I'm done with school. My first year at Aurehøj; over. I have no more classes left to take this year; no more lessons to go to; no more homework to scribble hopelessly down the night before it's due. All that's left of this school year, is exams and tests.
There will be people, music and beer in the streets. More than usual, anyway. The sun will (hopefully) shine on a distorted Copenhagen; for Distortion has finally hit our city. And I too am going to be enjoying the festivities in town later today.
All I'll be doing is relaxing, drinking, sleeping, dancing, screaming, laughing, TV-watching, partying, reading, hurriedly studying, perhaps stressing, but generally chilling.
It's almost-vacation time. Plus a bit of studying.
RECOMMENDING The artist Kimbra, and her EP "Settle Down". You might know her from Gotye's hit "Somebody That I Used To Know". You might not. That would be weird, though... But here's Kimbra. On her own. With her freaky videos. And her quirky hair... and dresses. And her awkward claps and dancemoves. And her catchy songs. Especially "Settle Down", which I absolutely love. At this point, the new release of her album "Vows" also deserves a mentioning; especially with songs like "Two Way Street" and "Good Intent". Like her, hate her, love her to pieces; here is Kimbra, and I think she's amazing.
PERSONALLY...
I wasn't all that wild about Kimbra at first. But the intro of the song "Settle Down" had me hooked by the first "boom ba-boom bah". After that came the "oooh oh-oh oh-oh oh" of "Plain Gold Ring" (live). And by the time I had made it to the "bom-bom-bom-bom-baah" of "Cameo Lover" I was sold. In fact, I litterally just bought her new album "Vows"; and in near bladder-bursting anticipation, I await leaning back in my bed with a book, and the bluesy, smoky voice of Kimbra in my ear.
KIMBRA IS AWESOME BECAUSE...
Her real name actually is Kimbra Johnson, and she was born in New Zealand in 1990. She often features very quirky hair-do's and dresses in her music videos. And no one can say "boom ba-boom bah" in the same, wide-mouthed and doll-eyed way she can.
She began writing music at the age of ten, in spite of not coming from an especially musical family. She was never tought to sing, and her father, a doctor, gave her her first guitar. Already at the age of twelve, she sang the national anthem in front of 27,000 people at the Auckland vs. Waikato NPC rugby final. She looks a bit like a porcelain doll; and in her music, she sounds both exactly like one, and nothing close to one. In the music video for "Settle Down",she used a young girl, about the age of twelve, to play the lead. She was discovered by manager Mark Richardson at the tender age of 17, and now has a contract with Warner Bros. Records. Her newest projects include touring the nation in support of Gotye, confirming dates to tour with Foster The People, and this May, releasing her debut-album, "Vows", which is now out in the USA and Europe. Comparisons have been drawn between Kimbra and Architecture in Helsinki, Amy Winehouse, Prince, Janelle Monaé and Björk. Her songs have been called "heavily thematic and laced with "quirky" jazz chords".
According to me, her songs are just wonderful; quirky, crazy and lovely. Just like Kimbra herself.
BAD DHO is finally over. 13 pages of endless fretting over text-analysis and litterary history, all written in semi-coherent writing, plus one nonsensical conclusion slapped onto the paper at 1am. Then a long and exhausting day after DHO, where all the first year students were walking around like zombies.
GOOD And then the day turned much better; birthday dinner for a friend, fun and a bit too much wine with the girls, and an old-fashioned school dance afterwards, with 50's style dresses and Big Band music. Ah.
NOW Downtime with Sex and The City, procrastinating homework, and drinking chai tea.
1 paper. 2 subjects, narrowed down to one. 2 days. 8 pages, plus formalities. 48 hours (that's 2880 minutes, or 172800 seconds) of laziness, stress, cramming and procrastinating. 99,9% hair-tearing wreck of a teenager. 0,1% brain. Innumeral amounts of nerves, word-vomits and books being torn apart in frustration. Millions of clicks, letters, failed attempts of avoiding Facebook, and back-cracks. 1 girl. Me.
DHO begins tomorrow. Am freaking out like a øajfødkæhfdsafjaædsfdsaælfhdsfhalfhaæsdfdshfæaf. Oh, the stressure (stress + pressure = stressure)!
Goodbye sanity. See you on Friday.
DHO:
"Dansk/Historie-opgave". Danish/History assignment that all first year students have to write. DHO should stand for Dreaded Horrible Overly-emphasized-by-teachers-making-students-panic-for-no-reason-as-it-doesn't-really-count-for-anything assignment. Mine is tommorrow, and shall be turned in on Friday.
If you could go anywhere in the world. Anywhere at all... It doesn't have to be fancy or exotic or incredibly luxurious. It can be, though, if that's what you want. But if you had to choose a single place in the world. A place you would use your enitre life's savings to visit. Somewhere you've always wanted to go. Someplace, that's special to you, and just you, for whatever reason...
Where would you go?
M E ? I W O U L D G O T O N E W Y O R K . . .
Do you know the feeling when an old friend writes to you from a foreign country? Somewhere they're travelling, perhaps even a new home, or just a place they've lived all along. And they tell you how amazing it is, how cultured, how refined, how wild, how beautiful, how exotic and how exactly how they imagined, while still being something out of their wildest dreams. That feeling?
I know that feeling. I soak up these descriptions. Especially if it's New York.
New York, ah, New York. I have this crazy, life-long dream of living there.
No, I've never actually been there. No, I've never seen the sky scrapers, Brooklyn Bridge, or the yellow cabs with their rude, shouting cab drivers; the smog and the smoke of the city, the flashing lights, or the people that never sleep; 5th Avenue and Broadway and Central Park and the Statue of Liberty; the bar crawlers and young dreamers and chain smokers and marathon runners; Brooklyn or the Upper East Side; or the rooftop restaurants and the enormous stores, the roar of traffic and the bustle of a million strangers collected in The City That Never Sleeps, The Big Apple, New York. No, I've never seen New York.
But I can feel it! I can practically smell, taste, touch, hear and lick it! Yes, I will freely admit that I'm a bit of a cliché. But though many teenage girls desperately long for their own Manhattan adventure, their own Carrie Bradshaw existence, their own shopaholic heaven, I somehow feel that my obsession is different. Don't get me wrong; it's not. I know it's not. But somehow, New York is mine.
I'm going there some day. One day; just wait and see. I'll live there. I'm not saying forever. Just sometime. In a completely shit appartment, alone with my 47 cats; or perhaps with a creepy roommate, who leaves the carcasses of recently devoured china boxes lying all over the apartment. Eating take-out every day, cooking ineptly in my tiny kitchen, living off doritos and cheap coffee... Working as a waitress at a crap coffee shop, as a bartender at some seedy bar, or as a dog walker in Central Park... Whatever it takes. I'm going to live there.
