One Thousand Word Challenge 241: What a Day

Posted on February 21, 2026 by Stupidity Hole

What a day. Where it goes, I don’t know. Where I go, I don’t know. I know I don’t know, but do I know that I know that I don’t know? I do know.

Anyway, I’m wrecked. Slept well, absolutely tired. More tired than I am less tired. The balance is not there. Everything is out of whack. What do from here? Where go? I could get off this seat, but I am comfortable. Do I want to ruin that comfort? The answer is, unsurprisingly, I don’t know.

This is not worth thinking about. This is not worth pondering. This is so not worth everything so hard that I’m not even gonna bother, and you need to know that because all that you aren’t. Neither am I, and it’s a wonderful way to be. However, say that, perhaps, this is not the case and thus I have to ruin comfort due to some sort of convoluted and weak explanation. What do I do then? Well, the answer is, surprisingly, a surprising one. However, it is yet to be determined.

The answer is so yet to be determined that I cannot justify trying to determine it now, for it is a waste of everyone’s time. You see, as everything transcends the silliness that I am putting forward, the world will collapse in on itself if I try to do things too soon, and if I don’t do them soon enough, then I don’t know which way everything will flow. Therefore, I need to keep on writing and distracting so as to buy time before an answer can be divined from the divining bundt cake of… yeah. The divining bundt cake of yeah. That’s what we’ll go with.

What has my life become?

So anyway, I think that there is plenty of time for pondering from this position of comfort. I need to keep on pondering and pretending that I know what I am doing. Am I to not, then the fruits of my labour will never be considered piquant to the mind, and that’s not something I’m willing to say no to. Therefore, I will keep crapping on about whatever and I will crap on about nothing whenever. However, once the answer is ready; once all is ready to be revealed, only then will I stop and allow it to be determined. At that juncture in time, everything will be as it should be and I will be ready to do the thing and then once the thing is done, I guess I’ll go back to being comfortable.

What if that never returns? What if going through all this rambling senselessness ends up creating a situation where I can never return to what was? What then do I do? I know not. It is too early in life to know, and if I don’t know that, then surely… something… else will happen. Or it won’t. Who knows. Who cares.

Well, I guess I care, or rather, I should care. There is a lot of care that I should care, really. I should care about the preparation, but I can only prepare so much, for I also need to distract. I also need to make sure that I am looking after myself, and all of these things take time. They take time and they create issues and complications and I don’t like that. I don’t like having to deal with the complications of my machinations, but I don’t have the kind of money that would allow me to hire someone to just deal with those for me, and so therefore I need to do it myself.

Maybe I can just clone myself or something. Spawn my clone and then the problem is solved. But maybe I’d need another clone…

How many clones am I going to need at the end of all of this? How many clones will I need to create in order to ensure that the work is not overloading me? I think three, at most. Maybe a fourth so as to make sure that the announcement of the determining is done with a bit of energy, but I’m sure my clones will lack the energy I also lack. It is possible that the energy I have will then be shared with the others and therefore, maybe it’d just be easier for me to not go down that path. Besides which, I’m not a cloneologist. I am not well versed in the art of cloneology. It could take far more time than I’d like, and so therefore maybe it’s just better that I get on with trying to deal with the things one at a time.

I don’t even know what it is that I’m trying to do anymore. I’ve written myself into a hole and I am desperately trying to get out. The hole is too big, however, and so if someone throws me a rope or ladder, or flies a helicopter down and then lifts me out and takes me to breakfast, that’d be great. That’d be fantastic.

Could have a nice conversation over a good cuppa. Really indulge myself whilst talking about how I got to where I was, and hopefully not bore the other person. Hopefully make sure that they are invested in my story. They will hear of how I got to where I did, but they won’t know why and neither will I, for that would have been lost in the winds of time. Forgotten, blown away, forever lost and never found. And that is the way that these things should go sometimes, because it’s rarely about the destination and more about the journey, unless the destination is somewhere important that you need to go to. If you need to go somewhere important, you want to make sure that the journey is mundane. Unless the destination is really boring. If it is, then who is to say how the journey should be? Could be anything, really. Possibly fantastic. However, that is yet to be determined.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 12:27:66

Really silly bit of writing that doesn’t go much of anywhere, but I do like this kind of writing. Just nonsense.

Written in Killara.

 

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One Thousand Word Challenge 240: A Series of Thoughts from a Friday

Posted on February 21, 2026 by Stupidity Hole

Alright here we go. Racing against the clock once more. Beating the life out of my keyboard. Treating it awfully. Need to treat it better. Need to write faster.

I’m also racing music at the moment. Not much time left, can do it, might do it. Will see if actually do do it. No idea. No way to tell as of yet. Just need to keep on writing.

I think that, in a lot of ways I am lucky that I can sit here and write whilst trying to finish writing before a couple of songs finish. I am lucky that I get to sit here and do this. There are plenty who aren’t and I have to wonder as to how much better things would be if we just looked after each other and didn’t blame people for circumstances beyond their control. Things would be great, wouldn’t they?

Or maybe they wouldn’t because someone would be slightly less rich than they were before. Who could really carry the burden of that kind of horror? The world may never know.

Sometimes I have thoughts that are worth writing down, but by the time I get to a point where I can, they have floated away. They have left me. I am left thoughtless, and I have become a husk. A shell. A receptacle of nothingness. That isn’t the best way to be, of course, but there are also worse ways to be. I’m not complaining.

I can see a body of water. It is small and it is still, but it is also large. There is a lot of water in it, but its body is small. It takes up not much space, but it also does. It is heavy and light and all sorts of things, and there are plenty of ways to approach it. It is still, or at least it appears still enough. Maybe it’s not still at all, and it is just where I am sitting that makes it look still.

Plants gently sway in the breeze. They move back and forth, lazily. They move slowly and they do not change. They keep on going on their cycle, some moving faster than others, but most are lazy. And there is variance in them. There is variance in how they appear, the kind of leaves they have, everything. But they sway as they sway, and breeze is suggested, Breeze is there, but it doesn’t seem to be there at all. It is almost as though all is quiet and everything is held in a spot, just going through the last bits of shaking before they stop entirely.

I wonder to the effect a desk can have on old injuries. I wonder how a desk might cause things to flare up, settle down… all of those things. I wonder about the shape of the next desk that I will claim as mine, and if it will be the right kind of height that I need, and if that all really matters. Surely the chair is more important, but the desk has to play a part in it all.

There are various sounds, and few of them are insects. There is music playing from my speakers, and there is the sound of water flowing somewhere nearby, but other than that, almost all is silent. Almost all is quiet. I don’t know what to make of it, but I’m sure that if I stepped outside, I’d hear some things. In here, it seems that there is no motion outside. Or rather, the movement and density of insect populations are both things that are quite low, and this saddens me as there’s so much out there worth seeing. There is so much out there worth hearing, and getting more greenery and habitat established should lead to more insect activity. It should lead to a richer world. So why aren’t we doing enough about it?

Clouds have consumed the sky, and indeed the sky is a mix of whites and grays, and it seems to almost be flattened depth. It seems to just be a thick wall covering everything, enclosing everything, trapping things in, keeping things out. It seems to have everything stop there, and nothing exists beyond it, and it moves, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t change and it continually changes, and everything goes on as it was and will be, and that’s how it is. That’s how it has to be.

There is a bright light coming in from outside into this room, and it is bright but it is dull. The shadows it creates are soft, seemingly vague at the edges. Spread out and focused at the same time. Everything in this space feels more homely, more relaxed, and perhaps quaint. Small. Lacking in the fantastic, and that’s nice. That’s nice to have right now, and it’s nice to see how the light is creating these pockets of shadow, almost like islands. Ideas of shapes creating new forms.

I hope that sooner, rather than later, we turn ourselves around. I hope that something comes out of all of this and we start appreciating nature more often than we do, and I hope that we take better care of ourselves and also each other. No one needs all the money in the world, and I doubt anyone needs to be richer than anyone else. It’s a shame to see how indifferent we are to each other. No one gets out alive, and no one deserves to be treated like shit. If we considered each other more and if we considered the environment more, then I’m sure things would genuinely improve, because maybe we’d be more willing to take action and stop defending people doing awful things out there. Maybe we’d actually get somewhere and show that, yes, we can be a strong society that does look after each other and works toward a better tomorrow. But who knows these days. Who knows how things will change in the coming years.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 13:11:47

This one I wrote yesterday, and it was written whilst incredibly tired. Not a good way to be as it made this bit of writing a struggle. There was no aim, but I had to think hard about what I was doing and that wasn’t good.

Written in Killara.

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Yasunori Mitsuda & Millenial Fair: Creid

Posted on February 20, 2026 by Stupidity Hole

One listen.

This is another song I’ve had queued up for a while but dragged my feet on writing about, and I don’t know why, to be honest. Was easy enough to write about… for the most part. The song makes use of uilleann pipes and I thought a lot about how to describe them and what they were doing. I ended up not doing so as thinking about how to was taking too much time and so instead I went elsewhere with the writing.

Yasunori Mitsuda & Millenial Fair’s (光田 康典 & ミレニアル・フェア) “Creid” is from Creid. The album is an arranged soundtrack based on music from Xenogears.

I hope you enjoy.

—

The whisperings of sound are gently present. It’s not long before choral voices come into the present, into the space and continue that expression of gentleness. Of calm, of cradling, and they rise and fall, then stop. Then they come back, lower a little, descend before rising up in what feels like some sort of light reverence.

It’s a flow and a journey. It’s expression, and those sounds that were whispers are coming a little more forward, becoming a little more prominent, and they sing and shine, and then everything stops.

New sounds come in, playing harsh and joyous and gentle, and some of the familiar returns, and soon percussion plays rough and plays it gently. Sound calls out across the landscape, across the wonder of the space, and those vocals return. Strong threads weaving their way through everything, harmonising, almost becoming textural sound whilst a slow flight, a light joy comes through.

A shadow, a coldness appears for a brief moment, but the joy of innocence, of youth playing, of the grandness of the land and the ocean, and the world, and how small we are comes through, and that shadow is just a part of life, and it’s all so light, and almost dreamy, and it all floats on until whispering is all that’s left, drifting as though thoughts and reflections at the song’s end.

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One Thousand Word Challenge 239: Anxiety Ramble

Posted on February 20, 2026 by Stupidity Hole

So I realised something and I’m going to stay vague about it because who knows what will happen, but I figure that if it’s going to pan out the way I expect it to pan out, better to let it happen than announce it and then pat myself on the back for a job well done and walk away and all that.

But I realised something and I’m going to attempt whatever that realisation is, and if I succeed, well, I succeed. Then I can pat myself on the back for a job well done and walk away and all that.

But anyway, yeah. Had a realisation and it’s achievable, and if it’s achievable, then I can do it. If I succeed, happy days. Only one way to find out and all that, so I’m gonna try and find out. Hopefully I will. Hopefully I will find out and then realise that, yes, I can get something completed… beyond the small of everything, that is.

But you know, life is full of realisations and all that, and I am a machine of generating realisations. A relisation machine if you will. Everyone is, really. And we are all so much more, and… that’s all I have, really.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the end of this space. I’ve been thinking a lot about the amount of work I need to put in in order to catch up on everything, and I know I can do it. I don’t know if I will, but I know that it can be done. Need to spend less time procrastinating if I am to do so, of course. There is a lot of stuff I need to do and catch up on if I want to make sure that everything is neat and tidy come the fifteenth anniversary. I think I can do it. I know I can do it. I don’t know if I will do it.

I wonder about the journey taken to get to this point, and I’m a little scared of letting go, but it needs to be done. I need to let go and move on with my life. I need to direct myself elsewhere, because this takes too much time and there isn’t enough of it in the day… you get the idea.

Right now I’m feeling anxious about it as it’s getting closer. I want everything to be nice and neat by the time I’m done, but I don’t think that’ll happen. There’s so much here to check and go through. I’ve created my own bloat and I don’t want to sink within it. I want to stay ahead of the growing pile. I can do that, at least.

But yeah; I feel anxious about it. Such a big part of my life is going to stop, and so much of my experience suddenly left behind. But it’ll remain here for a while, at least. It’ll remain here and sit as a testament to bloat and mess and ugliness, and all the things that fall between it all, and that’ll be that. I’ll get on with my life.

It’s strange though. The times I’ve stopped writing for a few days, I haven’t missed it and I keep going only because I’ll be wrapping it all up. I know that I will miss it, however, because it’s become so insidiously routine. It has become so heavily part of my life and it will remain that way for a little under two months at this point, and then I’ll have much more time on my hands.

I think part of the reason why I’m anxious is suddenly having more time. I’ll still be busy, but I’ll be less so, and I feel a need to be productive. I feel a need to keep creating and doing stuff. Having more time to do so in a way that I feel is genuinely more productive is, I think, a good thing. But I guess not having the standard routine I’ve had for so many years now is scary. But it’ll be better. It’ll be healthier for me, and that’s a good thing, at least.

Obviously I’m scared of letting go, even if I want to. It’s so much time and pain sunk into this place, and a lot of joy too. It’s one of the few constants I’ve had since I started it, and it’s uncomfortable saying goodbye to it, but I’m still going to. I’m going to do so and make this change, and I’ll have as much of it tidied up as I can before I do. But it’s going to be tough.

I think I’m also worried about not being able to say bye to it all in the way that I want to. And I think that part of me is worried about saying bye to you, the readers, because some of you have stuck it out with me for a long time. Saying bye to you all is also going to be tough, because I appreciate the time you spend here, reading through all of my crappy writing. I appreciate the time taken, because you’re giving me your time and you’ve continued to do so.

I think I’m getting a little too emotional and stressed about the whole thing, so I should try and focus on what I can get done and get back on with the doing of the things. If I don’t do that, then I’m just spinning the wheels about how this is stressing me out and all that, and I could just get back to producing more rubbish. A more productive use of my time, really. Or maybe it isn’t. Who is to say, other than me. And someone else who can say, of course.

Well, those are my thoughts for today and now you have read them. Now you have experienced my thoughts on how I feel about closing an outlet for my work, and now I’m gonna end this ramble.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 14:19:72

Could’ve been faster and perhaps less anxious. How I was feeling at work when I wrote this yesterday though, so that’s what’s bound to come forward, really.

Written at work.

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Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1562: Nonsense Writing

Posted on February 19, 2026 by Stupidity Hole

What a day. It comes in waves and phrases and forms and it shapes itself around itself, and it doesn’t even know that it does. It’s stuck on a loop of continuously moving out of itself whilst going back to the start that it drags into the present. It is a strip that moves through time, and it moves constantly, stretching and compressing along the way. It is itself and it returns to the start only to move slightly further away and then come back. There is no start anymore, and there never really was an end.

It goes on and on, and then it goes on some more and it never stops. It never relents. It is taunting my ears and teasing my eyes, and I look out a window as a cry for help, but all there are are ore windows. More windows that go on forever and ever, and even when there seems an end they just wrap back around and, lo and behold, nothing has changed. Everything has moved, but nothing has changed. Still, there is progress in time. There is progress in space. There is everything and nothing and it all comes together and creates thoughts that change.

Then thoughts change their shape and words, and things move in and out and cycle toward new eternities. The horizon of thoughts remains unobtainable and that’s the way it should be, and they come into combat with the day and the space and then there are more collisions. There are spreads of nothingness fighting spreads of everything, and nothing matters, and through all of that, perhaps some things matter. Perhaps a lot of things matter, and even though the day shapes itself around itself and moves in and out as it becomes an everlasting, changing static form, all those within it age as they move toward whatever lies next. Wherever the tomorrow leads. These are the issues at hand, but all I’ve got are issues.

To say that this is to say something would be stretching the truth, but sometimes it’s better to say nothing. Sometimes gibberish reaches in and reveals more than one would expect, and perhaps that’s the way things should be. Sometimes the masses of words and the masses of sentences that lead nowhere and do little else other than create surface imagery are better said than nothing at all, and I don’t know what it is that they would reveal, but it’s quite possible that they would reveal something. That they’d reveal anything at all. Who is to say at the end of the day, really? Not me, or maybe me. Maybe it’s up to me to say everything and nothing, and maybe it’s up to me to keep spawning senseless, lacking work. Maybe only I can do that, but I need to find a way to escape the loop in which
I am trapped. Or perhaps I just need to accept it and start getting on with what remains of my day.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 06:37:16

Not the best, not the worst. Just had a cascading mess of thoughts, decided to blurt them out as horribly as possible.

Written at work.

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A Poem About Worms and Birds

Posted on February 19, 2026 by Stupidity Hole

I was reading a book this morning, and when I saw a line of poetry in it that mentioned a worm, this started forming in my mind. It’s mainly inspired by a literal interpretation of “The early bird gets the worm” and, even though this doesn’t say much of anything and could be longer, I’m happy to leave it as just these two lines. Besides which, you could probably pull some depth of meaning out of it if determined enough.

I hope you enjoy.

—

The busy worm starts its day
The tired bird starts its night

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Whytwo: Apart

Posted on February 18, 2026 by Stupidity Hole

One listen.

I heard this song a few days ago and figured I could write about it, and I did, but I struggled. I thought too much and tried to tease things out instead of letting the writing happen. I did capture the song, but this could be so much better.

Whytwo’s “Apart” is from Ghost.

I hope you enjoy.

—

Something faint, vague, faded. Something in a distance, slowly coming forward. Could be sentimental. Something underneath it, like bass, seems to hum and pulse, and shift, and more sound comes in. More sound becomes prominent, and there’s something cold and warm here.

It’s sentimental, hopelessly pleasant. Pleasing to the ear, in hums and wisps and pulses and long beams of sound, and it becomes less cold. Becomes brighter, bigger and smaller at the same time. It continues on, continuing on a track. On a journey. Going somewhere, changing slowly, but following the same form, and soon it starts fading away.

A moment passed by, a moment disappearing, being moved away from. Moved away from, moving elsewhere, seeing it disappear in the distance as the song ends.

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Weird Fishes – Draft

Posted on February 18, 2026 by Stupidity Hole

This started back in April last year. I probably did the bulk of the writing in July, and very slowly got it to final draft a few weeks ago, then started chipping away. It took a long time. A lot of hurt in that time, and a lot of want to write, or rather desire to write, but the drive not being there. Initially I thought the desire wasn’t there, but perhaps it was the drive. Anyway.

I’ve come back to this occasionally and felt like I couldn’t finish it off. Felt the task was far beyond me, quite monumental, but I got to it and finally finished a draft. Comparatively, editing took far less time.

This is the final draft before cutting down and rewriting. The final result took a lot of work and it got to a point where it could have been better, but was ready. I had to publish because if I didn’t, I’d keep cutting away. The draft is a mess and far too heavy for what I wanted to do. I ended up doing some rearranging and removing of parts that I couldn’t justify, and the final result reads much better.

The final version of this essay was published yesterday on From Somewhere out the Back. If you’ve been following my stuff here long enough, then you’ll recognise the name as the title for when I write about music releases in my music collection. I’d been intending to dedicate a space for those pieces for a while, and of course rather than hold to that, the space expanded to more than just music. The draft below is just to give an idea of progress. Please check out the final version.

I hope you enjoy.

—

It started with my leaving home at around 8:10 p.m. I was heading over to Pleb City to pick up my friend, Andy.  Took some band photos for him before we were on the road. I wasn’t quite there, but I did my best. The band was happy with the shots, which is what mattered most.

A little detour through Enmore and then Andy and I were off to The Blue Mountains.

A lengthy, rambling conversation involving much of what I had been through filled the time before we reached where Andy lives. Andy commiserated and talked about his relationship issues, and we drifted away from the subject. There was only so much we could say before we were beating ourselves into the ground.

In the morning Andy made breakfast, More conversation about life, and stuff about King Crimson and the use of sax. Then I was off. The aim was to get to Bathurst and see Ewe and Anna. I never see them as much as I want and there was no special reason to be going, but I needed some time away from Sydney, and I wanted some distraction. I went to Katoomba to buy some bread, then continued on.

The drive was event-free, and the weather held up nicely. I saw some places that would’ve made for great photos. The rolling landscapes of varying vegetation, with just the right amount of cloud cover seemed idyllic. At the very least, their familiarity seemed a nice little distraction from my thoughts. Didn’t take any photos, however. Figured I’d do so on the way home instead.

I got to Ewe and Anna’s and gave Anna a big hug. Same with Ewe. Almost collapsed both times. I was feeling pretty overwhelmed by that point. These are two people I don’t get to see anywhere near as much as I’d like, and what with getting dumped… I think the week prior… everything was too much and not at all.

—

At some point Ewe and I went into his shed, though it’s not so much a shed but rather this miniature bar room. It’s part of the reason why Ewe bought the place. It’s this old space, partially frozen in time. There’s a bar, a couch, a bathroom, a record player and a good few records. It’s a dark space, though only due to the curtain being closed. When I drew it, the space gained this relaxing warmth of a sort.

I told Ewe everything as coherently as I could. He already knew details, but I felt the need to get it all out. It was a long retelling, though these things usually are. But there’s only so much that can be said before looking to move on, and we started playing music.

For Ewe and I, music is semi-ritualistic. There are plenty of times when we’ve just thrown something on, but often when we do it we’re spinning something to listen to and discuss. Specifically in this case, Radiohead’s Kid A because I guess the thing I needed most was to feel more miserable. Somewhere in it all we were talking about our top Radiohead songs. I think it was around “Optimistic” coming on, and I talked about my top three, which I said were “Optimistic”, “All I Need” and “Codex”. Ewe asked about “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”. Top four now.

It became a top five. Probably “Karma Police” or “Pyramid Song” or “Where I End…” or “…Punchup at a Wedding…”. Anyway.

Around “Optimistic” we paused the album and I put on Lianne La Havas’ cover of “Weird Fishes” due to talking about In Rainbows a little. I first heard “Weird Fishes / Arpeggi” as a live version back in… 2007? On YouTube, and it was “Weird Fishes / Arpeggi” is a song from Radiohead, and I remember hearing… I think a live version of it first, way back. Got In Rainbows when it came out, wasn’t the biggest fan. Certainly liked a good deal of it, but not all of it… but you know, I moved on eventually. But it’s an interesting song.

I heard La Havas’ version of the song in 2020, when I was living with my friend Fe. He was listening to it, I heard it, I asked what it was and enjoyed what I heard. I enjoyed it enough to get my hands on a copy of the album it was from – Lianne La Havas – so I could write about it, which I did.

Could the album be better? Yeah, sure, of course, but it’s a strong one. Has a lot of passion and energy running through it, knows what it is and what it’s trying to do… you get the idea. This isn’t about the album, however. This is about “Weird Fishes”.

—

“Weird Fishes” starts with rapid percussion before suddenly slowing down, and I like the idea but it plays its hand a little too much. I feels a bit like outwardly stating that the cover won’t be faithful, but the song does that well enough. It’s the only bit that feels like excess and it always sticks out to me, but even though it feels significant to me, it’s so minor it doesn’t feel right to hold it against the song. It just feels a bit obvious.

But anyway, it’s a relaxed, tight and snappy start. And it’s a good groove, too. And soon the silence around the percussion is broken with some wavering keys playing out their melody, and it’s not long after that when La Havas’ voice comes in, soft and husky, and firm. Carrying the words across with the firmness they need, not overdoing it, not underdoing it.

Bass comes in and fills out the melodic flow It keeps things straightforward and gives a lot to the shape, and so do the additional vocals when they come in. And so everyone plays with La Havas, doing what they feel is necessary; there’s no room for flourishes, and among it all La Havas also uses her guitar for what is necessary. Everyone sounds locked in; everyone feels locked in. And it’s all tight, and that tightness carries the calmness of the first part well. It’s a loudly quiet moment, not quite calm, not quite energised. And much like La Havas’ voice, it’s building up. And drops away, leaving only the voice, or at least multiple versions of it, harmonising. A moment of space emptied and the voice remains, and it floats on low, and it feels like you could almost feel the breathing between words.

Much like how it started, the second part of “Weird Fishes” kicks off in full with percussion, but this time with guitar working a new melody; one of a greater emotional thrust; of a release, and soon more instrumentation comes in, and the melody develops and fills out, and it starts to overwhelm. It pulls out the emotions, releases the heart… you know. It just seems to get more and more intense and just massive, and La Havas hits this peak and either howls or yells, and it feels just really visceral, and everything becomes quieter. Only a few sounds left, and the vocals are fragile, restrained again. Soft, yearning, and the song ends.

So what is “Weird Fishes”? What is it about? It’s about sound and closeness, and carries a certain intimacy; a closeness that’s difficult to replicate. Sure, recording techniques make it close, but there’s something in La Havas’ voice and how she uses it that carries that intimacy through the song naturally. She doesn’t whisper, but may as well, seems gentle, and slowly builds. Finds plateaus, moves past them, and lets loose in a controlled manner. Builds and gets louder, and escapes, or longs for it. Dreams of it. Hopes. It’s difficult to tell. But I’m getting distracted, and maybe that’s okay, because the original is ambiguously specific, and so is La Havas’ version, but hers feels so much more openly introspective and less distant. Maybe it’s the slower form of the song; maybe it has a lot to do with her voice as whilst the instrumentation is incredibly important, its her voice and the way she uses it among the other sounds that elevates this to something more than just a cool cover.

—

So that cover is what got me into Lianne La Havas, and maybe that’s a bit unfair to her. I don’t know. There was something about it back then that spoke to me. The way the sounds layer and coalesce; the way it builds, the desire that I seem to get from it that indicates a desire to be free of something, to gain a sense of being alive… I don’t know. There’s always a lot that one can pull from a song, but early on it was mostly the sound and the way it travelled, and the qualities in Lianne La Havas’ voice that she was so effortful, yet effortlessly getting across. Natural and genuine. Somewhere from the heart and the gut. Heavy.

And somewhere in there is what I was starting to get from that playing it to Ewe, after a long time of not hearing it, and it was something that he liked and there was something in it that was speaking to me. Something raw, refined. Something that became an emotional gut-punch when I listened to it on the drive back to Sydney, and the drive back to home where I proceeded to have a small breakdown and bawled my eyes out to my ex.

We listened to how it built and moved, and the light tearing at the emotions and strength in vulnerability and all those things, and there was something in it that made me feel something, if only for a moment. Ewe thought it was good.

We went back to Kid A.

—

The sound of “Weird Fishes” has a way of building and changing whilst remaining the same, and it’s similar to the original, whilst also completely different. That sound builds and doesn’t, and starts relaxed – deceptively so. It changes in the second half, becomes bigger, more massive, dramatic in flight. It overwhelms and crashes around, a slow burn that rushes, powerful, gargantuan… you get the idea. It feels so emotionally heavy and it just wrecks me hard. It’s the song that I thought “Gigantium” would be; the one that makes you go “Fucking hell…” and stare off, because you’ve been hit by this massive weight of relation that you’re pulling from something, and it floors you. You’re not sure if there’s anything else that can hit you with everything at once in a moment that seems to last forever but is contained within a few brief minutes of life, and there’s always so much more to go through but this, THIS is where you’re struck and that connection means everything. It’s almost whole. It’s THE song.

So I felt something coming on when I played it to Ewe, and I felt something more gripping me on that drive back, where I only stopped off at one landscape location and got photos that weren’t the ones I was after, but still photos good enough for me.

That drive back was rough too. A lot of darkness. A lot of weighted thoughts. I broke down when I got home. The pressure of everything got to me. Having to find another work contract was already tough; to then have to deal with possibly becoming homeless whilst needing to navigate my relationship ending but not being able to was too much, and I sobbed and howled in ways I hadn’t in decades. A lucky run through life, really.

Since then, I’ve listened to “Weird Fishes” a lot. Just let it consume me, repeatedly. I don’t know if it’s the best song in the world. In my view, Lianne La Havas, with her band, made it her own. It speaks to me in a way that I’m not sure is what was intended. I don’t know if Lianne La Havas was looking to rip open her heart and bear all, and I don’t think it does that, but that’s what I get from it, and it’s just a great song. It was a great song before getting dumped and it’s a great song now, and it’ll be a great song down the track, too.

Since all of that, life has gotten better, but “Weird Fishes” remains a gripping affair. It still hurts and it still hits hard. I can’t deny that my view is heavily shaped and skewed by my life last year, but I thought it was great before and I still think it’s great.

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Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1561: Bell Ringing Out

Posted on February 18, 2026 by Stupidity Hole

I just heard a ringing. There is a vehicle passing by somewhere, and I cannot see where. I cannot see it, but I can hear it. Or rather, I heard it. I don’t hear it anymore. It is no longer in existence. It is no longer part of my awareness of the world around me. It has gone elsewhere and there is nothing I can do about that. Or is there?

No, there really isn’t as I’d much rather laze about right now. I don’t want to go chasing after bells on moving vehicles. That does not seem productive to me.

And now I can hear it again. It rings out. It rings out without a structure or an order. It rings out into space and toward my ears, and to those of whomever else can hear it. It rings and rings and it rings no more, and once more it is out of my space. Out of my thoughts, or rather still in my thoughts, so I don’t know why I said it was out of them. Anyway…

So I sit. I sit and I wait, and I wonder. Both times the ringing was close. Both times the bell rung nearby, and it rang for precisely as long as it needed to in order to spark curiosity. To be fair, if it rang only once, that would still be curiosity-inducing, I think. However, in this particular instance, the curiosity is of a different type, and now the bell returns. It rings loner and louder, and whatever it is approaches, and now it stops again.

What is this? Where is this? I have questions and they could so readily be answered by the act of leaving the house, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to step outside. Not yet, anyway. There still is a lot for me to do today, and I’m trying to get through everything. Is there enough time? I don’t know, but now I’m fighting against curiosity and fighting against my need to write about what I’m listening to in a format known as long, and I’m getting distracted by a bell. I’m getting distracted by everything that isn’t what I need to do, and that’s not good, let me tell you. I’ll tell myself if I have to, really, but let me tell you that so on and so forth and this is how it goes and… yeah.

So I don’t know where that bell is and I don’t know what I’m doing, and this isn’t out of the ordinary, really. This isn’t something that has come out of nowhere. But I wonder about that bell. I wonder where it leads and how it could be something, and how it could be nothing, and maybe it is everything. Maybe it offers what I can’t offer myself, and by not chasing it I am denying myself something that could prove itself important to me. It could be quite important.

Oh, it’s an ice cream truck.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 05:44:08

I feel like I was trying to warm up here, but I don’t know what I was trying to warm up for. More writing, I suppose.

Written at home.

 

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40/80

Posted on February 18, 2026 by Stupidity Hole

The varying speed limits, on account of the road in this area being narrow and windy in places, as well as the region being used predominantly for farming.

I don’t know what it is that made me want to take a photo of speed signs. I think it might have had to do with the angle and framing more than anything else.

This is my submission into Leanne Cole‘s “Monochrome Madness” for this week. The next one is hosted by Leanne, and she has chosen the theme of “Taken Within 10km (roughly 6 miles) From Home”.

This challenge is open to all, and I recommend joining in. If want to, check out more information about it here, and include the tag “monochrome-madness” when you share your photo. If you’d prefer not to join in, then at the least check out Leanne’s photography, and what other people submit.

I hope you enjoy.

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