Entry 1
24.12.2019
Hello, my name is Emily Isherwood and I am an artist living in Bristol, UK. Most of my work has been live performance and composition with a number of bands since 2011. I've contributed post-graduate research in gender within music and songwriting psychology. More casually, I've worked in record shops for much of my 20s, to keep myself afloat. In 2019, I decided to release a collection of songs under my own name, and I put out an LP, 'Distant Television Studios', with lo-fi beasties, Breakfast Records. You can find it tucked in the racks of Rough Trade, or smaller indies across the UK. It's also on the stream machine.
Tonight, it's Christmas Eve, and I have decided that, in 2020, I'm going to try stand up (cue the immediate laughter of anyone who already knows me - this is going well). As I have found a greater interest in communication within art, I have consumed a lot of improvised comedy - in person, on the television, in my dreams - and people seem to laugh at some real shit, so I thought I might as well give it a go. I'm not particularly funny, or interesting, but people voted for Boris, so fuck it, people are stupid.
I think we are well versed with failure, in British culture. We love it. Laughing nervously and politely behind the disappointment, and there's some hilarity and comfort to be found in its familiarity. So, in theory, whether or not my first performance is met with interest or revolt, there is some humour to be found.
Announcing my inevitable, ill-fated destiny, seems fun, but also sort of like setting a resolution to start running with your work collegue when you both live at the top of Wells Road. A loaded resolution with many problems, but perhaps best left to see 'how it all pans out'.
As an unprofessional, but somewhat academically versed writer, I've tried many manifestations. Music reviews (not enough ways to describe vapid, money-fuelled nonsense/not enough bands making anything other than post-punk, at the moment, to introduce any language variation). Secondly, scriptwriting (the stark depression of fearing that you will never, ever find a cast of even local youths to fulfil your 15 minute theatre short), and, of course, songwriting - an innermost private monologue, flowered up with false recollections and a waft of desperation. The idea is to use this method (my most successful thus far) and package it with less synth, and more tears.