Beyond Selidor

When it comes to background music, I tend to cycle through the same collection of about fifty artists/albums/playlists/performances, depending on my mood, and this week seems to have been the time to return to Tiësto's epic, 4-hour-long DJ set from Copenhagen in 2007. I've had it on continuous repeat every day at work, and have just paused playing it again while preparing tonight's dinner — it's great for motivation when it comes to getting things done. I love the whole set, but honestly, the moments between 2.17.56-2.28.00 just get into my sinews and bones, and when the stream gets to that point, I find myself scrolling back, and replaying, and replaying over and over again.



This is one of the performances about which I have severe concert regret about not having attended — although given that I still lived in Australia at the time, it's highly unlikely I would ever have made it to Copenhagen, even if Tiësto had been on my musical radar those days. And at least I did have the opportunity to see this live set in 2010, and it ended up being one of my most memorable live music experiences, so there's that.

I swore to myself that I had hardened my heart against a lifetime of caring, hopefully, about the results of elections, and yet I opened Instagram, of all places, this morning to a wave of anxiety that's ensconced itself behind my ribs and refused to leave. I resent that I resemble this Guardian opinion piece by a fellow Australian.

I had made plans for tomorrow — more preemptive heart-hardening — to avoid the internet entirely, not just the blue hellsite that is Twitter. I was going to buy the next Benjamin January book and just wallow in a cone of silence until the internet had screamed itself out, whatever the result (or, more likely, whatever state of inconclusiveness things are in 24 hours after polls close). I spent so much time preparing for the aftermath that I forgot to prepare for this dreadful sense of unease that now creeps up on me on any kind of election day, in multiple countries, like a bucket of icy water. (That's my secret. I'm always anxious.)

Thankfully, I've got a rather tedious task ahead for most of today at work: running searches for a systematic review, which at least involves repetive, focused activities that should last several hours. I'll stick on a Tiësto live set and hope that the noise drowns out the noisy clutter in my own head. It should work as something of a bandaid solution, at least for a little while.

I'm sending hope to all of you, across oceans.

I am so grateful.

I am grateful to Alex, for the music.

I am grateful to thelxiepia, for telling me to go for a walk to improve my mood and getting me the hell out of the house.

I am grateful to M, who, upon hearing of said walk, responded, 'you should take some music, because that always makes you happier'. It does indeed. Pretending it's the soundtrack to running away from zombies makes me happy, for some inexplicable reason.

And then this song came on. Honestly, there was no way I was going to feel sad when this was playing. This is the song that reminds me I can be strong, I can be brave, I can be happy and beautiful and feel wonder.

Sometimes I just need some tough love. True friends are not enablers, and I'm incredibly grateful to have them.

Not having internet at home (beyond the unreliable wifi the neighbours are kindly letting us use) is making me feel very awful. I think I'm going to have to be stricter with myself about stuff in order to avoid getting into such a state again. Thus:

No internet at home. I will be in the internet cafe in the evenings, but I'm not allowed to use it at home at all. (So no forums, sporadic blogging, no chat. For the sake of my sanity.)

Get up at 6 every morning and just run. No excuses. Doesn't matter how cold and dark it is, that's the rule.

Thesis. Every day.

Looking at my tags, I am all about the literary allusions to dispossession. One of these days I'll have to write something about that.

Why is it that in all rental properties, there's always something that goes wrong? We've been having problems with our washing machine for ages. When you put it on, it can't get to the spin cycle at all. Initially, we got around this by physically switching it to spin when the other parts of the cycle had finished. After a while, this stopped working too, and so we first had to switch it to drain, then to spin.

Today, it refused to drain at all. When I woke up this morning, I thought, 'well, it's a beautiful sunny day, I don't have to be in the department until 1pm, so why don't I wash our sheets and M's towels? That way, they can dry on the line in the sun all day!' But the Washing Machine of Death had other plans, and our sheets and the towels have been stuck in the machine for three hours, while I desperately tried out every damn setting trying to get it to drain. If I could've just opened the door, it would've been okay, as there's a laundrette down the road and I could've used its dryers.

As is usual in such situations, the landlord's gone AWOL. J emailed him ages ago, and M emailed him again two weeks ago. He promised to be in (last) Monday to check it out. He wasn't. I just phoned him. He claimed to be in a meeting and that he'd phone me back in half an hour. We'll see.

In other, happier news, I simply CANNOT STOP PLAYING THIS SONG. It's a clip from the Tiësto concert in Victoria Park that I went to last year, but it's not your usual shaky camera-phone footage. I'm also pretty sure it's me jumping around like a lunatic at 4.42. Woo! Youtube fame!

ETA: The landlord's called and tried to sort some stuff out. No one can actually fix the machine until Wednesday, but apparently there's a way to drain it manually. I don't have time to try it now, but hopefully I can sort that out tonight.

ETA: M fixed the washing machine on Monday and we tried it out yesterday with a load of H's laundry. When it got to the spin cycle on its own, I danced around the kitchen.