2013: Year In Review

Forgive me, I'm going to put all my efforts into reining this post in but it might get a little out of control *excited rabbity hand gestures*; I just adore this time each year because I can sweep over the past 12 months and take note of all my little achievements and experiences. I am a Master Documentor of Things - ever since I was a kid I've been keen to write or draw things down - and this means that, at a time so momentous like the turning of a new year, this is MY TERRITORY.

Shazam! Amongst the creepy things I do to track my every move and breath through this long and winding road (terrible, cheesy metaphor for LIFE. apologies to Macca; you are my favourite Beatle) is my regular endeavour to make a playlist of my favourite songs for each month. I started this in 2011, and so far have... uh, 25 playlists (I really, really like playlists)? SO without further ado here is a playlist of my favourite songs from each month this year:

2o13: a year in songs from violett on 8tracks Radio.

Musically, this was the year I discovered Elvis Costello. In February I moved into a new bedroom in my Edinburgh flat and had enough space to set up my record turntable that I'd been gifted a couple of Christmases ago, complete with my parents' record collection. Every morning as I got ready for uni I would put on a record (Graceland, Pretzel Logic, Little Triggers, or perhaps even Moondance? If you don't recognise any of these names I want you to take a GOOD HARD LOOK AT YOURSELF) that would happily spin around as I got dressed and did my face. I had been aware of Costello for a long while, why, Oliver's Army was one of the songs I remember from my childhood, but listening to full LPs every single morning does something to a gal. I fell in love.

April's song on the playlist is my favourite song of the year, thanks to Costello and Burt Bacharach. Something about the chord progressions (buh! those SUSPENSIONS! classic BACHARACH! what you doin' to me, Burt!?), the boxing metaphor, that painful blue corner, Costello's dream voice (which often I think I owe something to with my own crooning) and the bells, oh man, the bells!, it all just sucks me right in, every time. What a dream. What a song. Costello is the master of twisting almost-too-clever lyrics around the most melodic structures. I adore him.

This year could also be viewed as the one that I discovered One Direction. Now now, hear me out: I have always been a big belieber believer in not being apologetic for liking what you like (as long as that thing you like doesn't hurt or discriminate against others, obvz); One Direction definitely fall in the category of guilty pleasures for some, but I really don't see anything to feel guilty about! Harriet (my sis) and I snuck along to the cinema in September to see the 1D film. It was the middle of a weekday, and the cinema was absolutely empty apart from the two of us, wriggling in our seats, giggling over Harry Styles' face and belting out each number with great enthusiasm. It felt like I was being force-fed SUNSHINE and I LOVED EVERY MINUTE OF IT. There is something so uplifting about really, really, beepy-boopy, basic pop. Manufactured? That's ok! Devoid of any lyrical intelligence? Even better! The more brainless it is, the more I love it (which may explain why I think that this is one of the greatest songs ever). One Direction serve a very important purpose, in my opinion. I need their little adorable faces singing to me every so often to keep me happy. Now lets all go dance and write bad fanfiction!!!!

In terms of my own achievements, here are several things that I am proud of this year:

• Working on and completing my biggest piece of work to date yet, my beloved final-year dissertation on the poetic work of Allen Ginsberg 
• Organising and playing gigs in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen
• Successfully getting into the Work Canada programme and the hours of pain/crying/blood/sweat/more crying that it took
• Achieving a First Class Honours in English Literature at Edinburgh University
• Getting ill (which is a bad thing) and recovering (which is the best thing!)

Over the Christmas holidays in 2012, I took a good hard look at myself and my 'career prospects'. By that point a lot of my peers were applying to graduate jobs etc., sharpening their ambitions to a fine point. I was living in a flat full of girls who were nearly all looking at careers in banks and finance firms. At this time I was on the committee for my university's radio station and nearly everyone I spoke to assumed that I wanted to go into radio. Pah! I was starting to see the differences between what I was capable of doing and what I really wanted to do, and not a lot crossed into that golden centre of the Venn Diagram.

So, like many young soon-to-be graduates, there were a lot of evenings when I would cry at my parents (v. productive, would recommend). Eventually I came to realise that I really, really enjoyed writing and performing music, that there was nothing else on this planet that I felt I was truly happy doing, that I had to make a real stab at it or I would just... just... 

*wah!*

2013 was the year INKA was born. For those of you who are still curious, she's my supersexy alter-ego who often dons a pair of scintillating bunny ears. The story behind the name? Ah, well. I was on holiday in Jamaica many years ago and met a woman who had named her two adorable daughters Texas Mirage and Inca Pheonix. Their names were insane and totally delectable. Inca sprung to mind as I was brainstorming with my pal over good music-artisty names, but we decided to change the C to a K, firstly to rid any misconception that I may be picking up a pan flute instead of a guitar (cultural appropration nothankyou), but also because I like the straight lines: INKA.

This year I began recording music in my bedroom and the living room. This mainly involved me hunched over a laptop on my bed, balancing a microphone on a hardback book while I tried to sit as comfortably close as possible with my guitar in hand. As with all things self-taught, it was a complete nightmare to get the hang of. I am still learning, but I'm getting there. Hearing a difference in the quality of what I was producing 12 months ago compared to my most recent songs is magical.

I went to a few gigs this year, but these were by far the best ones:

Lana Del Rey
I met up with my sister and her flatmates in a restaurant before the concert, where we ordered strawberry mojitos and were served by waiters that looked like lumberjacks. We were all Lana-ed Up, flower crowns and flawless hair and our best pouty faces to present to Our Girl. Harriet and I both agree that the concert was a religious experience, a pilgrimage over the waters of the Clyde, to a roaring, zealous crowd who held roses wrapped in cellophane, offering them with arms outstretched under the hot lights to the idol. She made us feel like fanatics, and we loved every minute of it.

Bruce Springsteen
This was my second time seeing Bruce, and I had been adamant for months that this time round I WAS GOING TO BE THE DANCING IN THE DARK GIRL. I was prepared to shed blood. Harriet, Ian and I sat in the sunshine all afternoon outside Hampden Stadium to get the best standing places we possibly could, and after about five and a half hours of waiting, we made it to The Pit (for those of you who don't know, The Pit is the sweetest spot you can get in the arena - it's the only place where you have a chance of being touched by the man himself!!!). Alas I was not pulled up on stage to awkwardly dance with My Future Husband (in this lifetime or the next, I'm not fussy), neither was I touched by his glorious hand. However, I did have the best time ever - we all felt The Spirit rush through us, and he finished the three-hour set with the softest rendition of Thunder Road. We all fell to hush, one by one, as Bruce stood alone before us with his acoustic guitar. I could feel tears well in my eyes, and I put my arm around Ian, who had guided me to Springsteen nearly four years ago. In a way it marked the end of my university career, which began with Bruce (a midnight play of New York City Serenade in a dorm room with new friends) and was now ending with Bruce.

Mountain Goats
This was a gig in tunnels underneath the railways in the centre of Glasgow. John Darnielle blew my head off, and it was just him, his guitar and his bassist. That's how you know the music is real music, that it's good music: it all carried through these two old guys in ill-fitting suits. I couldn't stop smiling through the whole affair. Mountain Goats have lyrics that grip you like incantations, and we were all chanting at one point or another, whether is was whispered and accompanied by hand-holding in Love Love Love, or loud and raucous, a full-pelt unison for No Children. I met John after the gig, and my hands and legs shook with the sheer excitement I derived from saying a few words to him. That man is magic.

My mantra for 2013 was gifted to me unexpectedly by a friend's dad in early January. We bumped into each other as I was walking across town. He offered me a lift and proceeded to talk to me about life, ambitions, the lot. He told me about a recent visit to San Francisco and a guest speaker at one of the church masses he attended. The woman was Belva Davis, one of the first female, black journalists in America. She imparted her personal mantra for success to the congregation, and it was now being passed on to me:

Don't be afraid of the space between your dreams and reality.

I wrote it down. I thought about it through the rest of my day. What were my dreams? What was my reality? What lay in the dreaded space between?

Glimmering high above me were the seemingly unreachable dreams of Canada and a successful music career. I was standing on the ground, two feet placed firmly in Scotland. The space between Canada and I was vast - a music career was laughably distant. I imagined building a ladder for myself. This year I started building, and placed my hands on the rungs.

Over Christmas, my family and I were throwing around ideas of the new year. The big question we posed to each other was "what's your word for 2014?". Choices included balance, relax, fun... I had originally chosen frontier (theeeese are the voyages of the starship Enterprise!): it symbolised adventure, the breaching of a new horizon, the crossing of boundaries. Last night, however, I found a new word. Written down in a zine by one of my favourite bloggers, I stumbled across this phrase:

you're at your best when you're fighting

Something about it resonated, perhaps because I felt like I'd been fighting for the about half the year, and I had come out on top.

Now, 2014 is on the horizon. I'm getting on a plane in 17 days' time. I know I'm going to have to roll up my sleeves and bare my knuckles once again. Fight is my word for 2014. When I announced this at the kitchen table this morning there were fits of laughter as we tried to find a more gentle synonym, so it didn't sound like I was going to have a year of elbowing people in the face ("rumble? fracas?!")... but I'm sticking with fight.

I want to thank everyone who made 2013 so magical - to old friends and new. When the bells go tonight, I'll be in the midst of the Hogmanay fray in The Restaurant. See you in the New Year!