{listening} flags

image :: brooke fraser

i live my life to music. constantly. always something playing in my mind.

right now, it's brooke fraser's new album flags. stunningly beautiful songs & melodies.

i've just found her purdy new blog. i was totally wowed by the pictorial essay by her drummer, aaron redfield. lovely photos to lose yourself in...

image :: aaron redfield

lets go there, hey? right now? ok. 

before a neon night's lighting i'm right beside you/the fire in motion/the fire in motion
the desert sun sinking/sleepy and low/but we're just waking/we are waking
river time is a mountain tonight/before tomorrow she flows on/carving valleys in the skin on our faces
i am bright as the sun/you are high as a kite/we are daughters, sons, brothers and sisters tonight/at coachella/coachella
come on now darling, let's shake off these blues/i'll let my hair out, you'll slip off your shoes/i feel like a baby, newborn in the spring/i'm setting down the sadness and I won't remember it
i'm a warm bleeding heart/you're a generous soul/and i love you though i'd never met you before to coachella/coachella
we are standing on the shore/in the smoke, in the starlight/on the edge of a human sea/and the tide is in

"coachella" lyrics by brooke fraser

the music room

this morning i got a chance to potter in my music room. It's such a wonderful thing to have a little room dedicated to playing my piano, and filling it with things i love. So i thought i might just share some pics...



my piano is an heirloom. passed down from my great-aunt, to my mother, to me. i love that both my mother and i learnt on this piano. It's a bit battered, and bruised. many a frustration have been banged out on the keys, and it's getting a bit honky tonky. But it's mine and i know every one of the 85 keys like the back of my hand. my mother was my teacher, which was a beautiful and frustrating thing at the time! but what a blessing it is now to be able to free your mind with music.
All music rooms should have a chandelier. Mine, a wall decal, adds a bit of glam to my playing... the book "How Green Was my Valley" by Richard Llewellyn was sacrificed to make the book sculpture. i found the how-to in real living. seriously easy, too cute! I just love my beautiful antique frames. gold and worn. they're very striking...






I picked these up for a song at a tiny little antique shop in a country town in tasmania earlier this year. They are too beautiful to put anything in.

my music room is also my library... fiction, non-fiction, cook books, music, magazines. it's lovely to get a cuppa (lady grey all the way...) and sit and read for a bit. my grandfather used to work at "The Canberra" hotel in Toowoomba. i'll always remember the chairs in my grandparents house in toowoomba which came from the hotel. When they moved into a retirement home i had to have them! they were a disgusting 50-year-old brown colour, and so a little love from an upholsterers into black has given them a glamorous make-over. I have 2 and they are a real treasure to me.




i feel relaxed just talking about my reading corner. Add a replica Philippe Starck stool and an amy butler pillow... and a little red tea cup. bliss!


and what am i playing at the moment?
Chopin, Trios Nocturne Op.15 No.3, & Deux Nocturne Op.62 No.2
Bach, J.S. Englische Suiten Gigue from Suite 5 in E BWV 810
Mageau, M. Ragtime - Elite Syncopations (in hommage to Scott Joplin)
Hanon, The Virtuoso-Pianist. (an everlasting love)


"Where words fail, music speaks" -Hans Christian Andersen