Richard and Linda Thompson – “Did She Jump or Was She Pushed?”

Hiya people! 🙂

A very interesting song I have for you today. I got first fascinated and hooked on British folk rock I guess some time in 2015 and it was around then that I first became familiar with this couple’s music, both what they have recorded together and separately. My favourite British folk rock artist from the 70’s is unquestionably Sandy Denny (who almost managed to become one of my major faza people but even though it didn’t happen due to Vreeswijk still standing strong in the dominant faza position I still love her music very much) and thus all of the bands that she was a member of. One of those bands and probably one with which she’s most strongly associated was Fairport Convention, through which I’ve also become acquainted with Richard Thompson’s music, as he was one of the founders of the band, as well as the lead guitarist and songwriter for it. I think he’s a really good lyricist and there are a fair few songs by him that I like mostly because of interesting or otherwise captivating lyrics.

This is one of the very first songs by them as a duo that I’ve ever heard, thanks to Last.fm where I’d made my first British folk rock discoveries, and aside from appreciating Linda’s vocals and the arrangement in general, I got intrigued immediately by the lyrics and every time I listened to these lyrics afterwards I kept wondering, did she jump, or was she pushed? 😀 I don’t like crime novels, detective fiction books, I don’t even read a lot of mystery, I think a lot of it is horribly overrated and just not my thing, but I like lyrics which are like stories. Then later on I was wondering whether “she” was someone specific so I did a bit of research, and no, she’s not, I don’t think so, although in one interview Richard Thompson said that, after writing this, he realised that

“it could be about Sandy Denny”,

or some other people he knew. He didn’t say specifically that it IS, and I doubt he had a clear intention of writing a song about her specifically, also I haven’t heard of her death ever being suspected to be a murder, but, thinking about it in general, the similarity is a bit eerie. Sandy Denny had a lot of mental health issues, a lot of it sounds like she could be bipolar, and one way in which she regularly self-harmed, or, as some people say, tried to get attention, was by throwing herself down from stairs, which was supposed to be something like a party trick. She also abused alcohol and drugs so she experienced a lot of accidental falls due to that as well. One time she hit her head on concrete when falling down a staircase during holidays in Cornwall. She had a lot of headaches afterwards and was prescribed a painkiller which can potentially be fatal in combination with alcohol. In April 1978, she stayed at her friend’s house alone, and was eventually found unconscious at the foot of the stairs. She went into a coma due to brain haemorrhage and died in hospital a few days later. So upon discovering this connection, albeit so dark and eerie, between this song and Sandy, I grew to appreciate it even more.

This song comes from the couple’s last collaborative album before their breakup – “Shoot Out The Lights” – and is the only song on the album and I guess also the only or one of very few songs of the duo to which the lyrics weren’t written solely by Richard but co-written with his then-wife.

Question of the day.

What are some productive ways to let your anger out?

My answer:

For me, writing usually helps a lot. Other times, I like to listen to music which corresponds with my mood, so when I’m angry it’s either some rock, Finnish works the best in such cases, or anything that I can find relatable at a given moment, either because of the lyrics or something else that resonates with the way I’m feeling. Sofi’s here as I’m writing this and I asked her what she likes to do to let her anger out in a productive way, and she says she likes to watch a movie and eat. When I’m super angry, I’m usually quite overwhelmed at the same time and I find it difficult to focus on things like books, let alone movies, which I always find difficult to focus on, even with the best audiodescription, unless I seriously have some extreme interest in a specific movie. But I can totally relate to eating. 😀 As much as I can’t eat when I’m stressed or anxious, especially when it’s a short-term but intense anxiety, with anger, I like to eat something yummy to make myself feel better. I don’t know how healthy/productive it actually is though, as people say you shouldn’t do that, but it’s not like I binge-eat or like I do it very regularly or can’t cope without it. I’ve written here a lot that my anger is turned inwards most of the time, as my default setting is to repress things, and when I no longer can, I’ve learnt to deal with it by self-harming. I still have urges to do it a lot of the time when I’m angry or just overwhelmed with any other unpleasant feeling(s), and sometimes I’m successful at overcoming them, but sometimes I’m still not. What I like to do instead of self-harming when I’m feeling angry, and what I’ve liked to do from the beginning ever since I started cutting, when I didn’t want to cut myself too much so that it wouldn’t be easily visible to people, is to eat something very hot and spicy. It’s weird how well it can work sometimes. Otherwise, I guess the pretty much classic strategy for dealing with self-harm urges is holding ice cubes in your hands for some time, and I’ve always hard a weird love for ice, so when we have some, I do that too.

How about you? 🙂

Question of the day.

Are you more likely to bite your nails or chew on your hair when you get nervous, or neither?

My answer:

I definitely am a nail-biter. And not only when I’m nervous, but also when I’m bored or thinking about something intensively, focusing on something a lot or experiencing some strong emotions whether positive or negative, or things like these. Not even getting paronychia was enough to stop me, even though I thought it would because getting any kind of finger-related condition can affect your daily life a fair bit when you are blind, and when I had it I was massively frustrated and then managed not to bite my nails for an impressive time of two weeks. My Mum used to put that bitter stuff on my and Olek’s nails because he also used to bite them, but it didn’t really work for either of us at all, we’d bite them anyway. Eventually Olek grew out of it naturally. Then later on I had braces so couldn’t bite my nails but started picking them, and after I had braces removed I didn’t even realise when I got back to biting and picking also stayed. Then I tried using nail polish as a sort of motivation not to bite my nails but at some point, usually sooner rather than later, I’d end up biting them anyway and realising what I was doing when some visible damage was already done, and obviously with nail polish bitten nails look absolutely gross and dreadful, way more than normal, so I no longer polish them. When I was self-harming particularly intensely as a teenager, I would often also do things like I would bite my nails so that they would be bleeding a lot and then put them in something like chilli or alcohol or other skin irritating things to make it hurt more. But that’s not something I do anymore. I also bite and pick my cuticles and lips as well. But I’ve never had a habit of chewing on my hair.

How about you? 🙂

Question of the day.

Hi people! 🙂

What was the last thing you got angry about?

My answer:

Minor trigger warning first, just in case: mention of self-harm urges, not actual self-harm.

*******

I got badly angry today and I still sort of am, but I’m not sure I can write about this at this point. First because it’s too fresh and I don’t want to write things I may regret later, and I am just having too much of a jumble in my brain at the moment so I don’t really know how to put it anyway, also I don’t feel too well physically at the moment, I don’t know, feels like I’m going to have a migraine soon, though I’ve taken the migraine med so hopefully it’ll go away before it starts properly. So I’m not really up to writing a whole long essay which it would probably be if I wrote about it in detail. 😀 Anyways, it’s nothing major, just happened to be very upsetting to me and is to do with my Dad. Thankfully I’m on my own at home for the evening so I can recharge a bit. I also am (or rather, to be exact I should probably say something like I know I should be) proud of myself though because I really felt like cutting as I’ve been feeling quite overloaded with awful feelings after that Dad thing and still am, though a bit less because I’m alone so that helps that I am not having any witnesses of how I’m feeling or anything and helped me to recover a bit, but didn’t cut in the end and don’t feel a strong urge to do so anymore, so that’s always some achievement. On the other hand I didn’t do anything else to let out the feelings either, except for writing a little here, as I can’t cry or do anything other constructive at this point, so it’s still bottled up and fizzing nicely. 😀 Maybe it just needs time.

You? 🙂

Question of the day (10th August).

Did you fall down any rabbit holes, recently? What about?

My answer:

Except for the recent depression and emotional overload rabbit hole I fell down last week and as it seems am on my way up, at least in that I’m more functional on the outside and don’t have the self-harm urges, I don’t think there have been any rabbit holes recently in terms of particularly engrossing topics. I mean, my interests are typically very engrossing for me, but there hasn’t been anything very new lately.

How about you? 🙂

Some fun stuff instead of question of the day.

Hi guys! 🙂

I’ve found something today that I thought I could post on here so we can have some fun. Below are sentences that we can complete. I’ll do it here in this post, and you can do it in the comments, or in your own posts (don’t forget to pingback or leave the link in the comments so I can read it). Keep them as long or as short as you only wish. For your convenience, I’ll write the unfinished sentences alone first so that you can copy paste them without having to edit them and delete what I wrote. Here goes:

I am confident about…

I am insecure about…

I need to…

I want to…

I like to…

I recently bought…

I am thinking about…

I am anticipating…

I am procrastinating…

I am watching/listening to/cooking…

Mine:

I am confident about… nearly nothing, I guess. I’ve been thinking on this for a while now and I just can’t come up with one thing I would be like absolutely and unquestionably confident about. 😀

I am insecure about… almost everything, which I guess is pretty logical from what I wrote above.

I need to… find myself another faza. It’s really getting imperative! I haven’t written much about that lately but I’m still searching intensely. My latest finding has been Jack Hughes who is cool but too normal, not versatile enough, and has a bit peculiar way of singing which would be annoying for me long-term. Why do I have to find a faza for myself in the first place, rather than it just happening without my conscious effort, like always before? My brain is getting way too lazy. And it’s a vicious circle because lack of a faza and thus beneficial stimuli in the right amount only makes it more lazy. 😀 What do you do with a lazy brain?

I want to… stop cutting myself. I did last week again, and a couple of times, so this time I only managed to go without it a month or so I believe. And on the other hand I don’t want to stop cutting. Well but what I do want is I don’t want to do it in such an impulsive way. Or at least be able to not do it for longer periods of time, like once I managed not to cut for about half a year. In case you’re wondering why I did it, I was just feeling depressed and overloaded, also had a lot of anxiety for no obvious reason, it was my friend Jacek from Helsinki’s another death anniversary on July 29, and then later in the week it was my cousin’s 18th birthday party and I reeeally couldn’t deal with the socialising and all that comes with it. Quite ironically, I have some special memories with Jacek from Helsinki and my own 18th birthday party, which didn’t help. But it’s better now.

I like to… sleep with Misha.

I recently bought… my new Bang & Olufsen headphones, yaaaaaay!!! Seriously, this was a very spontaneous purchase, totally on the spur of a moment, completely unlike me, just because it was my Mum who found these headphones online on sale and she told me about them, I only briefly looked them up online to see if it could be something for me and it seemed like it could perhaps be but might just as well not be, but it was on Zalando Lounge so they were way cheaper than they would be otherwise and I could return them if I decided they’re not for me. I really needed some good headphones for my iPhone, I also need a good speaker(s), so I figured I might just as well try these with an opportunity like this. I had to wait ages for these headphones, about a month, and also I was rather sceptical whether it could really be something for me ’cause I’m sort of picky and have some very specific requirements. But they came on Monday – just before my parents went out on their camper van trip so Mum could pick them up for me – but they had to go and Sofi wasn’t home when they were leaving so I had to set them up and pair by myself. Which was not difficult but I had no accessible manual or anything and I didn’t really know how to do it. I figured how to turn them on and turn Bluetooth on after a while but they still weren’t visible for my iPhone because it turned out I had to get an app to set them up, so I was very apprehensive and wondered how accessible it’ll be with VoiceOver – the iPhone screenreader – and moreover how usable for me as a still more or less beginning iPhone user. It would probably be badly inaccessible if not the fact that VoiceOver can now guess what different buttons in an application do from how they look if they’re not labelled properly, and as far as I remember none or very few were labelled originally in that app and VoiceOver did a very good job at the guessing game. Then I didn’t remember what exactly model I had and I had to select the one I had from the list in the app to set it up, and some only differ between each other with one number so not very Bibiel-friendly. So I ended up having to call Mum and she had to check up what my model was. Then still iPhone couldn’t connect to the headphones for ages and I was getting really frustrated, but then finally I did something random and they did connect to each other. And once I had them paired, a very Bibiel-friendly manual showed up – both with audio and text, not some weird, hardly descriptive video like a lot of tutorials are – so I could figure out hhow to actually use the headphones without anyone’s help very easily. And once I learned it it was very rewarding because I’ve already grown to like the headphones a lot. I would never buy them for their original price, I seriously don’t think the sound is worth as much, but it’s definitely good for me and good for the price I paid for them. When I read reviews people complained that the active noise cancelling feature is meh because it doesn’t work as well as in other similar headphones but for me it’s just right. They’re my first noise cancelling headphones and, I don’t know, I have a terribly, horribly, freakishly loud desktop computer and when I turn the noise cancellation on and sit at the desk I can barely hear the hum nor anything else outside. Granted, I don’t need some really extreme noise cancellation, I am obviously blind and a control freak, I want to know what’s going on around me most of the time so that I don’t need to worry that someone is lurking behind me and I have no idea because I’m listening to music. On the other hand I do like the noise cancelling for situations when I don’t need to hear the world around me so that I have a good and immersive environment for daydreaming haha, and these headphones are just right for this purpose. Even yesterday I had a situation when Sofi was in my room, watching a video on her phone, and there was some really weird music that was setting my brain off a little bit, so I just quickly put my headphones on and turned my own music on with the noise cancelling, and I could no longer hear Sofi’s evil shit. They also have transparency mode which is good sometimes for such people like me (Sofi once said that they should invent cheekphones for me because with my computer headphones often when someone was in my room or something I would have the headphones more on my cheeks than ears so that I could hear my surroundings clearly without having to constantly put on and take off the headphones, yes, cheekphones could be a cool idea for some specific situations 😀 ), and integration with Siri which is useful at times, and the earpads are really comfy, though I haven’t used them for a longer stretch of time yet. They have gesture control which seems to work very poorly, or perhaps it’s me not doing the gestures the right way exactly, but thankfully you can also control them within the app or just simply from the phone. They also have a cable so I can plug them into my PlexTalk which does not have Bluetooth which is cool because my previous PlexTalk/computer headphones are falling apart. Oh wow, what a mini review I just wrote lol.

I am thinking about… Jocky, whom Sofi has just let inside and he’s devastating the house and barking his lungs out, and about Misha, who is thankfully cosily tucked inside my wardrobe – this is his recent hideout for when he’s a bit stressed as it seems, and he certainly is stressed now because Mum is away and he’s very attached to her.

I am anticipating… huh, nothing really. Can’t think of anything I’d be anticipating at the moment.

I am procrastinating… way more than I realise on a daily basis. I’ve only recently thought more about it. I really procrastinate a whole lot and it’s usually because of anxiety as it seems. But it’s not like impairing or anything so I can’t say I care very much, just a little alarming when you suddenly realise such things.

I am watching/listening to/cooking… listening to BBC Radio Cymru at the moment.

So, who wants to play along with me? 🙂

Song of the day (16th November) – Coma – “Los Cebula I Krokodyle Łzy” (Fate Onion And Crocodile Tears).

I didn’t plan to share this song at all but I kind of had no idea for a song for this day, and I heard this one playing in the bathroom, so decided to share it because I have a bit of a personal story with her. It’s a song dedicated to people who struggle with depression but also generally just any kind of life difficulties. I heard it for the first time in the kitchen, one late Sunday evening, night actually. I went downstairs because I had self harm urges and wanted to cut or something. I came into the kitchen and took out the knife from the drawer when I heard this song playing: “Leave that damn mug alone, you’ll cut your fingers…”. 😀 I had a knife in my hand, not a mug, and intended to cut not necessarily my fingers with it, but the irony of the situation made me laugh out loud despite I was crying some five minutes earlier. 😀 I started to listen to the song and it sort of made me feel better, at least I could relate to it. I’d like to tell you that Coma prevented me from cutting that time but they didn’t, but the song helped me a little bit to make me feel less alone with my shit. And now I am going to share it with you and my translation of the lyrics as well.

   Leave that damn mug alone – you’ll cut your fingers.
Drink the milk, wash your face. I’ll come before you fall asleep.
Even though the galactic blast will destroy the civilisation
It’s not enough to burst out into tears.
For me, the day wasn’t too gracious either.
For me too, too long and bad is the winter
For me too, but you must admit, that all in all, life is wonderful
And stop wailing! Stop wailing! Stop crying!
And why do you read the comments from frustrated pipsqueaks?
Let the blockheads poison themselves with venom, save yourself the evil.
For me, the day wasn’t too gracious either.
For me too, too long and bad is the winter
For me too fate, onion and crocodile tears.
Stop wailing! Stop wailing! Stop crying!
For me, the day wasn’t too gracious either.
For me too, too long and bad is the winter
For me too fate, onion and crocodile tears.
Stop wailing! Stop wailing! Stop crying!i

Question of the day.

Do you ever get your nails done?

My answer:

I like having my nails done. In contrast to most other beauty related procedures, I do like how nail polishing feels, there is something nice about it. I like darker and more muted colours for my nails as well as for almost everything actually). But what is the point of doing your nails if you’re a nail biter/picker?! Absolutely none! I might be good with it for one day, desperately trying not to bite or pick my nails, not knowing what to do with my hands and all the nervous energy, but trying desperately, but the next day I usually forget about it or can’t resist it when some bigger stressor occurs or when I’m bored or something and then my nails look even worse than they did before. I can be a real intense and erratic nail biter and nail and cuticle picker so my nails look better normal than with all the polish and stuff. Still, sometimes, once in a while, I do get my nails done. Just to have to clean out all the polish the next day because it looks ewwwww gross. 😀

You? 🙂 Which colours do you like on your nails? 🙂

Question of the day.

Do you chew on your pens?

My answer:

Obviously enough – I don’t. 😀 I did, or still do, chew on other things though. I’ve mentioned a few times that when I was a little kid, I had a lot of autistic-like behaviours including stimming, and chewing too. Even later on, when I didn’t have as many of those behaviours or autistic traits, I’ve still had some stims, plus I was a very fidgety kid and had a handful of “soothing” behaviours, or whatever it was. I’ve had a tiny little glass bear when I was in primary, and although it was glass, so maybe it wasn’t the most practical idea, I liked to use it for stimming. I tossed it in my hands when I was bored or something and I often chewed on its ears, when I was thinking about something intensively or was bored. 😀

Nowadays, I don’t rather chew on objects around me, but I very very often chew on my lip. I’ve told you before that I am terrible nailbiter, but I guess my lip chewing is even more addictive. When I was younger I often picked it, but very luckily finally I managed to unlearn it, almost completely, then I tried to at least limit my nailbiting and cuticle picking, and then I started to intensively chew and bite on my lip and I didn’t really notice the moment when it started to be something regular. I try to unlearn it and stop it when I notice it, but the thing is I often just do it unconsciously and then I find myself doing it after some time already. That’s annoying. I do it whenever I’m bored, focusing on something, overloaded, frustrated, stressed out, trying to not show my feelings, insecure, very often. I think that actually I’m lucky because my lips still look decent, they looked much worse when I was younger and picking them, and I’ve never had any major infections of them so far, or any significant bleeding although I can bite it very intensively at times. I even had a situation when I woke up and realised I had to chew on my lip while sleeping. 😀 I’d really like to unlearn it, not only because it’s unappealing for others, unhealthy for me, but also because if your lips are hurting, it’s quite an issue to eat spicy food and enjoy it, he he, and if you eat it then it usually heals slower. But I still hope I’ll someday get rid of it as I got rid of other stuff, it usually happened with time.

Do YOU chew on your pens? Or anything else?

Question of the day.

I have a terrible habit of…
My answer:
…biting/nibbling my nails. I’ve been struggling with it as long as I can remember and nothing seems to make me unlearn it. When I have something stressful ahead, or something stressful that just passed, and I’m alone and don’t have anything constructive to do, I usually end up devastating my nails. It’s something that I usually do while overthinking and overanalysing stuff, it can really help you to quickly fall deeper and deeper in the abysses of your brain. SOmetimes I also do it when I have to focus on something or make up something. Therefore I very rarely have manicure, because well bitten nails with manicure look gross. I thought it might help me to stay motivated and not bite and nibble them, but it doesn’t really help. Therefore I only tend to have pedicure. What terrible habit do you have?

Question of the day.

Do you have any birthmarks or scars?

My answer:

Well who doesn’t… not many people, I guess. I have very light skin, which I actually do like and wouldn’t like to have darker, hence I don’t particularly like to sun bathe, maybe just my legs from time to time, but I guess that’s also the reason why I have quite a lot of birthmarks. They aren’t big or objectively significantly unsightly or something, but… meh, I just don’t like them and would most willingly get rid of them, and maybe will do it sometime in the future if it will be possible, I mean safe, at least with some of them. Same case is Zofijka. Some people say they are “beauty spots”, but I definitely don’t think so.

As for scars, I have very small ones, almost invisible now, on my Achilles tendons, after the surgery I had 11 years ago, I had to have them lengthened. I have a very small scar from smallpox on my forehead, which is actually also invisible because I’ve almost always had a fringe so it covers it completely. I have lots of scars from self harm, especially on my legs, some are almost invisible, some are pretty glaring, they are very varying, I also have some on my arms and other places on my skin, but usually even at the stage when I self harmed the most I was quite paranoid about someone seeing that I self harm, so I tried to do it somewhere that would be easy to hide. I have scars on my calves after those weird skin infection I’ve been having regularly since three years. And recently I had some contact allergy stuff on my cheek, I completely have no idea what caused it, anyway, as my skin doesn’t seem to heal easily, looks like I’ll have a scar after it because it wasn’t anything really serious but a few months have passed and it’s still there and looks like a scar, but maybe it just needs some time to heal, I’d be glad because although it’s small, it’s still visible and it’s weird as I don’t know the cause of it happening. SO apart from the self injuries I don’t have many of them luckily.

How about you?