#extended vocal technique

[onryou-onryou]

Ikue Mori & Charmaine Lee live at Ende Tymes X

[milawritess]

just read your gojo fic and it was amazing!! can i ask does megumi end up calling the reader mom to her face or something along those lines in the end? i’m a sucker for the reader being a parent to megumi so was wanting to know how that plays out 💜

Pairing: Gojo Satoru x Reader, mom!Reader & Fushiguro Megumi 

Warnings: angst, Megumi missing his mum :( 

Word count: 2k+

a/n: this takes place after the events of my fic Wherever you go, that's where I'll follow

-

Would Megumi ever call you mom to your face?

Yes and no. He’s a bit shy when it comes down to it. 

After nearly dying, you were sick. Your technique became unstable, a flicker of the shadow of what your flames once were. 

Your recovery was hard, harder than anyone could have expected. Your eyes were hollow and sunken; you had lost even more weight, and you were always so tired. Megumi saw you dozing off at the dinner table, in the middle of conversations, and one time while you were even standing. It seemed like a never-ending exhaustion—like your own soul couldn’t withstand being… alive. 

It scared Megumi. More than words could describe. 

When word got around that you couldn't even conjure up more than a spark, Megumi noticed you started to change. You’d disappear for days at a time, you were eating less and less, and you hardly spoke, evident by the strain in your vocal cords when you addressed him or anyone for that matter. He knew you were depressed; he picked up on the signs quickly and felt the weight of your absence. Eventually, it seemed Yuji and Nobara did as well. 

It was starting to get to you, he thinks. But Megumi doesn’t entirely blame you. If he woke up one day unable to conjure his shadows, he thinks he’d lose himself, too. 

Megumi could tell Gojo was starting to worry. He found him taking you out on strolls around the block a few times, trying to get you out of the house you’d much rather wallow away in. Gojo kept a bright smile on his face the entire time, and he was more open and apparent with his affection for you. His hands were always on your hip, around your shoulders, or your hand was tightly wrapped in his. Megumi wondered if it was to be closer to you or to help you keep your balance. Probably both; Gojo walked slower than usual, half strides that still never seemed quite slow enough to match yours. 

It felt like you were just… disintegrating right before everyone’s eyes. To Megumi, it was like watching an angel fall from grace. 

One day, he finds you and Gojo on the couch. After finishing his classes, he went to the store to buy your favorite soup, crackers, and some energy drinks he hoped might perk you up, even just a bit. He let himself into the Gojo estate after knocking and receiving no answer. It wasn't a big deal. Not too long ago, it was his home, too, and it's not like nobody was home. He could sense Gojo's presence. It was oddly overwhelming and dense. 

He sees why when he finds you. 

The room was warm—warm enough to make him break a sweat in his uniform upon entering. The fireplace was crackling, and the central heat was on blast. You were sprawled out on the couch in the main room, and Gojo was behind you, holding you to his chest while you slept. Megumi was ready to leave the grocery bag on the kitchen counter and leave. It didn’t feel right intruding, but-

You were shivering. 

He doesn’t get it—why nothing could keep you warm. His whole life, you’ve always brought a warmth that extended beyond your kindness and soft smiles. It was the kind of warmth you shared with him— from those oversized winter coats you bought him, those knitted gloves you make him every year, and you. 

He remembers being small and how you’d heat your hands before holding his tightly. Back then, he never had numb knuckles or fingertips whenever you were around. Not only that, you could just radiate warmth, effortlessly warming the air around you. He’s seen you do it a few times when the people around you got too cold. It was like walking past a sauna, a warm breeze that always caught others off guard. 

He remembers you doing it just a few weeks ago. Yuji’s eyes widened, and he jumped up and down, annoyingly asking a million questions about your technique. You looked a bit prideful when he compared you to a fire-breathing dragon, which, ironically, might have been the best comparison for you. 

He hated that you shivered now. With several blankets, the room cranked to eighty degrees, and Gojo beside you still wasn't enough. He hated that there wasn’t much anyone could do—anything he could do. 

Quietly, he ambles upstairs, yanking the blanket off the bed in his old room. When he returns to the living room, he throws it over you and Gojo. 

Gojo doesn’t move much but opens one eye, eyeing Megumi for a moment. He acknowledged Gojo with a nod, knowing that he wasn’t asleep. His six eyes have followed him since he knocked on the front door.  

However, he notices that Gojo has sweat beading down his temple, his white hair damp and sticking to his forehead. Megumi hadn’t associated himself with Gojo much since the incident, but… he’s happy he’s with you, doing everything he can to keep you safe, protected, and warm, even at his own expense. 

The corner of Gojos' lip twitches before his eye closes again. 

Megumi leaves a note on the counter before leaving. 

Mom, 

I bought you some food from the market. It’s in the fridge. Get well soon. 

— Megumi 

-

It’s when Gojo takes a leave of absence from teaching that Megumi can feel it sinking in—a dark foreboding, an anxiousness that tied knots around his heart, keeping him up late into the night. 

“I’m worried,” Yuji admitted sullenly. “What if… what if the damage was so bad she won’t fully heal? I know regenerating cursed energy takes a while, but it’s been weeks.” 

“I really hope that’s not the case,” Nobara sighs, resting her elbows on the table and looking out into the distance.  “It must be serious for Gojo-Sensei to leave.”

“I can’t imagine how painful it must have been,” Yuji winces a bit, merely playing with the fries on his plate. “… Urggg!” Yuji wines, hiding his face in his hands. “I don’t even wanna be at this stupid sandwich shop without Sensei. It’s not right!”

“Relax, I’ll order her something before leaving. I’ll drop it off at their place,” Megumi grouses, pulling himself away from his thoughts. 

Yuji peeks at Megumi between his fingers. “…Can I come?”

Hell no, is what Megumi wants to say, but he bites his tongue. Tsk. You’d probably like to see Yuji—Nobara too. 

“Fine,” Megumi laments between gritted teeth. “Just- don’t bother her too much. We drop the food off, and then we leave.”

Of course, Yuji doesn’t listen. 

“Sensei, it was crazy! First, it went—boom! Then skeeert, and wham! And then, and then- I went flying! Right into the wall! But it was a short wall! I flipped right over it!”

You held a cup of warm tea in your hands and smiled softly, eagerly nodding along and giggling at Yuji. He animated the story with excitement, bouncing on his toes, and his voice echoed through the halls as he made quirky sounds. Megumi rolled his eyes, finding his friend rather obnoxious, but you looked happy. He supposed that was all that really mattered. 

However, Megumi wonders if you have a single clue as to what Yuji is talking about. He surely didn’t. 

Yuji threw himself down on the couch adjacent to where you sat, right beside Nobara. “Man… they banned me. Can you believe that?”

“They banned you? That’s egregious.”

“I know, right!”

You wiggle your eyebrows before taking a sip of your tea. “Want me to beat up the director?”

Yuji lets out a heartfelt laugh. “No, but that would be kinda funny,” he sighs dramatically. “I guess I’ll just have to start going to other skating rinks.”

“Sensei-” Nobara freezes, your name slipping from her lips. 

Megumi couldn’t see what those two saw. He opted for staying in the corner of the room, watching you interact with his two friends. It was hard for him, he realized bitterly, to even look at you. So he stayed in the corner, content with just watching over you from a distance. But suddenly, the air is knocked from his lungs. 

Things weren’t supposed to be like this. 

Nobara reaches forward quickly, nearly dropping her tea as she does. She rips out three tissues from the tissue box before shoving them in your hands. 

However, Yuji freezes. His face goes white as a sheet. 

You lean forward, holding the tissue to your nose. Nobara jumps up, putting her hands on your shoulders as she encourages you to stand. “We’ll be right back! Going to the ladies room!”

It’s only when you two walk past him that he sees the bloody tissue, crimson dripping from your nose. Yuji remains silent on the couch, fiddling with his hands and looking at nothing in particular. He looks like he just saw a ghost, and Megumi doesn’t blame him. He felt the same way; however, he had the will to move. In a haze, his feet carry him to the kitchen. He finds Gojo there, plating the food Megumi brought you and putting it in the microwave. 

“You want to tell me what’s going on?”

“Well, hello to you too, brat.”

“Just tell me already.”

Gojo sighs. “Yeesh. Everything’s fine, you little gremlin. Nothing you gotta worry about.”

“H-Her nose just started bleeding! Out of nowhere.”

Gojo seems to pause for a moment before going back to what he was doing. “Seems Nobara has it handled. They’re on their way back to the living room now.”

“Just tell me what’s going on,” Megumi nearly pleads. He wants to accuse Gojo of not caring, of not doing whatever he can for you during your difficult recovery, but the bitter words never make it past his lips. Megumi knows he is. Even when anger threatens to blind Megumi, he remembers that you and Gojo have weird dynamics that often leave people’s heads spinning; however, the love is always there, alive and apparent. He just had to know where to look. 

Gojo loves you, and more importantly, he makes you happy. Megumi knew that even if he didn’t always understand it. 

Gojo sighed before reaching for the sink and turning on the faucet. Megumi gives an odd look, but Gojo grins before tapping his ear. Oh. Right. If you wanted to, you could easily pick up on what they were discussing. Megumi imagines you wouldn’t feel great knowing they were speaking about you—even if it came from a place of worry and concern. You didn’t need anything else being added to your plate. 

“Is she sick?”  

Gojo crosses his arms before leaning his back against the counter. “She is,” he answers honestly. Megumi wanted the truth, yet he flinched when it was handed to him. “She is sick.”

How can he do that? Sound so indifferent? But, as he looks at Gojo, Megumi notices that he's uncharacteristically stoic, almost stern, as he hands him the cold truth.  Gojo didn’t like what was happening as much as Megumi, but there was no avoiding the truth and no sense in lying about it. 

“What can we do?”

“Not much,” Gojo answers easily. “We just… wait.“

Megumi can’t quite understand that. He hates this, hates waiting, day after day. You were weak; Megumi could sense it, Yuji and Nobara, too. 

“She’s outputting more energy than she is retaining… how do you even begin to fix something like that?” Megumi murmurs, his eyes finding the floor. He was afraid. You were his mother, the woman who loved and raised him and always kept him warm. He feels like he’s losing you, like a candle wick running dry of wax. 

Suddenly, Gojo reaches up, ruffling Megumi's dark hair. “She’ll be alright, brat.” Gojo playfully pushes his head back as he pulls away, a small smile now gracing his lips. “Leave all the worrying to me, yeah? I’ll take good care of her. I promise.”

-

“Sensei! I’m praying for you!”

Nobara rolls her eyes. “You’re not supposed to tell her, dimwit.”

“I know, but I want her to know I’m praying for her recovery!”

Megumi groans, stepping away from the shrine. “Just shut up, Yuji.”

You smiled from your spot beside Gojo. You were leaning on him, your head resting on his shoulder. One of your arms wrapped around Gojo’s, your fingers grasping his bicep. Your other hand reached down, intertwining your delicate fingers with his. Clinging to his arm, which you held close to your chest, you smiled sweetly as you observed the scene around you. 

You still looked exhausted, and there were still bags under your eyes, but you had enough energy to get out of the house today, at least. 

“Thank you, Yuji,” you smiled. “I appreciate it more than anything.”

He beams, giving two big thumbs up. 

“Whatever,” Nobara brushed Yuji off, stepping forward. “I, on the other hand, got you an omamori!” She presents the small charm to you with a broad and cheesy grin. It was a Kenko charm—an amulet for good health and protection from illness and disease. 

You hesitantly reach for it, clasping it with one of your hands. “Thank you, but you didn’t have to. You have exams coming up that you should be focused on.”

Nobara waves you off harmlessly before looking at Gojo. Her eyes squinted. “You didn’t get her anything. Tsk. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Wha- I got her something! Look! Show them sweets!”

You laugh, putting Nobara’s charm in your pocket and rummaging around. You pull out two other charms—en-musubi charms. Your cheeks flush a bit as you happily present them, and Gojo perks up, looking the proudest he’s ever looked. 

“Two en-musubi? Hm,” Nobara hums passively. “And yet I don’t see a ring on her finger.”

“Hey, that’s not fair!”

Nobara defiantly turns her head from her Sensei. “Whatever, just tell us how you really feel...”

“Y’know, Satoru,” you play along with a slight grin. “She might be onto something…”

“Wait! Hold on, let me buy you a charm!” Yuji dashed away, ignoring how you protested, yelling to him that it was alright and that you didn’t need another charm. 

Megumi sighs. He hates to admit it, but that idiot's right. He should get you a charm, too. ”I’ll be right back.”

“Megumi, it's okay! I don’t need another one! My pockets are already full!” 

He waves, brushing you off. It was the least he could do. He prayed for you, of course he did, but he wouldn’t say anything about it—unwilling to risk his prayers potentially being unanswered.  So, he walks, eventually catching up with Yuji. However, even with the charm in his hands, it doesn’t feel enough. 

So, after buying your charm, he walks over to another booth. He takes out his wallet to purchase an ema, a wooden plank on which he can write the wish he has been praying for over the past few weeks. 

What Megumi doesn’t see, though, is Gojo nudging you and pointing over to where Megumi stood. Just in time, you see him hanging his ema, placing it alongside hundreds of other wishes. It’s only when Megumi turns around that he notices you and Gojo have been watching him the entire time. 

He coughs, cheeks flushing as he walks away. He puts his head down before walking to where Yuji and Nobara are waiting for him, too embarrassed to look your way. Yuji and Nobara’s smiles were sincere. Yuji even offered him a friendly squeeze on the shoulder. 

There were tears in your eyes as you read the ema. 

I wish for my mother to get well soon. 

-

a/n: just a little blurb following the events of wherever you go, that’s where I’ll follow :p

Let me know your thoughts or if I should write a longer fic detailing the reader's recovery. I have a few ideas in mind… 

As always, likes, comments, and reblogs are appreciated <3

[shiyorin]

Author's note: Come from my private au, has so many settings I am never said before but I think it is funny, must post.

Tumblr formatting sucks so I had to change it like this.

EXPOSED: 133 SPICY SECRETS THE IMPERIUM DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW — WHAT THE PRIMARCHS REALLY DO AFTER DARK!

From kink collections to bedroom blunders - the juiciest, weirdest, and most heretical habits of the Emperor’s golden boys. You won’t believe #26… and #90? Absolutely illegal in 7 systems!

The Lion maintains absolute discipline even during climax, barely changes expression.

Has a secret passionate side that only emerges with you.

Silent hunter in the streets, vocal beast in the sheets.

Despite his serious demeanor, he makes cat noises when he comes. Not sexy growls, literal "meow" sounds.

Has never discussed his intimate life with anyone, total compartmentalization.

Possesses surprisingly detailed knowledge of ancient Terran tantric practices.

Watch you like prey before making a move, intense predatory stare.

Has a ritual of knightly "service" that leaves you breathless.

Fulgrim has tried literally every sexual practice in Imperial records.

Can delay his climax indefinitely through perfect muscular control.

His perfectionism extends to sexual performance, practices techniques alone.

Has a mirror positioned above his bed, claiming it's "for technique refinement."

Keeps a detailed journal rating every sexual encounter on multiple criteria.

Always smells like different exotic perfumes depending on his mood.

Perturabo pproaches pleasure like an engineering problem to be solved with precision.

Records biometric data during encounters to analyze optimal techniques.

His jealousy issues manifest as possessiveness in relationship.

He has body image issues despite being built like a Greek god. When you started calling his stretch marks "triumph lines" and his response was to short-circuit emotionally.

Surprisingly responsive to praise during intimate moments.

Despite his gruff exterior, he cries during his refractory period. Every time.

Has trust issues that translate to control dynamics in bed.

Jaghatai's speed isn't just for the battlefield, it can vibrate certain body parts.

Never stays in one position for long, constant motion and rhythm.

Has a thing for outdoor sex.

Braids his hair specially for intimate occasions, pulls it out after.

Makes a distinctive sound during climax that's become legendary.

Knows pleasure techniques from dozens of different cultures.

Sometimes recites war poems during particularly intense moments.

Leman's heightened sense of smell means he can detect arousal from across a room.

Growls during climax, not metaphorically, actually growls.

Has fucked in every environment imaginable, including in blizzards.

Gets rough during full moons without even realizing it.

His beard provides unexpected sensations that drive you wild.

His dirty talk is surprisingly poetic, often in ancient Fenrisian dialects.

Has a thing for biting, leaves marks that last for weeks.

Dorn approaches sex with the same directness as everything else, tells you exactly what he wants.

Has incredible endurance, can maintain the same position for hours without tiring.

He speaks exclusively in literal terms during sex. "I am now going to insert my penis into your vagina" is his idea of dirty talk. When you asked him to talk dirty, he told you about soil composition and drainage issues. Somehow, still hot.

He has never once lied, which made "how was it for you?" a terrifying question until you learned to be more specific.

Never exaggerates or falsifies his reactions, 100% authentic responses.

Has an unexpected thing for bondage, loves testing the strength of different restraints.

Always keeps his word on promised pleasures, reliability is his hallmark.

If you want to peg him, he will provide a detailed structural analysis of your technique, complete with suggestions for improved angle of entry.

Konrad can see your deepest desires through his precognitive abilities.

Only has sex in complete darkness, says the shadows "speak to him" then.

Has a thing for fear, gets aroused when you are slightly afraid.

Never makes a sound during sex, total silence except for breathing.

Sometimes whispers your future to you during climax, usually disturbing stuff.

He's a little spoon who needs to be the big spoon until he falls asleep, then immediately reverts to little.

He keeps a "justice journal" where he ranks everyone's crimes and appropriate punishments. Apparently, your crime is "excessive smugness" and your punishment is "thorough pleasure correction."

Sanguinius's wings are erogenous zones, extremely sensitive to touch.

His beauty isn't just physical, emits a pheromone that intensifies attraction.

Blood rushes to his wings during arousal, making them flush visibly.

His enhanced hearing means he can detect the slightest changes in heartbeat and breathing.

You can feel a euphoric blood rush in his presence, possibly psychic.

Has a tragic fear of hurting you, requires absolute trust.

He looks like an angel but fucks like a demon. The dichotomy is disorienting.

He apologizes after dirty talk. "You're a filthy cockslut-I'm sorry, that was disrespectful.”

Despite Ferrus's gruff exterior, whispers surprisingly tender things during intimate moments.

Temperature of his hands can be adjusted for different sensations.

Always checks in verbally throughout, consent is non-negotiable.

Can go for multiple rounds with zero recovery time.

Has a thing for hands, loves both giving and receiving hand pleasure.

Contrary to expectations, Angron is extremely controlled in bed, afraid of hurting you.

His rage translates to intense passion when properly channeled.

The Butcher's Nails make his pleasure/pain responses unpredictable.

Requires specialized reinforced beds, has broken dozens.

Gets emotional after particularly intense sessions, sometimes even cries.

Prefers if you aren’t intimidated by his size or reputation.

His heart rate during sex would kill a normal human.

Guilliman approaches sex with tactical precision, maps erogenous zones like campaign targets.

Keeps a detailed spreadsheet analyzing performance and your satisfaction.

Actually wrote a private codex on sexual techniques, 500 pages, fully illustrated.

Always showers immediately before and after.

Has a thing for authority figure, ironic given his own position.

Surprisingly imaginative once he trusts you enough to relax.

Asks for performance reviews afterward, genuinely wants to improve.

Despite his appearance, Mortarion is unexpectedly gentle and attentive.

Has a breathing kink, loves controlled breath play.

His body temperature runs cold, creating interesting sensations for you.

Surprisingly flexible.

Has never been naked in front of anyone, always keeps something on.

His scarred skin is extremely sensitive, especially along his back.

Silent during sex except for carefully controlled breathing.

Prefers total darkness, claims it "equalizes the experience."

Magnus can psychically enhance your pleasure, making you feel everything he feels.

His eye glows brighter during arousal.

Can maintain an erection for days through psychic control.

Know exactly what you want before you do, mind reading has its benefits.

Has invented several positions that would be physically impossible without telekinesis.

Sometimes accidentally projects his orgasms psychically, causing everyone nearby to feel it.

His extensive library includes the galaxy's largest collection of erotic literature.

Has had sex while simultaneously reading a book.

Horus has a thing for power dynamics, he loves when you challenge his authority before ultimately submitting to him.

His stamina is legendary, often going for hours without breaks.

Gets incredibly turned on when called "Warmaster" in bed.

Has a secret collection of handcuffs from every world he's conquered.

That scar on his body? Extremely sensitive to touch, instant arousal trigger.

Secretly recorded himself with you, keeps the videos in a hidden vault.

Has a thing for doing it in war rooms, especially on strategic tables.

Lorgar treats sex like a religious experience, complete with rituals and chanting.

Has written erotic poetry that would make experienced courtesans blush.

Takes his time, foreplay can last hours as he "worships" every inch.

His voice alone can bring you to the edge, has studied sonic stimulation.

Maintains eye contact throughout, intensely spiritual connection.

Has a thing for confession scenarios, wants to hear your darkest desires.

Always burns special incense that heightens sensitivity.

Has sacred words tattooed in places only you discover.

Vulkan's body temperature runs extremely hot, like making love to a furnace.

Gives the best post-sex cuddles in the Imperium, like being wrapped in a warm blanket.

Has a surprising affinity for sensual massage, can work out knots you didn't know you had.

Laughs during sex, finds joy in physical connection.

Always focuses on your pleasure before his own.

His heartbeat is audible and hypnotic during intimate moments.

Corax can literally turn into shadows during particularly intense moments.

Has a thing for heights, loves balconies, rooftops, and flying vehicles.

So quiet during sex you sometimes forget he's there until he touches you.

Can see perfectly in darkness, knows exactly where to touch.

Sometimes sprouts shadow-wings during climax, startling the unprepared.

His voice drops to hypnotic registers during dirty talk.

Enjoys watching from the shadows before joining in.

You're never sure which twin you're actually with, sometimes they switch mid-session.

Can perfectly mimic the sexual techniques of anyone they've observed.

Keep a network of informants reporting on the sexual preferences of your.

Have developed secret pleasure points unknown to standard anatomy.

Sometimes speak in unison during threesomes, eerily synchronized.

Have been known to disguise themselves as servants to spy on people's sexual habits.

One likes to be on top, one likes to be on bottom, but they never specify which is which.

The Emperor's psychic presence intensifies pleasure to godlike levels.

Can appear differently to different, manifests as your ideal lover.

Time seems to stretch in his presence, moments of pleasure can feel like eternities.

His golden aura becomes blinding during moments of passion.

The Primarchs' various quirks are genetic echoes of the Emperor's own preferences, each inherited different aspects.

*******

You stared at the crumpled list in your hands, blinking rapidly as you processed what you were reading. The paper had been slipped under your door sometime during the night, the handwriting alternating between several different styles as if multiple people had contributed to it.

"What the fuck," you whispered, scanning the detailed, disturbingly detailed, descriptions of the Primarchs' supposed sexual habits.

This had to be retaliation for your artwork. Ever since you'd been caught sketching that sexual piece featuring Horus and Sanguinius in a rather compromising position, things had escalated into a bizarre war of increasingly sexual content between you and the Emperor's sons.

Your data-slate pinged with an incoming message. Seventeen new commission requests from seventeen different encrypted sources, all requesting artwork based on items from the list. Each offering payment that would make an Imperial Governor blush.

"Oh, it's fucking on," You cracking your knuckles as you reached for your stylus.

********

The first anatomical "reference session" was scheduled for that afternoon. Magnus had requested a private meeting in the Librarium after hours, claiming he needed to discuss "important tactical matters" with the remembrance.

When you arrived, you found the crimson Primarch sitting rigidly at a massive wooden table, surrounded by ancient tomes and scrolls that definitely weren't tactical in nature.

"I received your list," you said without preamble, dropping the crumpled paper onto the table between them.

"What list?" Magnus asked, his single eye widening with what appeared to be genuine confusion.

"The 133 sexual facts about you and your brothers," you clarified, watching his face carefully. "Rather detailed information about your... preferences."

Magnus's crimson skin darkened further as he snatched up the paper and scanned it rapidly. "This is...I didn't-" he sputtered, then paused, his eye narrowing. "Number Eighty-eight is accurate, though."

"Which one was-" you started to ask before catching yourself. "Not the point. Did you and your brothers create this as some kind of joke? Retaliation for my artwork?"

"I assure you, I had nothing to do with this," Magnus said, still reading the list with increasing distress. "Though I suspect Fulgrim or perhaps the twins..." His voice trailed off as he reached the section about himself. "That's... uncomfortably specific."

"So these are accurate?" you couldn't help asking, professional curiosity getting the better of you.

"I neither confirm nor deny," Magnus replied automatically, though his continued deepening complexion suggested otherwise.

"Right," you nodded, retrieving the list and tucking it away. "Well, regardless of its origin, I've received seventeen commission requests based on it. Including yours about psychic pleasure enhancement."

Magnus choked on nothing. "I didn't-"

"The request came from 'definitely_not_magnus@librarium.imp,'" you interrupted dryly. "Very subtle."

"That could be anyone," Magnus protested weakly.

"It was written in Prosperine hieroglyphics," you countered. "With annotations in a language that doesn't technically exist yet."

Magnus slumped in defeat. "Fine. I may have sent a... hypothetical inquiry."

"About whether I could accurately depict psychic pleasure transference in artistic form," you completed. "For which you'd need to demonstrate the technique. For accuracy."

"Precisely," Magnus nodded, scholarly demeanor returning. "It's a complex psychic phenomenon that requires direct observation to properly capture."

"Uh-huh," you said skeptically. "And this has nothing to do with item ninety-one on the list about you accidentally broadcasting your orgasms psychically?"

Magnus's eye darted away. "A preposterous exaggeration."

"So that didn't happen during the Ullanor campaign? Because I heard an entire regiment of Imperial Army suddenly collapsed in ecstasy during your private meditation time."

"A coincidence," Magnus insisted. "Mass hysteria."

"Right," you grinned. "So about this commission..."

********

The next morning found you in the training cages, ostensibly observing combat techniques for "assassinorum purposes" but actually gathering reference material for the flood of commissions that had arrived overnight.

Jaghatai and Leman were sparring, stripped to the waist, their compression leggings leaving little to the imagination as they grappled and threw each other around the cage. A small crowd had gathered to watch the Primarchs train, but you had managed to secure a front-row position with your sketchbook.

"Enjoying the view?" Torgaddon asked, sliding up beside you.

"Research," you replied without looking up from your rapid sketching. "Anatomical references for commission work."

"Uh-huh," Torgaddon nodded skeptically. "And the fact that you're focusing on their glutes and crotches is purely professional."

"The gluteal muscles are key to understanding proper movement dynamics," you explained with mock seriousness. "Also, item twenty-three indicates Jaghatai 'never stays in one position for long, constant motion and rhythm.' I need to capture that accurately."

"You actually believe that list?" Torgaddon asked incredulously.

"I'm verifying it empirically," you corrected. "Scientific method and all that."

Just then, Jaghatai executed a particularly impressive takedown that left Leman pinned beneath him, both Primarchs breathing heavily and glistening with sweat. They held the position a beat too long, eyes darting to where you sat sketching, before Leman growled something and they separated.

"They're showing off for you," Torgaddon observed.

"Of course they are," you agreed, adding detailing to your sketch. "And I'm getting excellent reference material because of it. Win-win."

"This is going to end badly," Torgaddon predicted.

"This is going to end profitably," you corrected. "I've made more money in the past week than in my last three assassination missions combined."

"Speaking of which," Torgaddon lowered your voice, "there's a rumor that the Emperor himself has commissioned you for something."

Your stylus paused momentarily. "Where did you hear that?"

"So it's true!" Torgaddon’s eyes widened.

"Neither confirm nor deny," you muttered, returning to your sketching. "Client confidentiality."

"By the Throne," Torgaddon breathed. "What did he ask for?"

"If, and I stress if, such a commission existed," you said carefully, "it would be for a classical portrait. Nothing more."

"Classical as in...?"

"Classical as in Ancient Terran style. Renaissance era."

"Nude?" Torgaddon pressed.

"Artistically draped," you corrected primly.

"The Emperor wants you to draw him like one of your Terran girls," Torgaddon marveled. "The actual Emperor of Mankind."

"This conversation isn't happening," you insisted, focusing intently on your sketching as Ferrus Manus entered the training cage, also stripped to the waist, his metal arms gleaming under the lights.

"Your pupils just dilated," Torgaddon noted.

"Lighting change," you dismissed, though your increased sketching speed suggested otherwise.

"Right," Torgaddon drawled. "Well, while you're conducting your 'research,' you might want to know that father is looking for you. Something about providing 'detailed references' for his triple-self commission."

"Already scheduled," you replied without looking up. "After the war council. He's bringing reference materials."

"What kind of reference materials could father possibly-" Torgaddon started to ask, then shook his head. "Actually, don't tell me. I don't want to know."

"Wise decision," you agreed, flipping to a new page as Ferrus began demonstrating a series of strikes that showcased his impressive torso musculature. "Very wise indeed."

********

The Emperor's private gallery was unlike anything you had ever seen, a vast chamber filled with artwork spanning human history, from primitive cave paintings to hololithic masterpieces that seemed to shift and move as you walked past them.

And here you were, presenting your completed commission to the Master of Mankind himself.

"The brushwork is exquisite," the Emperor commented, examining the large canvas you had delivered. "You've captured the classical style perfectly."

"Thank you," you replied, trying to maintain your professional demeanor despite standing before the most powerful being in the galaxy, discussing what was essentially an erotic portrait.

"The musculature is anatomically precise," he continued, "yet idealized in the classical tradition. Your understanding of chiaroscuro is impressive."

"I studied the ancient masters extensively," you explained, which was true, you'd spent three days in the Imperial archives researching Renaissance techniques for this commission.

"And the draped fabric creates just the right balance between revelation and mystery," the Emperor noted, his golden eyes studying the painting with the intensity of a sun. "Excellent work."

The painting depicted the Emperor in a classical pose reminiscent of ancient Terran deity portrayals, strategically draped fabric preserving modesty while suggesting the perfection beneath. It was tasteful yet undeniably sensual, exactly what he had requested.

"I'm pleased it meets your expectations," you said, feeling oddly nervous despite your training.

"More than meets them," the Emperor assured you. "I shall add it to my private collection immediately." He gestured to a section of the gallery that appeared to be accessible only through a psychically locked doorway. "Your compensation has been transferred to your accounts, with a substantial bonus."

"You're too generous," you began, but the Emperor raised a hand.

"I reward excellence appropriately," he stated simply. "And I understand you've been providing similar services to my sons."

You froze, unsure how to respond. "I-"

"No need for concern," the Emperor assured you, his perfect lips curving into a slight smile. "Creative expression takes many forms. And frankly, they've been more focused on their duties since your commissions began. Less... tension among them."

"I'm... glad to hear that," you managed, processing the fact that the Emperor of Mankind was essentially approving your pornographic side business.

"I would, however, suggest discretion regarding the list that has been circulating," the Emperor added, his golden eyes twinkling with amusement. "Some of those items hit rather close to home."

"You've seen the list?" you blurted before you could stop yourself.

"I see everything eventually," the Emperor replied enigmatically. "Though I suspect Malcador had a hand in its creation. He always did have a peculiar sense of humor."

Before you could process this revelation, the Emperor gestured toward the exit. "I look forward to seeing your future work, Remembrance. Perhaps we might discuss another commission at a later date."

Taking the dismissal for what it was, you bowed slightly and turned to leave. As you reached the doorway, the Emperor's voice stopped you.

"Oh, also? Item One-hundred-and-thirty-two is entirely accurate."

Your mind raced to recall the item in question, something about his golden aura becoming blinding during passion. By the time you turned back to respond, the Emperor had vanished, leaving you alone in the gallery with the distinct impression you'd just been teased by the Master of Mankind himself.

"What even is my life right now?" You muttered, making your way back to your quarters where seventeen more commissions awaited your attention.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Please help! I’m writing musicians but am gravely afraid of being so inaccurate I’ll get laughed at. Do you have any general tips for writing musicians/celebrities/rich people or all three?

Writing Notes: Musicians

Musician - creates, performs, or composes music.

Diverse in their talents, encompassing a wide range of instrumental, vocal, and compositional abilities.

They may specialize in various genres such as classical, jazz, rock, pop, electronic, or folk music, and their proficiency may extend to multiple instruments or vocal techniques.

Duties & Responsibilities

The duties and responsibilities of musicians can vary depending on their specific roles, genres, and settings. However, here are some general duties and responsibilities that musicians often have:

Practice and Rehearsal: Musicians need to dedicate significant time to practicing their instruments or vocals to maintain and improve their skills. They also participate in rehearsals with other musicians or bands to synchronize their performances.

Performances: Musicians are responsible for delivering live performances, whether in concerts, gigs, recitals, or other venues. They must prepare their repertoire, select appropriate songs or compositions, and perform them with skill and expression.

Collaboration: Many musicians work collaboratively with other musicians, bands, orchestras, or ensembles. They must be able to communicate effectively, listen to others, and contribute to a unified musical performance.

Composition and Arrangement: Some may create original compositions or arrangements of existing music. This involves writing or reworking musical ideas, melodies, harmonies, and lyrics to create new pieces of music.

Recording and Studio Work: Musicians often record their music in studios or other recording environments. They may need to work with audio engineers, producers, and other professionals to capture their performances accurately and achieve the desired sound.

Promotion and Marketing: Musicians, especially those pursuing a professional career, need to actively promote their work. This may involve creating a brand, establishing an online presence, networking, and marketing their music through various channels.

Music Education: May engage in teaching and mentoring aspiring musicians. They may offer private lessons, lead workshops, or work as music educators in schools or colleges to impart their knowledge and skills to others.

Equipment Maintenance: Responsible for maintaining their instruments or equipment, ensuring they are in good working condition. This may involve regular cleaning, string replacement, tuning, or repairing any issues that arise.

Continuous Learning: Musicians must stay updated with the latest trends, techniques, and developments in their respective genres. They may attend workshops, masterclasses, or pursue further education to enhance their skills and expand their musical horizons.

Types of Musicians

There are various types of musicians based on their roles, expertise, and the context in which they perform. Here are some common types of musicians:

Vocalists/Singers: Vocalists specialize in singing and using their voice as their primary instrument. They may perform solo or as part of a vocal group, choir, band, or opera company. Vocalists can have various vocal ranges and styles, including sopranos, altos, tenors, baritones, and basses.

Music Artists: Music artists, or soloists, are musicians who perform as the featured artist or performer in a concert or other musical setting. They often showcase their virtuosity and mastery of their instrument or voice. Soloists can be instrumentalists or vocalists.

Session Musicians: Record or perform with other artists or bands. They contribute their instrumental or vocal skills to enhance the recording or live performance. They may be hired for their versatility and ability to adapt to various musical styles.

Composers: Create original music by writing scores or arrangements. They may compose for a wide range of genres and mediums, including film, television, theater, orchestras, bands, or solo performances.

Conductors: Conductors lead and direct orchestras, choirs, or other musical ensembles. They interpret the musical score, guide the musicians, and shape the overall performance. Conductors use their knowledge of music theory and interpretation to bring out the desired artistic vision.

Music Educators/Teachers: Specialize in teaching and imparting musical knowledge and skills to students of all ages. They may work in schools, colleges, universities, or offer private lessons. Music educators can teach various subjects, including instrument instruction, music theory, composition, and conducting.

Music Arrangers: Music arrangers take an existing piece of music and restructures or adapts it for a different ensemble, style, or purpose. They make artistic decisions regarding instrumentation, harmony, rhythm, dynamics, and other musical elements to create a new arrangement that showcases the original composition in a fresh way.

Orchestrators: Orchestrators specialize in translating composers' musical scores into fully realized orchestral arrangements, determining the instrumentation and voicings for each instrument. They collaborate with composers and directors to bring musical visions to life in various contexts, from classical performances to film and television soundtracks.

Music Therapists: Use music as a therapeutic tool to address physical, emotional, cognitive, and social needs of individuals. They create and implement music-based interventions to promote healing, improve communication, enhance emotional well-being, and support overall therapeutic goals.

Instrumentalists: Specialize in playing a specific musical instrument. They may perform solo or as part of an ensemble, orchestra, or band. Examples include pianists, guitarists, violinists, drummers, saxophonists, and trumpeters.

Orchestral Musicians: Orchestral musicians perform as part of an orchestra, which typically consists of various instrumental sections, such as strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion. Examples include violinists, cellists, flutists, clarinetists, trumpeters, and percussionists.

Studio Musicians: Studio musicians work in recording studios and contribute their skills to create and record music. They may be hired to play instruments, sing backing vocals, or add specific musical elements to a recording. Studio musicians are often proficient in multiple styles and genres.

Jazz Musicians: Specialize in performing and improvising within the genre of jazz. They may play instruments such as saxophone, trumpet, piano, double bass, or drums, and often engage in improvisation and complex harmonies.

Rock Musicians: Perform within the rock genre, which encompasses various subgenres like classic rock, alternative rock, heavy metal, and more. They may play electric guitars, bass guitars, drums, keyboards, or sing as frontmen or frontwomen of rock bands.

Pop Musicians: Create and perform popular music that appeals to a wide audience. They often incorporate catchy melodies, hooks, and contemporary production techniques. Pop musicians can be solo artists or part of a band.

Folk Musicians: Specialize in traditional or contemporary folk music, which typically features acoustic instruments like acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin, fiddle, or harmonica. They often draw inspiration from cultural and storytelling traditions.

Classical Musicians: Perform music from the classical music tradition, which includes composers like Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and many others. They may play instruments such as violin, cello, piano, flute, or perform as opera singers.

Electronic Musicians: Electronic musicians create music primarily using electronic instruments, synthesizers, drum machines, and computer-based production techniques. They may specialize in genres like electronic dance music (EDM), techno, ambient, or experimental electronic music.

Hip-Hop Artists: Create and perform within the hip-hop genre, combining rap vocals with beats, sampling, and other elements. They often deliver rhythmic and poetic lyrics over instrumentals or electronic beats.

Country Musicians: Perform within the country music genre, characterized by its roots in folk and blues and often featuring instruments like acoustic guitar, fiddle, banjo, pedal steel guitar, and vocals with distinctive country-style twang.

Gospel Musicians: Gospel musicians perform within the genre of gospel music, which has its roots in Christian religious music. They may sing or play instruments such as piano, organ, drums, or guitar, and often incorporate powerful vocal harmonies and uplifting messages.

Personality & Interests

The Holland Codes: Musicians and singers typically have an interest in the Creating and Persuading interest areas.

The Creating interest area indicates a focus on being original and imaginative, and working with artistic media.

The Persuading interest area indicates a focus on influencing, motivating, and selling to other people.

Musicians vs. Non-Musicians. They seem to differ in 2 traits (Gjermunds et al., 2020), using The Big Five:

They somewhat tend to have lower scores on Conscientiousness, and considerably higher scores in Openness to experience.

Thus, Openness seems to be the most typical personality trait for musicians.

These results suggest that musicians are more creative and openminded than non-musicians.

Musicians and singers also typically possess the following specific qualities:

Dedication. Auditioning for jobs can be a frustrating process because it may take many different auditions to get hired. They need determination and dedication to continue to audition after receiving many rejections.

Discipline. Talent is not enough for most musicians and singers to find employment in this field. They must constantly practice and rehearse to improve their technique, style, and performances.

Interpersonal skills. Musicians and singers need to work well with a variety of people, such as agents, music producers, conductors, and other musicians. Good people skills are helpful in building good working relationships.

Musical talent. They have superior musical abilities.

Physical stamina. Those who play in concerts or in nightclubs and who tour must be able to endure frequent travel and irregular performance schedules.

Promotional skills. They need to promote their performances through local communities, word of mouth, and social media platforms. Good self-promotional skills are helpful in building a fan base.

Musicians are storytellers and conveyors of emotions.

They have the ability to evoke feelings, inspire, provoke thought, and create a sense of unity through their music.

Their music can serve as a medium for self-expression, cultural representation, and social commentary, making them influential figures in shaping the artistic landscape and reflecting the diversity of human experiences.

Musicians contribute significantly to the cultural landscape by expressing emotions, telling stories, and communicating ideas through the universal language of music.

They may perform as solo artists, collaborate in ensembles or bands, or work with orchestras, choirs, and other musical groups.

Musicians often undergo extensive training, practice, and continuous learning to refine their craft, and their creativity and dedication helps to shape the auditory experiences that resonate with audiences across the globe.

Sources: 1 2 3 4 5 ⚜ More: References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

You can find more details in the sources linked above. As for writing celebrity or rich characters, you can choose actual rich celebrities as a basis to develop your specific character. And also consider some Celebrity & Rich People tropes as inspiration. Just alter as needed/desired. Hope this helps with your writing (don't let getting laughed at discourage you. Keep writing, editing & learning throughout)!

[fushiglow]

IMPORTANT. I cannot stress how much this is Over the Threshold Satoru.

So, this song is much more interesting than it perhaps seems to the untrained ear. I literally had the chapter one Suguru experience watching this for the first time. That "Yeah, this is fine... Wait—" moment that makes him sit up and pay attention? That was me when this came on shuffle earlier. And when I watched the video? Literally felt my brain chemistry change in real time.

Here's how I described Satoru's music from Suguru's POV the first time he hears it:

Even through the tinny phone speakers, it was clear that Satoru had some pipes on him. The song was formulaic; but that didn’t mean it was bad. Suguru could appreciate the deceptive simplicity of a catchy pop song and, beneath the glossy veneer, there was a well written piece of music. He’d have to listen through his studio headphones to be sure, but he thought that if he stripped away the aggressive synths and over-processed backing vocals, he could detect a piano riffing extended chords in syncopated rhythms.

No piano, but literally everything else is there. First, some small things. The production is constantly evolving in fairly unnoticeable ways, just listen to the first post-chorus compared to the last one. Tons of blink and you miss it sparkles that elevate the song from good production to great production. The vocal range on display, both in terms of technique and the actual chromatic range, is really impressive, but mostly in the background, hidden behind all the gloss.

There are some really unexpected melodic choices in the pre-chorus that hit SO good, but apart from that little a cappella section at the start of the second refrain, the actual chorus is par for the course...

...or is it?

The song bounces on that Eb in the bass throughout most of its run time, giving the sense of a strong harmonic centre which puts your average listener at ease. "Don't worry, this is familiar to you, nothing amiss!" Yet, the repeated note he sings over it in the chorus is the NINTH of the chord! It's unstable! It's bluesy! The focal point of the song is built on a dissonance! And he just hammers away at it without reprieve!

Satoru had a real talent for making complex harmony palatable for the mass market. [...] He sought out ugliness in his lyrics, in his composition, in his performance — and somehow he made it work.

However, the true beauty of this dissonant yet contained chorus is the opportunity it creates for what comes afterwards. From the opening of Over the Threshold, and the foundation of the themes of the story:

Limiting is an aggressive form of compression, primarily due to its very high ratio — typically ∞:1. A limiter with an infinite ratio (a ‘brick-wall’ limiter) prevents anything from passing a set threshold, cutting rather than smoothing peaks to prevent unpleasant clipping. It is often applied in the final stages of mastering to make a track more ‘palatable’ for the commercial market.

The fact that the chorus limits (ey!) itself melodically and harmonically (and production/arrangement wise) is what makes the post chorus feel like a breakaway — like it escapes the bounds of the rest of the song. Suddenly, everything grows outwards. We're plunged into this rich sonic landscape where the bass starts moving and the main vocal line starts climbing and the harmony is fleshed out with new instruments. The whole song is given life for a moment—

When confined to such tight restraints, straining against them was natural. Pushing boundaries, testing limits, rattling your chains to see what you could get away with.

—before dropping back into place as a fun little pop song. Nothing to see here, move along.

I haven't detailed everything (even the structure is unusual!), but enough to describe how the entire track flirts with breaking the rules, straying outside of its commercial boundaries here and there, but it ultimately dances right on that line.

This is exactly how I wrote Satoru in Over the Threshold, because this is the music industry version of the strongest sorcerer keeping himself on a leash insofar as he has to, and it's a relatable concept to any trained musician trying to get along in a pop market. The most successful artists are the ones who understand and apply this lesson — but are the most successful artists the most satisfied artists?

And we haven't even got to the video! Honestly, this man has got it all. This is a star. The casual swagger, the confidence, the artistic flair, all on top of a brilliant song. But the dancing! As @bearhaviour put it (we're being so incredibly normal about this), "the dance is so nonchalant when it counts and so sharp when it counts". Just watch.

Effortless star power. Satoru.

*drops mic and dies*

[dustmusings]

WHAT MUSIC THE BAD BATCH WOULD LISTEN TO ACTUALLY THIS IS THE DEFINITIVE VERSION I'm kidding this is my very humble opinion. anyway let's go

Hunter — this man is the epitome of classic rock to me, (I know this is not a new take) but in much more of a AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Rainbow and Thin Lizzy way more than anything. I also see him being a lowkey Hendrix fan, and dabbles in some of the more psychedelic stuff from that time, a little Jefferson Airplane perhaps ('wish you were here' is his fav Pink Floyd album). I've been on the record saying that ZZ Top wrote 'sharp dressed man' about him and I stand by that, but I also see him rocking out to 'black night' by Deep Purple in particular

Wrecker — I see him getting on with most things, anything that gets him moving honestly, which is why I think particularly disco is his bag. man loves Donna Summer I'm telling you. I also see some acoustic guitar stuff there too: country, folk & singer songwriter stuff for when he's not up and dancing. big Johnny Cash guy from start to finish, every song. prefers the Creedence Clearwater Revival version of 'proud mary' (despite loving Tina Turner)

Crosshair — grunge. post-punk. garage rock revival. I'm talking The Strokes, Radiohead, Pixies. perhaps The Smiths thrown in there too. he likes Nirvana but he's not vocal about it because they're too 'popular' to be seen liking. he's pretentious but he keeps it to himself. 'boys don't cry' by The Cure hits home for him. secret Bowie fan but you couldn't torture that information out of him.

Tech— he will listen to anything that makes him think. he's analysing all the time. anything from Wagner to the Velvet Underground to math rock. in my minds eye he's a Dire Straits fan, and it's not so much a secret as he just doesn't let on. he appreciates the value of music in the same way as wrecker though, thus, one of his favourite songs is 'move on up' (the extended edition only) by Curtis Mayfield. the groove + the talent of the players + the interesting harmonies and rhythms, to him it's the perfect song. he's interested in the technological developments that brought in new genres and is fascinated by 80s music, as well as recording techniques like on 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band' (but it's not his favourite Beatles album, that would be 'Revolver' ofc)

Echo— a big fan of anything soulful, singers are the main appeal for him. he loves listening to a rich voice. Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone right up to Florence + the Machine, Hozier and Adele. also has a thing for britpop, and he's more in the camp of Blur over Oasis, but he likes both. musical theatre enjoyer on the downlow. 'before he cheats' by Carrie Underwood is his go to karaoke song, and he cleans up every time (he's the best singer, but Wrecker still gives him a run for his money)

[formerheroeswhoquittoolate]

okay so for those of you who haven't met me (most of you) I really like thinking about the way people talk (tone, inflection, accent, speech patterns, et cetera) and I'm tired so I'm extending this to the batfamily here we go here's my thoughts, unrequested and only slightly edited:

dick: sounds a bit like a male pop singer (think brendan urie but without the whining or busting his voice with drugs and bad technique). dude has a killer falsetto and can hit some of the highest notes in the house, beat out only by steph. saw a headcanon somewhere about him growing up speaking romani because of his parents and having an accent as a child that comes back when he's hurt or tired and honestly 100/10 it's part of this headcanon (and if you know where this post is please tell me! it's not mine and I'd love to give credit). you can also hear it in the way he says a couple less common words but his accent otherwise sounds exactly like bruce's.

jason: doesn't have the deepest voice of the batfamily; he's third deepest after bruce and duke. his tessitura (comfortable vocal range) is big though and his voice pitch changes a ton with his mood. he's got a soft r that the other bats don't have (think ny or boston) that he learned from his mom. his falsetto is trash but he is one of the better singers in the family. all low notes. you should hear him do the song the dwarves sing in the beginning of the hobbit.

tim: his voice is a little scratchy but it's not too noticeable. damian is the only batboy with a higher voice; tim and cass are at about the same pitch. he's a tad self-conscious about how he sounds in general and heavily mimics so he's got bruce's crisp ts and a softer r like jason's. he says "ahm" instead of "um" and that's not really common in gotham so nobody really knows where he's gotten that from. he's definitely more monotone, for a lot of reasons, and tends to emphasize his words by changing in volume rather than pitch.

damian: he's like twelve so his voice hasn't dropped yet but he wants it to be lower like his brothers. he's got just a touch of an arabic accent so his speech is a little more melodic and much like tim he's a mimic so he has bruce's ts and a few sporadic romani and aave quirks from dick and duke respectively.

duke: second lowest voice of the batfamily. the kid's quiet and his speech is usually peppered with aave although he's often a little self-conscious about it around the primarily white batfamily and especially white upper-class bruce. doesn't sing in public but he's good at it (he refuses to acknowledge this)

cass: okay she hardly ever talks but when she does it's slightly lower in pitch than what people expect. she typically speaks in broken english (well that's canon not headcanon) and it's always the same way as someone else in the batfamily speaks, usually babs, steph, duke, or jason since she spends the most time with them. she's barely ever louder than a kitten sneeze.

stephanie: holy shit the girl talks fast. she's got the highest speaking voice too by a few steps. gorgeous soprano but only about fifty percent of the time. loses her voice completely when she gets sick and turns into a raspy old lady. has an absolute knack for impersonations, not necessarily in terms of pitch but in speech patterns/rhythms.

barbara: right in between tim/cass and steph in terms of pitch. she uses very precise language and there's often random hacker lingo in there. she's also surprisingly loud and can out-shout any of them except for alfred.

and finally, bruce: deepest voice by a step or two. his batman growl is actually slightly higher in pitch if you listen closely enough which jason finds hilarious. he's got very crisp ts as a result of being raised primarily by the very british alfred and he often takes his time speaking especially in meetings.

[kiki-de-la-petite-flaque]

Maria Callas, widely regarded as one of the greatest opera singers of the 20th century, performed in numerous iconic productions throughout her career. One of her most memorable roles was as Lucia in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, which she performed at La Scala in Milan in 1954. This production remains one of the defining moments of Callas' career, as her vocal technique and emotional depth brought a new level of intensity and dramatic power to the role. Lucia di Lammermoor is known for its vocal demands, particularly in the famous mad scene, and Callas' performance in this opera is still remembered as one of the most poignant and technically brilliant interpretations of the role.

La Scala, the renowned opera house in Milan, has played a significant role in Callas' artistic life, as she made her debut there in 1950 and went on to perform in numerous landmark productions. Her 1954 performance as Lucia is a prime example of her artistic partnership with the legendary conductor Tullio Serafin, who was a constant presence in many of her most successful performances. The opera’s lush melodies and complex characterizations were perfectly suited to Callas' unique ability to combine vocal mastery with emotional depth, making her one of the most influential sopranos in operatic history.

The legacy of Maria Callas extends far beyond her operatic performances. Known for her dramatic interpretations and impeccable technique, she became a cultural icon, inspiring countless future generations of musicians and opera lovers. Her impact on opera is unparalleled, and her recordings continue to serve as benchmarks for aspiring singers. Callas’ life and career are celebrated worldwide, with museums and foundations dedicated to preserving her legacy, including the Maria Callas Foundation and the Maria Callas Museum in Athens. Her contributions to the world of classical music and opera remain unmatched, ensuring her place as a true diva of the operatic world.

Source: Postmodern History Shifts

[opera-ghosts]

How to Become a Successful Singer

HINTS ON THE CULTIVATION OF THE VOICE.

By ENRICO CARUSO.

It has often struck me, in a lengthy experience as a singer, that there is one point in particular about the human voice which is far too little appreciated by the rising generation of aspiring vocalists, and that is its wonderful reciprocity. Tend it, nurse it, "feed it on a proper diet," and it will invariably comport itself in the most amiable manner possible. But neglect it, treat it as an organ which is best left to look after itself, and the voice will at once, in revenge for this callous behaviour, retaliate by behaving itself in a manner which is perhaps best described as of the "hooliganistic" order.

And yet, as an actual fact, but a very small percentage indeed of would-be singers ever really seem to think it worth their while to bear in mind this axiom, for axiom it surely is, that the voice requires proper care and proper exercise to keep it in its best form just as much as is a certain amount of exercise necessary to the maintenance of good health in every human being.

Unfortunately, however, there would seem to be a prevalent impression among many amateur and not a few professional singers that singing is an art which can be acquired in quite a short time. Thus, is it not curious that while many students of the piano or the violin will willingly devote years of strenuous and conscientious practice to the study of the technique of these instruments, would-be singers frequently seem to expect to learn how to use their voice to the best advantage after a period of vocal practice extending, maybe, over a year or so, but more often even over only a few months? This policy, I need scarcely remark, is absolutely ruinous to the future careers of young singers, for no matter how naturally talented any individual vocalist may be, he or she cannot possibly produce the best results as a singer unless the particular organs brought into play in the process of singing have been subjected to a proper and sufficiently long course of training. Since the days of the old Italian masters there can be no shadow of doubt that, musically, we have advanced considerably; but sometimes, when I think of the rather slipshod methods of cultivating the voice advocated by many so-called "professors" to-day, the thought impresses itself on my mind that the detailed principles of the old Italian masters who, above all other considerations, insisted on a long course of voice training as being the only possible means to the attainment of the best art, possessed more to recommend them than do many of the modern "artifices" of voice-cultivation proffered by many teachers of singing to-day.

In a short article, of course, it is obviously impossible to go in detail into all the rules which should be observed by singers who are prepared to undertake the task of cultivating their voices on a conscientious and sound basis. At the same time, I hope to be able to suggest various hints and wrinkles which should prove of real value to aspiring singers.

In the first place, therefore, let me say at once that it is the most fatal of all errors for a singer to make too much use of the voice, for the muscles of the larynx are so delicate that they cannot possibly stand the strain of the "learn-to-sing-in-a-hurry" methods of those who hope to attain the highest point of proficiency without devoting sufficient time to that "drudgery" which is absolutely essential to the real and perfect cultivation of the voice.

For this all-important reason I would counsel singers to see to it at all times that in the early days of their training they do not devote too much time to practice. If they will take my advice, until they become thoroughly proficient in "managing" the voice—a happy state of affairs which can only be acquired after long practice—they will at first never devote more than fifteen minutes a day—in the early morning is, perhaps, the best time—to practice. I can readily realise that this must seem a very short time to enthusiasts who are willing to give up all their spare time to the study of voice cultivation, but it is, nevertheless, quite long enough, for the slightest strain put upon the voice may retard a singer's progress by months, while, on the other hand, as I pointed out at the beginning of this article, if the singer will only bear in mind that the voice requires the most careful "nursing" of perhaps all the organs, and must on no account be strained, he will soon find that, though he may not be aware of any improvement in it, his voice is, nevertheless, slowly but surely improving and gaining in strength through his gradually-growing knowledge of technique.

Another point in the cultivation of the voice which I often think is not sufficiently strongly emphasised to-day is the fact that young singers can improve their methods in the most extraordinarily rapid manner by studying the methods of other and more experienced singers. In singing, as in the cultivation of the other arts, in time the student will get what he works for, but it is surely unreasonable for him to expect to sing effectively by his own inspiration. He will be wise, therefore, to seize every opportunity of studying as closely as possible the methods of those who have thoroughly mastered the technique of singing. For true art, of course, there must be more than technique, but I would point out that in singing there is no art without sound methods of execution, which, after all, to all intents and purposes constitute technique. In the cultivation of expression, technique, and sympathy in the voice, there is no better teacher than "a visit to the opera." Still, I make no doubt that of the hundreds of aspiring singers who visit the opera during the season but very few indeed would care to go through the years of drudgery as conscientiously as have those who seem to sing so easily and to combine the art of acting and singing at the same time with equal facility. After all, the highest art lies in the concealment of that art, and I take it that it is because a really proficient opera singer accomplishes his performance with such apparent ease that the difficulties of operatic singing are so little appreciated.

Still, as I have said, I am strongly of the opinion that young singers can learn much from studying the methods of operatic vocalists, that is to say, when they have mastered the rudiments of voice cultivation, into which I need not enter here, for my object is rather to show singers various methods by which they can attain the highest art when they have served a sufficient apprenticeship under masters whose duty it is to teach them the elementary rules of singing.

For my own part, I find that a singer's life, with its constant rehearsals and performances, is such a busy one that not much opportunity is allowed him for indulging in outdoor exercise. Many other enthusiastic singers doubtless find themselves situated in very similar straits, not perhaps on account of their public engagements, but through the "calls" made upon their time by business, social, or domestic duties. In the cultivation of the voice, however, a certain amount of exercise is essential to good health, as, by the same token, is good health a sine quâ non to the attainment of the highest art in singing. It may be of service, therefore, if I explain the rules I observe when I find the calls upon my time too numerous to enable me to get as much exercise as I should otherwise like.

No matter how busy I am, when I rise in the morning I invariably indulge in a few simple physical exercises, similar in character to those I used to practise when, as a young man, the time came for me to serve my king and country as a soldato, or, if I feel that these are becoming monotonous, for a few minutes I find practice with a pair of dumb-bells—not too heavy, by the way—very beneficial. But save these mild forms of relaxation I have, as a rule, to rest content with, in the way of outdoor exercise, an occasional motor drive. Nevertheless, I would point out that, in itself, singing, with its constant deep inhalation, is by no means inconsiderable exercise, though, to be sure, I am well aware that it cannot be so health-giving in its effects as actual exercise in the open air.

Yes, past a doubt, young singers can learn much about the highest art of the cultivation of the voice from watching the knowledge of technique of our best operatic artists, and from observing their methods of "managing" the voice. Still, to thoroughly grasp the progress of the opera-singer's art, it will be necessary for students to appreciate the fact that Italian singing has had two important culminating periods, each of which was illustrated by a group of great singers, the first of which was made up of pupils of Bernacchi, Pistocchi, Francesca Cuzzoni, and other contemporary teachers. These great singers brought the art of bel canto to as near a state of perfection as has ever been known. But one has to remember the conditions under which they sang.

Thus Victor Maurel writes:—"In the days of the schools of the art of bel canto the masters did not have to take truth for expression (l'expression juste) into account, for the singer was not required to render the sentiments of the dramatis personæ with verisimilitude; all that was demanded of him was harmonious sounds, the bel canto." In other words, all that the singer had to do was to sing, for the emotions themselves had not to be portrayed, the psychical character of the dramatis personæ not being taken into account.

In consequence, the perfection of the singer's voice was but slightly interfered with, as, at most, he had little or no acting to do, a conventional oratorical gesture or two being considered quite sufficient for the fashion of the period. And it is scarcely necessary to remark that the great singers of this period were skilful enough musicians to prevent such unimportant gestures, which hardly deserve the dignity of the name of acting, from being an obstacle to the high quality of their singing.

In the second period of Italian singing, however, the period which coincides with the Rossini-Donizetti-Bellini period of opera in its heydey, the conditions, we find, were greatly altered. The music at this time was at once more dramatic and more scenic, and although the singing was still bel canto, the opera singer of the period was called upon not only to sing well, but to sing dramatically, though it must be said that the music itself provided larger scope for the actor's art, in that it gave more favourable opportunity for specialising and differentiating the emotions.

In "The Opera Past and Present" we find the following intensely interesting allusion to these two great culminating periods of Italian singing:—"A comparison of these two periods of Italian singing indicates the direction matters have taken with the opera singer from Handel's time to our own. From then to now he has had to face an ever-increasing accumulation of untoward conditions; his professional work has become more and more complicated. From Rossini's time down to this the purely musical difficulties he has had to face have been constantly on the increase—complexity of musical structure, rhythmic complications, hazardous intonations.

"He has to fight against the more and more brilliant style of instrumentation, often pushed to a point where the greatest stress of vocal effort is required of him to make himself heard above the orchestral din; more and better acting is demanded of him, he finds the vague generalities of histrionism no longer of avail; for these must make way for a highly specialised, real-seeming dramatic impersonation; intellectually and physically his task has been doubled and trebled. Above all, the sheer nervous tension of situations and music has so increased as to make due self-control on his part less easy. The opera singer's position to-day is verily no joke; he has to face and conquer difficulties such as the great bel cantists of the Handel period never dreamt of."

It has ever been my contention that the conscientious artist should carefully read and re-read the whole libretto, so as to inform himself of the poet's purpose and meaning in the construction and development of the plot, as well as to ever bear in mind his conception of the composer's idea of how the poetry and the various aspects of mind of the characters should be aptly and effectively musicked and interpreted so as to awaken a kindred, or appreciative, feeling in the minds of his hearers.

Besides this, the opera singer who aspires to rise to great heights must possess a keen nervous susceptibility, for only a man or woman of high nervous temperament can reasonably hope to succeed as a lyrico-dramatic artist. Again, in the great operas a most severe strain is placed upon the leading singers, for while they are portraying various emotions—-Love, Hate, Rage, or Laughter—they have, at the same time, to watch the conductor with most minute care lest they fail in time and rhythm.

In fine, though I think but few other than really conscientious students of singing entirely appreciate the fact, the opera-singer of to-day is called upon to possess a far greater knowledge of vocal technique than was ever demanded of him before in the history of singing, as those "good and golden days"—golden only to the moderate performer with but little ambition—when the singer who perhaps scarcely knew more than a few notes of music could, nevertheless, still arouse the plaudits of the public are gone—never to return.

I hope, by the way, that it will not be thought that I have entered too technically into the requirements demanded from an aspirant to operatic fame to-day. I scarcely think, however, that I can have done so, for I feel sure every really aspiring vocalist would prefer to know the exact heights to which he must cultivate his voice either on the operatic stage or concert platform, or even for the drawing-room, that is to say, if he is ever to make a great name for himself in preference to resting content to remain one of the "moderates," of which the musical profession is altogether already too full, not because there is a lack of singers with good voices, but largely, as I have always maintained, because there is a far too prevalent tendency amongst singers these days to shirk the real hard work which must be accomplished before lasting success can be attained.

In conclusion, in order to allow singers' voices to develop in a satisfactory manner, let me counsel them never to attempt those selections in public the range of which taxes and strains them to the utmost, for when a singer "exceeds" his proper range injury to the throat is always liable to follow. Better rather, therefore, is it that a song should be transposed to a lower key if a singer is determined to attempt it than that the voice should be unduly taxed.

And now I will say addio, though I would add that it is my sincere hope that some of the few hints I have given on the cultivation of the voice and of the heights of excellence to which ambitious singers should aspire may prove of real value to those with sufficient pluck to face the task of studying the art of the cultivation of the voice in a really conscientious manner. Hard work accomplishes wonders where the voice is concerned. Let me, therefore, counsel singers never to despair of attaining a state as near to perfection as possible, for it is those who are most alive to their own imperfections who will assuredly "go farthest" in the singing world.

[sujantim]

Dark Side of the Moon- Pink Floyd

Who hasn't even heard the name Pink Floyd? Every Gen X to Gen Z knows Pink Floyd. By any chance, if you don't know, which means you haven't listened to any of their songs, and if you dislike them, there is something wrong with you.

Pink Floyd is an English rock band formed in London in 1965. Gaining an early following as one of the first British psychedelic groups, they were distinguished by their extended compositions, sonic experiments, philosophical lyrics, and live shows. They became a leading band in the progressive rock genre, cited by some as the greatest progressive rock band of all time. Pink Floyd was founded in 1965 by Syd Barrett (guitar, lead vocals), Nick Mason (drums), Roger Waters (bass guitar, vocals), and Richard Wright (keyboards, vocals). 

Today, we are discussing them because 50 years ago, they dropped a nuclear bomb on the music industry with the album Dark Side of the Moon on March 1st, 1973.  They launched a composition of sounds of the instrument, an electric guitar solo with different elements which can’t be decoded easily, known as A timeless album, as if recorded just yesterday, impossible for others to find a comparison, too advanced in years for its time, it remains an absolute masterpiece, more than a record, a cult object! New electronic sound effects and recording techniques extended instrumental solos and improvisation.

The album " Dark Side of the Moon" begins with the track Speak to Me, which only lasts for about a minute and doesn't contain any lyrics with a bit of background, producing faint sounds of a heartbeat, quiet conversations, and cash registers slowly. Fade out into another song, Breathe in the Air, begins with the overlay of different instrument tracks. Verse 1: don't be afraid to care; look around and choose your own ground. For long you live and high you fly and smiles you will give and tears you'll cry and all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be. Remains as my favorite lines,

On the Run is another masterpiece that considers different sounds, including electric sounds, but not the lyrics. Pink Floyd is probably the band that can play with the instruments and elements without having lyrics, and still, the track struck in my head and is still your favorite. It was the first band to invent music and given psychedelic music. Music can be subjective from one to one, but these psychedelic rock bands could be a regular drug to balance someone's study or work-life balance.

The other song from the Album, Time, starts with a tickling sound and tense music. The verse;

“Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain

And you are young, and life is long, and there is time to kill today

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you

No one told you when to run; you missed the starting gun."

This Could be the best thing someone can tell about the time. I would say this song is their best work,  with perfect lyrics and the composition of the musical elements. This sound could say hundreds of words at the same time. This song remains a reminder of time. The track ends slowly and beautifully, taking us to The Great Gig In The Sky. This track leaves with phenomenal worldless vocals, creating the feeling that this will end even though we are halfway through the album.

The album's second part begins with the Money, which starts with the same kind of sound as Speak with Me, cash counting, and coins. The song goes with a beautiful baseline, and the sound of an electric guitar and saxophone played goes faster and faster with the instrument and sudden slow composition ;

Money

Getaway

You get a good job with more pay, and you're okay

Money

It's a gas

Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash

New car, caviar, four-star, daydream

Think I'll buy myself a football team

The song slowly fades out with a background conversation and begins to fade in with the same background sound with another track. The unique thing about this album is that all the songs are related to each other. Us and Them begin with the pleasant sound with classic jazz sound, organs, pianos, and percussion. The song starts with

Us, and them

And after all, we're only ordinary men.

Me, and you.

God only knows it's noz what we would choose to do.

The song addresses the mindless essence of war and the issue of being chained by consumerism and materialism. The track ends  as we transition into our next, “Any Colour You Like.” It is an electronic-filled song with distorted guitars to compliment the psychedelic feel it produces. With no vocals, it quickly ends, where “Brain Damage” quickly begins. The lyrics were inspired by the mental instability of one of the form band members. Brain Damage and Eclipse are often played as a single track. The song ends with the line.

And everything under the sun is in tune

But the sun is eclipsed by the moon

This track feels as if it were an amalgamation of all the songs previously heard. It contains repeated melodies and vocals as the moon ‘eclipses,’ marking the album’s end with the same faint heartbeat we heard in the first track, “Speak to Me.” 

Overally, Dark Side of the Moon is the greatest album ever. It feels like all the gods came together to to create this masterpiece. It remains timeless, being a fantastic listen every time, and it still feels damn this album existed 50 years ago, and people are still listening; it will continue to distinguish itself in a never-ending cycle like a moon. The Story behind Dark side of the Moon;

[horsesource]

"In our attempt to extend a behavioristically oriented approach to the engineering control of animal behavior by operant conditioning techniques, we have fought a running battle with the seditious notion of instinct. [..]

These failures, although disconcertingly frequent and seemingly diverse, fall into a very interesting pattern. They all represent breakdowns of conditioned operant behavior. [..] Hamsters that stopped working in a glass case after four or five reinforcements, porpoises and whales that swallow their manipulanda (balls and inner tubes), cats that will not leave the area of the feeder, rabbits that will not go to the feeder, the great difficulty in many species of conditioning vocalization with food reinforcement, problems in conditioning a kick in a cow, the failure to get appreciably increased effort out of the ungulates with increased drive, and so on.

These egregious failures came as a rather considerable shock to us, for there was nothing in our background in behaviorism to prepare us for such gross inabilities to predict and control the behavior of animals with which we had been working for years.

The examples listed we feel represent a clear and utter failure of conditioning theory [..] the diagnosis of theory failure does not depend on subtle statistical interpretations or on semantic legerdemain—the animal simply does not do what he has been conditioned to do. [..]

Here we have animals, after having been conditioned to a specific learned response, gradually drifting into behaviors that are entirely different from those which were conditioned. [..]

We have termed this phenomenon 'instinctive drift.' The general principle seems to be that wherever an animal has strong instinctive behaviors in the area, of the conditioned response, after continued running the organism will drift toward the instinctive behavior to the detriment of the conditioned behavior and even to the delay or preclusion of the reinforcement. In a very boiled-down, simplified form, it might be stated as 'learned behavior drifts toward instinctive behavior.' [..]

When behaviorism tossed out instinct, it is our feeling that some of its power of prediction and control were lost with it. From the foregoing examples, it appears that although it was easy to banish the Instinctivists from the science during the Behavioristic Revolution, it was not possible to banish instinct so easily. [..]

After 14 years of continuous conditioning and observation of thousands of animals, it is our reluctant conclusion that the behavior of any species cannot be adequately understood, predicted, or controlled without knowledge of its instinctive patterns, evolutionary history, and ecological niche.

We readily admit now that ethological facts and attitudes in recent years have done more to advance our practical control of animal behavior than recent reports from American 'learning labs.'"

"The Misbehavior of Organisms", 1961, by Keller and Marian Breland

[unitedsongbird]

Once in a Century Soul

When I first read the news that day, oh boy... it was one of those moments that forced me to stop what I was doing and think... for the love of music, we are so lucky to have him in our lifetime.

My mother was a teenage Beach Boys fan. I know all of their songs.

Brian Wilson’s legacy in music is monumental, shaping the landscape of pop, rock, and experimental sound. As the creative force behind The Beach Boys, he revolutionized songwriting, harmony, and studio production.

Wilson pioneered complex vocal harmonies, orchestral arrangements, and innovative recording techniques, pushing pop music beyond its traditional boundaries. His ability to blend melancholy with beauty made his compositions deeply emotional and timeless. His influence extends beyond The Beach Boys, shaping modern indie, chamber pop, and symphonic rock.

Today I am choosing song " That's Not Me" which is featured on the 'Pet Sounds' album (1966), this particular recording stands out in a personal way to me because it lifted my spirits when I was a teenager during the 80s. I love how it's relatable to so many and the sparse instrumentation, making it one of the more conventionally structured tracks on the album.

Brian's resilience and dedication to music make him one of the most revered and influential composers in history.

R.I.P. Brian

[vampire-apostrophe]

you know there’s a lot of debate about what kind of song should be created in music spaces. A lot of people criticize musicals for consistently having these high pop belts and saying they’re not healthy. My views on this as someone who has always sung a lot and only begun to take vocal training and learn about voices is complicated. But firstly let me draw a line and say one thing

Musicals and Children’s Films are connected and both are part of this discussion but they’re inherently different.

I will talk about children’s films in a second but let me start with musicals. Firstly, Yes modern belting can be A Lot. At the same time, some of the problems we’re seeing are from people doing things they shouldn’t. Musicals are treated as something that is doable….let me continue. A lot of modern listeners think they can sing the songs in musicals and to a certain they should be able to. However musicals can be really intensive performance/art, not just because they’re doing 7-8 shows a week but these songs are Technically demanding and written for trained voices. Musical actors that these songs are written for are professionals just like Ballerinas and opera singers. Yes there are local productions but they should have a person leading the music, doing warm ups and the singers practice for weeks or months before their performances.

I think if we heard someone say they hurt themselves trying to do ballet on Carpet or saying they were sing the Queen of the Night Aria we would treat them differently then someone who blew their vocal chords singing musicals either once or singing them constantly over an extended period of time.

Should we write interesting roles and parts for Altos and baritone. Absolutely. I have witnessed incredible and beautiful singing from people who focus on tone, balance, and expression over range and I think that that should Always be more important. We do not always need belting and chasing higher notes is an easy way to do some damage.

And while I think Belting can be a little overdone in theatre I think it is egregious to try and belt or sing demanding or complicated songs in children’s media.

Children’s voices are fundamentally different adults in a few ways and when you write for children’s music you need to realize that they will be singing it. To an extent a teenager or adult should know better than to constantly sing defying gravity….. but children were constantly belting Let It Go with no training. The music of Disney is written like it’s modern pop/broadway and therefore not something a lot of kids can sing and yet Disney is now one of the few remaining places of ‘children’s music’. These songs are the songs children sing on the playground and try and perform in concerts and competitions. We are seeing these child prodigies either belting or singing opera and their voices aren’t equipped for that. Meaning they are learning bad techniques to mimic adult voices.

TLDR Musicals are a little too challenging nowadays but if you are a teenager/adult you should be at least a little aware of what your are doing and when you are taxing yourself . Children however are not old enough to know better and their music (ie child films/musicals) should not be including challenging vocal material like Belts and broad ranges.

[sweetdreamsjeff]

RAIDER OF THE LOST ARTS

Jeff Buckley Revisited

by Simeon FlickMarch 2023

Remember me, but oh, forget my fate. ––Henry Purcell, “Dido’s Lament”

Jeff Buckley

When Jeff Buckley drowned in the Wolf River tributary of the Mississippi on May 29, 1997, just as his band was arriving at the Memphis airport to start helping him finally nail down the long-awaited and already agonized-over second album, music lost not only one of its most singular and revolutionary of raw talents, but also the most mythologized—even during his lifetime—since Kurt Cobain’s death just three years prior. Buckley bore the boon and bane of being the scion of an also semi-famous and ill-fated folk/jazz/soul singer named Tim, and spent his entire life and career—following a single week-long reunion just before Tim’s 1975 death from an accidental heroin overdose—futilely trying to distance himself from the wayward father he never knew apart from the music of nine mostly half-baked studio albums. That an ever-growing number of people, the majority having discovered Jeff’s music post-mortem, feel they know the son better than he or anyone else knew his father, and still feel his loss as acutely as one would a dear family member, is a testament to the unparalleled emotional conveyance and lasting legacy of Jeff’s music despite having released only one official studio album during his lifetime (1994’s hauntingly gorgeous, seamlessly diverse Grace, which has found a home on innumerable “Greatest” lists and has been declared a personal favorite by many of his idols). Jeff Buckley’s influence lives on in the burgeoning underground cult of posthumous acolytes, and in the hyper-emotive, falsetto- and vibrato-laden, multi-octave vocal histrionics of so many subsequent singers, which only seem to come off as pale and obvious allusions that smack more of imitation than assimilation, much less embodiment, and we may never see his like again.

**************

Jeff Buckley entered the world during a meteor shower on the evening of November 17, 1966, the son of an already absent father and a mother, Mary Guibert, who at 18 wasn’t much more than a child herself. Like Cobain, who would arrive only three months later, Jeff had a typical Gen X childhood, replete with divorce, paternal estrangement and maternal domination, often violently reinforced alienation from his formative peers and unstable itinerancy (Mary dragged him through virtually every backwater town in California for all too short stints before he finally put his foot down in Anaheim, where both parents had grown up, and where extended family awaited). The sole refuge, besides the brief but stabilizing presence of the occasional father figure like stepdad Ron Moorhead, was the music men like him turned Jeff onto: Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and countless others who would seemingly become part of his DNA. Music became his north star, his raison d’être, and when things went wrong, which was all too often (Jeff had to be a rock for flighty mother Mary, taking on too many of her responsibilities too young), he would escape into it for hours.

This would compound once he took up the guitar. Like many children of musicians do, in order to carve out a distinct musical identity (and to maintain a healthy generation gap), Jeff—or Scotty, as he was known by his middle name then––gravitated towards Gen-X’s chosen instrument: the electric guitar, to the exclusion of his mother’s classical piano and his father’s acoustic guitar and vocalizations. Aside from the occasional lead vocal in a high school cover band, mostly for the high-ranged prog-rock and new wave classics none of his other bandmates could pull off, he considered himself just a guitar player in the ’80s. But not just any player; with Al DiMeola as one of many paragons, Jeff threw himself headlong into the world of virtuosic technique, teaching himself complicated licks by ear as he worked diligently to master not just the instrument but music itself.

This trajectory was maintained after his 1984 high school graduation with a stint at the derided Los Angeles organization, MIT (Musician’s Institute of Technology), with its many specialized subsidiaries, including GIT (Guitar Institute of Technology), where Jeff continued his musical edification. After obtaining his virtually useless professional certificate from GIT but with his gun-slinging reputation solidified a year later, he gigged in various area bands and worked as a studio rat, arranging and recording demos for other aspiring artists. But the lead vocalist in him remained as of yet dormant.

Jeff’s father, Tim Buckley.

By the late ’80s it was already soul-crushingly evident that Los Angeles was a dead-end cesspool of intolerable immersion in other people’s music, and that a drastic change was required to sweep away the bad influences and external white noise to finally get him in touch with his own muse. New York City beckoned—just as it had to Tim in the ’60s—as a locus were people could become the epitome of themselves, get as weird as they wanted, and be unconditionally accepted or ignored as merely part of the scenery, and reach their full, rewarded potential in whatever their chosen field. Jeff tested the waters for a few months in 1990, but his money and options ran out, and he reluctantly returned to Los Angeles.

It wasn’t until April 26, 1991, when he performed as part of the Hal Willner-curated Greetings from Tim Buckley tribute show at Brooklyn’s St. Ann’s Church that he was able to lay the groundwork for a permanent relocation, having garnered the interest of several music industry types offering tangible professional succor, not to mention his first real girlfriend. That night marked the beginning of Jeff’s mythology-building not only as an artist in his own right, but also as an inextricable extension of his father’s legacy; many of the concert’s attendees were blown away not just by Jeff’s supposedly similar voice and delivery, but also by his physical resemblance (apparently there were some eerie backlit cheekbone shadows cast against the church hall walls that heightened the drama).

That there was so much defensiveness and/or mandated avoidance in so many subsequent interviews seems very bite-the-hand-that-feeds, but everyone has to break free from their parents at some point; that it often requires the assistance of those selfsame parents is a frustratingly ironic aspect of adulthood most of us have to face and embrace. Jeff simply had the misfortune of doing it in a highly scrutinized industry with zero—or even negative—expectations or tolerance of rock star progeny. He was also not only abandoned by his father, to whose funeral he was not even invited, but also projected on by Tim-obsessed fans and former love interests expecting the son to deliver on the father’s failed promise(s).

Jeff set up shop, and with the assistance of a demo tape of original songs he had recorded while still languishing in Los Angeles (courtesy of father Tim’s old manager, Herb Cohen), and a threadbare press kit (the only news clipping being a photocopied review of the Tim memorial show), he began beating the Manhattan pavement to drum up gigs and busk on the streets.

As of yet, short on original material, he leaned on sophisticated covers that resonated with his emphatically empathic and emotive spirit as he wall-pasta’d in search of a unique artistic identity. Songs by more recently assimilated influences like Nina Simone, Edith Piaf, and Leonard Cohen stood side by side with pitch-perfect deep-cut gems by Van Morrison and the beloved Zeppelin, with all-inclusive guitar arrangements that cast his different-every-time performances in full-blown Technicolor. His self-accompaniment on electric guitar as opposed to the acoustic form usually favored by the often excessively earnest—if not outright cheesy—solo folk artists of the past (including early-phase Tim), differentiated him from obsolete traditions, and it also broadcast the implicit message that this lone performer would eventually have a band behind him.

But the comprehensive guitar skill was just a tripod for the potent weapon his voice was becoming.

It’s difficult for most laypeople to differentiate between learned technique and natural timbre. Jeff didn’t inherit his father’s vocal gift; his was high-ranged and effeminate instead, with a thick palate and some huskiness occasionally muddying up his tone production. But what he did with it despite or because of the confines of those “limitations” is absolutely astounding. Instead of self-consciously diluting his delivery, he threw the book at it, almost as a diversionary tactic, like a magician smoke-and-mirror distracting his audience from an otherwise debunkable prestige move. With his uncanny imitative abilities and concomitant penchant for self-pedagogy, he adopted a rapid vibrato in accordance with essential influences (Simone, Piaf, Garland, and even father Tim, as was his undeniable birthright), nicked tricky classical and R&B trills and phrasing, turned his angelic upper register into a strength by frequently, often breathily leaning into his falsetto, incorporated various operatic (chromatic glissandos) and jazz (scatting) effects, learned how to push a full chest voice into his higher register like Robert Plant (and Tim) and to raggedly scream like Cobain and others of his generation. He ran sustain drills as he traveled across the city in cabs or on foot, drawing out his notes as long as possible to hone his deftly rationed breath support (just try holding out along with the 25-second E4 at the end of Grace’s “Hallelujah”). Tim had set the bar high for the younger Buckley, and Jeff rose mightily to the challenge, developing a comprehensive technique that kept pace with his guitar mastery, which had been pared down to unassailable jazz progressions and Hendrixian blues tropes and, like Cobain, would feature downplayed––if any––solos for the duration. If Jeff’s musical continuo was a haunted house, his voice had become the ghost that lingered within it.

(There’s something more compelling about the resulting output of singer/songwriters who start out exclusively as instrumentalists; it makes for more effective and meaningful musical accompaniment and better structured songs, and they tend to work more diligently and eruditely at mastering vocal technique. Tim leaned almost exclusively on his phenomenal voice, and insufficient thought was given to structure and harmony in his songs, and the lyrics were by turns predominantly unremarkable or unwieldy, the main drawback of being able to sing the phonebook. The resulting chord changes and accompaniment were more limited, derivative, yet ironically more obtrusive. Jeff had harnessed hooks, vivid and compelling lyrical imagery, and upper harmony into underlying works that left room for everything important, but especially the vocals. Thus, Jeff managed to achieve with one album what Tim failed to do in nine; he produced a timeless classic.)

Jeff’s most crucial influence––his self-declared Elvis––was the Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Qawwali singing introduced Jeff not only to its mystical eastern harmony, which was a subtle but unmistakable undercurrent in his guitar parts and his music in general, but also to a highly freeing ilk of vocal improvisation he would use to sparing but profound effect in his live performances, most notably in his wordless vocal warm-ups for things like “Mojo Pin” and “Dream Brother,” and in the way he would subtly tweak the songs’ melodies from show to show.

With all of this gelling within and beginning to burst out of him, Jeff flogged his wares at many a Manhattan venue, but he would find his symbiotic Shangri La at Sin-é, a hole-in-the-wall café run by a fellow man of Irish descent, ex-pat Shane Doyle. Jeff crystalized into the self-accompanying male diva he had been striving to become there at Sin-é and found a home away from home not only on the small stage, where he reveled in an unparalleled, as-of-yet anonymous freedom within the material, but also behind the counter, where he could often be found washing dishes.

This is where Jeff’s buzz began to build, thanks to his Monday night residency, the impression he had made on the industry folk at Tim’s memorial concert (including several Columbia employees who started showing up on the regular), and the steadily growing crowds comprised predominantly of young women. As word of mouth spread and audiences began to overflow onto the sidewalk, the higher-ups at several major labels started circling to investigate the fresh blood in the water. A hilarious bidding war ensued, with record company execs actually trying to make table reservations at the tiny walk-in café, and the street’s curbs clogging with limousines. Jeff would end up signing with Columbia, a Sony subsidiary that was home to many of his heroes, and that made all the right overtures and promises to this hot young talent who was desperately intent on accomplishing the impossible feat of using and defeating the music industry from the inside, as opposed to being consumed by it like his father had been.

**************

Jeff’s “million dollar” deal––consisting of a $100,000 advance, a higher than normal royalty rate, and a three-album guarantee––was unusual for a solo artist of that time, considering there were scant few original songs, no band, and no official demo tape to speak of (the L.A. recordings, which Jeff in his humorously nihilistic cups had dubbed The Babylon Dungeon Sessions, technically fulfilled the applicable criteria but weren’t aurally suitable). Columbia knew they had a hot property on their hands, the Gen-X manifestation of a Dylan or Springsteen-esque heritage artist, and Jeff made sure they knew, mostly through intentional late arrivals to countless business meetings. But because his talents spanned so deep and wide, everyone was initially at a loss as to what form his recorded output should take. What the hell do you do with an artist that has the chops and versatility to go in any direction??

The logical first step was to try and capture the solo version of Jeff on tape and issue it as a soft introduction. Live At Sin-é was culled from two performances recorded during the summer of 1993 and released on November 23 as a perfunctory, slightly disappointing four-song EP consisting of two originals (“Mojo Pin,” and “Eternal Life,” both of which would get definitive, full-band versions on Grace), and two covers (a rhapsodically incendiary rendition of Van Morrison’s “The Way Young Lovers Do” and a transcendent reading of Edith Piaf’s “Je N’en Connais Pas La Fin,” complete with a fingerpicked merry-go-round guitar waltz for the French-sung refrain).

In Columbia’s posthumous ambition to exploit remaining vault caches to continue paying down Jeff’s sizable debt to the label, the original release’s felonious dearth was rectified with 2003’s Legacy Edition, a two-disc, one DVD set that was a much more complete representation of Jeff not just as an artist during that pre-fame period, but as a person. Along with scads more songs from the same shows, the expanded set includes between-song banter that manages to do what his scant, more visceral studio work couldn’t: put his pronouncedly nerdy, madcap, sometimes salacious sense of humor on full display.

Meanwhile, Jeff had also begun working toward his only completed studio LP. Sony had brought him in to record the lion’s share of his repertoire in February of ’93 as a way to gently kick off the A&R cataloguing and selection process for the album (these were later released as part of the 2016 compilation You And I), and recording sessions were scheduled for September at Bearsville Studios, which was located near Woodstock in upstate New York. The only problem––and it was a big one––was that he didn’t have a band. Like so many other aspects of Jeff’s career, this got rectified at the last possible moment; he met and connected with bassist Mick Grondahl first, then drummer Matt Johnson less than a month out from the initial recording dates.

A tall, dark, and handsome Dane, Grondahl had an ideal combination of low-key receptiveness and musical adventurousness that allowed him to be the perfect on- and offstage wingman: he was interesting in an unobtrusive way. Johnson was a wet-eared Texan who had the ideal balance of power and precision (a slight and diminutive presence, Johnson’s physicality was bolstered by his construction day job) and the breadth of taste and experience to match the extreme dynamic variations of Jeff’s sonic palette (Johnson could crush it like Bonzo or play pindrop-soft like a seasoned jazz pro––whatever the music required).

Columbia was less than pleased that Jeff had recruited a rhythm section with virtually no stage or studio experience, but he would eventually be proven right in his selection of introverted, lump-of-clay rookies that doubled as a gang of friends who could hang with him in every sense, especially through all the spontaneous twists and turns he threw at them. This was one of many battles he would actually win for the better against Sony, though he would initially come off as the loser (it took a few months for the band to get up to speed on the Grace repertoire, because they rarely if ever played the album’s songs during rehearsals or soundchecks, preferring to fill that time with “jamming,” since they needed to build an intuitive rapport. They also knew they would be playing the same emotionally demanding songs night after night for the next year or two).

The trio began work on Grace at Bearsville Studios, which had been pre-rigged with several different recording environments to spontaneously capture whatever came out of Jeff and his band in any permutation and style, whether it was solo, low-key jazz combo or full-on rock group. Andy Wallace, who had dialed in the mixes for Nirvana’s Nevermind, wore the coproducing and engineering hats for these sessions, along with providing a regimented lens through which to focus and refract Jeff’s chaotic genius. Recording proceeded slowly and steadily, without too much fanfare, but then, again at the last minute there was an explosion of prodigious productivity. Among other developments, German vibraphone prodigy Karl Berger was in town, and with the assistance of a local quartet, he and Jeff co-arranged string parts for “Grace,” “Last Goodbye,” and “Eternal Life.”

The eleventh-hour burst of creativity suddenly began transforming Jeff’s modest debut into something more akin to the fully produced masterpiece that usually doesn’t happen until later in a discography. More studio time was booked for intensive overdubbing of additional layers, which pushed costs beyond the initial budget, and though Columbia held Jeff in high esteem and generally handled him with kid gloves (full artistic control was implicit), the majority of expenses went into his recoupable fund, which had to be paid down by Jeff through album sale royalties. Though Grace would eventually prove itself beyond worthy of the investment, this was one of the first major manifestations of Jeff’s Sony-sourced headache that would plague him for the duration.

Grace, which was finally released on August 23, 1994, tends to vex the neophyte at first blush. There’s so much to unpack, the resulting bottleneck can be off-putting. Only through repeated listens will it reward those who “wait in the fire,” as the title track has it. Once that rote assimilation has inured you to Jeff’s eccentric voice and anachronistically innovative affectations, and Grace has dilated your emotional receptivity wider than you ever thought possible, you will tend to listen obsessively for a while before you realize you need to take a break so your strung-out, wrung-out heart can snap back to normal. You will probably only be able to listen to it every once in a while thereafter, as the lachrymose music makes demands of your psyche that require exceptional equanimity to withstand (the irony is that while Grace might help you grieve a breakup or death, listening to its ten tracks can also exhume that grief long past the time you have worked through it). The fact that Jeff is no longer here but still sounds undeniably alive in the speakers, and that the making of this album led to insurmountable expectations for a satisfactory follow-up that added to his pre-death stress, only augments the album’s haunting intensity.

The sonic progeny of Robert Johnson, Nina Simone, Edgar Allan Poe, and John Dowland, Jeff comes off as the wide-amplitude, tragic-romantic, card-carrying Scorpio that he was, irresistibly obsessed with love and death, singing often of the moon and rain (and yet also of burning and fire), and bedroom-as-sanctuary-and-wellspring, and a melancholic, nearly heart-rending yearning for absent lovers past and present. All of this can’t help but feed into his steadily growing mythology, not to mention strike he’s-all-alone-and-vulnerable-go-save-him reverberations of longing through the heartstrings of every heterosexual female within earshot, while also getting straight men of all walks gratefully as in touch with their feminine side as he was. In the age of grunge––which force-fed emotion through intimidating volume and distortion––Grace was an anomaly, delivering a wider range of feeling through a listener’s induced surrender to its heightened peaks and valleys, with Jeff’s by turns angelic and demonic voice keeping pace, and, unlike Cobain, with absolutely no irony to lean on, hide behind, or use as disclaimer.

“Mojo Pin” is the perfect overture for an audiophile quality album with such wide yet still somehow cohesive style and dynamic oscillations, with softly looping guitar harmonics fading in, followed by a wordless melody delicately sung over a fingerpicked folk/jazz guitar pattern. The music rollercoasters from there, with dramatic stops featuring vocal melismas that proceed into straight 4/4 time, finally crescendoing in a loud, climactic buildup, and a ragged scream from Jeff that tapers seamlessly back into the jazz feel.

The first stanzas tell us so much about the author:

I’m lying in my bed, the blanket is warm This body will never be safe from harm Still feel your hair, black ribbons of coal Touch my skin to keep me whole

Oh, if only you’d come back to me If you laid at my side I wouldn’t need no mojo pin To keep me satisfied

Here we find a vividly lovelorn artist who tends to compose from the subconscious (as with many of his original songs, “Mojo Pin” was inspired by a dream he had had) has already begun confronting his mortality, equates love with addiction like so many troubadours before him (“mojo pin” is a euphemism for a shot of heroin, which, inspired in part by his father, Jeff used for a short time during the tour in support of Grace), and feels hopelessly separated from it all, with a heightened sense of longing that can’t help but garner the listener’s sympathies.

The title track picks up the thread in more ways than one; along with “Mojo Pin” it is the second of two pre-Sony songwriting collaborations with former Captain Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas—as part of his short-lived Gods and Monsters project (that’s Lucas’s guitar-noodle wizardry on both). And with lines like “Oh, drink a bit of wine––we both might go tomorrow,” it ups the mortality-as-enabler-and-aphrodisiac ante.

With its churning 6/8 groove, and with Jeff starting the song in typical fashion––toward the bottom of his discernable vocal range (D3), “Grace” culminates cathartically on a sustained, heavily vibrato’d, full-chest E5 bad-assedly blasting from his manic larynx and also marks the first of several ominous allusions to being harmed by water (“…And I feel them drown my name…”).

“Last Goodbye” was supposed to be the big first single. It even got an MTV video treatment (just look at his dour expression as he and the exhausted band take a precious day off from a European tour to do this exorbitantly expensive production of a compromised artistic concept in a despised medium), but with no real chorus to speak of, its chart success was modest at best. A Delta blues slide glides across an open-tuned electric 12-string guitar before dropping into a mid-tempo dance groove and a lyric full of bittersweet memories of a failed relationship with an older woman in L.A.

Not only was Jeff a bit shorthanded when it came to filling an entire 52-minute album with originals, but it also would have been a shame not to round out the running order with some well-chosen and interpreted covers in emulation of the intimate immediacy of Jeff’s Sin-é days. The first of these appearing on Grace is “Lilac Wine,” a torch-song standard written by James Shelton and adopted by Nina Simone. Jeff gives the distant-lover-as-intoxicant lyrics the hyper-emotive treatment, with perfectly sustained vibrato on the drawn-out notes and with his voice occasionally breaking into a heartrending sob, especially on the line, “…Isn’t that she, or am I just going crazy, dear?”

“Lilac Wine” is a significant indication of the barely fathomable depth of Jeff’s––and by extension, the band’s––versatility and their ability to do exactly right by the artist and repertoire (it’s difficult, in that sense, to listen to any of Tim’s records without taking umbrage with the musicians in the various band incarnations smothering Tim’s voice and stepping all over his 12-string guitar with their ego-fulfilling and poorly––if at all––thought-out parts).

“So Real” represents not only the successful search for a second guitarist, but also a tenacious battle fought and won against Columbia for the very soul of the album.

Michael Tighe, a mutual friend of Jeff and his ex Rebecca Moore (the one he had met and fallen in love with at the Tim tribute, and whom “Grace”s lyrics supposedly feature) joined the band on second guitar after most of the work on the album had been completed, and he brought an intriguing set of chord changes with him. When it came time to record B-sides and possible non-album singles (a cover of Big Star’s “Kangaroo”, which, to Sony’s consternation would often stretch out to 15 or 20 minutes in concert, was also laid down), Tighe’s progressions, which were inordinately sophisticated considering he hadn’t been playing guitar for very long, were dusted off, tracked with engineer Cliff Norrell, and Jeff did the lead vocal in one take after a last-minute walk to finish the lyric.

Distinguished by the verses’ seamless changes in meter (back and forth from duple to triple time), its by-now standard mélange of tragic-romantic imagery in the lyrics (“I love you / But I’m afraid to love you,” and the foreboding “And I couldn’t awake from the nightmare that sucked me in and pulled me under…”), another wildly climactic E5 at the end, and a massive chorus hook, the song fit Jeff’s MO––accessible innovation and wide-amplitude expression––perfectly.

So much so that it quickly shed its B-side status and usurped a coveted spot on the record from another, highly contested original: The excessively personal and harsh “Forget Her,” which in retrospect would have been the sole manifestation of irony on the album. Jeff was justifiably dissatisfied with this disingenuously caustic 12/8 blues-pop dirge waltz he had allegedly penned about the aforementioned, hapless Moore, upon whom the lyric displaced Jeff’s own culpability for the relationship’s dissolution. But the label was head over heels with it, as the song’s melodramatic, Michael Bolton-esque chorus made it the one and only potential crossover smash in their minds. Columbia exec Don Ienner, who was essentially Jeff’s boss, tried everything short of bribery to futilely sweet-talk Jeff into keeping it on the album, which, in itself, was a tangible reason for Jeff to dig in, though he also feared that the slightly smarmy song would be a one-way ticket to One-Hit-Wonder-ville. As it turned out, “So Real”s chorus was hookier anyway, enough to warrant its own video treatment, though its subsequent commercial impact was also negligible.

A plaintive sigh kicks off what is now widely regarded as the definitive recording of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” the second cover of the album, performed solo and glued together from multiple takes into a solemn paean to the ecstatic pain of long-term relationships. Inspired by John Cale’s 1991 reading, Jeff sticks to the ultra-romantic verses that find love and suffering linked in paradox, and the guitar tone and reverb augment the song’s church hymn vibe, almost as though it was recorded at a service or funeral. If you’ve heard this recording or noticed it in myriad movies and TV shows and haven’t cried at least once, you’re not human.

“Lover, You Should Have Come Over” is a classic swinging blues adagio, perhaps the best known and most covered original on the album. Water and death are linked once again (“Looking out the door, I see the rain fall upon the funeral mourners / Parading in a wake of sad relations as their shoes fill up with water…”), and then Jeff abruptly breaks that train of thought to do right by Moore in recognizing his role in their breakup (“…Maybe I’m too young / To keep good love from going wrong”). Again, his vocal starts low and builds to another E5 at the end. In the hands of another artist, all of this would have sounded forced and over the top, but somehow Jeff was able to make it work. That’s his genius/madness; he himself was fully dilated and committed in a way that wasn’t healthy or sustainable, but damn, did it make for visceral listening.

“Corpus Christi Carol” reaches even further back than 1950’s “Lilac Wine” and completely blows the listener away with its expectation-defying display of musical depth. He becomes a bona fide classical singer here, exhibiting total immersion in the anonymous 16th-century lyric that the aptly named English composer Benjamin Britten incorporated into 1933’s Choral Variations for Mixed Voices (“A Boy Was Born”), Op. 3, finally arriving at Jeff’s adolescent ears through the version for high voice recorded by Janet Baker in 1967. Jeff completely inhabits the allegory of a bedridden, Christ-like knight endlessly bleeding, witnessed by love and the purity of his cause, with the empathic delicacy that was already his trademark. The stark arrangement for electric guitar and scant overdubs is superbly matched by the lamenting vocal, which ends on a ghostly, falsetto’d E5 that is utterly cathartic in its climactic glory.

Jeff wanted to make an album that compelled rock fans to forget about Zeppelin II, and “Eternal Life” delivers on the heavier side of that promise. Written during his time in L.A., the creepy intro stops on a dime before a bludgeoning, yet highly danceable groove drops in and a reactive lyric confronts applicable listeners to wake up and smell the mortal coffee:

Eternal life is now on my trail Got my red-glitter coffin, man––just need one last nail While all these ugly gentlemen play out their foolish games There’s a flaming red horizon that screams our names…

Racist everyman, what have you done? Man, you made a killer of your unborn son Oh, crown my fear your king at the point of a gun All I want to do is love everyone…

There’s no time for hatred––only questions What is love, where is happiness What is alive, where is peace? When will I find the strength to bring me release?

With distorted bass as well as guitar alongside complementary strings and a killer groove featuring a highly effective, accelerating hi-hat pattern from Johnson on the verses, the song successfully proselytizes for universally incontestable causes, and reinforces Jeff’s projected mythology as a doomed soul whose seemingly relished fate awaits him sooner rather than later.

“Dream Brother” may be the last song on the album, but it was the very first idea Jeff and the band had worked up together. At the risk of overusing the word, and just like the album as a whole, it is haunting from start to finish, with a droney, string-cranking intro giving way to an eastern-inflected guitar motif. Jeff’s more static but no less sublime vocal melody goes beyond complementary; it builds tension by hanging on or around the fifth for most of the verse stanzas before resolving to the tonic on the last note of the phrase. Grondahl’s bass line, as with all his work on the album, is a sublime treat; here we find him working his way through the exotic Phrygian mode, recasting the guitar parts into a harmonically complex, emotionally compelling accompaniment that perfectly underpins the vocal.

The song features another penned-and-sung-at-the-last-possible-minute lyric, the chorus of which admonishes dear L.A. friend Chris Dowd (of Fishbone) not to abandon his new family like Tim had Jeff and Mary: “Don’t be like the one who made me so old / Don’t be like the one who left behind his name / ‘Cause they’re waiting for you like I waited for mine / And nobody ever came.” Grace’s only allusion to Jeff’s father builds in intensity to an instrumental bridge with wordless Qawwali wailings that are utterly bone chilling in their echoing-into-eternity saturation. The album’s final line puts an ominous capstone on the pyramid of the untimely-death-by-water preoccupation: “Asleep in the sand, with the ocean washing over…”

PART TWO

Jeff Buckley

From ’94 to ’96, both solo and with the band, Jeff Buckley toured the world and elsewhere. Those two years were highly transformative; he met and/or was lauded by so many of his personal heroes (including Zeppelin’s Page and Plant, Paul and Linda McCartney, U2’s Bono and The Edge, David Bowie, and he had a brief affair with Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil, who had covered Tim’s “Song to the Siren” [for aural proof of the romance, go to YouTube and check out their unfinished, embarrassingly smitten PDA duet on “All Flowers in Time”]), picked up an all but unshakeable smoking habit as a late-blooming extension of delayed formative-year rebellion and as a temporary, self-harming relief from the stresses of touring and just-shy-of-A-list fame (he managed to make People magazine’s 50 most beautiful list in May of ’95, which mostly appalled him, and also had an eye-opening night out with Courtney Love), turned down numerous primetime opportunities—SNL, Letterman, and acting roles and commercial placements—in favor of “underground” platforms like MTV’s “120 Minutes,” and was constantly at odds with his record label.

Australia and France embraced him like a returning hero, with the latter country’s Académie Charles Cros presenting Jeff with the rarely-awarded-to-an-American Grand Prix International Du Disque in honor of Grace on April 13, 1995 (two live shows, the second representing a career peak, were recorded during a French leg of the tour and later released as 1995’s Live at the Bataclan EP and 2001’s Live à l’Olympia).

The tank ran dry on March 1, 1996, which marked not only the final date of a hastily booked Australian/New Zealand tour to capitalize on Jeff’s surging popularity there and subsequently the last in official support of Grace, but also the final show with percussionist Matt Johnson, who had reached his hard limit with the band leader’s exacerbated lifestyle excesses and reckless behavior, not to mention Jeff’s escalating hazing of him.

Drummerless and exhausted, a different Jeff Buckley returned to a different New York. Though it suited his dysfunctionally nomadic, reactively noncommittal spirit, touring is not conducive to one’s mental or physical well-being nor is any level of fame, which is unfortunately what moves the units at the cost of anonymous normalcy. As a result, Jeff could no longer frequent any of his old haunts without being recognized and approached by strangers who thought they knew and deserved a piece of him beyond his timeless music. But then even his friends couldn’t help but feel jilted in their wanting a less ephemeral friendship with him, as he made them feel like the undeniably corroborated center of the universe when he was around, having given of himself interpersonally as completely and unadvisedly as he did in his music.

With inchoate fame now cutting him off from his usual decompression options, Jeff couldn’t recharge his psychic batteries. That coupled with the fact that Columbia and the press had been persistently hounding him regarding a follow-up to Grace piled even more pressure on the stress heap, further hampering his creative process and making The Big Apple taste more of the cyanide within the seeds than the once novel fruit of clandestine self-discovery.

There’s an industry saying: a recording artist has their entire life to make the first album and six months to make the second. Already no stranger to writer’s block under normal circumstances (he was inherently a better interpreter than a composer and understandably loath to commit to locked-in versions of anything), Jeff found himself hitting the creative wall in the midst of his increasingly stifling paradigm. The new songs were coming, albeit more slowly than everyone preferred, and in a different, more current vein than Grace. Having kept an ever-vigilant ear to the cultural ground, Jeff had met the Grifters and the Dambuilders while on tour, gaining a new love interest—Joan Wasser, to whom he related early on that he was going to die young—from the latter band and befriended Nathan Larson of Shudder to Think, and their contemporary alternative rock vibes ignited a light bulb over Jeff’s head, giving him the inspiration to pursue a rawer sound, much as Cobain had for Nevermind’s 1993 follow-up—In Utero.

It wasn’t necessarily Sony’s cup of tea. Though the label was by no means dead-set on putting out Son of Grace, they were a bit befuddled by the significant shift in musical mores away from the classic heritage artist sound toward the aural marriage of the Smiths and Soundgarden evident in the newer material. His sagacious selection of classic solo repertoire, and Grace by extension, had gotten Jeff’s foot in the door, as their sophisticated old-school values were arguably a premeditated affectation on Jeff’s part to woo the industry’s boho Boomer gatekeepers into signing and unconditionally supporting him. Now that he was more or less ensconced on the inside, and having gained more than a little leverage from all the hard work of the past year and a half, Jeff wanted to change things up to reflect more of what he’d been listening to and writing as an artist of his own generation. Though jumping high through Jeff’s hoops was by now second nature, Columbia was nevertheless befuddled.

This vexation next manifested as bewilderment over the choice of legendary Television alum Tom Verlaine (RIP) to aid and abet his alt-rock vision as the inexperienced coproducer for the second album. No one at Sony thought Verlaine was the right man for the job; they would just as soon have gone with Andy Wallace again rather than someone who, as with Grondahl, Johnson, and Tighe, didn’t have a track record to speak of. Whether or not Jeff’s choice was ill informed was irrelevant; it became his new crusade against the label, a pyrrhic war waged solely on the principle of getting his way even if it ended up biting him in the ass.

Columbia green-lit some bet-hedging recording with Verlaine to humor Jeff, but also to surreptitiously gather leverage as a failed, debt-enlarging investment, as the odds were slim that he could pull another rabbit out of his hat within the limited, impossible-for-Jeff parameters. Two brief as they were dissatisfying sessions occurred at various New York studios in 1996 and then a third at Memphis’s Easley McCain studios with Johnson’s permanent replacement, Parker Kindred, in early 1997. Jeff had become interested in recording at Easley through Grifters guitarist and Memphis resident Dave Shouse, and in relocating to that hallowed town for its legendary status in the history of blues and rock ‘n roll, and yet also as an escape from the lost anonymity, label pressure, and detrimental distractions of New York.

Jeff began striving for—and was at least able to temporarily reclaim—some semblance of a normal life in Memphis; he settled in at 91 Rembert Street, where he could often be found lying in the overgrown grass of his front yard, staked out all the good local restaurants, got a Sin-é-reminiscent Monday night residency at a downtown venue called Barrister’s, proposed marriage to Joan Wasser, and spent time with local friends who didn’t treat him like a rock star. At the time of his death, and as this evidence indicates, Jeff was trying to settle down, but he also felt ready to finally nail the landing on the second album, which he earnestly hoped would not only eclipse Grace but would frighten people as well. He was also noticeably uneasy.

The iteration of what was going to be called My Sweetheart the Drunk that came out almost too soon in May of 1998, not the barely attainable one Jeff would have overworked himself to complete had he lived, is the version the label should have agreed to put out had he been willing and able to play the long game. Though disc 2, with the exception of “Haven’t You Heard” and the cover of “Satisfied Mind,” is mainly for diehards (it contains sloppily recorded and produced home recordings that only hint at greatness, as well as superfluous original mixes of select disc 1 material), the ten Verlaine tracks are nothing to scoff at. In fact, the minimally but still excellently arranged and produced songs not only sound surprisingly finished, but would have also found Jeff paving the way for the future of alternative rock/pop in a manner that was more in touch with the times but still rang true to Jeff’s old-school tragic-romantic sophistication. Hindsight finds these recordings nothing to be ashamed of, the natural, expectation-managing and yet still promise-fulfilling continuation of Jeff’s artistic journey, though he didn’t—and wouldn’t—agree with that assessment (the tracks probably could have used just a little more tightening up… At the very least, and as it stands, disc 1 of My Sweetheart the Drunk could have been a highly respectable and acceptable “sophomore flop”). Jeff would have had to ease up on the malignant perfectionism had he lived, and in that light it both does and doesn’t seem strange that he continued massaging these recordings—with additional overdubs and polishing occurring at Easley after the band’s return to New York—despite his clearly declared intention to abandon what he had already recorded, concede defeat regarding Verlaine (who urged Jeff to erase the tapes), and start from scratch with Andy Wallace.

Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk has plenty of wide-amplitude thrills (“Vancouver,” which started life as an instrumental break on the Grace tour, now featured a soaring vocal that found him suddenly clued in to the detriments of giving too much of himself: “I need to be alone / To heal this bleeding stone…”), lots of tragic-romantic flair (the beautiful, minimally orchestrated ballads “Morning Theft” and “Opened Once,” the swinging caveat “Witches Rave,” and the macabre, “Come as You Are”-ish “Nightmares by the Sea” are by turns self-castigating and wary), more struggle over suitable repertoire (Jeff harbored hypocritical paranoia that the set-apart, slinky R&B slow-jam, “Everybody Here Wants You” would be chosen as a single against his wishes [it was], even though the song is an instant classic, and the album could have done without the cover of the Nymphs’ “Yard of Blonde Girls,” though he didn’t trust Columbia to agree), two Qawwali nods (the mantra jam “New Year’s Prayer”, and the utterly harrowing “You And I”), and plenty of fodder for precognition-of-untimely-death speculators (“Stay with me under these waves tonight / Be free for once in your life tonight…” from “Nightmares By The Sea”, and “Ah, the calm below that poisoned river wild…” from the goosebump-evincing “You And I”).

**************

Recording contracts have always been a Faustian bargain for the artist, especially at the onset, when it is weighted heavily in the card-holding label’s favor. Art and commerce often meet in the cultural-industrial ring as irreconcilable spouses who stay together for the kids, with the artist wanting to make a unique, challenging, and hopefully timeless statement for theirs and successive generations, and the label needing to make a profit, not lose their shirt, or just break even. The latter often requires innocuous music that has been dumbed down or otherwise compromised for mass consumption, usually the antithesis of the former. The artist, though, according to the standard contract they signed, is legally beholden to the label, which owns the master recordings and the right to exploit them until such a time, often years or even decades down the road, when the artist has gained enough cachet through account-balancing sales and accumulated cultural pertinence to renegotiate the contract into a more equitable form that befits their too-hard-earned stature. As with life in general, and back when labels were still labels, one had to play a patient, penitent, somewhat circumspect long game, with eyes intent on the future prize in order to succeed as a recording and touring artist, and to eventually win out over the label.

Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, now in or on the cusp of their 80s respectively, managed to successfully undergo and even control their fame-reconciling heritage artist transformations and break through to the other side. Jeff Buckley, who realized too late and too far out to sea that he had given up essential access to a normal life, and whose DNA and hardship-forged personality was geared for fleeting, heightened moments of impulsive escape and unrealistic levels of emotional outpouring during which there was no tomorrow, did not. After an itinerant childhood in a chaotic, single-parent household, neither of which allowed him any bonded, bolstering long-term friendships or gave him the necessary emotional support to instill enough confidence to enable him to pace, self-nurture, and recharge as an adult, Jeff was predestined for burnout. Add to this the looming legacy of his father’s similarly self-inflicted and untimely doom, the demoralizing fiscal and creative debt to—and incongruent association with—a major label, and pervasive generational nihilism, and you have the recipe for a death by misadventure.

The world generally eats pure-heart-on-sleeve empaths like Jeff Buckley for breakfast, and just like house-always-wins Vegas casinos, record labels are particularly good at exploiting, devouring, and then remorselessly shitting out their charges no matter how vigilant the artist may have been to the contrary. In Jeff and Columbia’s case, it’s difficult to pick a winner; dying got him out of both having to deliver on a second album and pay off his way-in-the-red recoupable, but his absence-generated popularity and Sony’s dogged determination to monetize ample vault caches in the aftermath may have balanced the ledger by now anyway. Either way you slice it, and for what it’s worth, the artist is gone, and Columbia is a tawdry shadow of its former self, but Jeff’s timeless music remains.

Trying to imagine how Jeff would have navigated the post-5/29/97 waters is not challenging, considering the comprehensive changes already in motion that would herald not only the end of his generation’s all-too-brief moment in the sun, but also the beginning of the end of the record industry as he had known it. Jeff probably would have seen Sony’s support slowly dwindle, becoming even more isolated until his contract came up for renewal and he was then most likely dropped from the label, as its various employee archetypes, which were industry-wide revolving doors, would have inevitably jumped ship for higher positions elsewhere. This exodus would have severed nurtured—and nurturing—connections, leaving Jeff in the hands of green, bottom-line-focused reps that had had nothing to do with scouting or signing him and were subsequently less inclined to offer the kind of largesse and preferential treatment to which he had been accustomed.

A new generation was also coming of age, one that sought shallower, more effervescent thrills to match their innate, well-nurtured ebullience. Soundgarden, Jeff’s now fellow-in-untimely-death friend Chris Cornell’s band, which was the first of the Seattle grunge era to sign to a major label, broke up almost on cue that year. Groups like Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, N’Sync, Hanson, and solo artists like Brittney Spears, Ricky Martin, and Christina Aguilera were prepared to replace grunge’s locked-up engine in the zeitgeist car, with already emergent, transitionally mellower sounds from the likes of Dave Matthews Band, Blues Traveler, Phish, Spin Doctors, and Hootie and the Blowfish having paved the way. Autotune was introduced that year, with computer-based digital recording having begun its ascendant journey to becoming the analog-supplanting, music-devaluing standard.

Within a decade, for better and worse, the industry as Jeff knew it would no longer exist, nor would the focus on organically profound music on which he had been brought up and of which he had become a part. With no plan B (he endearingly applied for what would have been a meagerly if at all remunerated position at the Memphis zoo’s butterfly exhibit), Jeff would have been hard-pressed to maintain a subsistent income—let alone pay down his debt to Columbia—inside or outside the new, less tolerant manifestation of the industry, which would have scoffed derisively and dismissively at his to-date album sales. And he probably would have recoiled from the rising popularity of bubblegum pop and nü-metal buffoonery in disgust.

Kurt Cobain once said he wished he had paced himself better, played more of a long game by holding back some of Nevermind’s material for subsequent albums, and a general feeling persists that Jeff had similarly neglected any thought of the future by putting everything he had into Grace, and there wasn’t enough left to create something new to match its grandeur, at least not within his unsustainable paradigm. It seems as though he was done, that his music’s true moment in the sun could only begin after he had disappeared somehow. Amassing cachet would have to rely on his premature-demise-as-career-move absence, the removal of his chronic perfectionism that allowed Sony to put out whatever was in the vaults without his opposition (albeit in full, duly diligent cooperation with next-of-kin trustee, supposed legacy preserver / promoter, and posthumous stage mother Mary), and amassing fin de siècle malaise that would find solace in Grace. But Jeff’s death feels wrong as well, redolent of the same sense of tragedy as JFK’s assassination, as if we had truly lost one of the good ones, and the subsequent sensation of all hope for a fair and just future having been annihilated in a flash, regardless of whether or not either of them actually deserved that idolization.

The grief-sourced application of culpability gets complicated when someone who has deeply affected strangers and loved ones alike is directly responsible for their own death, but it can’t exactly be called a suicide. And though we have plenty of lyrical and anecdotal evidence that could easily be construed as self-fulfilling prophecy (like Cobain, Jeff had consistently and insistently telegraphed his denouement), it is otherwise difficult to substantiate rumors that Jeff had been dreaming of his demise just weeks—if not longer—beforehand. But as with the cinematic portrayal of Mozart obsessively composing what would become his own requiem in Amadeus, if someone persistently gives thought and voice to fatal intent, walks that fine line long enough, the border between this world and the next will begin to blur and smudge until it finally wears thin enough for one to cross over without even noticing. Freud may have said it best: “Until you make the subconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.”

Unlike influencee Rufus Wainwright, whose songs are also emotive but restrained in comparison, Jeff never developed the necessary filters to mitigate the harmful aspects of his heightened sensitivity and permeability, preferring instead to empty his emotional ballast onstage night after night to the adulation of interchangeable, undemanding strangers (though some of them often clamored annoyingly for renditions of Tim’s songs), as if each show were his last (which he had hypocritically accused Tim of in a 1993 interview). In all of Jeff’s 30 years, he had never learned the kind of self-love that would awaken and bolster the basic long-term survival instincts to enable him to throw off the chains of his deeply ingrained fatalism. With his pallid, fey appearance, alluring gender-balanced charisma, heart-rending empathy, unregulated outflow of emotional energy, and foolhardily unshielded vulnerability, he seemed to many as though he was marked for an early end no matter what evasive action he might’ve taken.

Though Jeff had been exhibiting unstable, borderline bipolar behavior in the weeks prior to his drowning, he didn’t consciously intend to die that night (a nearby witness apparently heard a single cry for help), but his willful ignorance of the dangers of his impulsive and fatalistic nature and the whimsical flouting of the perils of his immediate surroundings would be the co-conspirators of his mortal undoing.

Fully clothed at twilight, Jeff waded backward into a notoriously dangerous river despite a lifetime aversion to water—and in denial of all the overt signals his subconscious and conscious had sent him. Doing the recently learned backstroke to the braggadocio boom-box strains of Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” in a roiling river all but universally avoided for its severe, passing-boat-generated undercurrents was supposed to be a spontaneous trip to and from the edge to take his mind off of life’s untenable pressures for a short while. But instead, and to his torch-carrying fans’, friends’, and family’s ongoing bereavement, it lasted forever.

**************

England’s annual Meltdown Festival consists of a series of concerts given over several days by contemporary artists and is curated by a celebrity participant with an ear toward the high-minded performance of unconventional repertoire. Jeff was invited by 1995’s chosen Master of Ceremonies—Elvis Costello—to take part on July 1, which serendipitously coincided with that year’s European tour in support of Grace, though it was inconveniently sandwiched between concert dates across the channel.

Along with collaborations in mixed ensembles comprised of co-billed artists, Jeff did a four-song solo set that featured the apropos “Corpus Christi Carol” (the song that had originally piqued Costello’s interest), Nina Simone’s “The Other Woman,” and “Grace.”

He began with an absolutely devastating rendition of “Dido’s Lament,” which Costello had personally requested from the setting of Dido and Aeneas by 16th century British composer Henry Purcell. Jeff was indistinguishable from a fully trained, operatic countertenor as he delivered the moribund lines with innate familiarity:

Thy hand, Belinda, darkness shades me On thy bosom let me rest More I would, but Death invades me Death is now a welcome guest

When I am laid in earth May my wrongs create No trouble in thy breast Remember me, but oh, forget my fate

Costello came out after the last of the four songs and accompanying ovation had died down and following some gracious comments recognizing the young artist’s overflowing docket, he essentially summed up Jeff’s contribution—and the debt of gratitude music owes him—with his closing salutation that now stands as a fitting epitaph:

“He gave everything. Thanks, Jeff.”

[erzherzog-von-edelstein]

If you're still into rusprus, I'd love to hear your answers on 13, 14, 15 from General or 2, 6 from Love for them (of course I don't ask you to answer all of these, choose whichever you prefer)

If I'm still into them? Of course! I wouldn't back away from Prussia's longest alliance as one my favorite ships. I wrote about them fairly recently too. I have unfinished smut of them sitting in my WIP document right this moment.

To show just how still into them I am, I am going to answer all of the questions.

13. Which one thinks they aren't good enough for the other, if at all?

The answer to this one is, ironically, both. Those isolated childhoods gave them both self-worth issues (and anyone who has read my version of Gilbert knows that I tone down his canon bragging a lot). Neither them is vocal or open about not feeling good enough for the relationship, because they learned young that vulnerability leads to pain. Ivan waited a long time to act on his feelings because he felt like he would get rejected and it took the wave of self-confidence that the Napoleonic Wars gave him to actually do something. Gilbert has the problem in all of his relationships that the idea of being attractive to people doesn't occur to him, because he pushed it out of his mind when he was a teenager. They both spent the best years of their relationship still in some disbelief and waiting for the moment when the other person realizes that under the facade, they're both vulnerable.

14. What are some songs that apply to their relationship, in-universe or otherwise?

For someone who keeps playlists for characters, I'm never sure what to post because it all makes sense in my head.

So, here's a few off my RusPru playlist:

15. What is their most common argument about?

Jealousy. They're both possessive people who don't do well with being less important than anyone else in their lover's life. And this isn't even just romantic jealousy (though Ivan still brings up Romania and Austria when he's upset). But this also extends to Ludwig. Ivan did not like being supplanted in Gil's priority list by Ludwig, especially when Ludwig made it pretty clear that he didn't like the Russian alliance. That's still very much a sore spot, and Ludwig causes more arguments between them than anything else.

2. What are their primary love languages?

Ivan - Gifts. If he is giving someone gifts and calling them nicknames, he's in deep.

Gilbert - Acts of Service. His whole life he has been a man of action rather than words. So he will do all sorts of things to make Ivan's life easier because it's how he shows he cares (this goes for Ludwig too)

One of their issues is that both of them sometimes need verbal confirmation of affection, and they're both rather bad at providing it. Ivan had to learn that Gil doesn't immediately interpret being called "my rabbit" as the equivalent of "I love you and I would die for you" and he needs to actually say those words.

6. What are their favorite things to do together?

Oh, Chess, absolutely chess. Those quiet times in Ivan's dacha were spent with a lot of long chess and card games. Anything with strategy.

They used to go hunting together a lot when it was a thing that royal courts did. For a couple reasons: Gil likes to show how good he is at it, Ivan finds watching him amusing, and in the Romanov court it was time away from people who were listening and watching. Less so now because it's not the same kind of experience.

Going out to the ballet. Now, Gil doesn't really like ballet, and he wouldn't go by himself. But he knows that Ivan loves ballet so much, so he'd get dressed up in his best dress uniform and go with him and let Ivan talk about technique and music and aesthetics all night.

[cryptidsmagick]

Arising from the works of the controversial JK Rowling is the magical book series we all learned to love (or hate) along with its films. As someone who didn't enjoy the series as much as I thought I would, I did find many ways to incorporate it into my practice, starting with the patronus: the embodiment of all things that ward of the dementors (the very fabric of depression).

"A kind of positive force, a projection of the very things that the Dementor feeds upon – hope, happiness, the desire to survive – but it cannot feel despair, as real humans can, so the Dementors can’t hurt it."

Like dæmons, in pop magick, they're not to be confused for spirit guides. Rather, they're manifestations that help protect you from negative energy and bring you happiness in hard times.

In my searching, I found two ways to manifest your patronus: thought forms and vessels.

In the case of a vessel, find an item to hold your patronus. A plushie matching its appearance is recommended. A wand is recommended for the next step, but is not necessary. Focusing positive intentions, happy memories, and other good feelings into energy (at the tip of your wand or at your hand), channel it into your vessel. This vessel will now contain this energy and serve as your patronus. Eating chocolate afterwards will help restore your mana.

With the vessel method, your patronus will not be able to speak or interact with you. It's simply a reserve of energy to help spread positive feelings when you're in need of them. In this sense, it's equivalent to a non-corporal patronus, “‘a thin wisp of silver’ that hovers ‘like mist’.”

The thought form method is more similar to the practice of dæmonism, where you visualize your patronus as standing beside you. At first, it may be non-corporal, but with time, you might start to visualize it as a creature. To help you start visualizing it as a creature, you can test out animal forms that stand out to you or even take the Wizarding World quiz to get started. Attached to this articles is the extended version of the pottermore quiz.

Both methods use Expecto Patronum as the vocal incantation of the spell—except with the thought form method, you say it every time you want to speak or interact with your patronus. If you use the thought form method, don't be surprised if the form you got in a quiz doesn't stick…quizzes aren't accurate. They're just for fun after all.

For thought form patronus, dæmonism techniques may come of use to you.

Finally, if your patronus corporalizes as a shape you're not a fan of…it's not a matter of if you like it, it's a matter of—what is your concept of happiness?

Your patronus might reveal more about you than you think.