You Will (Orion)

I wrote a song last year called “You Will”. I wrote it for someone I’d ended up hurting quite a lot, the song is basically me apologising and telling that person that they are better off without me; an apologetic warning, if you will. I think it’s one of the most direct songs I’ve written and I kind of shrugged it off as one of my lesser efforts at the time because it’s so simple, but it’s grown on me since.

I wrote the majority of this song in Greece last year whilst re-reading the myths, and although there’s a couple of sly references to Shakespeare, self-harm and the Trojan horse, the song is mostly about Orion (the hunter), and the boy mentioned above. Orion is one of the only constellations I can successfully pick out in the sky. The Orion myth I’m singing about combines the versions as told by Hesiod and Hyginus, which I will recap here:

Orion is first led astray by a girl called Merope, whose angry father discovers Orion and blinds him out of rage. After regaining his sight, Orion befriends Artemis, and becomes the only mortal who can keep up with her hunting skill. Her jealous twin brother, Apollo, kills Orion with a scorpion. Devastated Artemis cries a mountain of tears and begs Zeus (the king of the Gods) to hang Orion’s portrait in the stars, so that he will never be forgotten, and that is where he still twinkles today with his arrow raised above him and his shield raised in front of him, mid-hunt.

Artemis has been my favourite goddess since I was about 7 (I still have clumsy drawings I made of her at primary school) so it was very self-indulgent to try and look through her eyes whilst writing this song. I’m notoriously dismissive with boys and had a reputation for being quite cool (cruel) with potential suitors in my younger years. Looking back I do feel a sense of remorse when considering all these poor ignored boys from the past: nobody wants to think they’re leaving a trail of broken hearts and misery behind them, even if your own heart has been beaten up over the years as well. Immortalising this particular boy and our brief time together in a song is my version of a portrait in the stars, I guess. I wonder if he’ll ever hear it, and if he does, if he’ll recognise himself?

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Port of Rhodes

 On the very first day we were in Greece I found a very old postcard which featured the beautiful arcades above, flooded in golden light. The postcard was dated 1972 and didn’t credit a photographer or include any information about where the picture was taken. I was completely enchanted by the photo, and I imagined that the photographer who had probably spent a huge amount of time waiting to get the perfect shot of the arcades. I fancied that even if we managed to locate and visit the same unknown place on our trip in 2013, it would likely be some sort of built up tourist attraction hell, forever to be remembered by the golden 1972 picture.

Four days later Philly and I visited Rhodes and stumbled across the exact same arches drenched in the later afternoon sun. It was amazing discovering this secret place simply by chance when wandering around. The Prefecture is literally next to the harbour so admittedly it wasn’t exactly out of the way, but this kind of miraculous discovery does seem to happen more on holiday. I often think when I’m travelling I feel a bit more connected to the world, and I wonder if this is simply because of the technological cut-off. Had I been able to immediately identify the area on the postcard (google image search), read the caption (dictionary translate) and direct myself to the location (apple maps), I wouldn’t have been able to chance upon this place in a moment of complete serendipity and bask in the warm sunlight that drew me there. Dress – vintage, £12. Hat – Monki, £3 (sale. Flip-flops – Aldo, £12.

Lindos

Hello! Today it’s really rainy and gloomy in London but you can see how hot it was in Greece! I spent a week in Rhodes with my good friend Philly and we had amazing sunshine every day. I got back last week but have been recovering from food poisoning, hence the delay in posts! These photos are taken in Lindos, a picturesque town on the south east coast of the island. Philly and I travelled to Lindos via boat which was a 4 hour round trip from the village where we stayed in the north west.

Lindos is notable for the huge Acropolis which sits at the top of the mountain above the modern village. I’d normally consider myself more interested in science than anything else, but my week in Rhodes has sparked a nascent interest in history. It was fantastic wandering around the ruins and looking for traces of the people who had built them. My favourite bit was a huge discarded slab which somebody had trodden in whilst the concrete was drying. Seeing a huge footprint in the block somehow enabled my mind to leap back thousands of years and I felt immediately able to imagine the ancient Greeks walking around on the same patches of dirt that we were, moaning about the same heat and looking out at the same sea.

Lindos is also notable for using donkey taxis. Donkeys, like horses, have been domesticated over thousands of years to carry all of our rubbish but donkeys are much smaller than horses and their knees often buckle in old age due to a lifetime of transporting heavy loads. Donkeys are quite independent and if they don’t perceive a threat they won’t do something (unlike horses who can easily be scared into things using noises). I feel very passionately about animal welfare and whilst I enjoyed playing with the donkeys, it was really upsetting to see these poor animals transporting tourists up and down a steep hill in such hot weather. One of the donkey owners told me it’s ok because the donkeys are used to it, which is insane. If you smack somebody in the face every day for a year they’ll get used to it, does that mean that’s ok? It was nice to spend some time bonding with this 1 year old donkey anyway; he kept licking the flowers on my dress.

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