Back in high school, it seemed to be so easy to let a guy know that I liked him. I spent many a lunchtime in the library with my pencils, sketchbook and pens drawing pictures, comics and creating other bits of silly looking “artwork” that punctuated the thought “I’m that weirdo chick with the pigtails in 9D that listens to all that freaky sounding stuff on her walkman, usually gets detention for wearing her faded band tshirts over her uniform and sucks at Maths. Oh yeah, by the way, I really like you “

Most of the time going to all that effort succeeded in getting a hello out of them or even a round of four square or Kanga cricket. Other times, the pictures would end up in the bin and I’d spend months upon end being laughed at for being “the stupid girl in 9D who draws pictures of dragons and castles” (trust the stupid girl in 9D to be a sci fi/fantasy nut from such a young age)

I was never any good at letting a guy know I liked him. A simple “Hi. I like you.” is about as difficult for me to wrap my lips around as it is to pronounce the surnames of the Turkmenistan swimming team. It’s a different story after a few vodkas but that’s besides the point.

I like someone and I suppose, have liked them for a while now. Every time I want to somehow show this person that I like them, I seem to just either quietly freak out and mess things up or just trip over my words to the point where I’m typing a fluent combination of Lithuanian and Swahili.

I just wish it was as simple as drawing a picture and sending it to them.

Hi. I like you.
With love from me and my Derwent pencils

…and I wonder, do guys dig that sort of thing…….or am I just thinking like the silly girl I used to be back in 1992?

You don’t know me. Or perhaps you do. You’ve probably at one stage in your commuting life avoided sitting next to me on the train or made a funny face when trying to make eye contact with me because I have a lazy eye. I know you all too well. I see you everyday of my life.

I’m a laidback person. I drown out the cacophony of a society that travels on rails with my shiny white mass produced sweatshop headphones. I could travel all day with a lovingly handpicked soundtrack of sounds that would either make you cringe or feel like running far far away back to the land of commercial radio. You fear people like me because I can listen to the first fifty seconds of some random dance or techno tune and rattle off the record label, samples used in the track and any remixes that were subsequently produced. It’s a tragic habit. I’m a samplewhore. I’d love to find a bloke who I could babble to about music without having to dumb myself down and use the words “Spicegirls”, “Within Temptation” or “Andrew WK” in front of.

I don’t have many hobbies anymore. I gave most of them away when I commenced working as a phonedrone. It’s taken a good three and a half years for the creative side of my brain to automagically rewire itself. Inspiration is an amazing thing. You can’t buy this from some bloke called Sasja who lives on the other side of town and has a godawful habit of ringing you up at 3 in the morning, just so you can reassure him that ASIO isn’t going to burst through his folks’ bedroom window and kidnap his mum.

I find my inspiration through connection and communication. That and the odd tipple of rakija. The cobwebs in this old cavernous cranium of mine are slowly being blown away. It’s as if someone’s busted out some of that delicious sci-fi kung fu and strapped me into a time machine, set the year to 1998 and et voila, I’m back to being a long haired shy and demure Media Studies student who spent her lunchtimes listening to homemade nu-jazz and prog metal compilations that she put together on her piss poor excuse for a tape recorder.

I used to wish that I could invent a device that could capture the sound of synapses and neurons firing about in one’s brain. Then I discovered Autechre, Matmos and Audion. Problem solved, invention already created by someone else.

If one solitary post rakija fuelled dream can cause such a shift in behaviour, perhaps there is some sort of hope for the rest of my year.

I just wonder if you can fall in lust with certain frequencies, certain little basslines, certain breaks in a tune that make you want to lose yourself.

This inner suburban particle shifting princess needs something…..

….more cowbell, more of a connection and as to what else, I might reveal a little something about that if you’re nice enough to ask