All The Colours

Blood…sweat…tears…a little urine… (No, no urine really)…

…and wallah! I have written a song. It’s called “All The Colours”. I have videoed myself playing it, although I must warn you the quality is shocking and my facial expressions are alarming. I couldn’t upload it straight to this blog, as it wants to charge me like £50. I don’t have that kind of money, I’m unemployed here!

Hopefully this link will work…

http://s1102.photobucket.com/albums/g447/KarenAnneEverett/?action=view&current=allthecolours004.mp4

The instrumentation will change for the final version, I think there’ll be some strings in there, with less of an acoustic guitar sound and more of an almost instrumental backing.

Here are the lyrics so far:

I have a feeling
That this moment’s lost in time
No seconds left to go over my lines
I want to ad lib with you
But the stage is set tonight
I interject

All my life, you’ve been beside me
And your voice keeps me warm in my heart
And I know that you will find me
It just takes me much longer to start

All the colours x 3
We’ll see

This is a feeling
And it’s captured in your eyes
Like patterns in the window glint in the sunrise
Tell me you didn’t know
That I’m in love with you
All of you

All my life, you’ve been beside me
And your voice keeps me warm in my heart
And I know that you will find me
It just takes me much longer to start

You will never find x 3
Someone like me

When the sunset breaks the violet sky
And the indigo passioned sea will rise
The red hot fire rushes through my eyes
I feel alive

All my life, you’ve been beside me
And your voice keeps me warm in my heart
And I know that you will find me
It just takes me much longer to start

You will never find x 3
Someone like me

All the colours x 3
We’ll see

xx

Halloween Dream

It’s Halloween tomorrow so HAPPY HALLOWEEN to you all! (Or SPOOKY HALLOWEEN if you prefer, it’s your choice, take it or leave it).

I made a cheeky pumpkin carving, and yes you should be incredibly impressed, this is the first pumpkin carving I have EVER done in my life…

Pumpkin!

I was so chuffed! Incidently I just had the biggest camera-computer malfunction, it was literally touch and go. There were raised voices (well just 1 raised voice – mine) and expletives. Crikey, it was quite an ordeal! So much so that I had to actually go and buy a yorkie. I’m eating it now. It’s really good.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, yorkies aren’t for girls… Well I challenge ANY man to eat a yorkie quicker than I just did. Hell, I could even fit in more, I laugh, nay, quaff at your yorkie, ha ha ha!

I’m getting off topic here…

Back to pumpkins… I carved some little ones too, wanna see?

Munchkins

They’re dinky. In the shop (Sainsburys) they were marketed as munchkins, which is just so cute!

I think Halloween is a really underrated holiday in the UK. In the USA it’s massive, people dress up and have a right old jolly time of it – we just get drunk – nice. I made a slight effort to dress up this year and felt sorely out of place amongst the group I went out with last night! Last year was amazing, we all made an astonishing effort and really looked the part. I dressed up as Lady Gaga, it was literally awesome.

Temporary employment

So next week I actually have some temporary employment! This will inevitably make me sound like a nerd, but I’m actually really looking forward to it. I’m even a little bit… dare I say it… excited?…

It’s only data entry but I’m just delighted to be leaving the house. I also have an interview on Tuesday, which I believe I’ve already mentioned in a previous post. However, I cannot for the life of me find the job description for the role I applied for! It’s for Marketing Officer at the BVA in London and I’m really excited to be invited to the interview, I’ve done my homework and researched the organisation, looked thoroughly through the website, etc etc, but it would be the cherry on the cake if I could find the role description…

This is a major downside of unemployment, having no reason to leave the house. I could potentially spend all week indoors if I didn’t force myself to leave the nest sometimes. Not that my home isn’t lovely, it’s just the outside world is really something isn’t it?

Musical whimsical fantastical…

I appear to have a wealth of songwriting inspiration at the moment, which is always a good thing. I have half written a folky sounding song and intend to finalise the words this week. Once I’ve written the bare structure of it (without thinking through the instrumentation or other such things) I’ll record it just me and guitar and see if I can upload it so you can hear. We’ll take it from there. Would be great to get some opinions once it’s uploaded!

I never heard back from Thorntons about me gigging there – boo. Although I don’t feel as bothered as I probably should…

Itchy feet

No guys, I do NOT have a rash!

A foot

Following on from being bored with sitting around on my ever expanding arse all day long, I’ve been really thinking about this travelling malarkey and have come to the conclusion that it sounds grand. There’s only 1 place I really want to go to and that’s America… and while I’m there I may as well visit Canada, it would be rude not to!

In true Karen style (that’s me) I would like all this to happen immediately. THAT MEANS NOW! But I do feel really selfish for wanting to do this, however many times people keep telling me it’s not. It’s just that I know my parents will be upset at me for wanting to go, and I know it will upset the delicate household balance I live in because while I’m living with my boy and his friend they’re able to save up to go travelling themselves, which they wouldn’t be able to do if I left. Although now I’ve just written that down I’ve realised that what’s happening is that I’m forfeiting my dreams to support theirs. That’s not fair is it? But if I follow mine, I doubt they’ll be able to follow theirs.

I am in a pickle people, a little help here?? Please?? I don’t want to hurt anyone but I want to do what I want too!

Arrangements for next week

I MUST remember to record Due South, or life will not be worth living!! (Melodrama – gotta love it)

Peace out y’all xx

Happy Monday Everyone…

…And welcome to the last week in October! Yes, as of tomorrow it’s officially 2 months until Christmas – yes you did hear me correctly – yes it is terrifying isn’t it.

PANIC!

Cleanliness and other things

I think you’ll all be pleased to hear that our shower is FINISHED!! This means that no longer shall we remain smelly beasts in this house. No longer shall the stench of yesteryear prevail! However I am still sitting in my pajamas and it is midday…

Unemployment prospects

Yesterday (Sunday) I went to our local shops with my friend Rachel (just one more plug, promise it will be quick! – Rachel is an excellent maker of pretty celebration cakes and cupcakes, check her out at www.cakesfromrachelxx.com). We mooched, drank tea and coffee, and the great news is that I spontaneously decided to go for a part-time job in our local Body Shop. So it looks like I’ll be doing this part-time from now until Christmas! Now, I’ve still classed this as unemployment prospects because it’s not a career. That’s the whole point of this blog, it’s a move away from a traditional career. Besides, if I only work under 15 hours a week, I think I’m still eligible for job seekers allowance? Maybe? One can hope…

Musicianshit

Something I’ve probably not mentioned before, I am a bit of a typical struggling musician. I got my music degree in the summer of 2006 and since then have pretty much done absolutely nothing of worth with it. Having tried teaching, a regular office job, marketing, being an independent Avon representative and shop jobs, I have finally after 5 years of trying to make it in a traditional job in the big bad world, ended up right back where I started. It was this time 5 years ago that I remember facing a crisis of unemployment, knowing that the pressure was on from all sides to select a career and make enough money to settle down, knowing that I’d just come out of a turbulent relationship and I needed to calm down and move on, and not really wanting to hurt anyone in the process of doing what I knew was right. Consequently I ended up not moving at all. That’s the funny thing about having too many ideas, someone very wise once told me that the worst thing is to have too many ideas, because it’s paralysing! You can’t pick one over the other because you don’t know if one is more right than the other.

Do I stay or do I go now?..

The right thing at the time sounds ridiculous to other people, but it was right for me. I wanted to get as far away from everyone I had known before as I could and start completely fresh in  new place with all new people, somewhere fun I could pursue my dreams. Now, doesn’t that sound like a mighty pipe dream! I wanted to move to California. I was all set to do it. Then through certain circumstances that arose at that time, I ended up having to face a choice, do I stay or do I go now?

California

I ended up staying, thinking that surely this is the right thing to do, unfortunately my gut kept on telling me otherwise, I stupidly ignored it. 5 years on from that moment in time, and that feeling has not gone, it’s just gotten stronger and more frustrating.

Annoyingly it is in fact ni on impossible to move to or work in America if you are a UK citizen. There appears to be very few options:

1)   Camp America – now this looks really fun, if you like kids… It also seems to be aimed at people a lot younger than me, maybe that’s just me being picky though, I’m aware that I am a raving perfectionist!

2)   Bunac volunteer – this way you’re on a scheme, although you’re not earning any money…

3)   Travelling with no agenda – at the moment, this seems like the best option, because you’re free to make your own decisions and choices once you’re out there, you can meet anyone you want and if your trip takes certain twists and turns you can just ride the current. This is the option that will take the most convincing other people (i.e. my family) as they will no doubt want to know my exact location at any one time and know when I’m coming home and what’s happening next. Unfortuntely this is exactly what I’m trying to escape from. Is it really so selfish to want my freedom? The freedom to decide what I really want to do, who I really want to be? I only want to try my best, is that selfish? It feels as if it shouldn’t be, but my family will see it that way. I don’t know how to get around this, any advice would be welcome guys…

4)   Become insanely good at something and become invaluable to the American economy (ha!)

Have you ever put off doing something you know you have to do, and tried to cover it up and ignore it with lots of other things? If you have, then you’ll know that anything you try to do in denial ends up failing. Hence my life over the past 5 years. The longer you postpone something inevitable, the worse the fall out when it happens. Because it WILL happen eventually, if it was meant to be it was meant to be, and nothing will be able to stop it. You catch my drift?

Gig success!

So back to Sunday’s mooching trip…

Whilst at our local shopping village on Sunday I also spontaneously popped into Thorntons and asked them if they’d have me play covers of cheesy pop songs for an hour or so in their cafe area. SUCCESS! I exchanged contact details with the manager of the shop with a view to arranging a suitable slot sometime this week!

Cheese

I promise to let you know how it goes. I haven’t performed in public in years and I’m actually quite scared, I’m sure it will be fine though.

Tell you what, I’ll record it and upload it onto YouTube so you can see for yourselves, watch this space!

Due South

This show is brilliant – enough said.

Due South

Love! xx