too many people awake
If you stand up like a nail then you will be knocked down
Ive been too honest with myself I should have lied like everybody else

I am stronger than mensa, miller and mailer
I spat out plath and pinter
I am all the things that you regret
A truth that washes that learnt how to spell, learnt to spell

So damn easy to cave in, man kills everything
So damn easy to cave in, man kills everything
So damn easy to cave in, man kills everything
So damn easy to cave in, man kills everything


Faster, from the album The Holy Bible. Fucking magic. The new album aint half bad too. I find 'She bathed herself in a bath of bleach' really powerful - no idea what the lyrics are about but the music, especially the chorus is just wonderful.

My head is stuffed up with a dust mite allergy so this is about as considered as y'all getting today. Thankfully, my anti allergy duvet arrived today so hopefully I'll wake up and feel human tomorrow, with the added ability to breathe. That'd be nice.

Manics artwork

I'd like to share some images of artwork from 2 Manic Street Preachers albums.

From the new one, Journal for Plague Lovers:
Despite what some UK supermarkets think, the red on the child's face is a birthmark, not blood.

From The Holy Bible:

Both paintings are by Jenny Saville. I think her artwork is beautiful - there's a lot of tenderness in the images. So I googled her and found more paintings.




She's very good at capturing the intimacy of her subjects, I feel. I find everything about these paintings beautiful - the brushwork, the colours, the moods, the expressions. She is a truly talented painter. I hope to buy a book of her work, it fascinates me.

Struggling for thoughts

(I feel there should be a general madness trigger warning here, both for the song and the post itself)

For sale? dumb cunts same dumb questions
Virgin? listen, all virgins are liars honey
And I dont know what Im scared of or what I even enjoy
Dulling, get money, but nothing turns out like you want it to

And in these plagued streets, of pity you can buy anything
For $200 anyone can conceive a God on video
Hes a boy, you want a girl so tear off his cock
Tie his hair in bunches, fuck him, call him rita if you want

I eat and I dress and I wash and I still can say thank you
Puking - shaking - sinking I still stand for old ladies
Cant shout, cant scream, hurt myself to get pain out
I.T. them, 24:7, all year long
Purgatorys circle, drowning here, someone will always say yes

Funny place for the social, for the insects to start caring
Just an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff

In these plagued streets of pity you can buy anything
For $200 anyone can conceive a God on video
Hes a boy, you want a girl so tear off his cock
Tie his hair in bunches, fuck him, call him rita if you want, if you want

I eat and I dress and I wash and I can still say thank you
Puking - shaking - sinking I still stand for old ladies
Cant shout, cant scream, hurt myself to get pain out

Power produces desire, the weak have none
Theres no lust in this coma even for a fifty
Solitude, solitude, the 11th commandment

The only certain thing that is left about me
Theres no part of my body that has not been used
Pity or pain, to show displeasures shame
Everyone I've loved or hated always seems to leave

And in these plagued streets of pity you can buy anything
For $200 anyone can conceive a God on video
Hes a boy, you want a girl so tear off his cock
Tie his hair in bunches, fuck him, call him rita if you want, if you want

Power produces desire, the weak have none
Theres no lust in this coma even for a fifty
Solitude, solitude, the 11th commandment

Dont hurt, just obey, lie down, do as they say
May as well be heaven this hell, smells the same
These sunless afternoons I cant find myself.

The above are lyrics from the Manic Street Preachers song Yes, taken from the 1994 album The Holy Bible.

The Holy Bible is a dark album. Well, after reading those lyrics it should be pretty obvious it's a dark album. It deals with a number of themes, such as prostitution, depression, self harm, racism, the sexuality of world leaders, anorexia, suicide, politics and the inherent fucked upness of the world. The songs have titles like Of Walking Abortion, She is Suffering, Archives of Pain, Die in the Summertime and The Intense Humming of Evil.

I was debating which lyrics to post.

Ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayit'sworldwouldfallapart is one of my favourite songs on the album. But I fear it may be seen as rather an inflammatory introduction to the band, depending on how head-in-the-sand some Americans may feel (yeah I know, not diplomatic, so sue me). Maybe that one will come tomorrow. 4st 7lbs is a wonderful song, but should come with big flashing labels as an ED trigger. I was also considering Faster or This Is Yesterday, but again, they need to come with a big fat triger warning.

I adore the Manics.

It is pretty fair to say that this band is one of the things that got me through my teenage depression, through those days and months and years when I couldn't function and my head was spinning out of control. I shan't describe the what felt like physical nature of it, suffice to say, I don't welcome it and I don't want to be that way. ever. again.

I say this band got me through my teenage years because by the time I got to 19/20 years old I had moved to university and I began to explore and discover other ways of coping, other support networks. Music became less important, well, less central to my life.

Now, now I'm 29 and in a good relationship and have, gee I don't know, without sounding wanky, I guess I meanI found myself. I know myself, I know my identity, I'm reasonably assertive and confidence, fuck, I'm happy. There were times when I never thought I'd get to this stage. So you know, go me.

I met the singer and bassist a year or so ago. They played my city and I hung around afterwards to meet them (along with the rest of the audience). I asked them to sign my boobs and they both looked away, looked really uncomfortable and muttered something about their wives. How un rock'n'roll.

Why this somewhat intimate post today? Well, the band have a new album out. It's called Journal for Plague Lovers and the lyrics are by the same guy who wrote 70% of The Holy Bible's lyrics. So I've been listening to their old albums some more, and feeling partly joyful and partly downcast. The Holy Bible has always seemed rather triumphant to me, not neccessarily triggering or upsetting.

To be fair, if I got upset listening to it, it was just affirming what I couldn't articulate myself, and seeing as for several years I was in a fug incapable of feeling much there wasn't a lot in me to be triggered.

I shall be buying their new album tomorrow. I have very high hopes for it.

But today, well right now I just felt the need to share.

Extra special daily post

I was flicking through the new WFA posts earlier today and came across this one looking at Dark Reign: The Hood \1.
The poster would like to draw your attention to the dodgy racist Arab stereotype portrayed within, and the PHD educated guy who starts talking like he's from the streets.

I would like to draw your attention to one of the dumb ass commenters who thinks that if the author didn't mean to be racist, then the end product can't be racist.

Err, no. That's not how it works. People are unintentionally racist (and sexist, and homophobic) all the time. Just because they don't view it as racist doesn't mean it isn't. I mean, goodness, if we were going to go down that road we'd still have slavery, because it wouldn't be racist to keep folks as property, because that's just the way black people are meant to be.

OK that may seem like quite the extrapolation but it's really not. By saying that the author didn't mean to be racist so therefore it's all ok, you are drowning out (silencing) the offended (oppressed) party. Well isn't that a handy way of keeping the status quo.

Hey, if you don't want to be racist try creating 3 dimensional characters and not using crass stereotypes. If what you're writing looks similar to media depictions of other individuals, if you're using coding to show someone's evilness, (for example, in this case it would be the nubile young thing in the car, the dodgy broken English, the hook nose, bad teeth etc,) then you aint writing a 3 dimensional character. You're probably relying on crass tropes and if your trope is based around race, or gender, or sexuality or whatever, you're quite likely to be producing something bigoted.

Sort it out.

(This post has been inspired by Avalon's Willow, who a while ago was asking where all the white would be allies are and why we're staying silent. She has a good point and she got me thinking as to what motivates my posts and the subject matter contained therein.
I'm hoping those last two sentences don't sound as pompous or self aggrandising as I think they do.)


Today's thoughts brought to you by a dual soundtrack:
Manic Street Preachers' Imperial Bodybags from the Send Away the Tigers album
Zombina and the Skeletones who I saw in the city last night and who are just as good as last time I saw them, after the Reclaim the Night march. Zombina herself is lovely and smells of coconut.