Stillness is the Move: Dirty Projectors.

     

The llamas in this video are so adorable! I'd choose llama over domesticated animal any day.

Apparently, this song came out in 2009. I was too busy stalking The Jonas Brothers & googling ways to look emo without having to cut myself because I'm a pussy that was a 'cool' 'non-comformist' 'different' thing to be at the time to notice it so it flew right past me.

                                                             

  -I don't know why that sentence has so many quotation marks-     

*Sigh* We were fools. Pretty fools.

So I was swaying away to the Solange cover of this song (which is also really good, check it out) and I was curious as to what the original song sounded like.

Simply calling it amazing would be the biggest understatement of my life.

Amber Coffman's voice is so pure & accidental and I feel like I'm on a beach somewhere off the coast of Ghana jamming as the sun starts to come up. If that's not bliss by music then everything I know is fucking fugazi.                                                                

It is suffice it to say that this song has defined my year, given me a maxim to live by; not to mention addressed all (Well, some...) of my existential issues & I have no possible idea how the 2009-JoBro loving -Emo wannabe version of myself missed it.

I am aware now, the stillness is the move.

                                                                  

                                                                                                            

    And llamas!!! Friggin' llamas!         

Wind, Coachella, Carpe Diem. In That Order.

I don't want to get to a point in my life when everything is constant & steady because I'll always have a stampede of "what if's" marching through my mind until I go mad and eventually kill my family and die of a cocaine overdose.
                      -Okay, maybe not that extreme.-

Point is, when you want to do something? Why not just go out & do it?
You can make your whole yellow legal pad PROS & CONS list but in the end, if you know you really want to do it, just get out of your goddamn thoughts in your goddamn head & do it! Goddammit...

Par exemple:
Hello, my name is Melissa Kayanda and I live in a box. (Hi Melissa!) I want to travel. I want to go outside and see the world in all it's upside down glory. I want to feel, breathe and taste it all and inhale new experiences like it's petrol at a gas station.

I also want to do other things, but just for me.

I'm scared that if I start doing the things I like doing commercially, I'll either stop liking them or find out I didn't like them as much to begin with.
Does that make sense?

Unfortunately, my loop-holed theory can be thrown back at me:
I also want to have SEX (Ha, made you look).

My biggest fear isn't that I may die at any given moment of any given time on any given day. It's that I may die at any given moment of any given time on any given day without ever having experienced the single blinding pleasure that is sex.
...and that scares the shit out of me.

"Just do it", she said.
I know. You've caught me. I concede.

I am a girl and like every other girl, I want it passionately executed in a safe space with someone I wouldn't mind looking at or talking to or smiling silently while holding hands with for a few months/years/lifetimes after that.

Yes, boys & girls, I want it to be SPECIAL. Friggin' sue me. *insert sarcastic jazz hands*

So no, I'm not gonna Nike it & "just do it" for this one.

But there are a lot of beautiful things I wouldn't want to miss because I was tentative or just plain scared.
Like a wise bootylicious saint once said, "Enjoy your life. It's short."

One Should Never Trust A Woman Who Tells One Her Real Age (You Go Oscar Wilde!)

Apparently, dark and murky staircases are a really good place to process thoughts into word sequences that barely manage to make sense.

My birthday was yesterday and it made me rather uncomfortable.

Everyone says they don’t feel any different when asked, “How does it feel?” and I've been pulling that card too so it can just end there but in actual sense, I do feel different.

I feel sad. Not normal blog post sad; I mean down in the fucking doldrums sad.

I've never appreciated my youth and I know that’s never going to change for me. Until I’m about 25, I’ll always feel older than I actually am & hate every goddamn minute of it.

I blame my education. I've always been a steady 2 years younger than everyone in my class & instead of being proud of trumping all these old fucks & wearing it like a medal, it embarrassed me.

So I hide.I lie. I omit.

Because you couldn't say PATRONIZING fast enough. Have you ever been patronized? I can act like I don’t give a shit but it gets to me and boy, does it get to me deep.

So I've been hiding from that every day since I was 13. A little 12 month tweak never hurt anyone, now did it?

But I’m tired. I’m tired of lying. I’m tired of calculating the math in my head during conversations to see how old I “was” in that year (and I’m really bad at math). I’m just tired.

So I’m gonna tell the truth for a while now and see how that feels as a skin. Wish me luck.

I know I still haven’t mentioned how old I am which shows how I am yet to come to terms with it (Now I know how Blanche from Golden Girls feels) but hey...baby steps.

Bella: Angus & Julia Stone

It's really weird when I had to get to the 'g' in Angus for the Youtube suggestions to stop showing "Bella Swan" "Bella & Edward" and finally start showing Angus & Julia Stone.
Really Youtube? SHAME ON YOU.

This song is perfect. I'm scared if I say anything else, I'll tarnish it but I'll try anyway. (Forgive me.)

This song is so simple and so beautiful.
I've listened to it about 5 times now, each time crying harder than the last which if you ask me, is just self- torture but I didn't notice because that's what Angus & Julia Stone do.
They made me emotionally torture myself without even realizing it because I was lost in the sheer perfection of this beautiful & simple song.

(I also found this really cute fan made animation -not the full song- which was dedicated to a late Bonnie Howden who must have been an amazing person to have this amazing song dedicated to her.)

Rest in Peace, Bonnie.

Tomorrow. I am legally changing my name to Daisy, dyeing my hair golden & wearing a pretty skirt.

You know where to find me.

Because Life Begins at 50

Today, Kenya celebrates 50 years of independence. Emancipation from the man and all that hullabaloo.

And there's all this pomp and glory which frankly, I don't see the point of.
I mean, what's happened in the last 50 years?

• A tyrannical freedom fighter. An narcissistic & oppressive land grabber. A man who almost started a genocide. An alleged ICC criminal. 

• Unexplained assassinations of politicians. 

• Draconian statutes trying to gag the media.

• Politicians less concerned about the development of their constituencies and counties and more concerned about the development of their off shore bank accounts.

• Poor government response to crisis.

• People coming home from work to find their houses demolished without notice or compensation.

• Rapists sentenced to cut grass.

Sorry, I didn't mean this to turn into an anti-leadership rally. People just want a reason to make merry and they should be able to without fret. Don't let my thoughts ruin your Kenya at 50 celebrations.

I think the only thing worth celebrating is the men and women of this beautiful nation who have trudged through one misery and misfortune after another and have been at the nadirest nadir you could ever nadir but can still stand tall, hold their heads high and proudly say, "I am Kenyan."
Because despite all these bad leadership decisions, the ground you plant your feet on stays the same and so does the fact that Kenya is where your heart is.

So New Years Resolution for 2014, let's make the next 50 years something really worth celebrating and Google doodles.

SBTRKT: Trials of the Past

If you are in any way squeamish at the sight of blood or vivid colours, then I'd advise you not to watch this video. Which is a crying shame because it's an amazing video.

I found out today that SBTRKT was a stylization of Subtract. I've always pronounced it the way I read it. Yes, with no vowels.

This song alone is so majestic and the video reminds me of the stop motion pictures that I loved so much in my childhood & Sweeney Todd which makes my skin crawl and at the same time, makes me want to watch it again while eating Strawnilla icecream from a glass bowl.

Bon appetit.