Guest blogger Santi White, a.k.a. Santogold, plays with new wave, punk, reggae, hip hop and lots else on her upcoming debut. She recently toured with Bjork.

I’ve officially been awake for 35 hours. The dark circles and deep lines were creeping across my face by the minute, despite my best efforts to be the ever-so-social “artist” at the label dinner I just attended in Austin for SXSW. I snuck out just as my entree arrived (three hours later) and enjoyed the slow walk in perfect evening weather with my boyfriend.

Today was fun. I was dreading this trip, in all honesty. I felt like my schedule had been overbooked, which had turned me into a ball of anxiety just thinking of all that I needed to do just to be prepared. I found out just last night that I would be gone for three weeks, and stayed up all night doing a wrap-it-up-pack-it-up. I was all set to be a complete hater on this trip. Sat on the plane next to a creepy guy who stared at me while I slept. Traffic to the hotel put me behind schedule for my MTV interview and performance of a new song I barely knew. So I ran into my hotel room for a quick shower, a not-so-quick hair wash, a bite to eat and to download the instrumental for the song. I was an hour late, but no one acted like they cared. I did my interview and my song and it was painless. Enjoyable even. And I was free for the rest of the day!

Diplo happened to be eating Mexican food (my favorite) across the street and I wanted to crash his meal. We’d been bickering all week about this mixtape we’re working on and I thought it might be fun to go slap him around a bit.

He took one look at me and yelled “Santo-skirt!” In Wesley-talk, that meant “Hi, Santi. Oh my God, you’re wearing a dress! And boy, do you look pretty.”

We had a fun lunch on the patio in perfect weather (actually, we mostly just ate chips and dips). A bunch of friends joined us. My boyfriend Trevor (Trouble Andrew) came to meet up, and we all headed over to the Downtown label dinner (i.e., free food), where we ran into all our fellow freeloaders: Steve Aoki, Nick Catchdubs, A-Track. That free dinner went on way too long. I’d meant to go catch my friend Chris play with his band Man Man at 10 p.m., but pretty much faded out at that point. Luckily, they play again tomorrow.

So, here I sit now, in bed in my PJs. My favorite place to be. Got a photo shoot bright and early and a big day tomorrow.

Lights out!

*s

Photo courtesy Ms. White