How to be awesome

[thoughtfullyfamousdinosaur-blog]

the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars

Jack Kerouac

[thoughtfullyfamousdinosaur-blog]

Oh crap, I’ve already not done this...

Ok so slight set back on year of being awesome. I forgot about this. Also I went clubbing last Saturday, which I never do, and had a panic attack right in the middle of the dance floor. I managed to stagger outside, my best friend at my heels, and sort of collapse on to her while shuddering half from cold, half from  a strong and terrifying notion that I would never stop feeling like this or ever be happy again. I also got quite obsessed with Ernest Hemingway in my mind but was thankfully with it enough to not mention that out loud.

It hardly ever snows where I live. But that night it did. And I stood, in the slush, the cold, on a lamp lit street, watching the swirling flurry of flakes plummet to earth. I knew how they felt. Wheeling and spinning all over the place, no control, no way to stop their long, long fall. My friend, J, brought me back from that scary brink place. She told me to breathe, she reminded me who I am, that I’m here and that I’m going to stay here. It’s scary but it hasn’t beaten me. I don’t intend to let it.

[thoughtfullyfamousdinosaur-blog]

The Wild Eyed boy from Freecloud

David Bowie had always been there – because everyone knows a couple of Bowie songs, it’s impossible not to. But it was my dad, fresh off a business trip, wild-eyed and jet lagged, who really introduced me to him. I remember him dragging me and my brother into the study and insisting that we listen to this old song he’d loved as a teenager. He’d rediscovered it while fiddling with the radio on his 12 hour flight. Knowing my dad, he’d probably played it for the entirety of the flight too. Anyway, we sat down, we listened and… that was it. I don’t think my dad realised what an effect the song had had on me – we’re not gushy people – but it was immediate and it was incredible. Music could sound like this? It could be about a love story in a futuristic dystopia? It could express something in me, for me, that I didn’t even know I felt? My dad had given me a gift that meant the world to me.

The song was Drive In Saturday. It is still my favourite David Bowie song. And from that moment on I devoured everything Bowie-related I could lay my greedy little hands on. Nothing was enough. I pretended I wasn’t that bothered (self-conscious awkward teenagerhood, sadly): ‘Oh my uncle thinks we should get Life on Mars on iTunes? Yeah, I guess’, ‘There’s a David Bowie album to borrow in the library? I suppose I might get it, it could be ok.’ (And yes, it was a weird time: renting CDs and being thrilled by the idea of music on the computer). My first Bowie album was a burnt copy of Scary Monsters, eagerly loaded onto my first-generation (and ancient even then) iPod shuffle.

I was reaching an age where music really started to matter to me. All the other kids at school had apparently got there years earlier: they knew all the popular stuff, listened to the charts, could actually NAME current musical acts! Whereas I had looked up the name of one popular band on purpose just so I’d have something to say if someone ever asked who I liked. I was a weird kid. None of the music aimed at me meant anything to me. I’d happily grown up listening to my mum’s Elvis records and my dad’s Bruce Springsteen. I had a copy of ‘Songs from the Musicals’ that I loved dearly. I was a big fan of Jeff Buckley, because I’d found a copy of Grace lying around the house. But that was pretty much it. And then, all of a sudden, there was an explosion of colour and light and beauty and it began with Bowie. Of course there were others – some who came to me via David Bowie, some who didn’t – T.Rex, The Rolling Stones, Alice Cooper, New York Dolls, Lou Reed, Aerosmith, Guns N Roses. But Bowie towered above all the rest.

It was through David Bowie that I found my first boyfriend. His first ever words to me were ‘I love that Ziggy Stardust shirt’. Bowie was our common language, our way of bonding: we once spent an entire car ride to London trying to name every album track he’d ever had. And we did it too. We went to see a Bowie tribute act and fell about laughing when we realised only we and two other guys had come in glam-rock get-up – and we became friends with those two guys, we even briefly attempted to start a band with them!

And I passed on the gift of Bowie: to my friend at uni who had never seen Labyrinth before, to my friend from school who got almost as into him as I was (and with whom I swear I spent an entire summer somehow living in 1973 in the middle of the 00’s), to my other friends who were plagued with a barrage of Bowie’s every filmic endeavour ever and who somehow kept loving me and kept watching The Linguini Incident every time I brought it up. I’ve gone to fancy dress parties as David Bowie, I’ve been to Heddon Street just to see it, I’ve flicked through Moonage Daydream until it was absolutely dog-eared, the only reason I know what recidivism is and that Das Rheingold is part of the Ring cycle is because Bowie taught me.

Perhaps all this sounds crazy. All this gushing about one man? But if it is, so what? It meant something, he meant something. He meant that it was ok to be off-centre, to stand out from a crowd, to have your own identity that was crafted from all the madness, all the stardust-soaked energy and random bits of glitter and nonsense that you’d dredged up from the very deepest parts of yourself. Different was beautiful. Before I had learnt how to express myself, I could point to him and say: that’s it, that’s how I feel inside. He’s speaking my language. I thought it was just me, but it isn’t, it’s him too and it’s other people…

I am who am because of a lot of things: because of my parents, because of my friends, because of genetics! But there would be a very, very large hole right in the heart of me without David Bowie. And now we’re here: and millions of people, to whom he meant millions of things, can feel the hole left by his passing. But, of course, he’s pulled things off with style one last time. He’s left behind one of the most beautiful legacies a human being could leave – quite apart from his stunning body of work. He’s left behind the message, the fact, that it’s ok to be weird. It’s good to be weird, to live a life of change, freedom, creativity, inventiveness, quiet dignity and intelligence, to make mistakes, to have misfires but to rise again and succeed. Even if you are just a boy from Brixton, standing there in a dress, dreaming about stardust.

[dollychops]

‘Time may change me’

[staff]

Thank you, David Bowie, for everything you left on this planet.

[thoughtfullyfamousdinosaur-blog]

Ok so to me this is awesome: just a casual stuffed aubergine that I made for dinner from whatever I happened to have in. More cooking in the year of awesome!

[thoughtfullyfamousdinosaur-blog]

Introduction to Awesomeness

I started this blog in the first week of January 2016. Not because of any new year’s resolution goals, any thoughts that I was going to be the next internet sensation (but I totally am, right? Right?) No, I started it because I was a bit ill. I’d been to an NYE party and had been surrounded by a dangerous group of… friends with colds. The suspects were numerous. Was it the girl recently returned from a holiday abroad with a mysterious throat-killing bug? Was it the guy who’d been ill for weeks but finally (deceptively) seemed to be recovered? Or was it my hosts themselves, a beguilingly innocent and welcoming family? We will never know. All I do know is: having a cold sucks.

It wasn’t even one of those colds where you feel faintly crappy and decide you’d better just relax for a day and enjoy the sympathy and soft, throat-soothing foods. It was a monster cold. An evil, evil beast of a cold. And it sucked.

Which brings us to here. Me, on the way to recovery (please, please!) sitting in my grandparent’s living room – they had taken pity on me and brought me over to theirs’ for dinner. I’ve not got a lot to do while I wait to eat (how hard my life is) so I’ve started writing. I’ve always wanted a successful blog. So far I haven’t had one and I suppose the main reason for that would be… well, it’s me. Or, more accurately, it’s my complete lack of ability to continue doing things. I’m great at starting to do things. I’ve even been known to finish a few things that someone else has started. It’s just continuing, consistency that gets me. There is one exception and that would be someone making me do things. Like work. I do actually have a job and have so far continued to do it for over a year – the same one, that is. I’ve had others. I didn’t continue those quite as much.

Anyway. The point is, I’ve tried blogging before (and some old posts may end up being moved across to here at some point). But I haven’t continued blogging. And in my new spirit of MAKING MY LIFE WAY MORE AWESOME I am hoping that this time will be different. I am cautiously very hopeful: the idea is that in the process of making my life more awesome, the requirement set by me to chronicle my life improvements will make me keep blogging AND make me keep doing improvements! It’s all connected, man, all connected.

Blogs are pretty weird really, I mean this is kinda just a diary that anyone can read. That I want people to read. How self-referential and ego-trippy is this stuff? And yet the publicness may just be what keeps me keeping on writing this. Just know that I@m aware, ok? I’m aware this is egotistical. Maybe someday I’ll get a nobler goal for it though – I mean, really what are we doing? We’re sharing our human experiences, bonding through the similar, learning from the unique, marvelling at the different and laughing at the ridiculous. It’s connection, it’s humanity and if I think of it that way, I really do believe it’s kind of beautiful. Keeping it high-minded! Yeah!

So there we go. I guess next time I’ll get properly started on this business of awesomeness. But now I think it’s nearly time for tea…