User Profile

Well...let's see what there is to say about me. I'm a teenaged girl (15 years old)...I live in California, but that's not very important. I'm homeschooled (although they prefer me to call it independant study), which gives me a lot of time to do my own thing, like read, write, draw, write songs, play music, oh yes, and goof around on the internet like I'm doing right now.

I am a very artistic, creative person. I'm into drawing (you can see my art here if you like). Most of what I draw is either anime-like or psychedelic, abstract art. (Despite the fact that I am very much a psychedelic artist, I do not use drugs to create my art at all. I call that sort of thing Pure State Psychedelic art.)

I also write. I write short stories sometimes, oftentimes long books, of which I've written maybe...I don't know, probably four. (I'm counting everything I wrote since the age of 10...that's like, almost a book a year.) Some of my short stories could be described as weird pieces that are more like exercies in perfecting surrealism as a written form. I write songs, too (I believe that songs are merely poems set to music!), and they are completely surreal. Like a psychedelic rock song. Like I was on drugs at the time of writing (but which I entirely was not, see previous paragraph!). That's strange...my long stories are concrete narratives, my short stories are sometimes surrealistic, and my songs are entirely bizarre.

I write songs...I sing them, too. And I play them. I record albums under the name of Pippin Sparks. If you want to get my albums...sorry, you can't get them in the record store or on iTunes or anything. They're not officially published or anything. I'm too young for that. The albums are only just collections of what I've recorded and distribute amongst my friends. If you want to hear my music, though, it is on YouTube. You can see it here. But when I'm an adult, I fully intend to record and publish albums like the official singers do. And I'll still call myself Pippin Sparks, and I'll use some of the songs I have written now (they're better than some songs adults have written!). I also intend to be in bands. Actually, I'm a few bands now. I'm in Torch (a traditional rock group with three of my other friends; I am the bass player/sometimes lyricist/sometimes singer/sometimes player of other instruments), The R.A.S. Project (a humorous/experimental/weird group that is basically my 9-year old sister, one of her friends and me - I'm a singer/lyricist/multi-instrumentalist/sound collector/producer/mostly just sticking things together), and Plant on Premises.

Plant on Premises...that one's the most important to me right now. It's just myself and Kolya Mayberry (that's her stage name; I gave her the nickname of Kolya, which is a Russian nickname for her name, and she came up with Mayberry - she's very important to me and my best friend, in fact I think I'm in love with her). Our sound is hard to describe, but I like to say we're a psychedelic acoustic progressive punk jam band. Psychedelic because we sound like, well, people on psychedelic drugs (although we're not...we get high on each other, really), acoustic because we just don't happen to use very many electric instruments (only once, actually, if I recall correctly), progressive because like progressive rockers we tend to get caught up in ideas, symbolism and strangeness (we have a 30-minute epic about Oedipus Rex, and we're currently writing a concept album called The Madcap Vomits, which is a parody of a similarly-titled Syd Barrett album - we're heavily inspired by that Syd Barrett), punk because, even though we're not electric or protesters or anything you typically expect of punks, we do follow the punk rule of "the worse your playing is, the better your band is" (Kolya and I are both pretty good musicians when we're on our own, but it would seem we get so high on each other, for lack of a better phrase, and we fall apart and go nuts). It's interesting...if you like listening to the sounds of two teenage girls going nuts in the same room while playing guitar and mandolin and the whole thing is being recorded. It's very strange. Actually...you might almost call it freak folk. It's on YouTube now. I say just listen to it and decide for yourself.

As well as making my own music, I like listening to music. Music is one of the very important things in my life. My musical interests are very broad - initially I only liked music from the 60's or 70's, but now I like more recent music. Some of what I listen to (which is listed in my interests) would be Pink Floyd, Queen, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Neutral Milk Hotel, Can, Nico, the Doors, the Decemberists, the Kinks, the Velvet Underground, They Might Be Giants, Sweet, the Unicorns, Syd Barrett (a true tragic psychedelic genius), Jefferson Airplane, Jethro Tull, David Bowie, Psychic Ills, the Clash...oh my, here I go, listing all my musical interests. Let's just say that I can get very carried away when talking about music. If you like any of that sort of music (especially classic rock, indie rock, or psychedelic music, which are my very favorites) then I'd very much like it if you added me to your friends. Looking at that list, I realize it'd be helpful if I just said my absolute favorites are Pink Floyd, Neutral Milk Hotel, the Unicorns, Queen, the Beatles, and the Velvet Underground. Hopefully that was helpful somehow.

You could sort of say I'm an "indie person". I identify as one, in the sense that I'm a fan of indie music, and I create indie music and sort of do my own stuff operating independantly...I used to think I was a punk because I have sort of the mentality (and some of my opinions on religion very much match those of Christian punks) and also the do-it-yourself thing but I'm not into the punk music all that much...and before that, I thought I was a hippie, because I'm into love and peace and all that, and plus I love "flower child" music as you might call it, and I'm very interested in the idea of expanding your mind, sort of like a hippie might say (although a hippie from the 60's may also advocate using drugs to expand your mind; I say that if it's not a moral wrong, it doesn't hurt anybody including yourself and you like it, then go ahead and expand your mind any way you please).

I've also come to the conclusion that I may very well be an expressionist. More of an abstract expressionist, but I think I'm an expressionist because they were interested in expressing things they felt. And I use abstract art to express what I'm feeling at the time of drawing (mostly calm feelings, like love and peace and stuff - there's that hippie-ness again! - and not the negative anger and stuff some people express). Then again...I've also called myself a surrealist, a dadaist and a psychedelic artist. I'm certain I fit all these descriptions in some way or another.

Wow. That was an awful lot for me to say about myself. I hope I didn't come off as rambly there. Well, if anyone reads this and thinks I'm an interesting person because of it, then that's cool! You may very well enjoy reading my journal (which is basically the life and thoughts of me, a fantastically artistic, random, interesting person). Perhaps even add me to your friends, perchance? (Do and I'll probably add you, too.)

And there you have it.

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