✨ notebook treasure #2

a dog-bark Davie Bowie cover, and a pancake that will make you salivate and recoil in horror

Hello and welcome to another edition of Notebook Treasure! It’s like Treasure Island but with notebooks!! And instead of pirates we have songs! And instead of anything else to do with Treasure Island we have… me!!!

✨Notebook Treasure✨ is where I share little scraps and doodles from my notebooks, hard drive, and brain. This month we’ve got a LOTR comic, a dog-bark David Bowie cover, and a pancake recipe that will either make your mouth or eyes water, maybe both!

Just in case you’re new ‘round here, this is what we get up to:

✨🌈 A Constellation, Monthly Schedule ✨🌈

• 1st week of month: creativity issue where I write about music & the artistic process (posts like Here Is My Bottom, and Inside the Studio)

• 2nd week: notebook treasure (you are reading it right now!)

• 3rd week: geology issue, where I share my amateur geology thoughts and stories from the earth’s history which makes us feel less alone (think posts like Sedimentary, My Dear Watson, and Typical Forever?)

• 4th week: pop culture guest issue (like our Steely Dan Bumper Issue)

If this sounds like your jam, then subscribe:

🌋 One Comic To Rule Them All:

I powered through The Lord of the Rings these last two months, and the main takeaway is that Sam is the hero. Sam is the hero!!!! Sam is the best. And bless him. Bless him.

This scene from the start of The Fellowship of the Ring was my instant favourite. Sam’s been eavesdropping in the bushes (‘A little late for trimming the verge!’) and Gandalf pulls him up and gives him a big scare. Then G-dog tells Sam that he must off on this big adventure. Sam’s reaction in this moment is one of instant elation and then immediate tears. Same, Sam, same. Sometimes life is too exciting and scary all at once! I loved him from here onwards.

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🐶 MODERN LOVE, BARK BARK BARK

I wanted to choose something good for you this month but then I decided on this absolutely atrocious cover of David Bowie’s ‘Modern Love’ I made in 2014 which uses a HEAVY amount of dog barking keyboard sounds.

Make of this what you will.

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🍰 Two Cakes

Oh boy getta loada these cakes!!!

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🛒 Earthquake Room

One of my songs on the album I’ve written (coming 2024!) is about the Earthquake Room at the Natural History Museum in London. It’s a slightly raised platform that’s fitted out like a Japanese mini supermarket. It shoogles (this is a Scottish word, I will not explain it because it is onomatopoeic in my opinion. In your heart, you will know what shoogling is). It’s supposed to be a simulation of the Kobe earthquake in Japan in 1995, which was a 6.9 on the moment magnitude scale.

When I visited London for the first time with my parents, I was maybe about 9 years old, and one of the things I remember the most was the earthquake room in the Natural History Museum. It must have been pretty new, as we visited in 2000, I think.

When I was a grown adult, I went back to the Natural History Museum on a date. I wanted to go to the earthquake room. You stand on the platform and get shoogled about and you go “weeee.” Fake cereal boxes fall off the shelves and then right themselves when the simulation is over. It’s cute.

Actual earthquakes? Terrifying. Devastating. But for us, we stand in the safety of the simulation. We walk off the platform and once the ‘earthquake’ is over, it re-sets itself and starts again in 3 minutes.

I wanted the song I wrote to be about experiencing something without really being able to get hurt from it. I wrote it about the date I went on and I didn’t really think it was going to go anywhere or mean anything, it felt like a simulation of the real thing.

You can listen to a clip of it here:

olivia_rafferty

A post shared by @olivia_rafferty

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🍌 And lastly… Shit The Bed

I had a dream two weeks ago, and in the dream I had invented a new pancake topping. This pancake topping was titled, ‘Shit the Bed.’

It involved the careful arrangement of a banana, some nutella to create the illusion of a smiling man who just shat the bed.

Olivia, why? Look, do not ask me to explain the windmills of my mind. This morning I woke up with my arm directly in the air because I was dreaming that someone was handing me a paper towel.

Anyway I tried to explain ‘Shit the Bed’ to my friends. It did not go well:

And then I drew a diagram:

And finally, the next weekend, I made my creation.

anticipation

Peek-a-boo!

tragedy.

Actually making it felt like I was doing something wrong, because, who does this??? Who makes this??? But in the end, it was worth it. Dreams become reality. Also he was delicious.

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📝 WEEKLY QUESTION FREE-FOR-ALL

1. Do you think you would have what it takes to go on a fantasy quest? What would you be good at? Sword-swinging? Riddle-solving?

2. Can any 80’s song be improved with dog barks?

3. What is the best cake?

4. When you go to the museum, what do you want to go look at first?

5. Have you ever invented something in your dreams?

6. Anything else you’re thinking of right now?

🐶 Hey you! Don’t shit the bed! Go do one of these things instead:

• buy a ‘Gneiss Guy’ tote bag on my Bandcamp

• listen to my music on Spotify and add it to your playlists

• forward this newsletter to a friend!

• and if you haven’t already, subscribe:

Til next time! Be good,

Olivia 🌈✨🏔🎶