The World, as Seen by a Little Blind Girl

A really adorable and clever short film, that also makes you think, which I like.

 Embrace the madness

Mika Concert (pictures)

Some pictures of Mika's concert (see my last post for more details and things)

 The guy in the right foreground is the dude who took off his shirt (see the last post for that story). My second favourite person that night.

Casually walking on the piano, like a boss!

Embrace the madness (and, if you have the chance, embrace Mika, he apparently smells good. Aaaaaand that's creepy)

Mika concert

Hey humans, just gonna briefly apologise for not blogging in a little while; I was in London for a few days with a couple of friends. We went to see Mika (if you haven't heard of him, please get searching him now, he is INCREDIBLE) in concert in "Heaven" nightclub on thursday night. We queued for six hours in the sticky london heat (not a commonly used term, I know) but it was totally worth it.

We got places really near the front for our effort and foot pains and waited through a fairly mediochre dj (or it may just have seemed worse because we wanted the main even to start so badly) for our idol to take the stage. Emerging from backstage, he was able to change the atmosphere in the room rapidly and completely with an upbeat rendition of "Big Girl, You are Beautiful", everyone instantly forgot that they'd been standing for at least the last four hours and the jumping and fist pumping began. 

Master of the stage, Mika performed song after song, leaping and dancing around (a fair ammount of this was on the baby grand in the centre of the stage, very cool) seemingly tirelessly. As well as playing some of the classics from his first two albums (such as "Blame it on the Girls", "Grace Kelly", "Stuck in the Middle" and "Billy Brown") Mika performed some of the songs that we are to expect from his album coming out in September, like "Lola", "Celebrate", "Make you Happy" and, in a grand finalé, "The Origin of Love" the title track for the album.

I personally was blown away by how consistantly strong the lebanese heart-throb's voice was throughout the entire concert (which spanned almost three hours). I guess it really pays to be classically trained in such things (fact courtesy of my friend Sarah on multiple occasions, she literally never shuts up about Mika).

One particular highlight of the show was when, during a brief lull, one man in the audience yelled "Take it off, Mika!" and was met with the response, "It doesn't seem fair for me to remove my clothes while you keep yours on" from the stagebound star. Almost immediately, a hoodie was flung onto the stage, to laughter from the crowd. Mika, still not impressed, retorted, "Nah, you have your t-shirt on, that's still not fair" and sure enough, a white tee was tossed to the stage and Mika, seeing he was beaten, proceeded to unbutton his shirt, to uproarous applause and laughter from the audience. The sightly scrawny (and now shirtless) dude from the audience became everyone's hero for the remainder of the night. 

After the concert, myself and my friends went around the block to the back door of the club to try and catch a glimpse of our favourite singer. We were among the few who waited almost an hour on the footpath while trucks were packed with drumkits and pianos and sound stuff, all of us buzzing with residual excitement from the fenomenal feats of vocal acrobatics we'd just witnessed. We were in luck, as the singer, hair still wet from his recent shower, came out to meet us on his way to an after party in Shoreditch. I got my "London Tube Map" hat signed and was very impressed at how tolerant and soft spoken the star was as he singed various items and answered questions. He humbly repsonded to praise, remarking that "Sometimes he needed that" and earnestly gave advice to one guy who asked if he could direct his next music video. 

All in all, I had a great time and will definitely be attending his next concert and plan on buying his new album as soon as it's released. If you don't know Mika's music, I implore that you look it up, he is, in my opinion, one of the best artists out there at the moment. You won't be dissapointed. 

Embrace the madness

Truth

I don't know if you can read it very well but it's all true! Although i don't know any of these "mature humans" it references. Embrace the madness.

Some words I enjoy

Hey there, people with computers and very intelligent phones. Recently a friend of mine (shoutout to Rhona) introduced me to a trivia podcast called "Good job, Brain" (It's really good, you should all look it up, it's free) It's basically just a show where four smart and funny people talk about interesting stuff, and each week there is a theme. The other night i finished listening to their episode on words and it got me thinking about words that I like and why (I'm kinda OCD-ish like that, I also like certain numbers) and so I have compiled a list that will hopefully be somewhat entertaining to read. I wrote this off the top of my head so it's fairly short. I credit some of the words to the podcast "Good job, Brain":

Snarge: This is a word I learned from "Good job, Brain", it is the term for what happens when an aeroplane hits a bird in flight. Kinda gross but a very cool word.

Cruciverbalist: A crossword fanatic. Fun to say (I was disappointed that the GJB team didn't mention this word at all).

Tittle: Not actually a dirty word at all (but you can make people think it is), it's the dot on top of an "i" or "j".

Triskadekophobia: Fear of the number thirteen. Slip it into conversation casually and people will think you're a genius.

Onomatopoeia: The word for words that sound like the thing they describe (it's like wordception) Kind of a fail of a word, if you ask me; it has four vowels in a row but no "u". You could have a full house of vowels, why would you just leave it like that?!

Favourite: Everyone knows what it means, I'd just like to shame Onomatopoeia with the knowledge that a word almost half it's length has all five vowels because it is truly dedicated to being the best word it can be.

Skirmish: An unorganised brawl or battle. Really fun to say.

Awesome: Anyone who knows me knows I say this a lot. It's an awesome word. Awesome.

Snafu: a mess and a really cool word.

Word: a word that is very hard to describe without using the word "word". If you look at it for too long, it stops looking like a word and you start thinking "that can't be right, better use a different word, just in case".

Embrace: to hold something closely in one's arms/tentacles/branches/metal claws/mind.

The:  the english article denoting something unique or to be known generally via earlier reference. Try and go a day without using this word, I dare you.

Madness: Extremely foolish (and much more fun) behaviour.

Got to the end of the list without including any swear words, fuck yeah!

Musical video

Hey guys! As promised, here is the first of hopefully many videos of yours truly singing and playing the guitar.   The thumbnail is goofy lookin but it's the best youtube gives my. Enjoy 

And here, also as I have promised, here is a copy of the lyrics (they are written and owned by me, just to clarify)

Letting You Go:

Don't remind me what I saw in you

Please don't say everything that I'd want you to

I've told myself "I'm moving on"

That I'm fine with never knowing

It's time to empty out my heart

I need some room for growing

Chorus:

So I have to forget you

Though I'm so glad to have met you

You've changed me for good but I wish you would

allow me to let you go

Cos I'm tired of the hurting

and all the meaningless flirting

cos we're miles apart, it would destroy my heart

to drag this on anymore

So here's me, letting you go

You know I'll miss you but it's for the best

I can't continue with these unanswered questions of

"Does he love me? He loves me not" 

I think we're out of time

in this game where no-one wins 

and you'll never be mine

Chorus

Bridge: 

And I know I might regret this

in the years to come

But breaking off our friendship

is the price of my heart's freedom

Chorus 

End

 

Hope you like it, and, as always, embrace the madness.

My Youtube Channel

Hola people, firstly I'd like to apologise for neglecting my blogging duties of late, I've had some very important things to attend to (sleeping, reading, social life and the like) so I am very sorry and hope to make it up to you with some good news (or good for me cos I've been putting it off for a while). I am finally putting up my Youtube channel, with videos and everything!


I will be posting the first two videos on this page as soon as they are public (it takes a while to upload them) and hopefully you will enjoy watching them. I will also be posting the lyrics to the first of my original songs to be made public, "Letting You Go", to accompany the video of the song, which will also be posted here. 


I am very excited but also scared as hell to see the response my videos get (be kind, please). I am posting videos to try and improve but also to get out there as an artist. Who knows, if Justin Beiber (uugh, I hate to taint my blog with that name) can be discovered through Youtube, maybe the same goes for me (probably not, the internet is a very, very big place and I live in Ireland). But a girl can dream. 


Embrace the madness that is the world wide spiderweb

Getting Run Over by a Train of Thought

Hello peoples. I apologise, it's been a few days (no pageviews at the moment, fuck it, I'll be lazy). There is a reason for this. I have been having trouble coming up with acceptable things to write about. Well, not trouble. More like an overload. I call this type of writer's block "Getting run over by a train of thought" (I've written a song about it, which I will post when I get round to posting songs). 

Just to clarify, a train of thought (I didn't come up with that, sadly) is the way one thought topic has an association (usually distant and weird) with a different thought topic and this continues until you end up being like "How the fuck did I get thinking about this, I was just thinking about what I wanted for dinner?!!". It is an odd thing and it happens a lot (to me, at least, I don't know if that's normal). 

Now that that's out of the way, I can get to what getting run over by a train of though means. Context: you need an idea for something. Be it a blog (yay, relevance!) or a book or a bus ad or a pamphlet on how to escape a zombie apocalypse or a recipe for fish soup or a post-it telling your soon-to-be-ex that they're a asshole-fucktard-manwhore and that you know about that slut from the office or crayon drawing for school (well done on reading this, by the way, I don't know many five year olds who read blogs). 

Wow, that got off track, which is exactly my point. You need an idea for something and you have a wide range of things you can do. You can draw a dragon or put cinnamon in your soup or review a movie or advise people to use AKs instead of double barrel shotguns (seriously, guys, why is there always that one douche in zombie movies who brought the fucking shotgun and keep having to reload?). You see what I mean? You think of one great idea, that leads to another, to another and in the end you can't remember a single one of your "amazing" ideas and you end up writing some bullshit about writers block. You get run over, swept far away from the original genius, by a train of thought. It makes sense to me anyway. And my zombie soup crayon drawing looks awesome, so there. Embrace the madness.

Imagination

If you have imagination, if you let your inner child have a say in your whole life, you can't help but be happy. Embrace the madness

Chess Pieces

Today I was bored and for some reason started thinking about the chess pieces and how they move. I came up with a little story for each and thought I would share the result with you. Warning; sorta depressing. Also, I don't do all the pieces, who has that much time? You can come up with a story for the White nation if you want, I'm lazy:

Backstory: Two nations (alike in dignity *ahem* I totally didn't rip that off Shakespeare) are at war. They have assembled their armies for the deciding battle. Think Waterloo, Hastings, Battle of D-Day. A truce cannot be reached, too much blood has been shed and far too much pride stands in the way of a clean end. Only one side will prevail.

Black King: The king is very old. He's been ruling for almost thirty years and he's not really long for this world. Though he was once a just and intelligent ruler, his mental proficiency has drastically decreased with age. He doesn't have any power lately and advisors and generals tend to do what they like without his consent. He's only a symbol of power, a morale boost for the people. His physical condition is also incredibly poor, so much so that he can only move one square every turn (but in any direction, his carers let him have that much). A spectator at the battle, he must be protected by the participants. He fears for his life.

Black Queen: The queen is much younger than the black king, a typical gold-digger. She has never loved him, except maybe for his money and expensive gifts. She has done her duty to the nation and given the king two sons (although only the younger of the two actually belongs to the king, the elder the son is the oblivious son of the King's first general; the Black Rook). The queen does what ever she wants and she wants vengeance. The White King had a brief affair with her sister and, when a servant discovered the truth, had her and the servant boy secretly executed. The Black Queen received a letter containing the real story a few days after her sister went missing. She has taken it upon herself to slaughter the White King for his misdeed, and will kill anyone who stands in her way.

Black Rook 1: The Black Rook is the King's first general and young rival. He is brave, strong, cunning, everything the king no longer is. He has no long term partner and likes to think of himself as a real ladies man (he also secretly fathered the eldest prince, the second Black Rook, although the queen has not told him this). He has his own agenda in this war, hoping that 'terrible accidents' will befall the princes so that he can swoop in and sieze power. He in confident that he will survive the war. He walks on the sidelines, commanding other soldiers, going right in for the kill if he gets the chance.

Black Rook 2: Oldest prince and heir to the throne, he wants so desperately to do well. He is terrified that any day his 'father' (he is unaware that the first Black Rook is his real father) will pass and he'll have to take over as king. He's young, only just turned twenty three, cripplingly insecure and shy having never been exposed to normal social situations. He hopes that this battle will give him some kind of self confidence so he can figure out who he is. The thought that he might die hasn't really occured to him. He stays at the edge of the battle field, naively attempting to aid lowly pawns.

Black Bishop: A corrupt and self righteous priest, risen to power in the church throught deciet and murder, he has been drafted into this final battle as last resort, due to his army experience as a young man. A malicious killer, he often feigns injury to save his own skin, sacrificing lives on either side of the battlefield. He believes that he is god's labourer and so should do whatever is neseccary to survive. He weaves diagonally through the field and stabs attackers from behind.

Black Knight: The youngest prince and true heir to the throne, he is sixteen years old and a cocky, wild spirited, little prick. He has never had to work nor has he ever been given any responsibility. One of his favourite things to do is annoy the shit out of his ernest older brother, walking all over him the majority of the time. He has been sent into battle as punishment for one too many crazy parties and totally trashing the whole palace west wing, in the hope that he'll get his act together under a bit of pressure. This plan hasn't gone very well, however, the prince has taken it as a sure death sentence and gotten pissed off his head just before the battle. Someone had the bright idea to put him on a horse to avoid him causing further damage to himself. He controls it well enough to stay on but moves in an irregular, erractic way, often placing himself in more danger.

Black Pawns: The Black pawns are young soldiers, labourers, war prisioners and veterans. They are very weak, tired and half starved. They no longer care who wins the war but most of them do not expect tosurvive the battle.

Everywhere there is a story to tell. You just need to find it. And always, embrace the madness

An amazing band

I recently discovered this band called "Parachute", I think I have actually fallen in love with his voice. No joke, my heart is freakin racing with every note. I hadn't heard of them before but I now see that's a cruel injustice to these incredibly talented artists. Give them a listen, you won't regret it.

Embrace the madness

An Introduction to my Music

So, I've mentioned (multiple times, geez, you never listen to me) that I am a budding singer-songwriter. The primary reason I started this blog is for my music (and because I like to think that people want to read the things I write, though most people won't).

I've always liked music as a thing but didn't really get into it until I was about fourteen and started bothering to listen to the radio every now and then. Before that it was my dad singing me to sleep every night until I was about nine (I was raised on a diet of  Frank Sinatra, The Eagles and "Yellow Submarine" by the Beatles; my dad had a small repertoir but a very, very good one. I pity the children now growing up with the Justin Beiber influence, *shudder*). 

I liked singing, a trait I inherited from my dad, and although I'm fairly certain I vastly overestimated my abilities, I performed at tennis club children's concerts and every once in a while for my school class (who I annoyed the shit out of with the two songs I knew off by heart). I didn't learn any instruments although my parents made me take piano for first and second year (I was too impatient for it, I couldn't get good fast enough with as little practise as I wanted)

I also vaguely remember experimenting with the recording feature on my CD player aged eight or nine, on casettes might I add (I was such a little hipster) recording some of my dad's CDs and playing them in our "ancient" (made in 1998) Honda Shuttle that still couldn't play those fewfangled compact discs. 

But I'm boring you, I'll get back to the point. I got into music properly in my first year of secondary school (aged bout 13). This year, just before I turned sixteen, I began taking guitar lessons for the beautiful, black with a maroon pickguard, left-handed guitar I'd gotten for christmas the year before. I'd taught myself most og the chords that didn't use bars and had succesfully figured the intro to two songs and (not that badly *cringe*) worked out the chords for "All This Time" by OneRepublic.

Anyway, I finally got round to taking lessons bacause of the president's award "An Gaisce" that the majority of Irish fourth years do because it looks good on a CV and makes your parents happy. Something about bettering yourself too... I took lessons with a girl who's mum is friends with my mum and who had a reputation down at the tennis club (I don't play anymore, I hate the sport almost as much as I hate things that my parents make me do without asking if I have any interest in that thing) for songwriting and guitar playing at musical evenings. 

I started playing December of 2011. I got good quickly (or quick enough for me to keep up interest) because I had a good teacher and wanted to learn. I like to thing there's a certain ammount of natural talent there too, and a knack for picking things up. I tooks songs and changed them a bit to make them my own, posted one or two of the results on my facebook page. Around February 2012, I wrote my first song and things started to get interesting. 

I had tried songwriting many times before that, without being able to play an instrument (proficiently) and it hadn't gone particularly well, I only gained some mediocre poetry that I couldn't quite but to music. I did, however, write a piece that did have a good tune. I tried to made a whole song of it but couldn't; leaving me with only a tuneful couplet about how my third year at an all girls school was making me feel at the time (I changed school the next year and am now in a much better situation).

Thanks for making me feel like I'm invisible;
I'm fine, I'll just blend in with the background like I always do. 

I actually graffitied those words onto the bathroom wall of that school, unbelievable rebel that I am. I'll elaborate on that song later. My point is, that's when my writing took off. After I'd figured out that structure that a song needsand realised that I was able to create a song that sounded halfway like a proper song, my productivity sky-rocketed. I don't know if it was the fact that I didn't want to study for mid term tests (I got straight As except for Irish, without studying, hells yeah) or because I was inspiration struck, but I wrote two more songs in the course of a week. 

Excited by this newfound art form, I slowly began sending videos of my original songs to my friend, Rhona, who seemed somewhat impressed and thoroughly encouraged me to keep it up, proclaiming herself my sponsor. I continued to write songs, which I will be introducing you do at a later date (I'll leave you hanging, muhaha!)

I proceeded to play at a couple of musical events in my school and the tennis club (my dad sings there sometimes and you don't have to actually play) and I'm writing lots this summer. I currently have nine songs and plan on entering a song-writing competition on RTÉ (that's the main Irish tv station, for all you foreigners). 


So in a much longer introduction that I had initially planned, you now know some stuff bout me and my musical history. I'll be posting songs, covers, lyrics and various other stuff soonish. I'll also be setting up a youtube channel at some stage so watch this space. 


Thanks for reading, I'm sorry it's not as interesting as some of my other posts, I apologise and promise lots of silliness to make up for it. Embrace the madness.

Now for Pandas in a Tree

Sanity is just an excuse for being boring. Embrace the madness

The Title of this Blog

Now, as the more osbervant of you may have noticed, this blog is titled "Mental Notes". Congrats if you are one of those people! If not, eat some vegetables, maybe a fish or two and find refuge in the fact that a sharp mind like yours can always be put to good use in politics. 

The title of this blog (Mental Notes, keep up people) came to me in a bout of inspiration (those of which come far less frequently than I would like) and I personally think it is very clever; so Ima boast a bit. I would've had this blog up and running a lot earlier had I been able to thing of an adequately ingenius name sooner (I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my art and such things).

I wanted to set up the blog for my music, first and foremost, so I experimented with names like "Guitarmac" (but it's not just about guitar and I do not own a mac, nor do I have any interest in road laying materials), and "Living Lyrics" ( but it still didn't seem at all clever enough) so I procarastinated a lot, wrote, and frankly, put it out of my mind completely.

Then, a couple of days ago, I was advised to start a blog (because everyone should, apparently, although I personally believe that some people should not be let within 30 miles of internet access, for the best interests of humanity) and I though, Mental Note; start a blog. Mental Note. So perfect, simple, with many meanings all of which combined describe exactly what I want to convey with my blog. My subconscious is a freakin genius, wish it could do that more. 

Mental Notes. Mental notes as in simply thoughts. Mental notes as in notes which are perhaps a bit liberal in the old sanity department. Mental notes as in musical notes contained within the conscious and subconscious mind. And mental notes as in musical notes which are peculiar and different but good all the same. 

You sharp minded people will already have figured these out, I would hope (it's not exactly cryptic) but I just though I'd (humbly) spell out how perfect and simple and amazing the name was. These things are what I hope to offer in my blog, and more. There will be more to come. 

Embrace the madness 

 

Welcome to my world

Welcome peoples to my blog. Just a quick note on what's gonna be posted here (note, like in the blog title, relevance, yeah!). I'm Rachel, for those of you who do not know me (which is most of you) and to know a little bit about me, read the description! That's why it's there, show it a bit of love and let it do it's job, it has a wife and kids to feed. Lazy! Aaaanyways, Ima be posting stuff here that I like so that you can enjoy it (I'm just that nice). So welcome peoples (and animals, I don't descriminate, and extra terrestrial life, and beings surveying this reality from a different one and people who do not yet exist and inanimate objects and plant life and bowling balls and musical instruments) If i have left anyone out, I most sincerely apologise; feel free to write a strongly worded letter of complaint which I would take great joy in reading if I were stupid enough to reveal my home address on the internet. Embrace the madness