Sammy

24/Feb/2012

Sammy, I’ve just had this massive realisation.

All these 2.5 months we’ve been shedding tears over our loss. I just want to acknowledge — assuming that you’re still around and watching us — that the biggest loss is actually yours.

What if you wanted to live but could not. You seemed so happy when I last saw you. What if you wanted to live longer and do more things but could not. I am so so sorry that no one was around when you took your last breath. It absolutely devastates me to think that maybe you had a moment where you realised that you were dying and you didn’t want that but you couldn’t do anything about it.

You didn’t want to die. Of course you didn’t. You wanted to live life and you were doing an excellent job of living your life. Way to show us all up. I wish you had stayed with me that night. I wish you hadn’t left my place that Sunday night.

Not sure if I could have prevented the inevitable but I would have loved to know what your last thoughts were, if that were possible at all, and somehow been in a position to carry your message forward.

Obviously I have no idea what death feels like but I’ve been told that it feels like a massive release, like an orgasm. I take some solace in knowing that.

I just wish you weren’t alone at the time. All I think of is — two hours after you left my place — you in your bed by yourself, dying, and the only two possibilities that come to mind are

- either you didn’t realise
- or you did

AND BOTH OF THEM FUCKING SUCK ASS.

If you’re still around in any shape or form I want you to know that I kind of get your rather unusual predicament.

If you didn’t realise that you were dying then you didn’t get a chance to experience death and if you did realise then you didn’t get a chance to share it with anyone.

I miss your face, Sam. So much. You were gorgeous. So polite yet so cheeky. So successful yet so earthy. You were one in a billion. I can’t help but cry whenever I’m by myself. It is such a massive loss that I shudder to think how us supposedly advanced humans use such an embarrassingly flawed and inadequate form of communication called language that it fails so hard at expressing grief. Why are we so incapable of communicating simply through emotions? It’s quite ironic because at the end of the day all us humans care about is serotonin and dopamine.

You’ve made me realise I’m not as strong as I thought I was and I thank you for that because even though it’s so sad it’s such a liberating feeling.

I hope you’re okay wherever you are. I want to believe what I’ve been told… that you’re looking over my shoulder as I’m writing this.

You were fucking special and I’m so grateful for our serendipitous encounter.

Catch up

What’s the haps, kids? Oh no, that so doesn’t sound like me. Perhaps if I said it enough times?

Soo I’ve been away from my blog for ages but if I tell you what I’ve been up to, you might possibly die of envy. I’ve been in New Zealand for about seven months, studying to be a proper “hack” and doing all sorts of odd jobs — from waitressing at a feral diner in north Auckland to acting as a blood-thirsty Roman for a Gladiator-style US television drama.

With such a luxe life, blogging obviously had to take a backseat. So right now I’m going to resist the urge to indulge in some defensive, self-deprecating humour, and get straight on to what’s been happening on the music end.

One of my fave jobs here so far has been writing for a student mag (no, not at the university I attend).  What a defector!

Every fortnight, I profiled a Kiwi music band, wrote a feature and a wee coloumn called newsbot — a news roundup from the perspective of a self-obsessed, obnoxious robot .

I wrote a few music reviews as well, some alright and some worse than doped-out Sonic Youth at a concentration camp in Somalia.

Even though it was hard to balance all that with my intense journo course, I really enjoyed it as it gave me a chance to meet some very cool people.

I will soon be posting some of my work here, so I have something to show for my AWOLness.

In other news, I’m currently interning at Yahoo! Xtra. I’ve never interned before so this is awesome and slightly nerve wrecking.

In fact I was so nervous the night before it started, I could hardly get any sleep. Weird, cos I managed to sleep perfectly okay before I flew out to NZ in Feb. But I soon realised I had no reason to be so anxious. Companies love interns!

Everyone at Yahoo has been so nice to me, that as a sign of appreciation I even did what every intern worth her salt would do — I offered to make coffee! But everyone was way too nice to accept that.

I’ve got another week there and I’m so not looking forward to it ending. So far they’ve given me two new albums to review — Dimmer’s Degree of Existence and Tahuna Breaks’ Black, Brown and White. Appararently Tahuna Breaks are currently topping iTunes New Zealand chart. AND I’m interviewing them tomorrow. So excited!

Aaah I’m so going to have another sleepless night!

This is not a post

Apologies for no recent ramblings.

As it goes, Megha currently lacks inspiration but hopes she’ll be back as soon as she finishes chasing the rabbit through the burrow.

Loving Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa btw.

Iain Petrie – I’ll Stay By You

Thanks to Mikey Serpico, we have a great review of Iain Petrie’s album I’ll Stay by You. Petrie’s music is as laid back as it can get. It’s a perfect listen after a hard day at work, when all you want to do is relax while having a quiet drink.

It’s like retro but the problem is… it shouldn’t be

Containing much ranting, moaning and complaining

Loaded with expectation-plus, I went to see DJ Suketu play at one of the ‘best’ clubs of NCR last Saturday*.

My friend Ashish, who was here in Delhi on a flying visit from Mumbai, is a big fan of Suketu, and therefore, he thought it utmost important to make another friend’s and my attendance mandatory at the said event.

However after the first couple of minutes and intensive stare-downs from blinged-up and unattractively hirsute men, I knew it wasn’t going to be anything special.

My fears were confirmed when I realised the stuff being played by the opening DJ wasn’t doing anything to uplift my slowly waning (and massively-diluted) spirits.

REEVE CARNEY live at The Roxy 2/6/08

When it’s all sci-fi, red pill, blue pill, things fail to amuse as frequently as they used to back in the days, unless we’re talking Nicolas Sarkozy and the “man-eater” OR music.

A case in point: the prolific and may I say extremely handsome Reeve Carney. The first time I heard Carney, the visual disconnect in terms of what I expected and what I received was just amazing. I mean, at the risk of stereotyping let me say this, I generally don’t expect quality, deep stuff from good-looking people. In a way that’s a bit unfair too. They have the best of both the worlds. Think male of the species of Norah Jones. I’ll reword it better when I’m slightly more awake, but you get the idea.

And he’ll be playing at The Roxy, CA this coming Wednesday, February 6. Don’t miss him, if you’re in or around that area. I really do hope he plays Forget about You.

———–

Steven Harlow Productions and the Roxy Theatre Present

CARNEY with Blackcowboy, Lukas Haas, and Biirdie

    The Roxy

    9009 West Sunset Blvd

    West Hollywood, CA

    8:00pm – $10 – all ages!!

    Tickets

Team Stevie Wonder made it to Kathmandu in 15 days! Alive!

Andy and I (Stevie Wonder Driving School) made it to Kathmandu in 15 days time and we are so damn pleased with ourselves!

There’s loads to tell but the highlight of the entire run was this amazingly bad crash we had on the 11th day — I drove into the back of a parked lorry at 45 kmph! Our rick was absolutely twisted and mangled. I thought GAME OVER!

Currently roughin’ it…

I’m currently away from home…roughing it in some random place somewhere in India with roid raged Andy. At the time of writing this blog, our team, Stevie Wonder’s Driving School, has travelled about 1500 kms, covering three states in 5 days in a ridiculously breakdown-prone mode of transport known as auto-rickshaw. Had loads of fun getting a little more than slightly drunk on the New Year’s eve, crashing into the team parked right in front of us on the start date, ramming our auto-rickshaw into a pole, overtaking gigantic trucks on national highway, going on two-wheels downhill, handling breakdowns, giving random village people free rides in our auto-rickshaw…

Current location: Tuni, Andhra Pradesh

5000 km-15 days-145cc vehicle: We could die

The least you can do is give us a tenner in aid of Mercy Corps.

In January 2008, a friend of mine and I are going to be taking the risk of our lives.

We’ll be driving across the length of India, right to the mountains in Nepal, in the lamest, most fragile and most breakdown-prone piece of engineering ever made here — the great Indian auto-rickshaw. And this is all for a noble cause — charity.

We need to raise at least a £1000 or more for the world famous charity org Mercy Corps before or during this 15-day-long odyssey. We’ll be trying to avoid cutting ourselves open, breaking our heads or crashing into an oncoming truck or a tree or a dog because dogs are nice. We might even have to slay pythons, manoeuver our way around a mud slide, hang from a cliff until help comes by and all that jazz — all while driving on not so particularly nice Indian roads.

Radiohead – In Rainbows

Radiohead’s decision to axe the middleman (the-soon-to-be-helpless record companies) has resulted in a truck-load of money for them. The marketing decision that was being expected to be the biggest debacle of the year has proved to be otherwise and that too in the extreme. By selling their music online at whatever price their fans think to be fair, Radiohead might have created a ground-breaking business model for the other bands. The average music lover it turns out is honest and doesn’t mind paying the right price for what he deems worthy. As for me, I haven’t been able to get my copy yet because the website just won’t load! I’ll keep trying though.

But the good thing is that an old friend of mine has been able to get past the server overload issue. Here’s a big thank you to Vishnu Erramilli for sending in a really awesome track-by-track review of the last album of Radiohead — In Rainbows.